By Hannah Turner, Moriah Sharpe

This project, executed by the UNC School of Government Criminal Justice Innovation Lab (the Lab) in partnership with the North Carolina Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS), supports stakeholder interest in the expansion of social work services in North Carolina public defender offices by assessing the implementation of the social work function. The project has two components: (1) A workshop for Chief Public Defenders and select staff, held in April 2024, on holistic defense and the use of social workers in public defender offices. (2) An implementation evaluation of social work positions in seven North Carolina public defender offices. This report focuses on findings from the implementation evaluation and provides recommendations for public defender offices seeking to add or expand social work capacity. Key takeaways include: Eight public defender offices currently have social work staff, and many others have expressed interest in adding social work capacity. Of the twenty-seven public defender offices in the state, eight have social work staff members. Seven offices with social work staff participated in the implementation evaluation component of the project. However, representatives from twenty-one offices attended the April 2024 workshop, demonstrating broad interest in the use of social workers in public defender offices. The day-to-day operation of social work staff varies significantly by office. Offices have tailored the role of social work staff to meet their specific needs. For example, some social work staff take on a wide array of referrals, while others focus on a narrower client populationlike clients in custody seeking acceptance to residential substance use treatment programs. The background of the social work staff member, the availability of community resources, and the willingness of other court system actors to agree to social work alternatives as part of case resolutions all impact the day-to-day role of social work staff. Offices have different preferences when hiring social work staff. Offices have hired social work staff members with a variety of professional backgrounds, including capital mitigation work, psychology, county social services, and library science. Chief Public Defenders emphasized that not everyone with a traditional social work background would be an ideal candidate to work in public defense. For example, some offices expressed concerns about people with child welfare experience making the transition to advocate for adult clients who may have been charged with crimes against children. Most offices agreed that professional licensure was not a necessary requirement for their social work staff. Offices create their own procedures for training and onboarding social work staff. There is not a statewide standardized training or onboarding process specific to social work staff. Many offices described this as both a benefit and a challenge. Chief Public Defenders appreciated the flexibility, but they raised concerns about their ability to effectively train social work staff without subject matter expertise in the area. Offices used a variety of techniques to promote successful onboarding, like court observation, finding relevant online trainings, and shadowing current staff to understand different roles. Still, social work staff consistently voiced a desire for more training opportunities. Social work staff offer a range of benefits. Offices expressed that social work staff offer a variety of supports to clients, freeing up attorneys to focus on the person’s legal defense. They said social work staff facilitate  more trusting client relationships, promote a positive working environment, and can increase the community’s confidence in the public defender’s office. There is minimal overlap in data collection among offices with social work staff, which could be a limitation for future evaluation. Social work staff members typically create their own procedures for case documentation and data collection, and those procedures vary widely by office. Some offices use paper files, others use electronic tracking systems, and others do not have separate social work case files at all. The lack of consistency in data collection could present challenges for any future evaluation seeking to determine the impact of social work staff on non-legal client outcomes, like connection to substance abuse treatment. Consistent funding is one of the biggest challenges for retention of social work staff and expansion of the social work function. Offices fund social work positions in several ways, including grants, county government support, and state budget allocations. All of these funding sources have their limitations, and offices described challenges securing stable funding. Limited funding means that offices struggle to expand their social work capacity and that existing social work staff have very minimal opportunities for promotion. However, using interns from Master of Social Work or other similar programs can provide a no-cost option for offices looking for additional social work supporteven for offices that do not currently have dedicated social work staff.

Raleigh:  Criminal Justice Innovation Lab, UNC School of Government

Sexual assault is epidemic in the United States. Recent media reports, public outrage, and activism have been focused on the institutional settings in which these assaults occur. Colleges and universities, as well as the military and athletic programs, have come under increasing scrutiny as settings that not only fail to deter, but possibly foster rape.

viewpoints, 16p.

By Hayley Stillwell

Despite the foundational principle in the American criminal justice system that it is better to acquit the guilty than to convict the innocent, wrongful convictions remain a persistent issue. Wrongful convictions are sometimes caused by flawed evidence, such as eyewitness misidentifications and unreliable forensic techniques. Researchers and scholars have studied this problem of flawed evidence extensively, leading to many successful reform efforts to address this portion of the wrongful conviction problem. But there is another portion of the wrongful conviction problem that has yet to be the target of reform efforts—wrongful convictions caused by juror error. Implicit biases, forbidden assumptions, and strategic voting are jury errors that can lead to wrongful convictions, yet they are difficult problems to address given the black box of secrecy that surrounds jury deliberations. This Article proposes the use of “placebo trials” as a novel thought experiment that could transform into a real experimental method to identify and address jury error. Placebo trials simulate real trials in every way, but they are not real. As far as jurors know, however, they are sitting on a real trial. Another important characteristic of placebo trials is that the objectively correct verdict outcome is an acquittal. By inserting a variable into a placebo trial, the experiment can show with firsthand jury data whether the variable impacts acquittal rates. If a variable has such an effect, then it may lead to wrongful convictions and should be the focus of reform efforts.

56 Ariz. St. L.J. 1361 (2024 )

By Brandon MordueFollow

The idea that one’s punishment should depend on the crime committed rather than which judge happens to do the sentencing strikes most as uncontroversial, if not a requirement for a fair sentencing regime. Forty years ago, the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act promised just that result. Increased data availability allows us to evaluate the project’s success. The results are not encouraging.

Federal defendants are sentenced using guidelines issued by the United States Sentencing Commission that sometimes bear little relation to the underlying wrongdoing. This has created a split among judges, with some following the guidelines and others rejecting them. The consequences are arbitrariness in sentencing and unwarranted disparities across offenders.

In 2007, the Supreme Court permitted appellate courts to presume the reasonableness of guideline sentences, largely insulating those sentences from judicial review. Much has changed since then, and it is time for the presumption to go. The findings of the original data analysis presented in this Article, as well as developments since the Court’s decision, show that the claims made in support of the presumption are unfounded. In fact, some of the related case law rests upon provably false empirical premises.

Today, most sentences are not within the range set by the guidelines. Favoring the minority of sentences that are within the range results in a sentencing regime incompatible with the overriding statutory aim of avoiding unwarranted sentencing disparities. Rather than presuming the reasonableness of within-guideline sentences, the courts can chart a course correction by prioritizing the data on actual sentences from the Sentencing Commission. Such a shift would achieve more consistent sentences across offenders convicted of similar crimes.

115 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 133 (2025), 73p.

By Isis Misdary

Three separate but closely related factors have together produced this nation’s epidemic of mass incarceration. First, the enforcement of criminal law has become wholly dominated by a caste of repeat players. The chasm between this grouping and outsiders has become far more important than the prosecution-defense duality ostensibly dominating the system. Second, the system’s design and policies have become dominated by central authorities sealed in a “tough-on-crime” echo chamber. This leaves local communities largely powerless to check the devastation being visited upon them. And third, the system has ruthlessly suppressed the individuality of those facing charges. They are rarely seen, almost never heard, ignored if they try to contextualize events giving rise to the charges, and punished severely if they attempt to assert their rights, much less their innocence. Robbed of all that makes them human, their fates arouse little sympathy. Devastated communities have mounted various responses to mass incarceration. None is more exciting than the participatory defense movement. This movement seeks to involve the person facing charges as well as that person’s family and community. Together, they meet with defense counsel, gather evidence for the case, and in mitigation, prepare videos or other testimonials to influence charging and plea-bargaining decisions and undertake other efforts to support the person facing charges. Through the movement’s work on individual cases, families and communities have spotted issues within the criminal systems and the criminal laws close to home that must change, that must end. Case by case, they have started to challenge, change, and end them. Yet, for all its promise, participatory defense may face considerable challenges going forward in these areas. As a relatively new movement, it must continue to resolve significant design challenges and overcome formidable institutional and attitudinal buttresses the current system has erected.

25 Nev. L.J. 325 (2025), 92p.

By John Burns

This Note traces the evolution of bail from its origins to modern commercial bail, highlighting how the system has disproportionately affected low-income defendants. In 2023, Illinois became the first state to eliminate cash bail with the enactment of the Pretrial Fairness Act, which attempted to remedy longstanding inequities. The Note situates Illinois’s approach between New Jersey’s successful risk-based reform and California’s oversimplified and harmful “zero bail” experiment. While Illinois’s reform represents a meaningful step toward fairness, this Note argues that its reliance on a categorical approach and its limited use of pretrial assessments may unintentionally undermisne its effectiveness. The Note concludes that Illinois must go further by expanding judicial discretion and mandating the use of risk assessment tools.

Washington University Journal of Law & Policy [Vol. 78, 2025. 29p.

By Jess Hickman, Mei Yang, Andy Tisdel, Charlie Riccardelli, Ashley Neufeld, and Amanda Coscia.

When a person facing criminal charges fails to appear for a court hearing, no one benefits. Courts must reschedule hearings and often issue warrants, consuming time and resources. Meanwhile, people who miss court may face additional charges, fees, and even jail time. Jurisdictions across the country have explored interventions such as court date notifications to improve appearance rates, but failures to appear continue to present a challenge. Part of the problem is that the underlying causes are unclear. Research suggests that people miss court for reasons like forgetting the date or not receiving notice.1 Others miss hearings due to a lack of transportation or conflicts with life responsibilities, including employment or providing dependent care. Courts need hard data on why people miss court. However, relatively few studies have systematically investigated this question, leaving courts without the information needed to make policy decisions. To fill this research gap, the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI), with funding from Arnold Ventures, partnered with Jefferson County, KY (Louisville) and Salt Lake County, UT (Salt Lake City) to survey people who were arrested on a failure to appear warrant.

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2025. 7p.

By Anouschka Rajah, Conleth Burns

Recent events have propelled the criminal justice system to the forefront of public debate. The controversial early release of thousands of prisoners to ease overcrowding was one of Labour’s first acts in government. The Stockport attack, the 2024 summer riots, the media storm over ‘two-tier’ justice, David Gauke’s independent review of sentencing – all have contributed to a new and intense scrutiny of the UK’s approach to crime and punishment. The backdrop to these events is a justice system in crisis, of which the overcrowding of our prisons is only one symptom. As this report shows, victim and wider public confidence has collapsed; voters are deeply frustrated with the status quo and now rank criminal justice alongside the NHS, immigration, and the economy as a top priority for reform. The Common Ground Justice Project, which commissioned this research, aims to find a new way forward for the justice system which can command broad public support. In the context of a noisy, polarised debate, we’re starting by listening: to voters across the country, to victims, perpetrators and communities most affected by crime. To that end, More in Common conducted national polling and focus groups to better understand public attitudes to criminal justice through the lens of their British Seven Segments model. What emerges is a public ready for change, with views more complex than the popular framing of ‘tough’ vs ‘soft’ justice. While there are key differences between segments, most people are not at the extremes. They want a better balance: enforcing punishment while also improving accountability and proportionality and ensuring people who commit crime make a contribution to society rather than being a burden on the taxpayer. This is the emerging common ground that can point towards a different future: delivering a real sense of justice for victims, safer streets, and restoring public confidence – even national pride – in the British justice system. What might such a future look like? While the public shows little enthusiasm for costly prison expansion, many struggle to imagine credible alternatives. Yet our findings show that when people are presented with concrete examples of new approaches that speak to core values, they respond with openness. The will for change is clear – but to harness it, we need greater efforts to identify new ways forward that feel tangible, achievable, and properly resourced. We also found that the public segment whose views on criminal justice differ most sharply from the rest of the country (Progressive Activists) is significantly overrepresented in policy and communication roles across the public and charity sectors. For those advocating change or shaping justice policy, we hope this report underscores the importance of not only following the evidence of what works, but also speaking to the values of the British public whose trust in the system is essential. The report is just the first step, but an important one, of our journey to improve understanding of attitudes on criminal justice and light the way to a justice system that better serves victims and wider society

UK: Common Ground Justice, 2025. 41p.

By Patrick Armstrong

This policy framework outlines policy recommendations developed as part of a Justice Reinvestment Initiative effort in Kansas from 2020 to 2022 in collaboration with the Kansas Criminal Justice Reform Commission. Analysis conducted throughout the project resulted in numerous policy and practice recommendations to improve community supervision, victim services, behavioral health supports, employment opportunities, and housing for people in the criminal justice system. These recommendations were advanced to the Commission, and some were introduced to the legislature during the 2021 session. Some of these bills, in addition to new ones, were also considered in the 2022 session. Recommendations related to improving supervision by focusing resources where they can be most effective, expanding prosecutor diversions, and extending the existence of the Commission culminated in legislation that was signed into law in May 2021. Recommendations focused on improving specialty court programs, allowing people to petition to be removed from a drug offenses registry, and ensuring that people on supervision are supervised by only one entity were signed into law in April 2022.

New York: The Council of State Governments Justice Center, 2022. 16p.

By Kierra B. Jones Evelyn F. McCoy Natalie Lima Rod Martinez

Prosecutor-led diversion programs are growing in popularity in many jurisdictions across the country and offer a unique opportunity for prosecutors to address the impact prosecutorial decisions have in perpetuating mass incarceration and an opportunity to reduce local jail populations. Diversion programs can both hold people accused of wrong-doing accountable, while reducing the deleterious effects of incarceration. This case study, part of a series highlighting work supported by the Safety and Justice Challenge, examines how Milwaukee County, Wisconsin developed and implemented prosecutor-led diversion strategies to reduce the local jail population.

Washington DC: The Urban Institute, 2022.36p.

By Brian Elderbroom, Leah Sakala, and Ammar Khalid

Utah adopted criminal justice reform legislation (H.B. 348) in 2015 to curb prison population growth and invest in behavioral health treatment, including reclassifying first and second drug possession convictions from felonies to misdemeanors. Our analysis finds that Utah successfully reduced the number of felony drug possession convictions, with a 71 percent drop between 2014 and 2018. Additionally, people spent a combined 105,011 fewer days in prison for drug possession in the two years following reform than in the two years before. Furthermore, reconviction and imprisonment rates for people with drug possession convictions were low prior to the policy reform and remained unchanged afterwards. However, Utah’s prison population is again growing, arrests for drug possession are rising despite declining arrests overall, and prison admissions for possession with intent to distribute offenses are increasing. This brief offers recommendations that Utah policymakers can consider to build on prior reforms, address additional prison population growth, and continue to invest in more effective public safety solutions.

Washington DC: The Urban Institute, 2020. 19p.

BY THE PHILADELPHIA DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE

Key Takeaways Archival research conducted for this report demonstrated that racial disparities observed in Philadelphia’s criminal court system are rooted in severe historical injustices and wealth inequality. For over a century, Black Philadelphians have been overrepresented in arrests and criminal charges, relative to their representation in the City’s broader population. Disparities have not been resolved and in many cases have been worsened by federal, state, and local laws and policies. Combining publicly-available datasets reveals that markers of systemic disinvestment such as poverty, unemployment, litter, health problems, and eviction are concentrated in formerly red-lined neighborhoods where residents are predominantly Black and Latinx. From 2015 to 2022, Black defendants were charged at disproportionately higher rates relative to other groups in seven of the eight most common criminal charge categories. Even when accounting for prior criminal record and illegal firearm charges, Black and Latinx individuals who are convicted of aggravated assault or burglary are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration than white individuals convicted of the same crime. Latinx individuals convicted of possessing drugs with intent to distribute (PWID) are more likely to be sentenced to incarceration than Black or white defendants, even when they have no prior record or illegal firearm charges. While this administration’s policies have helped to reduce disparities in supervision and probationary sentences, large racial disproportionalities remain in Philadelphia’s court system. Justice agencies and social institutions must work together to fix the structural racism that creates disparities across systems 

Philadelphia: The District Attorney's Office, 2023. 68p.

by Terry Huang, Katarzyna Wyka, Maria Khan,

The US incarcerates more people than any country in the world. Driven by racial bias in policing policies, practices and sentencing, as well as biases toward individuals of lower socio-economic background, minority groups are disproportionately exposed to police contact and incarceration. People who have a history of incarceration face elevated risk of adverse health outcomes prior to incarceration, and incarceration is likely a determinant of the racial/ethnicity disparity in health. There is strong evidence showing that criminal legal system involvement (CLI) plays a role in cardiovascular disease (CVD) and STI/HIV exposure. CLI also appears to be associated with other chronic conditions such as diabetes22, and adverse pregnancy outcomes such as miscarriage. In addition, there is evidence CLI increases exposure to violence, including homicide and suicide. Given the intersection of incarceration and a myriad of health risks, there is a critical need to develop public health programs for people released from incarceration focused on client-centered goals to best protect health and wellbeing, and promote social integration, upon return to the community. The New York City Health Justice Network (NYC HJN), an innovative health service delivery program for individuals returning from incarceration, was developed and implemented by the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), with criminal justice reform funding from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office (DANY) Criminal Justice Investment Initiative (CJII). NYC HJN sought to provide individuals recently released from incarceration with peer support from community health workers (CHW) with lived experience of successful reentry from the criminal legal system and access to integrated primary care and social services. As an intersectoral strategy to improve community health and well-being, NYC HJN aimed to reduce the likelihood of further contact with the criminal legal system. NYC HJN addressed a wide range of client health needs, including support with health insurance, primary care, dental care, mental and behavioral health, and social service needs such as assistance with employment, housing, food security, obtaining vital documents (e.g., identification), and legal support. CHWs provided social and emotional support and served as critical advocates to help clients navigate the healthcare system as well as a wide range of social service organizations deemed critical to successful community reentry. The NYC HJN program served people released from both prison and jail. Those served generally represented the incarcerated population in NYC. This final evaluation report aims to examine the association of NYC HJN program participation with criminal legal system re-involvement outcomes, including re-arrests, conviction/reconviction and reincarceration at 6- and 12- months post program start. For the purpose of this evaluation, a sample of HJN clients who enrolled in the program between 2020-2022 were recruited and consented into the study. Using administrative data from criminal justice agencies in New York, HJN clients were compared to a sample of controls matched on age, sex, time spent incarcerated during the last jail or prison stay, top charge for the last incarceration, and frequency of incarceration in the past 5 years. For the final analysis, 203 HJN clients were matched against 339 individuals serving as controls. Bivariate results showed that HJN clients had a lower average number of re-arrests at 6-months compared to controls, as shown in Figure 1 below. This trend was present up to 12 months after program start. Other outcomes such as rates of conviction/reconviction and reincarceration were lower among HJN program participation relative to controls but were not statistically significantly different between the two groups. After adjusting for covariates, there were no significant differences in any of the outcomes at 6- or 12-months between HJN clients and controls, except for the lower mean number of re-arrests in the HJN group. The lack of statistical significance among other variables should be interpreted with caution, as the results may have been affected by the small sample size and relative short duration of the study.

New York: NYU-CUNY Prevention Research Center , 2025. 45p.

By Amanda Y. Agan, Andrew Garin, Dmitri K. Koustas, Alexandre Mas, and Crystal Yang

All results in this paper using IRS data are drawn from the publicly available working paper “The Impact of Criminal Records on Employment, Earnings, and Tax Filing,” which is available on the IRS Statistics of Income Tax Stats website. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or the official positions of the U.S. Department of the Treasury or the Internal Revenue Service. All results have been reviewed to ensure that no confidential information is disclosed. Researchers Agan, Garin, and Koustas received funding for this research through the Clean Slate Initiative, a project of the New Venture Fund. We thank the San Joaquin Public Defender's Office and District Attorney's office for their help and tireless work in making this project possible. We also thank the numerous interns who worked in San Joaquin to help us gather data. Camilla Adams, Kaan Cankat, Sarah Frick, Jared Grogan, Bailey Palmer, and Kalie Pierce provided instrumental research assistance. We also thank Emma Rackstraw and J-PAL NA for the initial conversations that allowed this project to happen. The RCT in this paper was registered in the AEA RCT Registry, RCT ID: AEARCTR-0004414. IRB approvals were obtained where necessary.

WORKING PAPER · NO. 2023-133

Chicago: University of Chicago, The Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, 2023. 53p.

By Phil Bowen and Ellie Brown

• This briefing considers the three criminal justice Bills currently before Parliament— the Sentencing Bill; the Criminal Justice Bill; and the Victims and Prisoners’ Bill— and estimates the impact they will have on the demand placed on the prisons and on probation specifically. (In a separate briefing, we have looked specifically at how to strengthen provision for victims within the Victims and Prisoners’ Bill). We recognise our estimates include a good deal of guesswork but we have tried as far as possible to ground them in the existing Government figures in the public realm. • The backdrop of these new Bills is stark. From court backlogs, high probation service caseloads and an overcrowded and overflowing population in the adult male prisons, the adult criminal justice system is already struggling with demand. The Sentencing Bill itself was originally announced as part of a broader response to acute prison capacity issues, and included a new executive early release scheme. • Our assessment is that, taken together, the proposals to reduce demand on, and increase the capacity of, our prison system are unlikely to adequately deal with the acute pressures on the adult male prison estate in the medium term. Measures like a presumption against short sentences may delay the point at which demand outstrips supply but we estimate that, by December 2026, we are likely to reach a capacity crunch point again. • Turning to probation, a number of the measures to alleviate prison demand place do so by placing additional burdens on the probation service (we estimate 14,000 extra cases over the next four years). There is currently insufficient assurance that probation have the workforce and resources to take this on. We have concerns that the current proposal to place individuals onto Suspended Sentence Orders (SSOs) as an alternative to short prison sentences could backfire due to this lack of probation resourcing, and this may further undermine judicial and public confidence in community sentences more generally. • We suggest that the Ministry of Justice pay special attention to the recommendations of the Justice and Home Affairs Committee of the House of Lords report on community sentences that “Deferred sentencing can be used… to create incentives for low-level, repeat offenders to engage with more intensive rehabilitative activities.” We also recommend the Ministry of Justice extends existing alternatives to short prison sentences for women (both diversion away from the court system as well as problem-solving court alternatives for women), and ensure that the presumption against short sentences applies for people under 18 as well. • Finally, we have concerns about the measures in the Criminal Justice Bill to tackle rough sleeping and nuisance begging through new civil orders which, if breached, can result in criminal proceedings. There is a lack of credible evidence advanced for these proposals and the Government’s own impact assessment seems to ignore the considerable evidence that similar attempts to use these types of order have been ineffective, poorly implemented, disproportionately punish the most vulnerable and do so while draining resources away from evidence-based preventative measures. We are also concerned that the proposals are accompanied by no assessment of their impact on the courts or other parts of the criminal justice system

London: Centre for Justice Innovation 2023. 10p.

By The ACLU of Northern California

California was once the nation’s leader in public defense. Long before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state must provide a lawyer to poor people charged with crimes, many counties in California already did so. Yet today, after years of neglect by the state, California is in the midst of a decades-long public defense crisis. A main cause is the reliance on “flat-fee” contracts with for-profit private attorneys and firms, where lawyers are paid a set amount for a limitless number of cases. These agreements lock attorneys and their clients in a financial conflict of interest where the lawyers’ fees are pitted against quality, zealous representation for those accused of crimes. Flat-fee systems have a well-documented history of providing worse representation and fueling mass incarceration and California has been called out, decade after decade, for allowing them to flourish.

This report examines the actual contracts California counties use and finds that they are woefully deficient in providing necessary resources to private contractors in order for them to adequately represent their clients, they uniformly fail to limit the number of cases attorneys can handle at once, and they provide little to not oversight or supervision for the lawyers who defend people when their lives are on the line. We synthesize the decades of research from within the state and around the country that show these systems should be eliminated and recommend that California finally do just that

San Francisco: ACLU of Northern California, 2025. 27p.

By Erik Luna and Weldon Angelos

Marijuana laws in the United States vary by state, with some states allowing recreational use and others only allowing medical use. At the federal level, marijuana is still illegal, however, banned as a Schedule 1 substance under the Controlled Substance Act. The disconnect between state laws and federal laws is growing. As of December 2024, 39 states allow for medical use of marijuana and 24 states allow for recreational use, while a proposed change in federal rules would reschedule marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3. With the laws constantly evolving, and calls for legalization at the federal level growing louder and louder, what happens to the people still affected by the federal war on marijuana at the twilight of national prohibition? This white paper proposes clemency criteria for non-violent, federal marijuana convictions. It concludes by offering next steps for both executive and legislative action. With the President’s leadership, this Administration and Congress can assure that individuals haunted by marijuana arrests and convictions will finally have the clean slate they deserve.

Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law Paper No. 5199528, 43p.

By Lindsay Bing, Rebecca Goldstein , Helen Ho , Devah Pager, and Bruce Western

  US courts regularly assess fines, fees, and costs against criminal defendants. Courtrelated debt can cause continuing court involvement and incarceration, not because of new crimes, but because of unpaid financial obligations. We conducted an experiment with 606 people found guilty of misdemeanors in Oklahoma County, Oklahoma. Study participants were randomly selected to receive relief from all current and prior fines and fees assessed for criminal charges in the county. Fee relief reduced jail bookings 21 mo after randomization and the effect persisted over 44 mo of follow-up. Although fee relief reduced incarceration, financial sanctions had no effect on indicators of lawbreaking. Instead, the control group (who obtained no relief from fines and fees) were rearrested at significantly higher rates because of open arrest warrants for nonpayment. These results indicate the long-term and criminalizing effects of legal debt, supporting claims that financial sanctions disproportionately harm low-income defendants while contributing little to public safety

PNAS 2024 Vol. 121 No. 51 e2415066121 

by Luzi Shi, Megan Denver

A common concern in hiring individuals with criminal convictions is the stigma associated with the criminal record, which can include negative consumer reactions. We provide two novel tests of courtesy stigma, or the idea of transferring negative traits from one entity to another, through a nationwide survey. Using a conjoint experiment and a follow-up open-ended question, we first establish whether the public is less likely to select a restaurant if the business has a hiring initiative for people with conviction records. Using a vignette experiment, we then test whether the same factors driving personal stigma apply to courtesy stigma and whether hiring messaging frames influence courtesy stigma. We find evidence of criminal conviction courtesy stigma in the conjoint experiment. Respondents, however, typically reported the characteristics of the business itself as influential, and when the criminal record mattered, the underlying rationale was mainly instrumental: Avoiding a criminal record–friendly business was often due to safety concerns. We find similar instrumental results in the vignette experiment; the quality of service, rather than the characteristics of the criminal record or server's race, influenced restaurant recommendations. Perhaps for this reason, messaging strategies focusing on reducing criminal record stigma did not reduce courtesy stigma.

Criminology, Volume 63, Issue 1, February 2025, Pages 89-121

By Shadd Maruna

Early desistance research identified a key role for redemption scripts in the process of desisting from crime. This research emerged in an incredibly punitive environment at the turn of the century, when core beliefs about human redeemability were being challenged by popular and academic theories about incorrigible predators incapable of change. Desistance research made a profound impact, inspiring academic scholarship and changes to the policy and practice of reintegration. However, desistance research can also be accused of numerous crimes, as well, ranging from the adoption of an overly individualistic framing to the usurpation of the voices of research contributors. Fortunately, redemption is possible. A new generation of desistance theory and research now explicitly addresses the political and cultural factors impacting the desistance process and proposes that these hardened prejudices will only be changed by supporting a social movement led by and for system-impacted people. With their proven ability to inspire hope and promote action, redemption scripts may, again, be a key tool in such a movement.

Criminology, Volume63, Issue 1, February 2025, Pages 5-25