MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

BY Gordon Hawkins

The Prison: Policy and Practice delves into the intricate world of correctional facilities, offering a comprehensive overview of the policies governing them and the practices implemented within their walls. This book provides readers with a deep exploration of the evolution of prison systems, the impact of various policies on inmates and staff, and the challenges faced by modern correctional institutions. By examining the intersection of policy and practice, this insightful work sheds light on the complexities of the prison environment and the ongoing debates surrounding criminal justice reform. An essential read for scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in understanding the role of prisons in contemporary society.

Chicago. University of Chicago Press. 1976. 228p.

By Olivia K. Ha , Evan C. McCuish, Martin A. Andresen, & Raymond R. Corrado

To examine individual perceptions of the consequences of crime, the role of criminogenic models, and whether rational choice and criminal social capital are informative of desistance during emerging adulthood. Data from the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offender Study were used to examine the relationship between different aspects of rational choice theories of desistance, criminogenic environment, and offending trajectories measured between ages 12 and 30, calculated using semi-parametric group-based modeling. Offending trajectories were then modeled using multinomial logistic regression. Trajectory analyses identified three desistance trajectories and three non-desistance trajectories. The strongest predictors of desistance trajectories included variables that relate to rational choices that considered the consequences of crime. Rational choice and life course perspectives on desistance as complementary, with sources of informal social control operating in a manner that, along with other factors, helps structure an individual’s consideration of, and importance placed on, the consequences of crime

Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology  2019,

By Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Emma Stammen and Connie Budaci

In San Joaquin County, California in 2010, 19-year-old Emmanuel Mendoza helped lure a robbery victim to a location where a masked accomplice waited with a firearm. When a struggle with the victim over the firearm ensued, Mendoza’s accomplice fired a fatal shot. Although Mendoza did not have a weapon and the killing had not been planned, he was convicted of felony murder with special circumstances, and automatically sentenced to life without parole (LWOP). In prison, he ended his gang affiliation and mentored others to do the same, earned a GED and associate degree, embraced his faith, and has been an active father to his three children. “I understand that at the end of the day someone lost their life,” Mendoza says. “Our plan that night wasn’t to kill anyone. I can’t take it back. But I also feel that it was a huge injustice to not be given an attempt at freedom.” Murder typically refers to an intentional killing. But “felony murder” laws hold people like Mendoza liable for murder if they participated in a felony, such as a robbery, that resulted in someone’s death. These laws impose sentences associated with murder on people who neither intended to kill nor anticipated a death, and even on those who did not participate in the killing. As such, they violate the principle of proportional sentencing, which is supposed to punish crimes based on their severity. These excessively punitive outcomes violate widely shared perceptions of justice. With one in seven people in U.S. prisons serving a life sentence, ending mass incarceration requires bold action to reduce extreme prison terms such as those prescribed for felony murder. These laws run counter to public safety, fiscal responsibility, and justice. Although other countries have largely rejected the felony murder doctrine, 48 states, the District of Columbia, and the federal government still use these laws. The only two states that do not have felony murder laws are Hawaii and Kentucky. Seven other states require some proof of intentionality regarding the killing to consider it murder, though the use of a gun—or mere knowledge of a co-defendant’s gun use—satisfies this requirement in some jurisdictions. In any case, all felony murder laws use the underlying felony to either a) treat as murder a killing that would not have otherwise been considered murder, or b) increase the gradation of murder, such as from second to first degree.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2022. 36p.

By Matt Cracknell

The Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014 has extended post-release supervision to all individuals serving short sentences in England and Wales – a cohort who previously faced neglect within the criminal justice system. This empirical study uses a case study approach to explore the resettlement experiences of individuals subject to this new legislation, understanding how individuals circulate and re-cycle between a range of services and agencies in the community, further illuminating upon the reality of repeat ‘revolving door’ imprisonment. Drawing upon Cohen's ‘net widening’ analogy, this article posits that collectively the array of services involved in an individual's resettlement form a ‘resettlement net’, which segregates individuals in the community through control and surveillance functions, extending the carceral boundary of the prison firmly into the community. Welfare-orientated organisations become compelled to ‘braid’ welfare responses alongside penal functions in order to operate within the resettlement net. This article also explores some of the difficulties that individuals experience as they navigate the resettlement net, including informal forms of exclusion, and the wear and tear of the net, which undermines the rhetoric of care envisioned by this legislation, and drives individuals deeper into the mesh of carceral control.

United Kingdom, Middlesex University. Punishment and Society, Volume 25, Issue 1. 2021, 18pg

By Nicola Carr

The crisis in prisons in England and Wales has been brought sharply into focus. On 16 October 2023, the Justice Secretary announced measures aimed at reducing pressure on the prisons, caused in part by a record high of 88,225 people in custody (Chalk, 2023). As if this is not cause enough for concern, forecasts indicate that the population is due to rise even higher in the coming years with predictions that by March 2027 the population may rise to anywhere between 93,100 and 106,300 people (MoJ, 2023). It is clear from the Ministry's explanation of its forecasts the government's own policies (as well as the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) backlog of cases in the courts) are a central driver of prison population growth. In recent decades, almost every government policy relating to crime and justice has ratcheted up systemic pressure resulting in more people spending longer in prison. This includes longer sentences for certain offences and changes to mechanisms for prisoner release. Not to mention of course the people who remain imprisoned under the egregious Indeterminate Public Protection (IPP) sentence, which although abolished in 2012, has still left approximately 3000 people languishing in prison. While the Conservative party has been in power for over 12 years, this punitive policy direction has a longer lineage, IPPs were introduced in 2003 by a Labour Home Secretary, who has since regretted the injustice.

United Kingdom, Probation Journal Volume 70, Issue 4. 2023, 4pg

By: Matt Davis, Desiree L. Fox, Ciara D. Hansen,, Ann M. Miller

Native people are disproportionately incarcerated in the United States. Several factors contribute: a history of federal oppression and efforts to erode Native culture, a series of federal laws that rejected tribal justice systems in place long before European contact, historical trauma that has a lasting impact on the physical and mental well-being of Native people, a complicated jurisdictional structure that pulls Native people further into justice involvement, and a deficiency of representation for the accused in tribal courts. Although people accused of crime in tribal courts are afforded the right to counsel, tribal governments are not constitutionally required to provide appointed counsel for the indigent. As a result, there are uncounseled convictions in tribal courts used against Native people in state and federal systems.

There are 574 federally recognized tribal governments in the United States, each with its own culture, sovereign government, justice system, and historical relationship with the United States government. For this reason, interventions meant to address over-incarceration of Native people should start at the tribal level. Tribes could impact disparity on a national level by providing supportive and restorative services for those involved in their own justice systems. Tribes could impact disparities by providing public defender services, in particular, holistic public defense that employs a restorative approach. A holistic model of public defense addresses the issues that contribute to people’s involvement in the criminal justice system and the collateral consequences to criminal charges and convictions. Providing services that address underlying needs results in improved life outcomes that predictably result in less criminal justice involvement. This article highlights the Tribal Defenders Office (TDO) for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes that has implemented holistic defense in a tribal setting.

Initially modeled after the Bronx Defenders, the Tribal Defenders holistic defense practice aligns with tribal values by going beyond the criminal case to view the accused as a whole person with a range of legal and social support needs that if left unmet will continue to push them back into the criminal justice system. Over the years, the Tribal Defenders’ team has worked to integrate into the community, listen to feedback from clients and the community, and refine the program accordingly. Through twelve years of integrated practice, TDO staff learned several lessons that have shaped their success: services come first, invest in culturally relevant research and services, listen to clients and the community, and adhere to cultural safety.

Although the article promotes holistic defense to the indigent as a solution to inequities facing justice-involved Native people, it also highlights other promising practices. Tribal systems have access to national organizations that support their efforts to address criminal justice challenges. There are tribal courts, victim services, probation departments, and reentry programs that have taken traditional, restorative principles and applied them in innovative ways to promote healing, wellness, and community safety.

United States, Safety & Justice Challenge. 2023. 23pg

By Michelle S. Phelps, H. N. Dickens, De Andre’ T. Beadle

Advocates for reform have highlighted violations of probation and parole conditions as a key driver of mass incarceration. As a 2019 Council of State Governments report declared, supervision violations are “filling prisons and burdening budgets.” Yet few scholarly accounts estimate the precise role of technical violations in fueling prison populations during the prison boom. Using national surveys of state prison populations from 1979 to 2016, the authors document that most incarcerated persons are behind bars for new sentences. On average, just one in eight people in state prisons on any given day has been locked up for a technical violation of community supervision alone. Thus, strategies to substantially reduce prison populations must look to new criminal offenses and sentence length.

United States, Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. 2023, 3pg

By Emily Richards

Welcome to the first edition of The Cheal report - Understanding prisoners abroad. This report, compiled using the data that Prisoners Abroad has access to, aims to bring together important insights into the number and characteristics of British people that are detained in prisons overseas, their family and friends, and those that return to the UK. This inaugural report is named after one of Prisoners Abroad’s founders, Chris Cheal. Chris had been in prison in the 1970’s when he was visited by Joe Parham on behalf of the drugs charity Release. A few years later, after his release, Chris and Joe, along with Craig Feehan, decided to “start something new”, which went on to become Prisoners Abroad. When the charity started in 1978, it was not possible for a person to request to transfer to serve their sentence in the UK. Chris worked hard with a group of lawyers to draft a Bill for Parliament that led to the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentences which made such transfers possible. The tremendous impact of Chris’ work is still being felt today and, over 45 years later, we hope he would be proud of what Prisoners Abroad has become. In what we hope will be an annual publication, we look at how the numbers and characteristics are changing over time, and identify trends and challenges, across three key groups of people: (1) People in prison overseas, (2) Families and friends, and (3) People returning to the UK. The number of people we supported last year saw a gradual increase during the year and we expect numbers to continue to rise. Of the 1,170 people in prison overseas that we supported, significant numbers face isolation. Of those in non-English speaking countries, almost three-quarters do not speak the language of the country where they are imprisoned. Six in every ten people (61%) in prisons overseas do not receive any visits, 59% were not resident in the country of their detention prior to their arrest, and nearly a third (31%) do not receive any money or financial support from anyone outside the prison. 35% of people said they were not able to take part in any activities (e.g. education, sport) and only 29% said they had some form of work opportunity in the prison where they were detained. British people are facing acute health issues too. 38% of people in prison overseas reported to us that they had physical health issues, 24% had mental health issues, and 13% had substance abuse issues. We suspect these are an under-estimate as some people will be reluctant to tell us through prison communications, and we know that a significant number of people are experiencing a combination of these - for example, 105 clients report both physical and mental health issues, and 64 clients report experiencing all three. Of those returning to the UK, an increasing proportion are returning with health issues, with 35% reporting substance abuse issues (compared to 35% two years ago) and 47% reporting mental health issues (compared to 30% two years ago). In this first edition, all of the data we have drawn on is what we have collected. As part of our strategic objective to ensure that all British citizens in prisons overseas are aware of what we do and are able to access our support, we are looking at what more can be done to better understand the total number of British citizens in prison overseas and where they are, and we hope that in the next edition there will be more data of this type.

United Kingdom, Prisoners Abroad. 2023, 20 pg

By James Hess

The California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA) is a self-supporting training and production program currently operating within the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR). CALPIA provides training, certification and employment to inmates in a variety of different fields. The goods and services produced by CALPIA are sold to the state and other government entities, which provides an economic benefit to the state. In addition to the vocational and economic aspect of the program, one of CALPIA’s missions is to reduce the subsequent recidivism of their inmate participants. This research examines the effect of participation in CALPIA on the recidivism of CDCR inmates released into the community. 

Irvine, California, School of Social Ecology. 2021, 40pg

By Julian V Roberts, Gabrielle Watson, Rhys Hester

Members of racial, ethnic, and Indigenous minorities have long accounted for disproportionate percentages of prison admissions in Western nations and of prison populations. The minorities affected vary between countries. Discriminatory or differential treatment by criminal justice officials from policing through to parole is part of the problem. Much media and professional attention focuses on sentencing, where the decision-making is most public. An emerging body of research identifies sentencing as a cause—or, at the very least, an amplifier—of minority over-incarceration. Solutions aiming to reduce it have been implemented, with varying but modest degrees of success, in the United States, England and Wales, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand. Progress toward reducing minority over-incarceration has been slow. Most US sentencing commissions have failed to determine the extent to which their guidelines contribute to the problem. The Sentencing Council of England and Wales has taken the limited step of warning judges about racial disparities, without suggesting remedial steps to be taken. Courts in Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand have taken more activist approaches, mitigating sentences when offenders adduce evidence of discrimination or abuse by criminal justice officials.

Crime and Justice, Volume 52. 2023