By Ray  Madding  Mcconnell

Ray Madding McConnell’s Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint first appeared in 1912 as one of the more philosophically ambitious works of the American Progressive Era. Though rarely cited today, the book occupies a fascinating place in the early twentieth-century dialogue between philosophy, criminology, and legal reform. Its author, who died shortly before the book’s publication, taught social ethics at Harvard and belonged to a generation deeply convinced that clearer thought could repair the accumulating confusions of modern criminal law. His book is therefore both a legacy and an argument: a legacy of Progressive rationalism and an argument for reconsidering the foundations of punishment in an age increasingly aware of causation, psychology, and social science.

More than a century after its publication, Criminal Responsibility and Social Constraint offers a valuable perspective for scholars, legal theorists, and reformers. It is a window into the moment when American thought on crime and punishment began to absorb scientific psychology, social statistics, and philosophical determinism. It presents an early, coherent version of a consequentialist theory of punishment that still structures major parts of modern practice. And it invites readers to confront the perennial tension between causation and accountability: how can a society committed to science and determinism still punish, censure, and regulate?

McConnell’s answer is that responsibility is a socially constructed tool—one that must be justified by its utility rather than by metaphysical claims about freedom. Whether one accepts or contests that answer, it remains a stimulus to deeper thinking about the moral and practical foundations of the criminal law. In that sense, McConnell’s book continues to speak forcefully to our age, reminding us that the architecture of justice must rest on reasons we can defend, not merely on traditions we have inherited.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. p.234.

By Mia Bird, Mia, Alissa Skog and Molly Pickard

 The California prison system is designed to house and provide rehabilitative services to people sentenced to prison for felony offenses. Although most people in prison are serving multi-year sentences, 39.6% of people released during the past ten years spent one year or less in prison custody. The proportion of people released after these short stays (of one year or less) increased from about one-third of all releases in 2014 to about one-half in 2023. In 2020 and 2023, the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code recommended that short prison stays of one year or less be served in county jails. This recommendation was designed to build on California’s Public Safety Realignment Act from 2011 which required people convicted of less serious felony offenses to serve their sentence in county jail instead of prison. The Legislature has not yet adopted this recommendation, but given the State’s focus on reducing prison system costs while maintaining public safety, it remains a policy option. In this fact sheet, we explore how the number and share of people released after short stays has changed over time in California. We also explore the demographic, offense, sentencing, and county characteristics of people who have short stays in prison. To do so, we draw on data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) for the years 2014 through 2023. KEY FINDINGS Short stays have increased as a share of all releases since 2014. Over the past decade, 39.6% of all people released from prison had stays of one year or less. However, the proportion of those with short stays increased over this period from 36.3% of all releases in 2014 to 49.5% of all releases in 2023 (Figure 1). During this period, 15.4% of people released had very short stays of six months or less. The share of people released with very short stays also increased, from 13.4% in 2014 to 21.2% in 2023. This increase in short stays was concentrated in the period following the COVID-19 pandemic. During the first year of the pandemic, people may have spent more time in jail before they were convicted, sentenced, and transferred to prison. This was due to delays in court processing and suspensions of prison transfers. In addition, public health releases to reduce the spread of COVID-19 may have also led to shorter stays in prison.1 The share of people released from short stays continued to increase in 2022 and 2023. It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue in 2024.   

Los Angeles: California Policy Lab, 2024. 7p.

By Michael Balfour

The book discusses the use of drama in the rehabilitation of violent male offenders. Itexplores the theoretical territory of criminology and the rehabilitation perspective, aswell as the application of drama with offenders. The document also includes information on the outcomes and evaluation of drama-based rehabilitation programs.

ResearchGate, 2003, 302 pages

By Shirin Bakhshay

The American public has complex views on criminal punishment. They are driven primarily by retributive motivations. But they have other justice considerations, such as restoration and rehabilitation, that can be activated in different ways. Laypersons are also motivated to psychologically distance and dissociate from those they perceive to be criminal “others” and to see punishment itself as a kind of dissociation, embodied by the prison form. The psychological processes that produce these beliefs lead to an insistence on prison as a necessary criminal justice outcome, despite reservations about its effectiveness and concerns about the state of mass incarceration and punitive penal policy more generally.

This Article builds on the psychology of punishment literature to offer a deeper understanding of the dissociative theory of punishment and how it produces the belief in the necessity of prison. Drawing on original, qualitative focus group data and analysis, this Article identifies the specific psychological mechanisms that motivate dissociation, explains the role of the belief in retributive justice as part of this process, and offers nuanced insights into the contours of the dissociative theory and the way people psychologically reason about criminal punishment.

Georgetown Law Journal, Vol. 111, No. 6, 2023, 84pg