MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Sheldon Glueck And Eleanor T. Glueck

The book provides a comprehensive analysis of the after-conduct of discharged offenders, focusing on the implications for reforming criminal justice:

● Causal Relations: It emphasizes the importance of understanding the multiple causal factors, both biological and environmental, that influence criminal behavior.

● Predictive Techniques: The document discusses the feasibility of using predictive tables to aid in sentencing and parole decisions.

● Reform Proposals: It suggests reforms for criminal justice based on scientific insights, such as re-designing correctional equipment to address causes rather than symptoms.

● Scientific Insights: Follow-up studies are highlighted as a means to gain scientific insights into the effectiveness of sentencing, treatment, and parole practices.

These key insights aim to shift the focus from punitive measures to a more rehabilitative approach that considers the complex interplay of factors contributing to criminal behavior.

Cambridge University. London 1945. Kraus Reprint Corporation New York 1966. 129p.

By Felicity Stewart, Paul McGorrery

Deferring (or postponing) sentencing for a short time, up to 12 months, is one of the ways that courts can achieve the various purposes of sentencing in Victoria (for example, community protection and rehabilitation) and ensure that judicial officers have all the information they need in deciding an appropriate sentence in a case.

Introduced in the adult criminal jurisdiction in 2002, sentence deferral has evolved into a vital, but potentially under-utilised, part of the Victorian sentencing landscape. Over the last two years, those who work in the criminal justice system have told us that sentence deferral can be a highly effective therapeutic tool. Sentence deferral can support complex and vulnerable offenders in their rehabilitation and can protect the community in the long-term by allowing offenders to participate in programs that reduce their risk of reoffending. In some cases, a person’s progress during the deferral period can make the difference between receiving a prison sentence and receiving a community order.

In this report, the Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council makes 10 recommendations for reform that have been informed by their research, data analysis and consultation. In developing these recommendations, they were mindful not to ‘fix what isn’t broken’, in particular, not to disrupt the aspects of sentence deferral that make it work well, especially its flexibility and lack of formality. The Council has only made recommendations where there was strong evidence for change.

Melbourne: The Sentencing Advisory Council, 2024. 115p.

By Tom O’Grady and Gemma Buckland

The Better Justice Partnership has set out to transform the penal system. But to state the obvious, it is politicians and their advisers who enact reforms. If we want to influence their choices, we must first understand them. This report is an attempt to see the world of criminal justice reform through their eyes. We explain their worldview from first principles. We show when and where they share the common assumptions of the criminal justice reform sector, and how they differ. We also discuss what they think is politically feasible, and why they sometimes resist changes that reformers see as common sense. Armed with this knowledge, we then outline how the Better Justice Partnership should go about achieving its aims of a more effective and humane penal system in England and Wales. The central message of this report is that if it wants to be more impactful, the criminal justice charity sector needs to become more politically savvy. Policymakers view the sector as politically naïve. They think that campaign groups are too quick to point out problems yet too slow to suggest feasible solutions. Sometimes they feel misunderstood, wishing that reformers would show greater awareness of the constraints under which they operate. In their opinion criminal justice is a uniquely difficult area of government to work in, and the political peril faced by those in the Ministry of Justice is not recognised. This lack of understanding matters. If reformers had a better grasp of the constraints under which politicians act, they could have more influence on them. Our interviewees clearly believe that the penal system in England and Wales is in a deep crisis, with radical reforms needed. When deciding what changes to make, they share many of the end goals of the sector. They all want a much greater focus on rehabilitation. Where they arguably differ is that their core goal is to balance punishment with rehabilitation. Both must go together in their view, and much else that they do flows from this basic assumption. What stops politicians and their advisers from attempting bold reforms? They do not view public opinion as an insurmountable barrier. In fact they think that in the right circumstances, the public could be persuaded to take a less punitive path. So they lack neither knowledge about what should change, nor a belief that the public would stand in its way. But they view reforms as exceptionally hazardous, and say that there can be little political incentive to enact them. The risks are high and the rewards potentially very low. The Better Justice Partnership, therefore, could focus its efforts not so much on educating politicians and the public on what needs to change, but rather on persuading politicians that it is worth their while – and not too risky – to make those changes in the first place. That they feel afraid of trying to make changes is crucial in understanding why some changes that seem obvious to penal reformers are viewed as anathema by politicians. Disagreements are as much about what can be done as what should be done. We identified several key barriers to reform. Fear of the media response is uppermost in politicians’ minds. They also perceive a lack of interest in justice from colleagues, and the unique career risks run by anyone entering the Ministry of Justice, as crucial. In their view the Treasury stands in the way of change too, perhaps more so than in any area of government. Above all, any strategy that Better Justice creates will need to give politicians a clear incentive to tread what they perceive as being an exceptionally hazardous path. Our participants made many suggestions for change, which we outline in detail at the end of this report. These included ways to frame reforms (for instance, as saving money) that would make them more politically palatable. They argued for gradual policy changes that slowly build confidence with the media and the public; slower change in the near term may achieve much faster changes in the long run. More progressive reforms could also be wrapped up in other changes, such as better police funding or support for victims, that make the public feel safer and show that politicians have their interests at heart. And their dual focus on punishment and rehabilitation means that they view smart tagging and visible community payback schemes as obvious, and politically viable, reform strategies.

London: NACRO, 2024. 40p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By Alexis M. Durham III

After 300 years of the American struggle with crime and punishment-related issues, the nation seems less able to deal with them now than at any other time in history. Why have we failed? Is the worst yet to come?In Crisis and Reform, criminology expert Alexis M. Durham III explores the most serious problems currently plaguing America's correctional system, their historical background, and possible solutions.Topics covered include:--Prison Crowding-AIDS in Prison-Difficulties Associated with Older Inmates-Women in Prison-Changing the Offender-Alternatives to Incarceration, including Electronic Monitoring, Intensive Supervision, House Arrest, Community Services, and Day-Reporting Centers-Boot Camps-Prison Privatization-The Death Penalty

Jones & Bartlett Learning, 1994, 377 pages

By  Paul H. Robinson and  Jeffrey Seaman

Few claims have won such widespread acceptance in legal academia as the “mass incarceration” narrative: the idea that the rise in America’s prison population over the last half century was fueled largely by the needless and unjust imprisonment of millions of criminal offenders due to punitive changes in sentencing. To many academics and activists, the question is not how accurate the mass incarceration narrative is, but how mass incarceration can be ended. This Article argues the “mass incarceration” narrative is based on a series of myths and, as a result, many proposed reforms are based on a misunderstanding of America’s past and present carceral practices. A more accurate understanding is needed to produce effective reform.The central myth of the mass incarceration narrative is that exceptional and unjustified punitiveness largely explains America’s significant increase in prison population since the 1960s. This explanation overlooks the numerous non-sentencing factors that increased incarceration: a near doubling in U.S. population, higher crime rates, increased justice system effectiveness, deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, new and tightened criminalizations, worsening criminal offender histories, and more. While this Article makes no attempt at statistical precision, these non-sentencing factors can easily explain most of America’s elevated incarceration compared to the 1960s—a fact in direct conflict with the mass incarceration narrative. Additionally, while some punishments have increased in severity since the 1960s, most of these increases are likely to be seen as moving sentences closer to what the community – and many incarceration reformers – would believe is appropriate and just, as in cases of sexual assault, domestic violence, stalking, human trafficking, firearm offenses, and child pornography, among others.Comparing America’s prison population to foreign countries, as the mass incarceration narrative often does, similarly overlooks the contributions of many of these non-sentencing factors and incorrectly assumes that a higher American per capita incarceration rate always reflects a problem with American, instead of foreign, practice. While America can certainly learn from foreign countries, the reality is that many foreign sentencing practices have sparked chronic and widespread dissatisfaction abroad. It may be that the dispute over incarceration practices is more a dispute between the elites and the community than a dispute between the U.S. and other democracies’ populations.While all decarceration reformers should welcome a clearer picture of America’s incarceration practices, it is hard not to conclude that many mass incarceration myths were created deliberately by those who oppose not only incarceration but punishment generally. For these activists, the mass incarceration narrative is primarily a means toward eliminating punishment, a goal that is difficult to pursue directly because it is so contrary to the views of the general population and even a majority of academia.This Article is not pro-incarceration. It subjects the mass incarceration narrative to much needed scrutiny precisely because reforming incarceration practices is necessary. The criminal justice system should strive to deliver just punishment in the most societally beneficial way, which we believe means increasing the use of non-incarcerative sanctions. The myths of the mass incarceration narrative frequently lead activists to overlook non-incarcerative reforms that deliver just punishment—a tragic failure because such reforms would have much stronger popular support than the anti-punishment or unsophisticated anti-prison reforms now pushed by the mass incarceration narrative.Part I of the Article describes the mass incarceration myths that have become so broadly accepted. Part II reviews the facts of American incarceration practice, which contradict many, if not most, aspects of the narrative. Part III offers our reform proposals, which we believe more accurately address the problems in current incarceration practice. Central to those proposals are the use of creative non-incarcerative sanctions that still deliver punishment proportional to a nuanced assessment of each offender’s moral blameworthiness

U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 24-04

By Rebecca Tublitz

After four decades of explosive growth in the number of people arrested, jailed, and imprisoned in the United States, a growing consensus about the overreach of mass incarceration and unjust systems of punishment has emerged in the 21st century. Seeking to raise national attention to the problem of overuse and misuse of incarceration in local jail systems and to catalyze innovation and reform at the local level, in 2015, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (MacArthur Foundation) launched the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC). In its eighth year, the SJC now supports a diverse network of more than 57 cities, counties, and states across the country in developing and implementing decarceration strategies and represents an ambitious effort to generate transformative change in how localities conceive of and use jail incarceration.

Data, measurement, and evaluation has been pivotal in guiding this initiative—for identifying drivers of the jail population, designing innovative decarceration strategies, monitoring progress, and evaluating and understanding performance. CUNY ISLG plays a leading role in these data collection and analysis activities across the SJC, serving as a central liaison between local jurisdictions, external researchers, technical assistance providers, and the MacArthur Foundation.

This report focuses on the role that local data has played in the SJC initiative and CUNY ISLG’s work to develop and support the SJC model of data-driven reform. The report details:

• The collection of data and how data were used by many stakeholders across the initiative;

• The build-out of CUNY ISLG’s data repository;

The development and use of standardized performance measures for reporting site progress towards reducing

• Jail populations and eliminating racial and ethnic disparities; and

• Lessons learned from working with cross-agency administrative data to drive reform and evaluate policy change.

New York: CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance —————— Safety and Justice Challenge. 2024. 36p.

By Ammar Khalid, Rochisha Shukla, Arielle Jackson, and Andreea Matei

Pima County, Arizona, has implemented multiple reforms to address probation-related drivers of jail incarceration through its participation in the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, including strengthening transitional housing support intended to provide short-term housing options for people experiencing housing instability. The Urban Institute conducted a study, in partnership with the Pima County Adult Probation Department, to describe probation pathways to jail incarceration and system-level trends, as well as the effects of providing transitional housing support to people on probation, particularly in terms of jail use.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Many jurisdictions across the country have implemented strategies to reduce jail incarceration for people on probation because probation violations contribute significantly to rising jail populations in the United States: 33 percent of all people incarcerated in jails were arrested while on probation, and 27 percent of the people in jails for probation violations were incarcerated for technical violations alone. Housing instability can heighten the risk of criminal legal system involvement, particularly for people on probation.

WHAT WE FOUND

Our main takeaways include the following:

Roughly 10 percent of all jail bookings in Pima County were due to probation violations, representing an overall low share of jail admissions. However, average length of stay for people in jail for probation violations was considerably longer at 66 days, nearly three times as long as that for the pretrial population (25 days) and five times as long as that for the sentenced population (13 days).

Probation violations resulting in jail incarceration represented 16 percent of all terminated probation cases and were largely driven by technical violations, which include absconding charges.

There were some observable racial and ethnic disparities in jail use as a formal probation revocation petition outcome. Native American and Hispanic people had higher odds—by 97 percent and 46 percent, respectively—of being revoked to jail compared with white people. Black people were 24 percent more likely to receive coterminous outcomes compared with white people.

Between January 2020 and June 2022, 331 people received financial assistance to access transitional housing. The number of people receiving assistance increased over time and the probation department prioritized people with higher risk and needs when making decisions about funding for transitional housing.

The odds of a probation termination to jail were not significantly different for people who received funding for transitional housing and those who did not. These null effects, however, could owe to the small number of people served and the limited data available on people who received transitional housing support. Interviewed stakeholders, though, perceived this support for people on probation to be a crucial stabilizing force and extremely meaningful to their well-being.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2023. 63p.

By Francis T. Cullen Karen E. Gilbert

From the Foreword by Donald Cressey: “'This is more than a book about punishment versus rehabilitation of criminals. It is, to be sure, the first book to defend the notion that Americans acted unwisely and too hastily when they recently exorcised rehabilitation programs from prisons. But it also is an essay on how social movements go awry - on the unanticipated consequences of purposive social action. Further, it documents aproposition which humanitarian policy makers established centuries ago, namely that "government by law" always will, in the absence of "government by men,"' have gross injustice as its consequence. More generally, it pinpoints the tragic irony involved as humanitarians, bent on reducing pain and suffering in the world, have recently convinced Amer icans to inflict more pain and suffering on criminals, even if doing so allows criminals to inflict more pain and suffering on the rest of us.”

Cincinnati, Ohio. Anderson Publishing Co. 1982. 339p. Book contains mark-up

By Kenneth C. Haas and Geoffrey P. Alpert

From the Preface: “Prisons, as they were established in the United States, were to be positive contributions to the New World. They were to be institutions in which the idle, the unmotivated, the hooligans, and the cruel were sent to be transformed into active, energetic, useful, and kind members of our society. Somehow, somewhere, something went wrong. Critics have offered too few constructive solutions for change and too many quick- fixes……

Prospect Heights, Illinois. Waveland Press, Inc. 1986. 422p.

By Mary Carpenter.

“The English and the Irish Convict Systems -were both founded on the Act of Parliament of 1853. The object of that Act ^vaa to make such changes in the system adopted towards Convicts, as would prepare them for discharge in oiu' own country, since our Colonial provinces were virtually closed against them, "Western Australia only consenting still to receive a small number annually. "We have seen that in England the system has hitherto been a failure, but have traced that failure, not to the principles on which that and the subsequent one of 1857 were founded, but to certain omissions and additions which were incompatible with the successful working of the principles. We now proceed to the examination of the Irish Convict System, which has fully developed the principles of both those Acts. The results of the ten years during which it has been in operation demonstrate, beyond any possibility of doubt to an impartial observer, not only the truth of tlio principles embodied in the Acts of Parliament, but also of those moral principles which are so embodied in it as to constitute its peculiar features, and of the excellence of the machinery by which these are brought into action. The wonderful combinations of all these by the founder of the system,Sir Walter Crofton, demands from us very close investigation of its principles, and examination of its details.

London: Longman, 1864. vol. 2. 389p.