By Ian O’Donnell

The Evidence Review of Recidivism and Policy Responses examined:

(i)  factors underpinning recidivist and prolific offending behaviour;

(ii) public policy interventions that tackle recidivism and prolific offending; and

(iii) effectiveness of these interventions and likelihood of successful transplantation to an Irish context.

The review findings concluded that:

• Suspended sentences or community service can be more effective in terms of reducing recidivism than short terms of imprisonment.

• Planned and structured early release, including parole, may reduce recidivism.

• Perception of fairness may have an impact on likelihood of recidivism. A perception of procedural unfairness can lead to alienation, resistance and noncompliance whereas a belief that one has been treated fairly may reduce the likelihood of future offending.

• There appears to be a significant treatment effect associated with cognitive behavioural interventions delivered both in community and custodial settings.

Dublin: Irish Department of Justice and Equality, 2020. 104p.

By Louise Kennefick and Eoin Guilfoyle

The Community Service Order (‘CSO’) was introduced to Ireland in 1983 as an alternative to custody in order to address concerns relating to prison overcrowding and rising crime rates. International consensus on the null to criminogenic effects of prison on reoffending rates has renewed calls for decarceration. At the same time, the evidence reviewed shows that community service results in lower recidivism rates and more positive outcomes for those who have offended and their community, when compared with short-term prison sentences. Notwithstanding these findings, the CSO remains underutilised in this jurisdiction. The purpose of this review is to evaluate research findings and knowledge from peer-reviewed journals, national and international policy materials, reports, and publications relating to community service spanning the key areas of strategic innovation, operational practice, legal structure, impact, evaluation and related developments. The recommendations contained in this report are intended to provide broad guidance to the Probation Service in the development of community service in Ireland, and to highlight key areas that require further investigation.  

Dublin: Irish Probation Service, 2022. 108p.

By Josh Pacewicz and John N. Robinson III

This article investigates a trend in the Chicago region that defies conventional accounts of municipal politics and revenue-motivated policing: since the Great Recession, higher-income black suburbs have sharply increased collection of legal fines and fees. To explain this, we draw on a study of municipal officials to develop a racialization of municipal opportunity perspective, which highlights how racial segregation in the suburbs intersects with policies that encourage competition over tax revenue to produce fiscal inequalities that fall along racial lines. Officials across the region shared views about ‘good’ revenues like sales taxes paid mostly by nonresidents, but those in black suburbs were unable to access them and instead turned to ‘bad’ revenues like legal fines to manage fiscal crises—even where residents were fairly affluent and despite the absence of discriminatory intent at the local level. These findings invite inquiry into the racially uneven consequences of seemingly colorblind municipal fiscal practices in the USA and the distributional consequences of municipal governance in other national contexts.  

Socio-Economic Review, 2021, Vol. 19, No. 3, 975–1003   

By The Fines and Fees Justice Center

Fees are imposed on people accused of offenses in criminal, juvenile, municipal, and traffic courts around the country and are used to fund all types of court- or government-related programs, activities, or functions. For decades, justice fees have been a way that states raise revenue through a system of hidden taxes.1 Among these court-imposed costs, there is a particularly pernicious category of fees that are imposed on people simply because they are involved with the justice system. Whether they are called administrative assessments, surcharges, court costs, privilege taxes, docket fees, or something else, the one thing they have in common is that they are imposed in nearly every criminal, traffic, or local ordinance case—regardless of the offense, sentence, or specific circumstance of the particular case. Most are imposed only after conviction, but others, like docket fees, are imposed even if a person is acquitted or the charges are dismissed.2 For the purposes of this report, we collectively call these fees “assessments and surcharges,” recognizing that they may go by other names in different jurisdictions. Ultimately, these are “catch all” fees that legislatures impose to collect money exclusively from people drawn into a state’s various justice systems.3  

New York: Fines and Fees Justice Center, 2022. 28p.

By Emily Cunniffe

Detention and alternatives to detention can be used for immigration-related purposes in Ireland. Detention takes place in Garda Síochána stations and prisons. Throughout 2019, 477 people were detained in Irish prisons for immigration-related reasons, reducing to 245 people in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Alternatives to detention, such as regularly reporting to a Garda station, however, tend to be used more routinely and in the first instance.
This study presents a comprehensive review of legislation and practice on detention and alternatives to detention in international protection and return
procedures in Ireland. It is based on the Irish contribution to a European Migration Network (EMN) report comparing the situation in EU Member States. Immigration detention in the EU and the UK has been the subject of considerable academic research; however, there has been comparatively less research on the situation in Ireland, particularly regarding alternatives to detention.

Dublin: The Economic and Social Research Institute. 2021. 109p.

By Hindpal Singh Bhui, Rebecca Stanbury. et al.

Black and minority ethnic (BME) groups are greatly overrepresented in the prison population: as of March 2020, 27% of prisoners were from a BME background, compared with only 13% of the general population. People who identify as ‘black’ are imprisoned at an even more disproportionate rate: they comprise only 3% of the general population but 13% of adult prisoners (UK Prison Population Statistics, 2020). HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMI Prisons) inspection reports consistently show that BME prisoners report worse experiences and outcomes than white prisoners across a wide range of indicators covering most areas of prison life. The Lammy Review (published in 2017 and subtitled ‘An independent review into the treatment of, and outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic individuals in the Criminal Justice System’) drew extensively on HMI Prisons’ evidence and other sources to highlight under-identification of BME prisoners’ vulnerabilities, widespread feelings among BME prisoners of being treated less well than white prisoners and shortcomings in important systems of redress and internal assurance. People from a BME background have less trust in the criminal justice system than white people and worse perceptions of the system’s fairness, whether or not they have had any significant involvement in it (Lammy, 2017). The reasons for these perceptions are complex and under-researched, and result not just from criminal justice processes, but also from long-term patterns of social inequality and prejudice (Bhui, 2009). Developing a greater understanding of the perceptions of prisoners and disproportionalities in the prison system, and finding ways to address them, is an important task for those working in prisons. This thematic review is a small but original contribution to that effort. We will consider carefully how the findings might be built upon in future work. Little has been written on BME prisoners’ experiences of offender management and resettlement services, and there is very limited work on the increasingly influential concept of ‘rehabilitative culture’ and the degree to which efforts to achieve it have taken account of the specific experiences of BME prisoners.   

London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, 2020. 58p.

By Mia Bird, Omair Gill, Johanna Lacoe, Molly Pickard, Steven Raphael and Alissa Skog

Criminal sentences resulting in admission to a California state prison are determined by both the nature of the criminal incident as well as the criminal history of the person convicted of the offense. Cases with convictions for multiple offenses may lead to multiple sentences that are either served concurrently or consecutively. Characteristics of the offense (such as the use of a firearm) or aspects of the person’s criminal history (such as a prior conviction for a serious or violent offense) may add to the length of the base sentence through what are commonly referred to as offense or case enhancements, respectively. California’s Three-Strikes law presents a unique form of sentence enhancement that lengthens sentences based on an individual’s criminal history. Consider an individual with one prior serious or violent felony conviction (one “strike”) who is subsequently convicted of another felony. Under Three Strikes, the sentence for the subsequent felony will be double the length specified for the crime regardless of whether the new conviction is for a serious or violent offense. For an individual with two prior violent or serious felony convictions, a third conviction for a serious or violent felony would receive an indeterminate prison term of at least 25 years to life, with the exact date of release determined by the Parole Board.

Los Angeles: California Policy Lab, 2022. 45p.

By Santiago Tobón

I study the effects of prison quality on recidivism using individual-level data from Colombia. To estimate causal effects, I leverage the quasi-random assignment of inmates to newer, less crowded, and higher service prisons. For inmates assigned to newer facilities, I find that the probability of returning to prison within one year is 36% lower. Criminal capital, access to rehabilitation programs, and negative prison experiences—which could trigger changes in intrinsic preferences over illegal occupations—seem to be important mechanisms. The program led to substantial welfare gains, even when assuming a low social cost per crime.

Preprint, 2020. 47p. Published in Review of Economics and Statistics, 2022.

By Michelle Butler, Gavin Slade and Camila Nunes Dias  

This paper finds qualified support for the use of Skarbek’s (2011, 2014) governance theory to understand the emergence of prison gang-like groups in Kyrgyzstan, Northern Ireland and Brazil. However, Skarbek’s (2011, 2014) governance theory has little to say about how many prison gangs emerge and how they organise comparatively outside the US context. This paper argues that variation in the number of gangs and their monopolization of informal governance can only be explained by considering importation and deprivation theories alongside governance theories. These theories factor in variation in prison environments and pre-existing societal divisions imported into prison, which affect the costs on information transmission and incentives for gang expansion. In particular, the paper pays attention to the wider role social and political processes play in influencing whether monopoly power by prison gangs is supported and legitimized or not.

Trends Organ Crim (2022) 25:427–442 

By The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

This report examines current approaches to reforming the pre-trial and bail systems in the U.S. criminal justice system. The report reveals that between 1970 and 2015, there was a 433% increase in the number of individuals who have been detained pre-trial, and pre-trial detainees represent a larger proportion of the total incarcerated population.

Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2022. 281p.

By The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Rhode Island Advisory Committee 

The Rhode Island Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights submits this report regarding licensing as a barrier to employment post-conviction in Rhode Island. The Committee submits this report as part of its responsibility to study and report on civil rights issues in the state. The contents of this report are primarily based on testimony the Committee heard during an in-person public meeting held on April 30, 2019, as well as virtual meetings held on May 20, 2020 and June 30, 2020. The Committee also included related testimony submitted in writing during the relevant period of public comment. The following report begins with a summary of the testimony the Committee received on this topic. It then identifies primary findings as they emerged from this testimony. Finally, it makes recommendations for addressing related civil rights concerns. While other important topics may have surfaced throughout the Committee’s inquiry, matters that are outside the scope of this specific civil rights mandate are left for another discussion.  

Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2021. 38p.

By C. Geltner

From the cover: Corporal punishment is often seen as a litmus test for a society’s degree of civilization. Its licit use purports to separate modernity from premodernity, enlightened from barbaric cultures. As Geltner argues, however, neither did the infliction of bodily pain typify earlier societies nor did it vanish from penal theory, policy, or practice. Far from displaying a steady decline that accelerated with die Enlightenment, physical punishment was contested throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, its application expanding and contracting under diverse pressures. Moreover, despite the integration of penal incarceration into criminal justice systems since the nineteenth century, modem nation states and colonial regimes increased rather than limited the use of corporal punishment. Flogging Others thus challenges a common understanding of modernization and Western identity and underscores earlier civilizations' nuanced approaches to punishment, deviance, and the human body. Today as in the past, corporal punishment thrives due to its capacity to define otherness efficiently and unambiguously, either as a measure acting upon a deviant's body or as a practice that epitonuzes — in the eyes of external observers — a culture's backwardness.

Amsterdam. Amsterdam University Press. 2014. 110p.

By The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,  New Hampshire Advisory Committee

 This report details civil rights concerns the New Hampshire Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights examined regarding solitary confinement in New Hampshire. The Committee submits this report as part of its responsibility to study and report on civil rights issues in the state. The contents of this report are primarily based on testimony the Committee heard during virtual public meetings held on July 20, 2020; August 17, 2020; September 21, 2020; and December 9, 2020. The Committee also reviewed related testimony submitted in writing during the relevant period of public comment. The report begins with a brief background of the Committee’s proposed project, followed by a summary of the testimony the Committee received on this topic. It then identifies primary findings as they emerged from this testimony. Finally, it makes recommendations for addressing related civil rights concerns. While other important topics may have surfaced throughout the Committee’s inquiry, matters that are outside the scope of this specific civil rights mandate are left for another discussion.

Washington, DC: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2021. 63p.

By Terry-Ann Craigie, Ames Grawert, and Cameron Kimble 

Ascertaining through careful statistical analyses just how costly the mass incarceration system has been to the people ensnared by it is a major achievement. These findings reframe our understanding of the issue: As a perpetual drag on the earning potential of tens of millions of Americans, these costs are not only borne by individuals, their families, and their communities. They are also system-wide drivers of inequality and are so large as to have macroeconomic consequences. That insight is vital today. The unprecedented economic contraction triggered by the pandemic, and the federal government’s botched response, appears to be falling hardest on those who were already struggling, just like in past slumps. When employers cut back, employees with criminal records are all too often the first to be furloughed and the last to be rehired. And while major corporations get billions of dollars in relief, millions of the jobless are being largely left in the cold. Foreword America is approaching a breaking point. For more than four decades, economic inequality has risen inexorably, stunting productivity, weakening our democracy, and leaving tens of millions struggling to get by in the world’s most prosperous country. The crises that have rocked the United States since the spring — the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting mass unemployment, and a nationwide uprising for racial justice — have made the inequities plaguing American society more glaring than ever.  

New York: Brennan Center for Justice, 2020. 44p.

By Leticia Fernandez, Sharon Ennis, Sonya R. Porter and Elizabeth Carson

This report was produced by the U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies (CES), under award number DJO-BJS-21-RO-0005. It explores the role that race/Hispanic origin, other demographic characteristics, and custodial/criminal history factors have on post-release mortality, including on the timing of deaths. It also assesses whether conditional release to community supervision or reimprisonment may explain the higher post-release mortality found among non-Hispanic whites. In the second part of the analysis, the report estimates standardized mortality ratios by sex, age group, and race/Hispanic origin using the U.S. general population as a reference. The data come from state prison releases from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP). The NCRP records were linked to the Census Numident to identify deaths occurring within five years from prison release. NCRP records were linked to previous decennial censuses and survey responses to obtain self-reported race and Hispanic origin if available.

Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2022. 44p.

By Alabama Appleseed

The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, Daniel Prude, and others have generated increased scrutiny of how the government and law enforcement treat Black people. These police killings of unarmed Black people are perhaps the starkest example of the many ways the state inflicts violence on individuals, contrary to both our legal and social code. But in Alabama and elsewhere, another, pernicious form of deadly state violence continues with far less scrutiny. Black people are dying violent deaths while in custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC), the largest law enforcement agency in the state — and they are dying in disproportionate numbers as compared to their white peers. This continuum of Black people being killed by police and in prisons amounts to two sides of the same coin. Police are the front end of law enforcement, and prisons are its back end. They are inseparably connected. In this report, Alabama Appleseed seeks to document and demonstrate the ways in which deaths — particularly deaths resulting from homicide, suicide, and COVID-19 in Alabama prisons — are prompted by the same issues of state violence and deliberate indifference to the safety of people in government custody as the police killings that have inflamed the country and energized the Black Lives Matter movement. Alabama Appleseed has identified, by name, 89 people who have died violent, preventable deaths from homicide, suicide, or drug overdose over the last six years while in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. These incarcerated individuals lost their lives due to the State’s failure to provide “basic human needs, one of which is reasonable safety”. The neglect, violence, and death disproportionately impacts Black men, who are dying at over three times the rate of white men.  

Montgomery, AL: Alabama Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, 2021? 18p.

By Denis Gough and Megan Coghlan  

This rapid evidence review (RER) presents an analysis of literature and research to understand factors linked to reoffending and desistance, while also analysing multi-2022. 943p.agency working in relation to reducing reoffending. This is important given the 2021- 2023 Department of Justice Statement of Strategy that includes a focus on reducing reoffending and understanding multi-agency working to inform policy and ensure a shared purpose in the criminal justice sector in Ireland. To identify relevant literature for this RER peer reviewed academic literature only is analysed to understand reoffending and desistance, while a mixture of academic and governmental literature was selected to analyse multi-agency working. To be eligible for analysis, the relevant literature and research was required to be European and published in English from 1990-present.

Dublin: Ireland Department of Justice,  2022. 94p.

By Jake Phillips and Rebecca Roberts

In 2018/19, ten people died each week following release from prison. Every two days, someone took their own life. In the same year, one woman died every week, and half of these deaths were self-inflicted. 

This report, co-authored by Dr Jake Phillips of Sheffield Hallam University and Rebecca Roberts of INQUEST provides an overview of what is known about the deaths of people on post custody supervision following release from prison. It highlights the lack of visibility and policy attention given to this growing problem and calls for immediate action to ensure greater scrutiny, learning and prevention.

London: INQUEST, 2019. 17p.

By Rebecca Roberts, Claire Campbell and Deborah Coles

Every four days a person takes their life in prison, and rising numbers of ‘natural’ and unclassified deaths are too often found to relate to serious failures in healthcare. The lack of government action on official recommendations is leading to preventable deaths.

Deaths in prison: a national scandal exposes dangerous, longstanding failures across the prison estate and historically high levels of deaths in custody and offers unique insight and analysis into findings from 61 prison inquests in England and Wales in 2018 and 2019.

The report details repeated safety failures including mental and physical healthcare, communication systems, emergency responses, and drugs and medication. It also looks at the wider statistics and historic context, showing the repetitive and persistent nature of such failings.

With case studies of deaths and inquest findings, it tells the harrowing human stories behind the statistics (see page 9). INQUEST also details the experiences of bereaved families who struggle to access minimal legal aid for inquests, while prisons automatically receive millions in public funding.

London: INQUEST, 2020. 20p.

By Charles Seguin and David Rigby

Historians are increasingly studying lynching outside of the American Southeast, but sociologists have been slow to follow. We introduce a new public data set that extends existing data on lynching victims to cover the contiguous United States from 1883 to 1941. These data confirm that lynching was a heterogeneous practice across the United States. We differentiate between three different regimes over this period: a Wild West regime, characterized mostly by the lynching of whites in areas with weak state penetration; a slavery regime, found in former slave states, characterized mostly by the lynching of blacks; and a third minor regime, characterized by the lynching of Mexican nationals mostly along the Texas-Mexico border. We also note great variability at the county level in the extent of lynching. By contrast, we find very little state-level variability in lynching once local and regional regimes are considered. We discuss the implications of local and regional heterogeneity for quantitative lynching research using these data.

SociusVolume 5, January-December 2019