By ESPEN WALDERHAUG

he government’s proposal, Drug policy reform – from punishment to help, means that society’s reaction to illicit drugs for personal use will be transferred from the justice sector to the health sector (1). Today, the use and possession of narcotics is penalised with fines and up to six months’ imprisonment or a decision not to bring criminal charges followed by monitoring and drugs testing. This will change if the government gets its way. The police will continue to focus on use and possession, but if you are caught with small amounts of narcotics, this will instead result in a compulsory meeting with the municipal drugs counselling services. Selling drugs will continue to be criminally prosecuted as it is today. The same applies to the storage of large quantities of narcotics, production and import as well as driving under the influence.

The Journal of the Norwegian Medical Association 2020, 3p.

By Auzeen Shariati, Rob T. Guerette

Purpose Following the rise of the novel coronavirus, de facto residential quarantines resulted either from executive stay-at- home orders, unemployment or through remote work requirements. One question that has arisen is whether the COVID-19 quarantines led to increases in domestic violence (DV), with research findings thus far being mixed. To further this under- standing, this study examined whether the frequency and geographic dispersion of DV increased during stay-at-home and phased reopening periods of the pandemic in New Orleans, Louisiana while accounting for socio-economic determinants. Methods The study built on a natural experiment of home quarantine and examined its effects on DV using a mixed-methods approach of quantitative and geospatial analyses. Data for the analyses came from a sample of 11,502 police reported DV incidents and ArcGIS portal data of sociodemographic information across neighborhood statistical areas (NSAs). Results While results revealed no significant increase of DV during early phases of the quarantine, a significant increase in frequency was observed in the second reopening phase compared to the same time-period in the previous year. However, the dispersion of DV incidents appeared stable with continued concentrations in pre-existing geographic ‘hot spots.’ Conversely, households which were greater in size exhibited significantly fewer DV incidents. Conclusion Findings suggest that prevention programs might target residences already inflicted with domestic violence his- tories in advance of future pandemic or natural disaster related residential quarantines. Findings also reveal that situational factors, such as number of household residents, might be used to triage the delivery of services.

Journal of Family Violence, 2022, 12p.

By Sandy Xie, Colleen M. Berryessa, and Farah Focquaert

In 1972, Cecil Clayton suffered a serious accident during which a piece of wood shot into his head and dislodged bone shards that pierced his brain, leading to around 20 percent of his frontal lobe being surgically removed. After the removal, Clayton, who had previously been a loving husband, father, and preacher, transformed into an aggressive alcoholic whose wife divorced him. Clayton spent the next twenty years after his accident trying to get psychiatric help, suffering from extreme depression, violent episodes, anxiety, and hallucinations. Eventually, Clayton killed a sheriff’s deputy who responded to a domestic violence call. The deputy had not even left his car when Clayton shot him point blank. Clayton did not appear to understand the wrongness of his actions, even asking a friend who was with him at the time if he should shoot other officers that came to arrest him, to which his friend answered no.

In M. Altman (Ed.), Cham, Switzerland: The Palgrave Handbook on the Philosophy of Punishment. London, UK: Palgrave MacMillan., 38p.

By Rajeev K. Goel and Umad Mazhar

Capital punishment is the final frontier in enforcement. Given that there is no remediation in case there is an error in prosecution and/or conviction (and due to related moral issues), many nations do not have capital punishment, have eliminated this extreme form of punishment or have it on paper and have seldom used it (abolitionists in practice). The presence of death penalty, a legal instrument of crime deterrence, remains a politically charged issue worldwide.1 Typically, capital punishment is reserved for violent crimes, usually involving the death of the victims. However, in some cases, capital punishments are also handed out for other crimes. Even in nations where there is no capital punishment or where there is such punishment for specific crimes, the demonstration effect or learning on part of lawmakers might embolden them to consider suc

Wiley, 2018, 25p.

By JOAN E. DURRANT

Objective: In 1979, Sweden became the first nation to explicitly prohibit all forms of corporal punishment of children by all caretakers in an effort to: (1) alter public attitudes toward this practice; (2) increase early identification of children at risk for abuse; and (3) promote earlier and more supportive intervention to families. The aim of this study was to examine trends over recent decades in these areas to assess the degree to which these goals have been met. Method: Primary data were collected from official Swedish sources for the following variables: public support for corporal punishment, reporting of child physical assault, child abuse mortality, prosecution rates, and intervention by the social authorities. Lines of best fit were generated and Cox and Stuart tests for trend were conducted. Results: Public support for corporal punishment has declined, identification of children at risk has increased, child abuse mortality is rare, prosecution rates have remained steady, and social service intervention has become increasingly supportive and preventive. Conclusions: The Swedish ban has been highly successful in accomplishing its goals.

Child Abuse & Neglect, Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 435–448, 1999

By Rev. Aaron Pidel, S.J. 

As with most tricky pastoral questions, distinctions prove helpful. Ever since Augustine, the tradition has distinguished between two different kinds of evil: “Fault (culpa) is the evil we do, but punishment (poena) is the evil we suffer” (De lib. arb., bk. 1, ch. 1). Aquinas inherits this distinction, differentiating broadly between the evil of fault (malum culpae), e.g., sin and guilt, and the evil of punishment (malum poenae), or defects of “form or integrity” such as sickness or poverty (De malo, q. 1, a. 4). There is, moreover, a key difference between the two kinds of evil. Whereas the evil of fault is sheer waste, contributing nothing to the good of the universe, the evil of punishment is always connected to some other creature’s flourishing. A stab wound is the consequence of steel being good steel; pandemics are the consequence of a coronavirus flourishing in its own way. The evil of punishment always takes place within an interconnected order, where creatures depend not only on God, but also on each other. As a result, one may say that the evil of punishment is not directly willed by God, but only indirectly, as the consequence of maintaining the good of order.

Fellowship of Catholic Scholars, Volume 9, Number 10, October 2020, 4p.

By George W Holden

The discipline and punishment of children by parents is among the most commonly investigated topics in developmental psychology. Discipline has long occupied a central role in views about socialization, specifically the processes by which children are taught the skills, values, and motivations to become competent adults. The types of disciplinary techniques used by parents reflect a core ingredient of those parents’ approach to child rearing. Furthermore, the particular types of disciplinary techniques used have long been related to children’s outcomes. This is true both in theoretical writings and subsequent empirical evidence. Discipline and punishment is not a simple topic to study for several reasons: there is confusion over terminology and conceptual issues, the subject matter reflects a dyadic event, embedded in larger contexts of ongoing relationships, family, and neighborhoods, as well as culture, and disciplinary practices that are determined by multiple sources and change over time are at the intersection of cognition, emotion, and behavior. Discipline occurs when there is a breakdown in child management and the child has made, in the parent’s view, a transgression. Disciplinary techniques are those methods used by parents to correct misbehavior, discourage inappropriate behavior, and gain compliance from their children. These techniques consist of a variety of actions and reactions and include such common techniques as reasoning, psychological control, coercion by threats or corporal punishment, time-outs, withdrawal of privileges, or ignoring. Some investigators focus on a group of disciplinary techniques labeled “ineffective discipline” but also called “maladaptive,” “dysfunctional,” or “inept” parenting. Such actions inadvertently reinforce misbehavior or model inappropriate behavior. Although most of the research on discipline has focused on parental punishments, attention is now being devoted to the topics of child compliance, autonomy, self-regulation, and ways of engaging children in cooperative interactions.

Reaserch Gate, 2012, 41p.

By Teodolinda Barolini

Dante’s linguistic treatise, De vulgari eloquentia, is not without joy in linguistic difference and invention. However, the treatise’s signature view of linguistic difference is its powerfully punitive account of the Tower of Babel. Linguistic diversity, aka “confusion of tongues”, is the punishment meted out to Nimrod and his followers for their presumptuous building of the Tower of Babel: thus, difference is punishment. This essay traces Dante’s evolution as he moves from De vulgari eloquentia to the encounter with Nembrot (as Dante calls Nimrod) in Inferno 31 and then to Paradiso 26. The punishment of Inferno 31 is no longer differen- tiated language but lack of language: Dante punishes Nembrot not with linguistic diversity, but by assigning him a non-language that communicates non-sense. Adam’s great discourse on linguistic creation in Paradiso 26 signals full transition: from difference as punishment to difference as pleasure.

Textual Cultures 12.1 (2019): 137–154p.

By Danielle M. Reynald

This article presents an overview of theoretical perspectives that explain the relationship between crime and environmental design. It describes how crime event research has been influenced significantly by developments in our understanding of how environmental design influences both offender decision making and crime preventive action by citizens. Key crime prevention techniques that involve the manipulation of environmental design will be explained and their empirical standing will be considered. Through a discussion of the practical applications of design theory and concepts, some fundamental limitations and gaps in criminological knowledge about the crime–design link will be highlighted. In conclusion, this article will emphasize the need for better integration of the role and function of crime controllers to continue the advancement of the crime–design framework

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 2015, Vol. 31(1) 71, 19p.

By Juan Li, Yi Liu, Zhen Wang, Haoxiang Xia

This study explores why individuals are willing to bear the cost of punishing defectors in cooperative settings, offering a new explanation: the punisher's motivation is egoistic rather than altruistic. Egoistic punishment, aimed at recovering personal losses rather than enforcing group norms, proves to be more effective in promoting cooperation across a variety of conditions. Using spatial public goods game models and both peer- and pool-punishment mechanisms, the research shows egoistic punishers can outcompete altruistic ones in promoting collective cooperation. This dynamic holds across different population structures and strategy-update rules. Particularly in pool-punishment settings, egoistic punishment functions better in high-cost, low-fine scenarios, revealing that self-interested motivations may provide a more robust foundation for sustaining public goods. By demonstrating that fairness perceived through self-interest can lead to broader cooperative outcomes, the study challenges conventional assumptions about the purely moral basis of punishment.

(Scientific Reports, 2021, Volume 11, Article Number: 6584, 13p.)

By Iqbal Ahmad, Hamdan Said, Faisal Khan

This study investigates how corporal punishment affects students’ motivation and classroom learning, focusing on secondary school teachers in Pakistan. Using a correlation design and data from 250 teachers, the authors found a significant negative relationship between corporal punishment and both motivation and learning outcomes. The research draws from psychological and educational theory to argue that such disciplinary measures not only diminish students' enthusiasm and academic performance but may also contribute to long-term emotional and behavioral issues. It recommends non-violent and supportive teaching methods to foster effective learning environments.

(Review of European Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2013, pp. 130–134)

By The Justice Policy Institute

The Justice Policy Institute (JPI) has long opposed the use of solitary confinement and has collaborated with national and local partners to develop strategies to end this harmful practice across all levels of the criminal legal system. The December 2024 killing of Robert Brooks by correctional staff, followed by an unlawful work stoppage that left tens of thousands of incarcerated individuals in dangerous conditions, has brought New York State’s prison system to a crisis point. A Moment of Reckoning highlights significant concerns about violence, accountability, and the treatment of individuals in custody, offering a policy blueprint for meaningful reform. It presents concrete steps to reduce the prison population through expanded release mechanisms and to implement proven violence-prevention strategies, enhancing conditions for both incarcerated individuals and staff. Drawing on successful models from New York and other jurisdictions, this blueprint establishes a framework for creating a safer, more just prison system that upholds dignity and accountability.

Policy Blueprint

Washington, DC: The Justice Policy Institute, 2025. 34p.

By Bruce Western, Jessica Simes, and Kendra Bradner

In a given year, one in five people incarcerated in the U.S. prisons is locked in solitary confinement. We study solitary confinement along three dimensions of penal harm: (1) material deprivation, (2) social isolation, and (3) psychological distress. Data from a longitudinal survey of incarcerated men who are interviewed at baseline in solitary confinement are used to contrast the most extreme form of penal custody with general prison conditions observed at a follow-up interview. Solitary confinement is associated with extreme material deprivation and social isolation that accompanies psychological distress. Distress is greatest for those with histories of mental illness. Inactivity and feelings of dehumanization revealed in qualitative interviews help explain the distress of extreme isolation, lending empirical support to legal arguments that solitary confinement threatens human dignity.

Incarceration Volume 3(1): 1–25, 2021.

By Bruce Western, Jessica Simes, and Kendra Bradner

In a given year, one in five people incarcerated in the U.S. prisons is locked in solitary confinement. We study solitary confinement along three dimensions of penal harm: (1) material deprivation, (2) social isolation, and (3) psychological distress. Data from a longitudinal survey of incarcerated men who are interviewed at baseline in solitary confinement are used to contrast the most extreme form of penal custody with general prison conditions observed at a follow-up interview. Solitary confinement is associated with extreme material deprivation and social isolation that accompanies psychological distress. Distress is greatest for those with histories of mental illness. Inactivity and feelings of dehumanization revealed in qualitative interviews help explain the distress of extreme isolation, lending empirical support to legal arguments that solitary confinement threatens human dignity.

Incarceration Volume 3(1): 1–25, 2021.

By Storm Ervin and Azhar Gulaid

With 11 million admissions a year, jails in the United States are overused, overcrowded, and carry significant individual and systemic impacts for people of color, who are disproportionately detained in jail pretrial. But people are detained in jail via actions and processes that occur across agencies and decision points, making cross-agency collaboration essential to system responses to reduce the jail population. The criminal legal system in the United States is a fragmented system that is siloed by varying decision points, such as arrests, the pretrial and prosecution stages, and sentencing. Within local jurisdictions, agencies and officials often use their discretion for decision-making with different goals in mind. This process limits the potential for innovation and system improvement and prevents shared goals or a “vision” for the overall system (Borakove et al. 2015). To counteract this fragmentation and effect systemwide change locally, jurisdictions can implement formal (or informal) collaborative bodies that cut across agencies and stakeholders and include non-system actors, such as representatives from community-based organizations and other local stakeholders. This case study is part of a series highlighting work supported by the MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC) (box 1) and examines how East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana; the City and County of San Francisco, California; and St. Louis County, Missouri, implemented strategies intended to reduce local jail populations by creating collaborative bodies in their respective jurisdictions. To develop this case study, Urban conducted 22 semistructured interviews with stakeholders involved in the SJC work across the three jurisdictions. Interview participants had a range of connections to local justice reform and jail use; they worked in courts, pretrial services, probation, public health, community organizations and nonprofits, criminal justice coordinating councils, and SJC technical assistance providers. Urban supplemented these interviews with reviews of internal and public-facing reports and other relevant documentation, including data from the sites and the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance.

Washington DC: Urban Institute, 220. 31p.

By Jesse Jannetta and Storm Ervin

Millions of people enter and exit local jails in the United States each year, making jail incarceration the country’s most common type of incarceration experience. Even brief periods of jail incarceration have a wide range of negative effects (such as disruption to employment and family connections) on people who experience it (Dobbie, Goldin, and Yang 2018; Lowenkamp, VanNostrand, and Holsinger 2013; Stevenson 2018s).1 Moreover, jails in many places are antiquated, understaffed, and unsafe, resulting in high rates of victimization for people incarcerated in them. And although racial disparities in jail populations have decreased in recent years, these disparities are still very high, as Black people are jailed at a rate of 600 per 100,000 Black US residents, Latinx people at a rate of 176 per 100,000 Latinx US residents, and white people at a rate of 184 per 100,000 white US residents (Zheng and Minton 2021). For these reasons, many local justice reform efforts are focusing on rethinking how jails are used and reducing jail populations and disparities. Among the most prominent of these reform efforts is the Safety and Justice Challenge (SJC), a multiyear, multisite effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to change how jails are used in the United States (box 1). The central goals of the SJC are reducing jail populations and reducing racial and ethnic disparities in jail populations. For SJC sites to realize those goals locally they need to understand what drives their jail populations, where to target interventions to address those dynamics, whether interventions are functioning as intended, and whether interventions are generating system impact. They also need to communicate what they are doing to the broader public to secure and maintain buy-in and support system accountability. Effective use of data is necessary for all of these efforts

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2022. 39p.

By Rochisha Shukla, Ammar Khalid, and Arielle Jackson

This case study presents trends in jail incarceration for the probation population in Pima County, Arizona, using datasets for jail bookings (2015–2020) and petitions-to-revoke (PTRs) (2016–2020).1 It was developed as part of a research initiative funded by the Safety and Justice Challenge examining the impact of providing housing support on jail use for people on probation in Pima County, in partnership with the county’s Adult Probation Department. 2 People on probation in Pima County can be incarcerated in jail for various reasons. They can be held in jail as an intermediate sanction (i.e., a short jail stay without a formal petition), as they await a violation hearing (e.g., for absconding), and because of a PTR outcome (e.g., probation revocation or coterminous sentence3 ).

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2022. 6p.

By Susan Nembhard and Evelyn F. McCoy

The Catalyst Grant Program is a collaboration between the Urban Institute and the Microsoft Justice Reform Initiative to help nonprofit organizations use data and technology to advance racial equity in the criminal legal system. This guide is for community groups interested in launching a community survey in order to understand perspectives on the criminal legal system. It discusses how to design a survey, write survey questions, administer the survey, and share findings. This is one of a series of guides for community groups that draws on the experiences of Catalyst grantees and Urban researchers

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2023. 5p.

By Robin Olsen

The Northwestern District Attorney’s Office, which prosecutes crimes in Hampshire and Franklin Counties, two rural counties in Massachusetts, runs the Drug Diversion and Treatment Program (DDTP) to divert people arrested for crimes driven by drug use and instead give them the opportunity to receive substance use treatment from a community partner. The DDTP takes a health-focused approach to its planning and execution, and it benefits from wide community support from a variety of stakeholders. This case study, which is part of the Mapping Prosecutor-Led Diversion Project, centers on the DDTP’s health-focused approach to diversion and the strong community and stakeholder support available to the program’s leaders and staff, highlighting takeaways for prosecutors looking to launch similar programs. The information included is based on the office’s response to the Mapping Prosecutor-Led Diversion Project survey and on interviews with program leaders, staff, and partners. This case study is intended as an overview of the DDTP’s diversion strategy and is not an assessment or evaluation.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2023. 5p.

By Cassandra Ramdath Bethany Young with Lauren Farrell, Alice Galley, Azhar Gulaid, Jahnavi Jagannath, Alexandra Kurland, Colette Marcellin, Travis Reginal, Georgia Bartels-Newton, Jesse Jannetta, and Katie Robertson

After decades of neglect, US prisons have attracted increasing inquiry and oversight in recent years. This has been compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had devastating effects on carceral facilities throughoutthe country. Advocates, journalists, and oversight entities are documenting the conditions, cultures, and climates of prisons and putting forth new, more humane, and innovative models of confinement that align with those in more progressive European countries. Research should be at the center of efforts to better understand and improve prison environments, and data should be leveraged to promote transparency of substandard conditions, document and evaluate innovative reforms, and hold systems accountable for making transformative change. But far too often the research community is handicapped by a paucity of data about what happens in prisons as well as by restricted access to them, both of which severely inhibit the generation of new knowledge. Indeed, US prisons are uniquely closed systems, lacking transparency, oversight, accountability, and access, despite being public institutions operating with taxpayer dollars. Research can help discern the types of prison climates and conditions that reflect and promote safety, dignity, humanity, respect, and autonomy for people incarcerated in prisons and staff that work in them. Prison climate—the social, emotional, organizational, and physical characteristics of a prison as perceived by incarcerated people and prison staff—is a vital but underresearched aspect of justice policy. To implement innovations in a prison without documenting and understanding its underlying climate is to neglect crucial context that could either thwart or facilitate such efforts. And prisons with poor conditions can lead to trauma and the development or worsening of mental health issues. Better metrics on prison climates and conditions that are collected routinely, integrated into prison operations and management, and publicly disseminated could be used to identify areas of improvement, support oversight efforts, hold prison leadership accountable, prompt changes to policies and practices, and provide a baseline from which to measure the impacts of those changes. This research agenda is a starting point for building a foundational knowledge base that moves past decades-old prison research grounded in traditional notions of confinement within a security-andcontrol paradigm. Instead, it underscores the importance of leveraging research and data to promote transparency and accountability in carceral systems, and to do so through a racial equity lens. The goal of this agenda is to encourage researchers to pursue groundbreaking inquiry that will ultimately transform prisons into safer, more humane, rehabilitative, and more equitable environments. It begins by setting forth guiding principles and then presents concrete strategies for advancing transformative change in US prisons, reducing racial inequity, improving metrics of well-being, advancing transparency and accountability, and more broadly promoting human dignity in carceral settings.

Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 74p.