Comparing the Level of Punitiveness in the U.S. and Germany

Teaching & Learning Guide for: ‘Basic Challenges to Prisoner Reentry’

The Supreme Court’s Role in Mass Incarceration illuminates the role of the United States Supreme Court’s criminal procedure revolution as a contributing factor to the rise in U.S. incarceration rates. Noting that the increase in mass incarceration began climbing just after the Warren Court years and continued to climb for the next four decades—despite the substantial decline in the crime rate—the author posits that part of the explanation is the Court’s failure to understand that a trial system with robust rights for defendants is not a strong trial system unless is also reliable and efficient. There have been many explanations offered for the sudden and steep escalation in the U.S. incarceration rate, such as it was the war on drugs to it was our harsh sentencing statutes. Those explanations have been shown to be inadequate. This book contends that we have overlooked a more powerful force in the rise of our incarceration rate—the long line of Supreme Court decisions, starting in the Warren Court era, that made the criminal justice system so complicated and expensive that it no longer serves to protect defendants. For the vast majority of defendants, their constitutional rights are irrelevant, as they are forced to accept plea bargains or face the prospect of a comparatively harsh sentence, if convicted. The prospect of a trial, once an important restraint on prosecutors in charging, has disappeared and plea-bargaining rules. This book is essential reading for both graduate and undergraduate students in corrections and criminal justice courses as well as judges, attorneys, and others working in the criminal justice system.

Impacts of age of onset of substance use disorders on risk of adult incarceration among disadvantaged urban youth: A propensity score matching approach

Modeling the community-level effects of male incarceration on the sexual partnerships of men and women

"Michael Tonry, Malign Neglect. Race, Crime and Punishment in America." Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 9(2), pp. 202–203

Understanding and Preventing Criminal Recidivism Among Adults With Psychotic Disorders

State Mental Health Policy: Mental Health Transformation: Moving Toward a Public Health, Early-Intervention Approach in Texas

Nations utilize imprisonment to different extents, but scholars have yet to fully explain why. One hypothesis, proposed here and previously unexamined, is that the size of the front-end justice system workforce (police, prosecution, judiciary) is related to incarceration rates. Previous literature has examined why these workforces are of a certain size, but largely ignores the implications of their size in regards to incarceration. Supported by a conflict perspective and a systems approach, this research examines the relationship between justice system workforce size and incarceration rates cross-nationally, controlling for other relevant factors supported by the literature. The study relies on a compilation of data on 47 countries from several international databases, with United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (UN-CTS) as the primary sources for main variables of interest. Findings suggest that there is a positive relationship between prosecution workforce size and incarceration rates in the sample of countries examined, and a weaker, likely indirect, negative relationship between judiciary size and incarceration rate. No relationship between police personnel size and incarceration rate is found. The paper also discusses study limitations and implications for future comparative research on incarceration.

Violence, Criminalization & Punitive Excess

VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: This paper was presented by Felton Earls, M.D., Professor of Child Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, at the Third National Conference: Health care for the poor and undeserved at risk. Dr. Earls, reported on interpersonal violence and its increasing rates, he reviewed the current organizational and scientific approaches for controlling it, and he proposed new strategies to help advance the knowledge of its causes. METHODOLOGY: This presentation followed a nonexperimental discussion of violence. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: Dr. Earls began his discussion by suggesting that the circumstances enticing children towards victimization or perpetration are no different from those experiences that are linked to violence among young adults. He argued that child abuse, domestic violence, assaultive behavior and homicide are reported to interact within communities and families. A major road block in the study of violence is that we have created different systems which appear to fragment the way we define and deal with it. He suggested that such fragmentation has on one side, the Criminal Justice System which is concerned with apprehending and incarcerating violent offenders, yet on the other side there are public health and social service systems which are oriented towards human welfare and address violence within the home. With respect to our current ability to track the magnitude of violence, Dr. Earls discussed mortality data, survey data identifying victimization, and criminal and juvenile data reporting arrest and incarceration rates. Also, some hospital rates and physical abuse rates were made available. However, these were not uniformly reported and cannot be used in the public health data collection. He stated that even though the morality rates were important, there is no system available to track nonfatal injuries adequately, and that only recently has violence become a public health priority. Available data from the FBI showed that the rate of violence rose in 1970, fell in the early 1980s, and has subsequently risen sharply in the last few years. This data demonstrates that men were victims of homicide at 10 times the rate of women, and that homicide was the leading cause of death for male and female African-Americans under the age of 35. Correctional facilities report that the inmate populations of jails, state and federal prisons rose from 274,563 in 1974 to 450,416, in 1986. The number of violent offenders remained high with 58% in 1979 and 55% in 1986. Dr. Earls reported that over the past decade, the number of children and adolescents within the criminal justice system has increased while the proportion of adolescents in the population has decreased. The author further stated that the United States has the distinction of leading the industrialized nations with the most prisons, most homicides, and highest costs due to injury. Dr. Earls pointed out that the U.S. legal, juvenile, and criminal justice systems are mostly reactive, though the public health agencies try to work preventatively through gathering rates of violence, and constructing preventative interventions. AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS: Dr. Earls recommended that all services involved with the management of violence, policy makers, professionals and those involved in research work together in a more integrated fashion. He placed priority on public policy and professional practice needs before research needs because he believed that a restructuring of the values of society are needed before a cure designed by research could possibly be effective. Specifically, he recommended that many areas be addressed to face the current level of violence in our society. With respect to fire arms, he recommended the elimination of assault rifles, mandatory waiting periods, and more effective federal regulations controlling the manufacturer, safety and distribution of firearms. He also stated that we need to address racial bias and discrimination within the system. In the area of education, he said that those individuals who were trained in behavioral sciences and health care, who will work with and treat children, need to also be trained to work across criminal justice and social welfare systems. Dr. Earls stated that violence severely impacts the lives of children who then require help from professionals in medicine, psychology, education, and social work. These providers lack an awareness of the value of a coordinated and sustained approach to violence prevention. He offered the following targets of change: educational preparation of the poor and disadvantaged; programs which enhance IQ; the encouragement of cooperation; help motivate and integrate children into the school system; and reduce the number of teen pregnancies as well as school dropout rates. He believed that more males are needed as prosocial models to help compensate for children growing up without father figures. These children also need to develop the foundations necessary for controlling their aggressive impulses. Finally, he felt increased attention needed to be paid to those involved in violence; victims and perpetrators alike. He suggested that discrimination and avoidance may be playing a role in health care when psychiatric care is given to a person who attempts suicide rather than to a child who is a victim of violent injury. Dr. Earls reported that past research has been segmented into separate schools of philosophy without considering the variables from other disciplines. Many levels of information are now needed within a single research design. Also, future research should address how males and females respond to the risk factors identified in delinquent males. He stated that the role that neurotransmitters play, specifically serotonin, needs to be explored in terms of its relationship to male aggression. New studies could help identify clues which may distinguish behavior types in children which make them vulnerable to violent behavior in the future. Also, he stated that the effects of single parent families living in poverty, specifically African American, and the risks for deviant and violent behavior should be addressed and causal factors identified. Future research should also sample fathers when looking to the causes of violence. While previous research addressed mothers' and teachers' contributions regarding the nature of family life and risk of delinquency, the fathers perspective was noted as sorely lacking. Dr. Earls thought that there should be a way to measure variations between communities and the link that community change has with individual development as it relates to violence. Finally, he said that future research needs to contrast primary prevention with secondary prevention of antisocial and violent behavior. Efficacy of interventions could then be examined when observing primary prevention, prior to the age a child manifests behavior problems, and secondary prevention, during the elementary school period. In conclusion, Dr. Earls thought that structural changes within society may need to change in order to help control violence in our society. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) KW - Violence Causes KW - Public Health Services KW - Prevention KW - Child KW - Juvenile KW - At Risk KW - Socioeconomic Factors KW - Research Recommendations KW - Policy Recommendations KW - Intervention Language: en

Incarceration Rates of Persons With First-Admission Psychosis

Across American societal institutions, a punitive culture of control and surveillance has manifested in a variety of ways, including exponential growth in incarceration rates and school suspension rates over the last four decades. To date, much of the scholarship exploring the relationship between criminal justice outcomes and school-based outcomes has focused primarily on how school punishment is consequential for future involvement in the justice system. What remains unclear, however, is whether an alternative relationship exists. That is, does a culture of control foster an environment where punitiveness in the criminal justice system is mirrored by punitiveness within schools? Drawing on carceral perspectives and place-based stratification theories and analyzing a random sample of Florida middle and high schools combined with school district data, several key findings emerge. Specifically, Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be suspended in places with higher incarceration rates; all students are more likely to be suspended in places with greater concentrated disadvantage; and Black and Hispanic students are significantly more likely to be suspended when attending schools in places with high incarceration rates and greater concentrated disadvantage. These findings highlight the interconnectedness of place and social control in the school setting.

Because of the dramatic rise in incarceration rates during the past two decades, children of incarcerated parents have been a topic of increasing interest. Children who have parents in jail or prison, however, are only a subgroup of the children child protective services agencies encounter who have parents who are involved with the criminal justice system. According to data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being, the primary caregivers of one in three children in in-home settings have been arrested, but are not currently incarcerated. Households headed by caregivers who have been arrested have higher levels of substance abuse, domestic violence, and extreme poverty than households with never-arrested caregivers. Children of arrested and never-arrested caregivers have comparable levels of clinically significant emotional and behavioral problems, but these problems are more prevalent in both groups than is typical for children in the general population. There are special considerations in working with families in which a parent is incarcerated, but the child welfare field should not overlook opportunities to improve outcomes related to the safety, permanency, and well-being of children whose parents are involved at other points within the criminal justice system.

The disproportionate number of people incarcerated is one exceptional feature of criminal justice in the United States. Comparisons among the United States and other Western democracies on several social, political, and economic factors fail to provide a justification for the high incarceration rates in the United States. The more than 2.3 million people incarcerated in this nation largely reflect policy choices that have been made at all levels of government in the United States. While these policy choices have created unprecedented imprisonment rates, abnormally large incarceration rates are not entirely unknown in other nations. In the 1950s, Finland had an incarceration rate more than three times greater than that of its Nordic neighbors. More than 50 years later, Finland was able to reduce its use of incarceration to a rate comparable to its neighbors. Germany is another country that has worked to reduce its reliance on incarceration. A focus on how other Western democracies have reduced their incarceration rates can provide the United States with blueprints for how effective crime control can be achieved without a heavy reliance on incarceration.

California’s prisons are dangerously and unconstitutionally overcrowded; as a result of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Plata v. Schwarzenegger, the state must act to reduce its prison population or face court-ordered prisoner releases. The state’s plans to reduce overcrowding are centered around what it calls criminal justice “realignment”, whereby California will divert some sentenced offenders away from state facilities towards county facilities. The plan faces opposition from county officials, who argue that the state is pushing its problem onto the counties.But what if the counties are actually responsible for state prison overcrowding? I argue that California’s prison overcrowding is due in large part to county decisions about how to deal with crime. Using data from 2000-2009, I will show that California’s counties use state prison resources at dramatically different rates, and, moreover, that the counties which use state prisons the most have below-average crime rates. Viewed this way, the state is simply returning the problem to its source, and forcing counties to pay for their sentencing decisions.The contribution the Article makes, then, is twofold. First, it suggests that incarceration in state prisons is one policy choice among many, not an inexorable reaction to violent crime. Counties can and do make different choices about how to respond to violent crime, including the extent to which they use state prison. Second, the Article demonstrates why localities are crucial—and critically underexamined—contributors to state prison populations. Decisions are made at local levels about prosecution, investigation, plea bargaining, and sentencing, and these decisions are made by officials who are either elected locally (such as DA’s, judges, and sheriffs) or appointed locally (police and probation officers). Local policies and policymakers affect the state’s corrections budget, even though the state has no say in designing or implementing these policies. State officials must take these local differences into account, and create incentives for counties to behave differently. The problem is that it is difficult to distinguish between justifiable, crime-driven incarceration and optional, policy-driven incarceration. I propose a new metric for distinguishing between these two types of incarceration, one which defines justified incarceration in terms of violent crime. This would allow the state to manage local usage of state prison resources without either penalizing crime-ridden areas or rewarding prison-happy ones. This Article is the first of two articles dealing with the state/county prison relationship. While this Article quantifies the ways in which the extent of local prison admissions is not necessarily a function of the violent crime rate, a second Article will examine whether, given these differences, it makes sense for the state to subsidize county commitments to prison.