Criminal Justice Reform Research Articles

The Race Warfare and the United States Justice System

Let us think for a moment, the United State is home to 5% of the world population, but 28% of the world’s prisoners. That is more than one out of four human beings in the world, with their hands-on bars, shackled, and locked up in the land of the free. Ninety-seven percent of this incarcerated people never had a trial. So as public support for criminal justice reform continues to build, it is now more important than ever that we get the facts straight and understand the big picture. With a much-needed clarity in crime rate and justice’s system, this empirical analysis will be digging deep into available data to offer some much-needed clarity by piecing together the United States’ disparate system of confinement. The study emphasizes the need to understand how 2.52 million people ended up in jails or prison and why the majority of those people are poor, and also brown and black. In the end, the reform of the criminal justice system is not about whether or not black lives matters, but it is about changing the way United States understands human dignity.

Reimagining public defense advocacy in times of Covid-19: lessons from a task force

ABSTRACT In March 2020, the Contra Costa Public Defenders Association (CCPDA) established a task force to counter the injustices and dangers experienced by clients in custody during the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this commentary is to describe the background and work of the task force, discuss the lessons learned and finally, to identify opportunities for reshaping the criminal justice landscape. In response to the humanitarian crisis in jail, the task force fought for systematic reform, including decarceration. However, while faced with increasingly divergent challenges arising from the pandemic, the task force became overextended, reverting its focus onto membership. The task force’s main lesson is that alliances with other organizations are essential to propel political and legislative change. The Covid-19 task force provided a platform for CCPDA to publicly protest the treatment of incarcerated people, while also providing an opportunity to rethink its role as a political organization. Moving forward, public defenders can, in collaboration with other organizations, play an essential role in criminal justice reform. To prevent future deaths of people in custody during this and future pandemics, we must find alternatives to the current correctional system.

Criminal justice reform and court-imposed bail in Mexico: an empirical report

ABSTRACT This article furthers the discussion on bail through an analysis of the conditions under which this measure is used in Mexico, a country which has recently reformed its penal system (2008–2016) by introducing new procedural rules, which seek to reduce the use of pretrial detention. The study is based on a statistical-descriptive examination of 1,537 judicial cases in which judges chose to impose either pretrial detention or bail. Our findings indicate that, obtaining bail, rather than pretrial detention, is related to both the specific nature of the crime as well as the circumstances of the criminal investigation. Furthermore, our data confirm that pretrial decisions can affect the entire course of a case. In our sample, defendants who were granted bail were more likely to receive non-condemnatory sentences than those who awaited trial in prison.

Civic Responses to Police Violence

Roughly a thousand people are killed by American law enforcement officers each year, accounting for more than 5% of all homicides. We estimate the causal impact of these events on civic engagement. Exploiting hyper-local variation in how close residents live to a killing, we find that exposure to police violence leads to significant increases in registrations and votes. These effects are driven entirely by Blacks and Hispanics and are largest for killings of unarmed individuals. We find corresponding increases in support for criminal justice reforms, suggesting that police violence may cause voters to politically mobilize against perceived injustice.

Introduction to the RBPE Special Issue on Criminal Justice Reform titled “Criminal Justice Reform: 2020 and Beyond”

This essay introduces the reader to the papers in this special volume about criminal justice reform.

Virginia lawmakers pass new budget amid COVID‐19 pandemic

Virginia lawmakers all but wrapped up a special legislative session Oct. 16 by approving a new state budget that gives bonuses to police, pays for a host of new criminal justice reforms and extends moratoriums on evictions and utility shutoffs during the COVID‐19 pandemic, the Martinsville Bulletin reported. The budget now goes to Gov. Ralph Northam, who can propose changes before it is finalized. Among the bills, lawmakers gave final approval to a bill to establish community care teams around the state to respond to emergency calls involving people with mental health issues. The teams would be led by mental health providers, with police as backup support. The legislation is named after Marcus‐David Peters, a teacher who was fatally shot after he charged at a Richmond police officer during a mental health crisis in 2018. “This is a bill that's going to save people's lives, I have no doubt,” said Sen. Jeremy McPike.

Welfare state development and Finnish criminal justice reform from the 1910s to the 1960s

In contemporary research, Nordic countries are considered to have comparatively lenient penal policies, such as the restricted use of imprisonment. However, criminal justice in Finland during the early decades of its independence was exceptionally harsh. Due to its history, Finland is considered a difficult case for institutionalist theories that have related the Nordic welfare state model with lenient penal policy. This analysis argues that Finland’s development away from this severity was, in fact, caused by the shift of its social policy toward that of a (Nordic) welfare state in the 1940s, which is associated with the adoption of the model of democratic corporatism after decades of intense political conflict. The 1940s were a turning point when regulation of prison population sizes started to become an objective in legislation concerning the penal system. Meanwhile, independent of legislation, judges’ attitudes and sentencing practices began to relax. A generational replacement began among the criminal justice elite that manifested as generational disagreement in the 1950s, and by the 1970s, a reformist consensus was achieved.

Pretrial justice reform and property crime: evidence from New Jersey

ABSTRACT Several states and localities have begun to implement various forms of pretrial justice reforms aimed at reducing the size of pretrial detainee population. However, empirical investigation of the effect of such reforms on crimes more broadly (other than recidivism) is limited. We analyse the effect of the 2017 New Jersey Criminal Justice Reform on property crimes. We find that property crime per 100,000 population increased by 22.5% within the first two years. Our findings suggest that reducing the likelihood of pretrial detention for less violent crimes can have substantial impact on behavioural incentives for offenders of such crimes.

A Timely Retrospective on the Need and Potential for Change

This review examines Hans Toch’s “ Organizational change through individual empowerment: Applying social psychology in prisons and policing” and discusses important lessons for today’s change-makers. Toch reflects on some of the most formative moments of his career at the intersection of social psychology research and criminal justice reform through powerful illustrations of people’s ability to change themselves, and sometimes, the institutions they inhabit. Toch’s human-centered approach to research and culture change is evident in every story, shining a light on much needed values, principles, and questions for the current era of criminal justice reform.

"Racial Bias…I'm Not Sure if It Has Affected My Practice": a Qualitative Exploration of Racial Bias in Team-Based Primary Care.

In summer 2020, COVID-19 laid bare social determinants contributing to disproportional African-American death rates,1 and #BlackLivesMatter protests decried police brutality and systematic racism that continue to exert daily pressure on African American lives.2 These twin forces resulted in renewed commitment to health equity and criminal justice reform within the medical community.3 Microaggressions including “microinvalidation”—the denial of racialized experiences of people of color—may more profoundly impact racial anger, frustration, and self-confidence than overt forms of racism.4 Furthermore, denial of racism prevents team members from realizing and confronting their role in causing traumatic reactions or perpetuating disparities.5

Maternal incarceration trajectories and the intergenerational transmission of imprisonment: A nationwide study

Abstract While children with maternal incarceration experiences have substantially higher rates of criminal justice involvement than children without maternal incarceration experiences, research on the association between maternal imprisonment and children’s criminal justice involvement reveals divergent findings. The inconsistencies are potentially attributable to the widespread use of a dichotomized maternal incarceration measure that masks different experiences across samples. This study used incarceration trajectories over the life course to determine the nature and array of maternal imprisonment histories associated with intergenerational incarceration. Using the Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities dataset (N = 881), we conducted logistic regression to examine the relationship between maternal incarceration trajectories and children’s risk of imprisonment. Findings suggested that children whose mothers followed the young-adulthood-peak trajectory had higher odds of being incarcerated than children whose mothers followed the moderate declining path. Moreover, the mother’s experiences of sexual abuse and juvenile justice involvement were significantly associated with intergenerational incarceration. This study suggests the need to use comprehensive longitudinal maternal incarceration measures to understand its consequences. Rehabilitative rather than punishment-oriented interventions for mothers may lower the odds od intergenerational incarceration. Prevention programs that target the unique challenges od mothers following the young-adulthood-peak trajectory may also interrupt intergenerational imprisonment. Moreover, criminal justice reform should consider systematic racism and socioeconomic inequalities to reduce the criminal justice involvement of children from disadvantaged communities in the US.

Major Decisions and Career Attractiveness among Criminal Justice Students

Criminal justice programs have grown dramatically in recent decades. Yet, relatively little is known about what motivates students to choose criminal justice as a major and what their career goals are after graduation. In light of current uprisings and demands for criminal justice reform, this study investigates the relationship between undergraduate students' personal characteristics and the criminal justice careers to which they are attracted. Findings can inform criminal justice curriculum development and student retention, as well as recruitment and hiring practices for criminal justice agencies.

MP and/or JP: An Examination of the Public Work of Selected Women during the Early Years of Women’s Enfranchisement (c.1920–1931)

The 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act became law only a year after the first election in which women were able to vote and stand as Members of Parliament (MPs). Among its other provisions, this legislation allowed women to become Justices of the Peace (JPs) for the first time. In December 1919, the Lord Chancellor convened a committee of advisors (the Crewe Committee) drawn from different parts of the United Kingdom and the various political parties, and in 1920 the appointment of the first large group of women to become JPs was announced. Among the early women JPs were several individuals who also feature in the list of the country’s first women MPs, and some others who stood unsuccessfully for parliament. This article concentrates on the careers of a few of these women in public and political service, with particular focus on their engagement with criminal justice reform and connections to the women’s movement. It considers examples both of women who were successful in becoming MPs, and those who were not. Among the issues considered will be the extent of these individuals’ interest in the political and judicial aspects of their work and an assessment of their extra-parliamentary careers. This paper concludes that women could and did lead important and satisfying political lives outside as well as inside the House of Commons.

Framing of criminal justice and crime in the news: 2015-2017

ABSTRACT This study examined newspaper coverage of crime and criminal justice issues from 2015 through 2017, a period that encompassed significant political change. A total of 300 articles from four major national newspapers were coded for the presence of punitive and progressive crime- and criminal justice-related themes in order to assess whether, and how, the presence of these themes may have changed over time. Results indicated that the average number of articles with at least one progressive theme did not decrease overall, and there were substantially more articles with at least one progressive theme than those with at least one punitive theme. The progressive themes displayed a greater emphasis on arguments for reform rooted in social and justice-based considerations, compared to those based on fiscal savings or other practical considerations. However, keyword searches indicated that there may have been a decreased focus overall in major broadcast news and newspaper on the criminal justice system and criminal justice reform during this time period.

Public opinion and the politics of collateral consequence policies

We analyze data from a national sample of the U.S. population to assess public support for policies that deny former offenders’ access to job training programs, food stamps, and public housing. We find that Americans generally oppose benefit restrictions, though support for these policies is higher among Republicans and people with higher levels of racial resentment. We also find that a legislator’s criminal justice reform positions generally do not significantly affect voters’ evaluation of him or her, and even voters with more punitive attitudes toward collateral consequence policies support legislators who advance particular kinds of reform proposals. These findings provide little evidence that any group of Americans would be mobilized to vote against a legislator who works to reform collateral consequence policies. We discuss the implications of these findings for American and comparative studies of the politics of punishment.

Legal reform as an instrument of constitutionalization of the legal order

The article examines the problems of constitutionalization of the legal order in the light of legal reform. It is noted that the currentsituation in the legal sphere (in the state of constitutionalization of law) is characterized by the following negative features: the lack ofrational legal policy and of systematic decisions of public authorities; the lack of optimal economic and political conditions for the developmentof the legal system as a whole and its individual elements; the low level of legal awareness of subjects of law and the high levelof legal nihilism; conservatism and inertness of individual subjects of the legal system. All these circumstances are a serious obstacle tothe legal order. Reforming is closely related to the change of power, political system, state policy, ideology, political course. In such situations,there is a need for systematic improvement of existing legislation. And it is necessary to make amendments not to separate laws,but to the whole legal field which needs systematic updating. It is emphasized that legal reform should be divided into three main areas:constitutional, legislative and judicial. These are, first of all, the reform of public administration, administrative and territorial reform,judicial and legal reform, the reform of criminal justice, and the reform of local self-government in Ukraine. All these areas are interconnected.At the same time, taking into account the fundamental importance of constitutional law (in relation to other branches of law),there is a need to substantiate the possibility of implementing constitutional principles into the fields of current legislation in order to furtherconstitutionalize the legal order. In view of this, an important step for the legal enforcement of reforms is the constitutional reform,the implementation of which is part of the problem of the development of statehood, improving the legal system of Ukraine.It is concluded that in the implementation of legal reform it is important to strictly adhere to the principles of the rule of law, oflegal certainty, and of proportionality, with the latter formed in the legal positions of the European Court of Human Rights. These legalmechanisms will contribute to more effective constitutional development of Ukraine, improvement and harmonization of all spheres ofpublic life, including legal one, renewal, constructive mechanism for protection of human and civil rights and freedoms, which is themain goal of constitutionalization of the legal order.

Allies, Antagonists, or Ambivalent? Exploring Latino Attitudes about the Black Lives Matter Movement

While many Latinos suffer the injustices of racial profiling at the hands of law enforcement and immigration officials, differences in immigration status, racial identity, contact with the Black community, and the prevalence anti-Black sentiment pose challenges for coalition building with Blacks. This study explores the factors that lead to an avenue for allyship from the Latino community to the Black community. Using attitudes about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, a series of hypotheses are tested to examine the structure of Latino-Black compared to white-Black coalitions. Two major findings emerge from the analysis; first, differences between whites and Latinos reveal that the effect of harboring anti-Black stereotypes are extraordinarily predictive of rejecting calls for racial social justice and combatting the scourge of police killings of unarmed Black men among whites but not among Latinos. Second, differences according to Latino racial identity and indicators of acculturation also impact support for the BLM movement in ways that both reaffirm but also challenge previous scholarship. These results suggest that while on the whole Latinos, and especially immigrants, are uninformed about BLM, once aware they exhibit a generally supportive stance toward the movement’s goals of criminal justice reform.

Post-2013 Reforms of the Chinese Courts and Criminal Procedure: An Introduction

This is the introductory chapter of an edited volume which combines a wide range of analytical perspectives and themes in order to investigate questions that link institutional changes within the court system and legal environment with developments in criminal procedure law. The chapter begins with a review of the literature on post-2013 legal institutional reforms before turning to the context and content of procedural law changes and court reforms. It then discusses the role of the SPC as an initiator of criminal procedure amendments and promoter of legal institutional reform. The most significant change in the judicial structure, that caused by the introduction of the supervision commissions, is examined from the perspective of ongoing court reforms and the balance of power amongst the various actors within the judiciary. The chapter then turns to the criminal procedure law reforms enacted in 2012 and 2018, discussing the new mechanism of pre-trial detention, the criminal justice reform goal of ‘trial-centredness’ and criminal reconciliation in public prosecution cases. As the contextual factors of criminal trials often have a decisive impact on the trial outcome, such factors as performance evaluations of courts and judges and media scrutiny of criminal cases are subsequently analysed. Finally, the chapter concludes with a summary of the key issues and findings of the volume as a whole.

Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico

How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mexican prison population and leveraging the date and place of arrest, this paper provides causal evidence about how these two explanatory variables shape police brutality. Our paper offers a grim picture of the survival of authoritarian policing practices in democracies. It also provides novel evidence of the extent to which the abolition of inquisitorial criminal justice institutions—a remnant of colonial legacies and a common trend in the region—has worked to restrain police brutality.

Public Discussion about Critical Issues in Criminal Justice Reform

Through analysis of six focus groups with 44 black and white residents of the greater Boston metropolitan area, this paper presents a qualitative assessment of people’s “zone of acquiescence” for justice reinvestment reform, paying particular attention to people’s criminal justice budget preferences and their openness to sentencing reform for violent offenders. When asked to write their own crime prevention budgets, participants chose to invest more money into the infrastructure and social services of communities than into police, probation, or prisons, arguing that the former is in greater need of funding than the latter. Most participants were initially resistant to sentencing violent offenders to community-based sanctions, but after discussion, they endorsed a discretion-centric, case-by-case treatment of violent felons. These data suggest that, when properly framed, policymakers have more “political space” to reinvest money directly into at-risk communities and release some violent offenders without provoking public backlash than they have so far assumed.