Criminal Justice Institutions Research Articles

Leveraging Marijuana Reform to Enhance Expungement Practices

States reforming marijuana laws should be particularly concerned with remedying the past inequities and burdens of mass criminalization. State marijuana reforms should not only offer robust retroactive ameliorative relief opportunities for prior marijuana offenses, but also dedicate resources generated by marijuana reform to create and fund new institutions to assess and serve the needs of a broad array of offenders looking to remedy the collateral consequences of prior involvement in the criminal justice system. So far, California stands out among reform states for coupling repeal of marijuana prohibition with robust efforts to enable and ensure the erasure of past marijuana convictions. In addition to encouraging marijuana reform states to follow California’s lead in enacting broad ameliorative legislation, this essay urges policy makers and reform advocates to see the value of linking and leveraging the commitments and spirit of modern marijuana reform and expungement movements. Part II begins with a brief review of the history of marijuana prohibition giving particular attention to social and racial dynamics integral to prohibition, its enforcement and now its reform. Part III turns to recent reform activities focused on mitigating the punitive collateral consequences of a criminal conviction with a focus on the (mostly limited) efforts of marijuana reform states to foster the erasure of marijuana convictions. Part IV sketches a novel proposal for connecting modern marijuana reform and expungement movements. This part suggest a new criminal justice institution, a Commission on Justice Restoration, to be funded by the taxes, fees and other revenues generated by marijuana reforms and to be tasked with proactively working on policies and practices designed to minimize and ameliorate undue collateral consequences for people with criminal convictions.

Implicit Bias and Mental Health Professionals: Priorities and Directions for Research.

This Open Forum explores the role of implicit bias along the mental health care continuum, which may contribute to mental health disparities among vulnerable populations. Emerging research shows that implicit bias is prevalent among service providers. These negative or stigmatizing attitudes toward population groups are held at a subconscious level and are automatically activated during practitioner-client encounters. The authors provide examples of how implicit bias may impede access to care, clinical screening and diagnosis, treatment processes, and crisis response. They also discuss how implicit attitudes may manifest at the intersection between mental health and criminal justice institutions. Finally, they discuss the need for more research on the impact of implicit bias on health practices throughout the mental health system, including the development of interventions to address implicit bias among mental health professionals.

Leveraging Marijuana Reform to Enhance Expungement Practices

States reforming marijuana laws should be particularly concerned with remedying the past inequities and burdens of mass criminalization. State marijuana reforms should not only offer robust retroactive ameliorative relief opportunities for prior marijuana offenses, but also dedicate resources generated by marijuana reform to create and fund new institutions to assess and serve the needs of a broad array of offenders looking to remedy the collateral consequences of prior involvement in the criminal justice system. So far, California stands out among reform states for coupling repeal of marijuana prohibition with robust efforts to enable and ensure the erasure of past marijuana convictions. In addition to encouraging marijuana reform states to follow California’s lead in enacting broad ameliorative legislation, this essay urges policy makers and reform advocates to see the value of linking and leveraging the commitments and spirit of modern marijuana reform and expungement movements. Part II begins with a brief review of the history of marijuana prohibition giving particular attention to social and racial dynamics integral to prohibition, its enforcement and now its reform. Part III turns to recent reform activities focused on mitigating the punitive collateral consequences of a criminal conviction with a focus on the (mostly limited) efforts of marijuana reform states to foster the erasure of marijuana convictions. Part IV sketches a novel proposal for connecting modern marijuana reform and expungement movements. This part suggest a new criminal justice institution, a Commission on Justice Restoration, to be funded by the taxes, fees and other revenues generated by marijuana reforms and to be tasked with proactively working on policies and practices designed to minimize and ameliorate undue collateral consequences for people with criminal convictions.

Detrás del castigo. Primeras aproximaciones a la relación de la justicia penal con la prisión

La justicia penal tiene un vínculo en apariencia estrecho con la prisión. Es que constituye la respuesta preponderante y más utilizada frente a los conflictos que llegan a su conocimiento. Esto, ya sea a través de la aplicación de una pena en sentido estricto o bajo la modalidad del encierro preventivo. Este trabajo intenta problematizar este escenario a través de un acercamiento empírico que indicaría que, en rigor de verdad, la justicia penal ha consolidado una distancia tal con la prisión con secuelas concretas a la hora de abordar los problemas estructurales de la cárcel. Desde ese lugar, invita a reflexionar sobre la necesidad de que los operadores jurídicos –los integrantes de la justicia penal– tengan mayor contacto durante la carrera judicial

An abolitionist theory on crime: ending the abusive relationship with Racist-Imperialist-Patriarchy [R.I.P.

In this article I re-assess the parameters of what we seek to abolish as we pursue penal abolition. I apply Black Feminist Hauntology to exorcize the barriers of traditional and ineffective deconstructions of crime and criminalization. To illustrate these weaknesses I discuss police killings and related vigilante white supremacist violence. I present the aftermath of the deaths and trials (when there were trials) to bring to light the large disconnects that exist between abolitionism and the world in which crime lives. To begin to address this disconnect I present an abolitionist theory on crime founded upon five pillars of assessment: abolition’s perceived minimization of violence; the abusive R.I.P. relationship between crime and justice; a cultural phenomenon of achieving significance through proximity or by association; abusive naturalizations of violence that have been unaddressed in penal abolition; locating the struggles to exit abusive relationships within the core of our studies of criminal justice and penal abolition. I conclude that when penal abolitionists conceive of crime as a social construction tied to criminal justice institutions alone, as opposed to part of a structurally Racist-Imperialist-Patriarchal [R-I-P] abusive relationship, they stunt the possibilities of abolition in manners akin to pushing against a 500 year old tree from its trunk and expecting it to topple over without any account for the roots that hold it firmly in the ground.

Determinants of satisfaction with police in a developing country: a randomised vignette study

ABSTRACTThis study examines the effects of three theoretical factors representing both process-based and outcome-based dimensions of police actions on attitudes towards police using an experimental vignette design. We constructed two vignettes depicting citizens’ plausible encounters with police in an urban setting in a developing country (i.e. Accra, Ghana) and varied the level of police procedural justice, measured by quality of treatment, lawfulness, measured by whether or not a bribe is present, and effectiveness, measured by whether or not the offender was caught. In line with previous research, we find that dimensions of police procedural justice, lawfulness, and effectiveness all increase citizens’ satisfaction. However, we find that in certain situations, unlawfulness and ineffectiveness can undermine any positive influence of procedural justice policing on satisfaction. These findings have implications for criminal justice institutions seeking to improve relations with citizens and boost satisfaction and ultimately legitimacy.

LGBT Identity and Crime

Recent studies report that LGBT adults and youth disproportionately face hardships that scholars have long-viewed as risk factors for criminal offending and victimization. Some of these factors include higher rates of poverty, overrepresentation in the youth homeless population, and overrepresentation in the foster care system. In spite of these risk factors, there is a lack of study and available data on LGBT people who come into contact with the criminal justice system as offenders or as victims.Through an original intellectual history of the treatment of LGBT identity and crime, this Article provides insight into how this problem in LGBT criminal justice developed and examines directions to move beyond it. The history shows that until the mid-1970s, the criminalization of homosexuality left little room to think of LGBT people in the criminal justice system other than as deviant sexual offenders. The trend to decriminalize sodomy in the mid-1970s opened a narrow space for scholars, advocates, and policymakers to use anti-discrimination principles to redefine LGBT people in the criminal justice system as innocent and non-deviant hate crime victims, as opposed to deviant sexual offenders. Although this paradigm shift has contributed to some important gains for LGBT people, this Article argues that it cannot be celebrated as an unequivocal triumph. This shift has left us with flat understandings of LGBT offenders as sexual offenders and flat understandings of LGBT victims as hate crime victims. These one-dimensional narratives miss many criminal justice problems that especially fall on LGBT people who bear the brunt of inequality in the criminal justice system — including LGBT people of color, transgender people, undocumented LGBT people, and low-income and homeless LGBT people. The Article concludes by showing how ideas and methods in criminology offer promise to enhance accounts of LGBT offending and LGBT victimization, and in turn, inform law, policy, and the design of criminal justice institutions to better respond to the needs and experiences of LGBT offenders and LGBT victims.

The disjuncture between confidence and cooperation: Police contact amongst Polish migrants and established residents

Trust and confidence in such criminal justice institutions as the police is considered crucial for the successful functioning of society and to allow for greater voluntary compliance and cooperation with institutions of control. There is a plethora of existing research, however, that shows the often strained relationships between the police and particular ethnic minority groups in the UK, Europe and the US, with such groups exhibiting a great deal of mistrust and lack of cooperation. This article aims to add to this body of literature by presenting the findings of a case study that used quantitative and qualitative methods to explore new Polish migrants’ and established local residents’ trust in and cooperation with the police following a period of mass migration in a small working-class town in the north-west of England. The key results show that, contrary to expectations, Polish migrants in fact have greater trust in the police than do the more established local residents in the area. Notwithstanding th...

The Hidden Arm of the Law: Examining Administrative Justice in Gun Carry Licensing

Responding to calls to “decenter” American penality beyond the carceral apparatus, this article ethnographically examines administrative process and dissects how it interlocks with criminal justice. To do so, it draws on an admittedly unusual, but theoretically generative, case: administrative gun boards, charged with issuing, denying, revoking, and suspending licenses to conceal carry a firearm. While scholars have examined gun ownership and gun carrying as a social practice, less attention has been paid to gun licensing as a state practice. Drawing on observations of over 900 cases from gun board meetings in two counties in Michigan, this paper examines how administrative process mimics, supplements, and facilitates criminal justice through three mechanisms: procedural pains, in which administrative process resembles criminal justice; parallel punishment, in which administrative process supplements criminal justice through withholding of benefits, entitlements or licenses; and valve-turning, in which administrative process funnels, or threatens to funnel, claimants into the criminal justice system. Revealing how administrative process and criminal justice become mutually reinforcing, the findings extend and integrate scholarship that shows the material, symbolic, and psychic implications of criminal justice contact, on the one hand, with the increased tendency of administrative contexts to resemble criminal justice institutions, on the other.

The effect of minority threat on risk management and the “new disciplinology” in schools

BackgroundDiscipline in U.S. public schools has been mirroring patterns observed in the U.S. criminal justice system. Educational and criminal justice institutions have not only become increasingly punitive and exclusionary despite decreasing rates of misbehavior and crime, but have also produced dramatic racial and ethnic disparities in who is punished relative to representations in the larger national population. Rocque and Snelling argue that these phenomena are the product of a general desire for risk management. PurposeI argue that much of the punitiveness observed concurrently in educational and criminal justice institutions is actually the result of minority threat and its influence on perceptions of risk that may accompany minority composition of schools and communities. ResultsEvaluation of research on racial threat and the “new disciplinology” makes it seem likely that racial composition is increasing policy makers' and administrators' desire for risk management as an institutional goal, which subsequently cultivates support for the punitive punishment that disproportionately targets minorities. ConclusionsPunitive educational and criminal justice policies should be revised to diminish the likelihood that they will be implemented in a discriminatory manner. Further, restorative practices in both settings have promising outcomes not just for racial and ethnic minorities, but for communities as a whole.

More data means better tools for South Africa

In February this year, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) released the findings of the 2015/16 Victims of Crime Survey, and announced that it would release the 2016/17 results in November. Victim surveys, though not without fault, capture valuable data relating to crime, justice and safety, that is not typically collected by criminal justice agencies. Much of their value lies in their ability to identify victimisation trends which may or may not appear in police data, and to gauge perceptions and experiences of criminal justice institutions.

More data means better tools for South Africa

In February this year, Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) released the findings of the 2015/16 Victims of Crime Survey, and announced that it would release the 2016/17 results in November. Victim surveys, though not without fault, capture valuable data relating to crime, justice and safety, that is not typically collected by criminal justice agencies. Much of their value lies in their ability to identify victimisation trends which may or may not appear in police data, and to gauge perceptions and experiences of criminal justice institutions.

Crime Data, the Internet, and Free Speech: An Evolving Legal Consciousness

Digitization and open access to governmental data have made criminal justice information incredibly easy to access and disseminate. This study asks how law should govern access to criminal histories on the Internet. Drawing upon interviews with crime website publishers and subjects who have appeared on websites, I use legal consciousness theory to show how social actors interpret, construct, and invoke law in a nascent and unregulated area. The analysis reveals how both parties construct legality in the absence of positive legal restrictions: Website publishers use legal justifications, while those appealing to have their online record cleared resort to personal pleas, as opposed to legal remedy. Ultimately, I show how current data practices reinforce structural inequalities already present in criminal justice institutions in a profoundly public manner, leaving website subjects with little recourse and an inescapable digital trail.

From “Junkies” to “Soccer Moms”: Newspaper Representations of Overdose, 1988–2014

In the United States, opioid-related mortality has tripled since 2000, leading the Centers for Disease Control to declare a national overdose epidemic in 2016. With overdose an increasing area of mainstream political and popular concern, some commentators have suggested that sympathetic attention has followed changes in the profile of opioid users, as rates of heroin initiation have doubled among white Americans and women. Yet no studies have examined how media framings of overdose have shifted alongside the epidemic’s demographic contours. Focusing upon southwestern Pennsylvania, this study uses qualitative analysis of news items surrounding three surges in heroin overdose deaths in 1988, 2006, and 2014. 178 items reporting on such overdose outbreaks were selected for thematic coding, with attention directed toward opioid user representations, “drug problem” characterizations, and suggested solutions. Results reveal a transformation in the depiction of overdose sufferers over time, with stories increasingly centered around “unexpected” opioid users, whose habits are made legible through biomedical discourses of addiction; such portraits are used to argue the impropriety of punitive responses to drug misuse. At the same time, the role of criminal justice institutions in addressing overdose is not dismissed, but relocated in recent coverage, with the intensified prosecution of drug dealers offered by many.

Criminal Justice’s Ailing Role

The general philosophy of social contract is premised on the notion that the state assumes the role of maintaining social relation through diverse political ideas and strategies. Within the context of this historical arrangement, the institution of criminal justice has been foremost in shaping the relationship between members of the community by defining rights and sanctions. These socio-legal trajectories that developed through theories and policies have continued to define the various strategies of crime control as well as the jurisprudence of punishment. It has also been the key measure for the legitimacy of crime control and other dispute resolution techniques (Davies et al. 2009). Being a significant component in the formation of political systems, the institution of criminal justice has also developed to encapsulate the values of democracy, constitutionalism and human rights. It is from these ideas that criminal justice institutions mainly the police, the prosecutors, the courts and prisons derived their legitimacy, that are today seen by many as the ideal mechanism for maintaining social order. These agencies have, over time, gained prominence within the framework of a larger political order, engaging themselves as some “product of incremental enlightenment, benevolence, and a consensual society” (Burke 2012: 194). Despite these lofty assumptions about the role of criminal justice in the society, this paper argues that the policies and practices in criminal justice are far from benign. By bringing to discourse the contemporary realities of penal justice, this paper argues that many of the traditional values of criminal justice have been tremendously altered; conventional narratives are replaced by a new kind of penology. This includes the way in which the role and rights of various parties and participants in the system have been reconfigured as well as the economic way of thinking that is steadily disrupting the balance and objectives of the entire institution of criminal justice.

Introduction

As unprecedented levels of human mobility continue to define our era, criminal justice institutions in countries around the world are increasingly shaped by mass migration and its control. This collection brings together legal scholars from Europe and the United States to consider the implications of the attendant changes on the exercise of state penal power and those subject to it. The contributions in this special issue are united by a shared set of questions about the salience of citizenship for contemporary criminal justice policies and practices. They are specifically concerned with questions of fair and equal treatment, the changing configurations of state sovereignty, and the significance of migration on criminal justice policies and practices. Collectively, the articles show how, in grappling with mass mobility and diversity, states are devising novel forms of control, many of which erode basic criminal justice principles and reinforce existing social hierarchies.

A Research of reasonable relations of criminal justice institutions - the necessity of their sound checks and balances

A Research of reasonable relations of criminal justice institutions - the necessity of their sound checks and balances

Trajectories of neighborhood attainment after prison

A potentially important but understudied aspect of prisoner reentry is the neighborhood environments experienced by formerly incarcerated people. We know that many formerly incarcerated people return to very disadvantaged neighborhood environments and that returning to disadvantaged neighborhoods after prison increases the risk of recidivism and reduces employment. Yet very little is known about the social, economic, and institutional processes that sort formerly incarcerated people into different neighborhoods after release or their trajectories of neighborhood attainment over time. Motivated by a conceptualization of prisoner reentry and reintegration as a process that unfolds over time, we examine trajectories of neighborhood environments after release. Motivated by the literature on neighborhood attainment, social capital, and the role of criminal justice institutions in structuring the lives of former prisoners, we examine sources of variation in neighborhood attainment. We use administrative data from the Michigan Department of Corrections on formerly incarcerated people paroled in 2003 and followed for two years after release. Descriptive results from a latent class trajectory model show that most white and black formerly incarcerated people experience flat trajectories, with little upward or downward residential mobility over time. Findings from multi-level growth curve models suggest that institutional factors are particularly important for the neighborhood attainment of whites, while human capital and social ties are particularly important for blacks. Among both blacks and whites, pre-prison and first post-prison neighborhood conditions exhibit a strong association with post-prison neighborhood attainment, although these associations are larger for blacks than whites.

Where Do We Stand? An Exploratory Analysis of Confidence in African Court Systems

As an exploratory analysis, this research investigates the factors influencing public confidence in the court systems of five African nations; namely, South Africa, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali and Zambia. Incorporating frequency descriptive measurements and ordinal logistic regression, this research provides a comparative assessment across varying political, cultural, social and historical contexts to foster continued research within the criminal justice institutions, specifically the courts. The findings indicate that public confidence in the courts remains high, despite popular speculation to the contrary. There were, however, varying levels of confidence between the five nations; differences at theoretical and practical levels are discussed.

Examining the Sources of Racial Bias in Potentially Capital Cases

While prior research has uncovered racial disparities in the administration of death sentences, little attention has been devoted to earlier stages in the capital punishment processes. To understand the locus of racial bias within death penalty institutions, this study examines the entry of homicide cases into Los Angeles County’s criminal justice system during a 5-year period. This two-part analysis seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) Does victim/defendant race influence homicide clearance and death penalty charging decisions? and (2) if so, does the likelihood of clearance mediate the effect of victim race on death penalty charges? Logistic regressions indicate that cases involving Latino victims are less likely to be cleared. Moreover, cases with Black and Latino victims are less likely to be prosecuted with a death penalty–eligible charge. Racial disparities accumulate across these stages, with clearance patterns influencing subsequent death penalty charging decisions. Results underscore the cumulative nature of racial within criminal justice institutions. By linking police and prosecution outcomes, these findings also highlight the interrelationship between criminal justice agencies.