Prosecutorial Diversion Programs

2021 ◽  
pp. 621-635
Author(s):  
Leon Sawh ◽  
Charlotte N. Goff ◽  
Matthew W. Epperson
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Chrysanthi S. Leon ◽  
Corey S. Shdaimah

Expertise in multi-door criminal justice enables new forms of intervention within existing criminal justice systems. Expertise provides criminal justice personnel with the rationale and means to use their authority in order to carry out their existing roles for the purpose of doing (what they see as) good. In the first section, we outline theoretical frameworks derived from Gil Eyal’s sociology of expertise and Thomas Haskell’s evolution of moral sensibility. We use professional stakeholder interview data (N = 45) from our studies of three emerging and existing prostitution diversion programs as a case study to illustrate how criminal justice actors use what we define as primary, secondary, and tertiary expertise in multi-agency working groups. Actors make use of the tools at their disposal—in this case, the concept of trauma—to further personal and professional goals. As our case study demonstrates, professionals in specialized diversion programs recognize the inadequacy of criminal justice systems and believe that women who sell sex do so as a response to past harms and a lack of social, emotional, and material resources to cope with their trauma. Trauma shapes the kinds of interventions and expertise that are marshalled in response. Specialized programs create seepage that may reduce solely punitive responses and pave the way for better services. However empathetic, they do nothing to address the societal forces that are the root causes of harm and resultant trauma. This may have more to do with imagined capacities than with the objectively best approaches.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Landis ◽  
David Hsu ◽  
Erick Guerra

This article uses a series of fixed-ratio projections and scenarios to explore the potential for local residential energy conservation mandates and compact growth programs to reduce locally based CO2 emissions in eleven representative US metropolitan areas. Averaged across all eleven metros, residential energy conservation mandates could reduce residential CO2 emissions in 2030 by an average of 30 percent over and above 2010 levels. In terms of implementation, residential conservation standards were found to be goal-effective, cost-effective, scale-effective, and in the case of new construction standards, reasonably resistant to local political pushback. Local compact growth programs do not perform as well. If accompanied by aggressive efforts to get drivers out of their cars, compact growth programs could reduce auto-based 2030 CO2 emissions by as much as 25 percent over and above any emissions reductions attributable to higher fuel economy standards. Unaccompanied by modal diversion programs, the stand-alone potential for local compact growth programs to reduce auto-based CO2 emissions falls into a more modest range of 0 to 7 percent depending on the metropolitan area. Based on past performance, local compact growth programs are also likely to have problems in terms of their goal- and scale-efficiency, and their potential to incur political pushback.


Author(s):  
Nora V. Demleitner

Prosecutorial decisions play an important, and sometimes a decisive, role in a defendant’s ultimate sentence. They begin with the selection of charges and may end with a recommendation on clemency or expungement of a criminal conviction. The influence of prosecutors over the sentence, therefore, is far more extensive than that of any other official. The charging decision sets the starting point for the sentence range. The prosecution tends to control entry into diversion programs that may spare an offender a criminal record after complying with a set of requirements. Plea bargains, which have become more frequent even in Europe’s civil law countries, usually focus on the type and scope of the criminal justice sentence. Mandatory minimum sentences, mandatory aggravators, and stacked charges provide prosecutors with overwhelming bargaining power, causing many defendants to waive their right to a trial. Judges tend to follow the parties’ agreements and impose the recommended sentence. In many states prosecutors routinely weigh in on parole decisions and determine whether to proceed against defendants for supervision violations. Even in clemency decisions, they frequently submit a recommendation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin Stainbrook ◽  
Stephanie Hartwell ◽  
Amy James

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