Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Richard S. Frase ◽  
Julian V. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Criminal History ◽  
Sentencing Guidelines ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Racial Disproportionality ◽  
Nonviolent Offenders ◽  
Offense Severity ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Prison Populations

This chapter provides an overview of the book, including the following major topics: why this neglected topic is so important; the ubiquity of prior record enhancement in modern sentencing systems, and their particularly powerful roles in U.S. jurisdictions with sentencing guidelines; the wide variations in the criminal history scoring formulas used in guidelines, with respect to matters such as which prior crimes and other factors are included, the weight each receives, and the degree to which a high score increases recommended sentence severity; the unclear punishment rationales for such enhancements; and the numerous negative consequences of these enhancements— increasing the size and expense of prison populations, undermining the important goal of punishment in proportion to offense severity, increasing the need for prison beds to house property and other nonviolent offenders, generating large numbers of aging prison inmates, contributing to racial disproportionality in prison populations, and undermining offenders’ efforts to reintegrate into society.

Adverse Impacts on Offense-Based Proportionality and Prison-Use Priorities

2019 ◽  
pp. 114-127
Author(s):  
Richard S. Frase ◽  
Julian V. Roberts ◽  
Rhys Hester
Keyword(s):  
Adverse Effects ◽  
Criminal History ◽  
Low Risk ◽  
Risk Level ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Violent Crimes ◽  
Nonviolent Offenders ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Older Offenders ◽  
Prison Populations

This chapter shows how powerful criminal history enhancements undermine important goals of guidelines reforms. First, these enhancements undermine the goal of making punishment severity proportional to the seriousness of the offense for which the offender is being sentenced; if prior record receives more weight in sentencing, conviction offense seriousness receives less weight. Second, these enhancements counteract the goal of reserving expensive prison beds for offenders convicted of violent crimes—powerful criminal history enhancements shift the balance of prison admissions and inmate stocks toward property, drug, and other nonviolent offenders. Third, prior record enhancements change the composition of prison populations by risk level—older offenders often have more prior convictions but declining recidivism risks, so criminal history enhancements increase the number of aging, low-risk prison inmates. The formulaic nature of such enhancements also over-predicts the risk level of some younger offenders. The chapter concludes with proposals for limiting these adverse effects.

Paying for the Past

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian V. Roberts ◽  
Richard S. Frase
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Repeat Offenders ◽  
Offense Severity ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Three Strikes ◽  
Sentencing Policy ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
Severity Of Punishment

Virtually all modern sentencing systems consider the offender’s prior record to be an important determinant of the form and severity of punishment, often carrying more weight than the crime being sentenced. Repeat offenders “pay for their past,” even though they have already been punished for their prior crimes. And the majority of sentenced offenders have at least one prior conviction. This topic thus lies at the heart of the sentencing process; every well-designed sentencing scheme needs to have a carefully conceived approach to the use of prior convictions. But the vast literature on sentencing policy, law, and practice has generally overlooked this issue. Moreover, the apparent justifications for prior record enhancement—the repeat offender’s assumed greater culpability and risk of re-offending—are uncertain, and have rarely been subjected to critical appraisal. Nor has sufficient attention been paid to the substantial negative consequences of such enhancements, which: increase the size and expense of prison populations; impose penalties disproportionate to offense severity; fill prisons with nonviolent and aging, lower-risk offenders; increase racial disproportionality in prison populations; and undermine offenders’ efforts to reintegrate into society. This book focuses on prior record enhancements under sentencing guidelines systems in the United States because sentencing rules operate more transparently in those systems. But the policy implications are much broader. Similar enhancements are informally applied, with substantial impacts, when judges sentence without guidelines. And most jurisdictions have statutes (three-strikes and career-offender laws; higher penalties for second and subsequent violations) that impose much more severe penalties on repeat offenders.

Punishing for the Past (Sometimes): Judicial Perspectives on Criminal History Enhancements

2021 ◽  
pp. 003288552110296
Author(s):  
Rhys Hester
Keyword(s):  
Criminal History ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Criminal Record ◽  
Sentencing Guidelines ◽  
Common View ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
The Common

Prior criminal record is routinely cited as one of the primary determinants of sentencing, and the common view is that prior record was a leading factor in non-guidelines jurisdictions going back decades. Yet, recent findings from a non-guidelines state failed to conform to this account. This study uses interviews with judges from a non-guidelines state to understand the role of prior record in sentencing in an unstructured sentencing state. This study also reexamines some of the early sentencing guidelines formation literature and finds some indications that pre-guidelines, prior record was not universally an instrumental predictor of sentence length.

Impacts of Criminal History Enhancements on Prison Bed Needs and Costs

2019 ◽  
pp. 152-162
Author(s):  
Richard S. Frase ◽  
Julian V. Roberts ◽  
Rhys Hester
Keyword(s):  
Criminal History ◽  
Fiscal Impact ◽  
Nonviolent Offenders ◽  
High Magnitude ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Fiscal Impacts

This chapter shows how sentencing data can be used to quantify the substantial fiscal impacts of high-magnitude criminal history enhancements, overall and with respect to the problematic aspects of those enhancements identified and discussed in previous chapters. It uses data from Minnesota and several other states as examples because of the excellent sentencing data available for those states. The chapter first examines the total fiscal impact (added bed needs and costs) that results from the sentence-enhancing effects of criminal history on prison commitment and prison duration decisions. It then quantifies the fiscal impacts of the identified problematic aspects of prior record enhancements: disproportionately severe prison durations imposed on high history offenders, imprisonment of nonviolent offenders recommended for prison solely because of their elevated criminal history scores, imprisonment of aging offenders who are recommended for prison due to their high history scores, and racially disparate sentences that result from criminal history enhancements.

Disproportionate Impacts on Minority Offenders

2019 ◽  
pp. 128-151
Author(s):  
Richard S. Frase ◽  
Julian V. Roberts ◽  
Rhys Hester
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal History ◽  
Major Contributor ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Criminal Records ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
Prior Conviction

Sentencing enhancements based on the offender’s prior conviction record are a major contributor to racial disproportionalities in prison populations, since racial minorities tend to have more extensive criminal records. After briefly reviewing the larger problem of disproportionate minority confinement in the United States, and the serious negative consequences of such disparities, this chapter examines data from several states on the ways in which racial differences in prior conviction records and other factors cause disproportionate minority confinement. The chapter focuses on black-to-white disparities, since blacks are the largest nonwhite group in most states and there is more detailed criminal justice data on them than for most other nonwhite groups. But the available data on Hispanics and Native Americans reveals disparities that are sometimes as great as for blacks. The chapter concludes with proposals for revising criminal history enhancement rules that have the largest and least defensible disparate impacts on nonwhite offenders.

Going Off the Grid: Assessing Sentencing Departures for Individuals Convicted of Sexual Offenses

2020 ◽  
pp. 001112872097745
Author(s):  
Katrina Cole ◽  
Jason Rydberg ◽  
Michael Cassidy
Keyword(s):  
Child Pornography ◽  
Sexual Offense ◽  
Sentencing Guidelines ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Sexual Offenses ◽  
Multinomial Logit Models ◽  
Offense Severity ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Sex Offense ◽  
The Impact

This research examines factors associated with departures from sentencing guidelines for a sample of individuals convicted of sexual offenses in Pennsylvania between 2004 and 2015 ( N = 26,093). We contribute to the literature on the sentencing of these cases by considering whether the impact of individual and contextual factors is conditioned by the type of sexual offense being sentenced (e.g., assaultive, child pornography, failure to comply with registration). Bayesian multilevel multinomial logit models suggested a number of legal, extralegal, and contextual correlates of departure likelihood, and indicated that the effects of offense severity, prior record, a previous sex offense conviction, multiple concurrent convictions, and court size vary across different subsets of sexual convictions.

Hazardous Duty: Investigating Resistance to Police at the Point of Arrest Among Incarcerated Military Veterans

2021 ◽  
pp. 0095327X2110420
Author(s):  
Mark A. Morgan ◽  
Matthew W. Logan ◽  
Ashley N. Arnio
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Criminal History ◽  
Prison Inmates ◽  
Police Contact ◽  
Self Reports ◽  
Treatment Courts ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Exact Moment ◽  
Veterans Treatment Courts ◽  
And Training

The link between military service and crime has been a subject of investigation for several decades. Although research has examined the likelihood of arrest, incarceration, and recidivism across military cohorts, relatively little is known about the circumstances surrounding police contact and suspect behavior at the exact moment of arrest. This is a critical oversight given that what transpires during an arrest can have a marked impact on downstream criminal justice outcomes, including access to diversionary programming like veterans treatment courts. Using a nationally representative survey of prison inmates, this study analyzes veteran and nonveteran self-reports of their arrest controlling for a host of relevant demographic, mental health, and criminal history variables. Findings indicate that veterans are significantly less likely to resist the police at arrest. These results provide further support to the sentiment that military culture and training can have a lasting behavioral influence on those who experience it.

The Model Regime

2019 ◽  
pp. 207-220
Author(s):  
Richard S. Frase ◽  
Julian V. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Nonviolent Offenders ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Counting Rules ◽  
First Offenders

This chapter outlines a model regime of prior record enhancement (PRE), designed to promote more rational, parsimonious, and humane sentences. It provides general principles and specific rules reflecting what is known about PRE justifications, costs, benefits, and adverse consequences. The principles specify which punishment purposes justify PRE, while also recognizing the overarching importance of maintaining proportionality to conviction offense seriousness, ensuring that PREs are necessary and cost-effective, minimizing racial disparities and imprisonment of aging and nonviolent offenders, avoiding interference with offender efforts at desistance, and striking a reasonable balance between rule and discretion. The model’s PRE counting rules exclude juvenile and misdemeanor priors, convictions more than 10 years old, upweighting of felonies based on their severity or similarity, and custody status points. First offenders receive substantial sentence mitigation, after which PRE magnitude increases modestly and is capped. High-history offenders are punished no more than twice as severely as first offenders.

What Other Factors Indicate High or Low Recidivism Risk?

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-71
Author(s):  
Richard S. Frase ◽  
Julian V. Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Prediction Accuracy ◽  
Criminal History ◽  
Older Age ◽  
Assessment Instruments ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Criminal Thinking ◽  
Prior Record ◽  
Salient Factor

If prior record enhancements are justified as a way to manage offender risk, policymakers need to consider other, non-record risk factors that may improve risk-prediction accuracy. This chapter examines the limited extent to which guidelines systems have incorporated such factors—usually as a ground for departure or other adjustment after the recommended sentence has been determined based on current offense and prior record. The chapter summarizes the offense factors and non-criminal-history offender factors, such as the offender’s current age and criminal thinking patterns, that criminological research has found to be good predictors of the risk of re-offending, and that are often included in widely used risk assessment instruments such as the Salient Factor Score, CSRA, and LSI-R. Very few of these non-record risk factors have been given a formal role in guidelines sentencing. The chapter argues that judges should be allowed to consider some of these factors, especially older age.

scholarly journals Transition to substance use disorders: impulsivity for reward and learning from reward

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (10) ◽  
pp. 1182-1191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoinette Poulton ◽  
Robert Hester
Keyword(s):  
Substance Dependence ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Societal Burden ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Substance Dependent ◽  
Drug Naïve ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Enhanced Learning ◽  
Behavioral Impulsivity

Abstract Substance dependence constitutes a profound societal burden. Although large numbers of individuals use licit or illicit substances, few transition to dependence. The specific factors influencing this transition are not well understood. Substance-dependent individuals tend to be swayed by the immediate rewards of drug taking, but are often insensitive to delayed negative consequences of their behavior. Dependence is consequently associated with impulsivity for reward and atypical learning from feedback. Behavioral impulsivity is indexed using tasks measuring spontaneous decision-making and capacity to control impulses. While evidence indicates drug taking exacerbates behavioral impulsivity for reward, animal and human studies of drug naïve populations demonstrate it might precede any drug-related problems. Research suggests dependent individuals are also more likely to learn from rewarding (relative to punishing) feedback. This may partly explain why substance-dependent individuals fail to modify their behavior in response to negative outcomes. This enhanced learning from reward may constitute a further pre-existing risk factor for substance dependence. Although impulsivity for reward and preferential learning from rewarding feedback are both underpinned by a compromised dopaminergic system, few studies have examined the relationship between these two mechanisms. The interplay of these processes may help enrich understanding of why some individuals transition to substance dependence.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document