Conscience and convenience: American victim work in organizational context

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Globokar ◽  
Edna Erez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Organizational Context ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Occupational Characteristics ◽  
Midwestern Usa

Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of victim-focused positions inside and outside the criminal justice system, yet little is known about the occupational characteristics and organizational context of this field in the United States. In this article, we draw on 42 semi-structured interviews with victim workers from a variety of settings and organizational affiliations in the midwestern USA to describe their pathways, activities, and challenges. The data reveal key differences among the experiences of those who were publicly employed, affiliated with the nonprofit sector and working independently. The findings underscore the significance of organizational affiliation in understanding victim work, the value of strong public/private partnerships, and the necessity of reforms to the organizational culture of criminal justice agencies to optimize victim experiences.

scholarly journals Mercy towards decarceration: Examining the legal constraints on early release from prison

Incarceration ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 263266632097780
Author(s):  
Alexandra Cox ◽  
Dwayne Betts
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Family Members ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Release ◽  
The Us ◽  
Legal Constraints ◽  
Release From Prison

There are close to seven million people under correctional supervision in the United States, both in prison and in the community. The US criminal justice system is widely regarded as an inherently unmerciful institution by scholars and policymakers but also by people who have spent time in prison and their family members; it is deeply punitive, racist, expansive and damaging in its reach. In this article, we probe the meanings of mercy for the institution of parole.

Criminal Justice in an Era of Mass Deportation

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid V. Eagly
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
State Level ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Collateral Consequence

After a sustained period of hypercriminalization, the United States criminal justice system is undergoing reform. Congress has reduced federal sentencing for drug crimes, prison growth is slowing, and some states are even closing prisons. Low-level crimes have been removed from criminal law books, and attention is beginning to focus on long-neglected issues such as bail and criminal court fines. Still largely overlooked in this era of ambitious reform, however, is the treatment of immigrants in the criminal justice system. An unprecedented focus on immigration enforcement targeted at “felons, not families” has resulted in a separate system of punitive treatment reserved for noncitizens, which includes crimes of migration, longer periods of pretrial detention, harsher criminal sentences, and the almost certain collateral consequence of lifetime banishment from the United States. For examples of state-level solutions to this predicament, this Essay turns to a trio of bold criminal justice reforms from California that (1) require prosecutors to consider immigration penalties in plea bargaining; (2) change the state definition of “misdemeanor” from a maximum sentence of a year to 364 days; and (3) instruct law enforcement agencies to not hold immigrants for deportation purposes unless they are first convicted of serious crimes. Together, these new laws provide an important window into how state criminal justice systems could begin to address some of the unique concerns of noncitizen criminal defendants.

Do Americans Like to Punish?

Metamorphosis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Values ◽  
The People ◽  
American Prison

This chapter addresses the question of whether Americans like to punish. The United States clearly punishes more heavily and for longer periods than other countries, with comparable social and political values. One can land in an American prison for life over minor offenses—a punishment not used for serious offenses in Western Europe. The leading comparativist on criminology, James Whitman, argues that a politics of dignity has instilled mercy and mildness in European systems, while leveling impulses, distrust of authority, and too much power in the people is said to have left the United States with a criminal justice system long in degradation and short on mercy.

Sex Panic and Denial

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 458-482
Author(s):  
Corey Rayburn Yung
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Sex Offenders ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Goal ◽  
Residency Restrictions

The American criminal justice system regarding sex is not just logically incoherent, it is also often morally bankrupt because it remains unexamined and poorly understood. This Article contends that there are actually common roots underlying the seemingly oppositional forces of social panic and denial, which explain why the United States has an endemic sexual violence problem. Both panic and denial reinforce the implicit, and sometimes explicit, desire to avoid substantive engagement with socially contentious issues related to sex. The use of residency restrictions and civil commitment fit the modern social goal of putting sex offenders out-of-sight and out-of-mind. Yet, those same desires also explain America’s unwillingness to believe victims of sexual violence and police failure to properly investigate criminal complaints. In this way, sex panic dovetails with sex denial—in both instances, American culture only permits a limited discussion and understanding of sex and sexual violence. The result is that our nation fails to take sex crime complaints seriously while overreacting to the few convictions that emerge from the hostile criminal justice system.

Comparing Plea Bargaining and Abbreviated Trial Procedures

2019 ◽  
pp. 702-727
Author(s):  
Gwladys Gilliéron
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Civil Law ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
The United States ◽  
Wrongful Convictions ◽  
The U.S

This chapter compares U.S. plea bargaining with plea-bargaining-type procedures and penal orders in Continental Europe, with reference to Switzerland, Germany, and France. It first considers consensual criminal procedures across jurisdictions and why they exist, focusing on plea bargaining in the U.S. criminal justice system and abbreviated trial procedures in European civil law systems. It then examines the extent to which abbreviated trial procedures in civil law systems differ from plea bargaining in the U.S. system, the problems inherent in consensual criminal procedures, and the question of whether there are any solutions. In particular, it explains how plea bargaining and penal orders may lead to wrongful convictions. Finally, it discusses prospects for reform of plea bargaining in the United States and in civil law systems in Europe.

The Criminal Justice System and the Racialization of Perceptions

2013 ◽  
Vol 651 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliya Saperstein ◽  
Andrew M. Penner ◽  
Jessica M. Kizer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Longitudinal Data ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Racial Perceptions

Recent research on how contact with the criminal justice system shapes racial perceptions in the United States has shown that incarceration increases the likelihood that people are racially classified by others as black, and decreases the likelihood that they are classified as white. We extend this work, using longitudinal data with information on whether respondents have been arrested, convicted, or incarcerated, and details about their most recent arrest. This allows us to ask whether any contact with the criminal justice system triggers racialization, or only certain types of contact. Additional racial categories allow us to explore the racialization of crime beyond the black-white divide. Results indicate even one arrest significantly increases the odds of subsequently being classified as black, and decreases the odds of being classified as white or Asian. This implies a broader impact of increased policing and mass incarceration on racialization and stereotyping, with consequences for social interactions, political attitudes, and research on inequality.

The Prisonized Old Head: Intergenerational Socialization and the Fusion of Ghetto and Prison Culture

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 673-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Forrest Stuart ◽  
Reuben Jonathan Miller
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
The United States ◽  
Urban Neighborhoods ◽  
Neighborhood Context ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Prison Culture

Over the last four decades, the United States’ criminal justice system has undergone a historic expansion, which has disproportionately impacted poor urban neighborhoods. The meteoric rise in the percentage of the urban poor either on their way to, in, or recently released from jail or prison has led a number of scholars to theorize a “fusion of ghetto and prison culture” (Wacquant 2001). The exact sources and contours of this fusion, however, remain unspecified. How, concretely, are the cultural contexts of prisons transmitted to poor urban neighborhoods? This article proposes that intergenerational socialization is a key mechanism in this process. We contend that the dramatic expansion of the criminal justice system over the last four decades has given rise to an unexpected and peculiar form of socialization, provided by a new social actor—what we term the “prisonized old head.” We define the prisonized old head as an individual who exhibits three particular characteristics. They are (1) older individuals with extensive experiences in, and wisdom about, the criminal justice system; who (2) informally socialize neighborhood residents to embrace the cultural schemas and routines learned inside penal spaces; to (3) navigate the daily exigencies routinely faced in the neighborhood context. Stated simply, prisonized old heads leverage ways of life developed “on the inside” as strategies for living life “on the outside.” We articulate the emergence, mechanisms, and implications of this form of socialization drawing on fieldwork data in Los Angeless’ Skid Row neighborhood—one of the premier reentry communities in the United States. We show that although this socialization may contribute to desistance and self-transformation, it can simultaneously constrain upward mobility and limit reintegration.

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