scholarly journals Same old song and dance? An analysis of legislative activity in a period of penal reform

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-412
Author(s):  
Michael Campbell ◽  
Heather Schoenfeld ◽  
Paige Vaughn
Keyword(s):  
Crime Control ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Set ◽  
State Legislation ◽  
Penal Reform ◽  
Or Practice ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Legislative Activity ◽  
Prison Populations

After years of tough-on-crime politics and increasingly punitive sentencing in the United States, economic, political, and social shifts in the 21st century have created new opportunities for opponents of the penal status quo. By 2013, a majority of states had enacted some type of reform aimed at reducing prison populations. An emerging body of punishment and society scholarship seeks to understand the possibilities and characteristics of reform efforts by examining enacted state legislation. In this article, we use a unique data set of all proposed and passed bills in three legislative sessions in New Jersey between 2001 and 2013 to provide a nuanced empirical account of change and continuity in penal logics in the period of reform. Even when not enacted, proposed legislation shapes the penal field by introducing new ideas that are later incorporated into rhetoric, policy, or practice. Proposed bills that never become law can also alter the political calculus for reformers or their opponents. Our findings demonstrate that by expanding our universe of data, we gain insight into characteristics of “late mass incarceration” that we might otherwise miss. In particular, while we find evidence of decarceration and bifurcation logics, our analysis also demonstrates that state lawmakers continue to participate in “crime control theater” and reproduce the same punitive penal logics that helped build the carceral state.

Critical Junctures and Conditions of Change: Exploring the Fall of Prison Populations in US States

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Karstedt ◽  
Tiffany Bergin ◽  
Michael Koch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Transformative Change ◽  
Us States ◽  
State Prison ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Penal Reform ◽  
Prison Populations

State prison populations in the United States have been regularly declining since 2009, and, at the end of 2014, the combined federal and state prison population was at its lowest level since 2005. Criminologists were caught by surprise by this development in the country that epitomized contemporary ‘mass incarceration’. Their theoretical accounts were steeped in a ‘punitive worldview’ that left no space for the stabilization and eventual decline in mass incarceration in the United States. This article focuses on policy processes, rather than structural conditions, as drivers of penal change. The article begins with an overview of theories of punishment and their shortcomings. The framework that guides our study is based on the concept of ‘critical junctures’, which are seedbeds of long-term transformative change that present opportunities and constraints for actors in the penal field. The empirical research presented here analyses the adoption of legal reforms aimed at reducing mass incarceration by the 50 US states. We find that a trifecta of conflicting actors – legal, political and public – accounts for the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which states move towards penal reform.

The Insidious Momentum of American Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franklin E. Zimring
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Next Generation ◽  
Single Generation ◽  
American Life ◽  
Peak Rate ◽  
Or Practice

The phenomenal growth of penal confinement in the United States in the last quarter of the twentieth century is still a public policy mystery. Why did it happen when it happened? What explains the unprecedented magnitude of prison and jail expansion? Why are the current levels of penal confinement so very close to the all-time peak rate reached in 2007? What is the likely course of levels of penal confinement in the next generation of American life? Are there changes in government or policy that can avoid the prospect of mass incarceration as a chronic element of governance in the United States? This study is organized around four major concerns: What happened in the 33 years after 1973? Why did these extraordinary changes happen in that single generation? What is likely to happen to levels of penal confinement in the next three decades? What changes in law or practice might reduce this likely penal future?

Local Labor Market Inequality in the Age of Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
pp. 003464462096602
Author(s):  
Luke Petach ◽  
Anita Alves Pena
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Incarceration Rate ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Level Data ◽  
White Poverty

We contend that the rise of mass incarceration in the United States can be framed through the lens of stratification economics, which views race- and class-based discrimination as a rational attempt on behalf of privileged groups to preserve their relative status and the material benefits which that status confers. Using the first (to our knowledge) local-level data set on incarceration rates by race, we explore the relationship between income inequality, poverty, and incarceration at the commuting zone level from 1950 to the present. Consistent with Michelle Alexander’s hypothesis that expansion of the penal system and the rise of “tough on crime” policy were efforts by privileged groups to drive a wedge into working-class political coalitions formed out of the Civil Rights Movement, we find that labor markets with greater inequality experienced larger increases in the overall incarceration rate. Furthermore, we find that relative rates of poverty play a key role in explaining differential effects of mass incarceration across race. Areas where White poverty rates were large relative to non-White poverty rates experienced no significant change in White incarceration, but an expansion of non-White incarceration. These findings have implications for policies related to economic and judicial systems.

Monumental Promises, Incremental Gains

2021 ◽  
pp. 222-244
Author(s):  
Khalilah L. Brown-Dean
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Key Policy

There were growing public demands to address ongoing tensions over biased policing, excessive sentencing, and the often lethal consequences of disproportionate minority contact. However, the Obama administration’s professed commitment to comprehensive criminal justice and mass incarceration reform was constrained by institutional norms, federalism, and a skepticism about individual responsibility that most frequently came from Republican detractors. Hyperincarceration in the United States has garnered substantial attention from scholars, activists, and analysts. Yet beyond crime rates, the racially disparate consequences of this autonomous system hold significant implications for the institutionalization of Black political power. African Americans are disproportionately represented in every realm of punitive control, from surveillance to arrest to conviction to incarceration to postrelease supervision. Crime control policies, then, shape individual access and communal representation. In this chapter, I interrogate President Obama’s record through the lens of what I term “concentrated punishment.” I begin by highlighting the behemoth growth of the criminal justice system that set the tone for the challenges President Obama attempted to address. From there, I analyze key policy reforms within these two domains to characterize President Obama’s legacy of criminal justice reform. Finally, I outline a reform path for future administrations.

Prison School

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lizbet Simmons
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Public Schools ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
African American Boys ◽  
Socioeconomic Disparity ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
Prison Populations

Public schools across the United States have turned to the criminal justice system as a gold standard of discipline. As public schools and offices of justice have become collaborators in punishment, rates of African American suspension and expulsion have soared, dropout rates have accelerated, and prison populations have exploded. Nowhere, perhaps, has the War on Crime been more influential in broadening racialized academic and socioeconomic disparity than in New Orleans, Louisiana, where in 2002 the criminal sheriff opened his own public school at the Orleans Parish Prison. “The Prison School,” as locals called it, enrolled low-income African American boys who had been removed from regular public schools because of nonviolent disciplinary offenses, such as tardiness and insubordination. By examining this school in the local and national context, this book shows how young black males are in the liminal state of losing educational affiliation while being caught in the net of correctional control. This book asks how schools and prisons became so intertwined. What does this mean for students, communities, and a democratic society? And how do we unravel the ties that bind the racialized realities of school failure and mass incarceration?

Regulating California’s Prison Population

2016 ◽  
Vol 664 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Austin
Keyword(s):  
Driving Forces ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Federal Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Court Order ◽  
Ballot Initiative ◽  
The Past ◽  
Penal Codes ◽  
Prison Populations

While many scholars and social commentators bemoan the rise of “mass incarceration” in the United States, few states have succeeded in significantly reducing prison populations. Fueled by systemic changes in penal codes, sentencing practices, and federal funding all designed to increase the use of imprisonment, most states have been unable to reverse the massive increase that has transpired over the past four decades. More alarming, there are few indications that mass incarceration will be reduced any time soon. There are a few exceptions, with California being one. Since 2007, California’s prison population has dropped by over 43,000 prisoners. Reductions have also been achieved in the state parole (82,000) and probation (15,000) populations. Today there are 146,000 fewer Californians in prison, jail, parole, or probation. Initially driven largely by a period of lengthy litigation, a rare federal court order to depopulate, several other reforms, reflecting a sticks and carrots approach, were introduced beginning in 2007 to lower imprisonment rates. Among them was “Realignment,” which relocated approximately 27,000 state prisoners to the counties. However, it required another stick in the form of a ballot initiative (Proposition 47) to further reduce the prison population and meet compliance with the federal court order. In the end, it was the externally imposed dual “sticks” of litigation and a ballot initiative that proved to be the driving forces in reducing California’s use of mass incarceration.

Repression and Crime Control: Why Social Movement Scholars Should Pay Attention to Mass Incarceration as a Form of Repression

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela Oliver
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Drug War ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The 1960S

The disciplinary insurgency that created the academic field of social movement studies distinguished dissent from crime. This dichotomy has led the field to ignore the relation between the repression of dissent and the control of "ordinary" crime. There was massive repression in the wake of the Black riots of the 1960s that did not abate when the riots abated. The acceleration of the mass incarceration of African Americans in the United States after 1980 suggests the possibility that crime control and especially the drug war have had the consequence of repressing dissent among the poor. Social movement scholars have failed to recognize these trends as repression because of the theoretical turn that built too strong a conceptual wall between crime and dissent. Revisiting this dichotomy is essential for understanding repression today.

The Origins of Mass Incarceration: The Racial Politics of Crime and Punishment in the Post–Civil Rights Era

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 433-452
Author(s):  
Katherine Beckett ◽  
Megan Ming Francis
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
Control Policy ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Civil Rights Era

This article examines the origins of US mass incarceration. Although it is clear that changes in policy and practice are the proximate drivers of the prison boom, researchers continue to explore—and disagree about—why crime control policy and practice changed in ways that fueled the growth of incarceration in all 50 states. One well-known account emphasizes the centrality of racial and electoral politics. This article more fully explicates the racial politics perspective, describes several friendly amendments to it, and explores a range of arguments that challenge it in more fundamental ways. In the end, we maintain that although mass incarceration has many drivers, it cannot be explained without reference to the centrality of racial politics; the importance of the crime issue to the GOP electoral strategy that emerged in the wake of the civil rights movement; and the nature of the decentralized, two-party electoral system in the United States.

Probation Revocation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David E. Olson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Missed Appointments ◽  
Department Of Justice ◽  
Technical Violations ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
The Impact

Despite all the attention paid to the growing prison populations in the United States since the early 1990s, it remains, as it has throughout recent history, that probation accounts for the largest portion of those under the custody of the criminal justice system. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that at the end of 2015, there were more than 3.7 million adults under the supervision of U.S. probation authorities, compared to 1.5 million in prison, 870,000 on parole, and 728,000 in local jails. And while probation is not often thought about within the context of “mass incarceration” in the United States, probation directly impacts prison and jail populations in two specific ways. First, a sentence of probation for a felony offense is the most frequent alternative to a prison sentence. Second, the revocation of probation can directly lead to the imposition of a sentence to prison or jail, depending on the nature of the original conviction offense. During 2015, in the United States, it is estimated that 12% of all probationers exiting supervision were incarcerated due to probation revocation, which translates to an estimate of more than 233,000 probationers annually. Probation revocation means that the sentencing court has determined that a violation of the conditions of probation have occurred, and because of this, the original probation sentence is no longer appropriate. As a result of a probation sentence being revoked, the sentencing court imposes a different (usually more serious) sanction on the offender. Often, those on probation for a felony offense who have their probation revoked are sentenced to prison, leading to their admission to prison. Indeed, given this link, scholars and practitioners have identified reducing probation revocation as one strategy to reducing prison populations, and jurisdictions often focus on reducing probation revocations as a means to lowering their commitments to prison. Probation revocation can result from either new arrests or violations of technical aspects of the sentence, such as missed appointments or non-compliance with treatment orders. However, whether or not a probation sentence is revoked as a result of these violations varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. This variation in the use of probation revocation as a response to violations of probation illustrates the localized nature of revocation proceedings, and attempts to reduce these disparities have taken many forms. These efforts to reduce the impact of probation revocations on prison admissions have ranged from providing local jurisdictions with financial incentives to respond to revocation-eligible violations with sanctions other than incarceration, to legislative efforts to prohibit sentences to prison as a response to probation revocations stemming from technical violations or instances where public safety is not threatened.

Decarceration Problems and Prospects

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd R. Clear
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Policy Reform ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Annual Review ◽  
Publication Date ◽  
Violent Crimes ◽  
Prison Populations ◽  
Broad Consensus ◽  
Western Democracies

Incarceration rates in the United States are far higher than the world's other Western democracies, so high that they are referred to as mass incarceration. After nearly 40 years of sustained growth in US incarceration rates, a broad consensus exists to bring them down. The Iron Law of Prison Populations directs attention to the fact that 51 different jurisdictional-level penal policies, rather than crime, drive incarceration rates, making systematic policy reform difficult. However, the fact that prison populations have already begun to decline, combined with the emerging public will to reduce incarceration and dropping age-specific incarceration rates, promotes optimism in the decarceration agenda. Three issues remain to be resolved: the eventual target rate of incarceration, what to do with people convicted of violent crimes, and how to avoid the distracting focus on reentry programming. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 4 is January 13, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

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