scholarly journals Explaining the collapse of the prison population in the Netherlands: Testing the theories

2020 ◽  
pp. 147737081989622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda Boone ◽  
Francis Pakes ◽  
Sigrid van Wingerden
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Organized Crime ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
Western World ◽  
Sustained Reduction ◽  
Average Sentence ◽  
Remarkable Reduction

Between 2005 and 2015 the Dutch prison population decreased by 44 percent. Such a rapid yet sustained reduction in the number of prisoners has no parallel in the Western world in this period. What are the factors that underlie this unique development? This article charts the decline of prisoner numbers in the Netherlands and considers areas that may account for it. It takes a systemic approach which considers publicly available data that has involved the whole of the criminal justice system. It finds that a serious decline in crimes reported to the police is part of the explanation. Although the overall percentage of cases solved by the police has not changed and the prosecution office has not become more reluctant to forward cases to court, fewer cases that warrant imprisonment have come before the court over this period. In addition, the average sentence length imposed by judges has gone down. The proportion of acquittals has gone up. This shows that any explanation should involve developments in policing as well as in the courtroom. However, questions regarding police capacity to deal with serious and organized crime call into question any conclusion that the Dutch carceral collapse is simply due to a decrease in crime. The reality underlying this remarkable reduction in the number of people in prison at any one time in the Netherlands requires a more multifaceted answer than this.

scholarly journals Reducing Recidivism Not Rights: Rethinking Interior Architecture as a solution for New Zealand's failing prisons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Luuk Abernethy
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western World ◽  
Recidivism Rate ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Recidivism Rates

<p>This thesis argues that the design of the built environment of a prison can have a huge impact on lowering recidivism rates of prisoners in New Zealand. It proposes that this can be achieved through the development of a new health model/framework that facilitates positive relationships between families, prison staff and other inmates; supports spiritual, mental and physical health; equips inmates for participation to society upon release; and gives them a sense of identity. It further argues that this framework can then be applied to the design process to create a new precedent for prison design that effectively rehabilitates and reintegrates its inmates into society. The work of key architects, and theorists such as Hohensinn Architektur and Dominique Moran, have been analysed to help translate their successful designs and theories into a New Zealand model of correctional facility.  Prisons are institutions of deprivation and isolation. Marginalised by and separated from community, they are maintained by physical and psychological structures designed only to isolate. Imprisonment results in individuals embittered and hardened by the experience, who are likely to reoffend, and become lifelong participants in the criminal justice system. New Zealand’s prison population has been substantially increasing since the 1980s. The current imprisonment rate per population is the second highest in the Western World, second only to the United States. This increase is due to a combination of changes in political economy, an attitude of exclusion of minority groups by the criminal justice system and a rise in penal populism. New Zealand currently imprisons 212 people for every 100,000, and has a recidivism rate of 50 percent. Māori represent over 50 percent of our prison population, whilst only 15 percent of the overall New Zealand population. These statistics are self-evident; our prisons aren’t working. They are not successfully rehabilitating and reintegrating inmates into society.  This design-led research investigation offers a new process for prison design: one that strives to design for humans, humans of intrinsic moral worth. This is based on the premise that all people are capable of change and improvement; creating impactful change through design to the extremely high recidivism rates of inmates in New Zealand.</p>

scholarly journals Homicide in Eight Countries From 1980 to 2000: The Flow From Crimes Committed to Time Served in Prison

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-282
Author(s):  
David P. Farrington
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Longitudinal Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Sentence Length ◽  
National Data ◽  
Average Sentence ◽  
Time Served ◽  
Time Periods

This article summarizes national data on completed homicides for eight countries in three time periods: around 1980, 1990, and 2000. The eight countries are England/Wales, the United States, Sweden, Australia, Scotland, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Canada. In each year, the article presents the number of police-recorded crimes, the number of persons convicted, the number of offenders sent to custody, average sentence length, average time served, and all linking probabilities. It also shows changes in all these measures between 1980, 1990, and 2000 in different countries. It would be desirable to carry out longitudinal research, tracking offenders through the criminal justice system.

scholarly journals Reducing Recidivism Not Rights: Rethinking Interior Architecture as a solution for New Zealand's failing prisons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Luuk Abernethy
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western World ◽  
Recidivism Rate ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Recidivism Rates

<p>This thesis argues that the design of the built environment of a prison can have a huge impact on lowering recidivism rates of prisoners in New Zealand. It proposes that this can be achieved through the development of a new health model/framework that facilitates positive relationships between families, prison staff and other inmates; supports spiritual, mental and physical health; equips inmates for participation to society upon release; and gives them a sense of identity. It further argues that this framework can then be applied to the design process to create a new precedent for prison design that effectively rehabilitates and reintegrates its inmates into society. The work of key architects, and theorists such as Hohensinn Architektur and Dominique Moran, have been analysed to help translate their successful designs and theories into a New Zealand model of correctional facility.  Prisons are institutions of deprivation and isolation. Marginalised by and separated from community, they are maintained by physical and psychological structures designed only to isolate. Imprisonment results in individuals embittered and hardened by the experience, who are likely to reoffend, and become lifelong participants in the criminal justice system. New Zealand’s prison population has been substantially increasing since the 1980s. The current imprisonment rate per population is the second highest in the Western World, second only to the United States. This increase is due to a combination of changes in political economy, an attitude of exclusion of minority groups by the criminal justice system and a rise in penal populism. New Zealand currently imprisons 212 people for every 100,000, and has a recidivism rate of 50 percent. Māori represent over 50 percent of our prison population, whilst only 15 percent of the overall New Zealand population. These statistics are self-evident; our prisons aren’t working. They are not successfully rehabilitating and reintegrating inmates into society.  This design-led research investigation offers a new process for prison design: one that strives to design for humans, humans of intrinsic moral worth. This is based on the premise that all people are capable of change and improvement; creating impactful change through design to the extremely high recidivism rates of inmates in New Zealand.</p>

Public Attitudes Toward New Prisons in New Zealand and Deficit Narratives: A Quantitative Survey

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 348-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adele N. Norris ◽  
Kalym Lipsey
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Quantitative Survey

The imprisonment rate in New Zealand ranks seventh among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Yet the imprisonment of Indigenous people is on par with the United States, which has the world’s highest incarceration rate. Almost 70% of the prison population in New Zealand is comprised of people racialized as non-White. In 2016, the National Government proposed to spend $2.5 billion over a 5-year period to build new prisons (1,500 prison beds) to accommodate a growing prison population. This study assessed public attitudes toward the need for more prisons and the equity of treatment of individuals within the criminal justice system. Findings from a 2016 and 2017 quantitative survey of 5,000 respondents each year revealed that roughly half of the respondents believed the proposed spending for new prisons to be extremely to somewhat necessary. A large proportion of respondents also believed Māori and Pākehā, if convicted of the same crime, are treated similarly within the criminal justice system. New Zealand scholars have critiqued news media coverage of contentious sociopolitical issues, such as crime and prisons, for employing tactics that have worked to construct a morally and culturally deficit “Other” while normalizing whiteness, rendering it invisible and raceless. This article concludes that this process masks racial disparities of individuals located within the criminal justice system and preserves the ideal that prisons are a normal function of the social landscape.

Institutionalized Police Brutality: Torture, the Militarization of Security, and the Reform of Inquisitorial Criminal Justice in Mexico

2020 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 1013-1034
Author(s):  
BEATRIZ MAGALONI ◽  
LUIS RODRIGUEZ
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Police Brutality ◽  
Explanatory Variables ◽  
Common Trend ◽  
Criminal Suspects ◽  
Colonial Legacies ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Large Survey

How can societies restrain their coercive institutions and transition to a more humane criminal justice system? We argue that two main factors explain why torture can persist as a generalized practice even in democratic societies: weak procedural protections and the militarization of policing, which introduces strategies, equipment, and mentality that treats criminal suspects as though they were enemies in wartime. Using a large survey of the Mexican prison population and leveraging the date and place of arrest, this paper provides causal evidence about how these two explanatory variables shape police brutality. Our paper offers a grim picture of the survival of authoritarian policing practices in democracies. It also provides novel evidence of the extent to which the abolition of inquisitorial criminal justice institutions—a remnant of colonial legacies and a common trend in the region—has worked to restrain police brutality.

Gang wars risk wider violence in Brazil

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Violence Risk ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Armed Violence ◽  
Criminal Groups

Subject Gang wars and violence risk. Significance Brazil's two largest criminal groups appear to have entered an uneasy truce, after a 'declaration of war' in September that broke a 23-year alliance. The breakdown in relations has gradually escalated into violence inside Brazil's prisons, where leaders of organised criminal factions still coordinate their transnational empires, and risks increased urban armed violence. Impacts The gang war has added urgency to the nationwide security plan being drafted by the federal government. Some changes in the criminal justice system are expected in order to reduce the prison population. Both groups have shown appetite, in the recent past, for large-scale and highly disruptive attacks, and spill-over is likely.

scholarly journals A kaupapa Māori analysis of the use of Māori cultural identity in the prison system

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Riki Mihaere
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Prison System ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
The Status ◽  
Kaupapa Māori

<p>Māori are 15% of the New Zealand population, and yet are 45.3% of annual police apprehensions and 51% of the prison population. This status of Māori ‘over-representation’ in the criminal justice system has remained steady for the last 34 years. One principle explanation of this status is that Māori have limited access to a secure Māori cultural identity. As a result, criminal justice authorities, especially the Department of Corrections, have progressively focused policies and programmes towards the perceived Māori cultural related needs of Māori offenders and prisoners. This focus is undertaken not only to reduce rates of recidivism but also to provide culturally relevant environments for Māori prisoners and increased opportunities for successful rehabilitation.   The result is that New Zealand’s prison system now contains a number of unique strategies such as the Māori Therapeutic Programme, the New Life Akoranga Programme and Māori Focus Units. Despite these developments, there remains a dearth of clearly articulated descriptions of how, why or even if Māori cultural identity has a positive effect on reducing Māori offending and imprisonment. This thesis is designed to address this gap in the research.   The thesis pursues a kaupapa Māori methodology, using in-depth interviews with key Māori associated with the development of the theory, policy and practice of Māori cultural identity in the criminal justice system. This focus provides an opportunity for those Māori whose careers or, in some cases, life works have been dedicated to the development and implementation of cultural responses to crime to speak for themselves. This approach allows a full exploration of the underlying rationale and meaning of the Māori cultural identity policies and resultant programmes sprinkled throughout New Zealand’s system.  The thesis develops two key arguments. Firstly, despite strongly held criminal justice beliefs about the potential validity of Māori cultural identity in relation to reducing Māori offending and imprisonment, the broader context regarding the status of Māori as the most marginalised population in New Zealand is largely ignored. Rather than accepting that Māori offending is likely to be ignited by a broad array of socio-economic factors which are the result of generations of colonising Pākehā practices, the Correctional response has been to individualise Māori offending by focusing on the degree of Māori cultural identity inherent in specific Māori offenders. Secondly, that the authenticity of Māori cultural identity policies and programmes designed and delivered by Corrections is questionable. While the Department argues that Māori cultural identity nestles comfortably within western-based therapeutic programmes, professional Māori disagree. In their view, the Māori cultural identity programmes delivered in New Zealand’s prisons do not resemble Māori culture at all. Given these two arguments, the thesis questions whether the criminal justice use of Māori cultural identity is more a measure of official attempts to meet ‘Treaty’ obligations rather than a genuine effort to reduce Māori offending and imprisonment.</p>

Restitution of Victims by the Offenders

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 331-339
Author(s):  
Judith Karp
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Western World ◽  
Pressure Groups ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Collective Experience ◽  
Victims Of Crime

It is with great pleasure that I address you today at this Conference in Jerusalem. I believe that there is a profound symbolic meaning in putting the subject of victims of crime on the agenda of a conference in Israel, the homeland and the state of a people who, throughout history, have experienced much victimization.Unfortunately, it seems that the historical collective experience of victimization does not necessarily enhance the understanding of the phenomenon of victims of crime — neither that of secondary victimization by the criminal justice system itself nor the responsibility of society to address victims’ needs and problems.It seems that the criminal justice system in Israel, to a certain extent, is still detached from the victims rights movement which has been developing with growing impact during the last decade in the Western world. It is true that in recent years specific issues concerning victims of crime, such as violence in the family and child abuse, have been a topic of growing interest and action in Israel. As a result, legislation has been passed by the Knesset to deal with these issues and the groundwork for an infrastructure of social services is being laid. However, this does not appear to be a result of a genuine or widespread recognition of the social and legal importance of the commitment which a society should have towards the plight of crime victims. Rather, it seems to be more of a reaction to various political pressure groups.

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