American criminal justice has deteriorated in almost every respect in the past 40 years. Overcriminalization is more common and mens rea requirements are lower. Procedural protections against wrongful conviction are weaker. Many police are demoralized and alienated from the communities they serve and lack legitimacy in the eyes of many citizens. Prosecutors have displaced judges in sentencing and routinely abuse their powers to coerce guilty pleas. Mandatory minimum and similar sentencing laws force judges to choose between imposing unjustly severe punishments and circumventing applicable laws. Prisons are overcrowded, often brutalizing and inhumane, and lack resources needed to provide essential services. Community corrections agencies are overwhelmed by caseloads and inadequately funded to help offenders live law-abiding lives. Parole agencies are loath to release eligible inmates and quick to revoke parole. Evidence-based means exist to make major improvements in every facet of American criminal justice. What has been lacking is the political will to use them.
{"title":"From Policing to Parole: Reconfiguring American Criminal Justice","authors":"M. Tonry","doi":"10.1086/689987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/689987","url":null,"abstract":"American criminal justice has deteriorated in almost every respect in the past 40 years. Overcriminalization is more common and mens rea requirements are lower. Procedural protections against wrongful conviction are weaker. Many police are demoralized and alienated from the communities they serve and lack legitimacy in the eyes of many citizens. Prosecutors have displaced judges in sentencing and routinely abuse their powers to coerce guilty pleas. Mandatory minimum and similar sentencing laws force judges to choose between imposing unjustly severe punishments and circumventing applicable laws. Prisons are overcrowded, often brutalizing and inhumane, and lack resources needed to provide essential services. Community corrections agencies are overwhelmed by caseloads and inadequately funded to help offenders live law-abiding lives. Parole agencies are loath to release eligible inmates and quick to revoke parole. Evidence-based means exist to make major improvements in every facet of American criminal justice. What has been lacking is the political will to use them.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"1 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/689987","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49215573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, the basic drug-crime policy challenge was to manage social harms associated with the heroin and cocaine epidemics. As they ebbed, the crime-drug policy challenges changed. Alcohol receives greater attention as the leading criminogenic substance. Efforts are under way to improve and expand substance use disorder (SUD) treatment for criminally active populations. Model nontreatment interventions seek to monitor and deter use among individuals whose use endangers others. Two key issues are the continuing high rate of alcohol-related crime and violence and opportunities to expand SUD treatment for criminally active populations under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Alcohol taxes, regulation of alcohol venues, and model programs such as Dakota 24/7 are promising paths to reduced alcohol-related crime. Problem-solving courts can be made more pertinent to the broad range of drug-involved offenders. Existing treatment systems face many challenges in providing mental and behavioral health services mandated under the ACA. Properly implemented, ACA offers many opportunities to prevent offending through provision of appropriate services.
{"title":"Dealing More Effectively with Problematic Substance Use and Crime","authors":"H. Pollack","doi":"10.1086/688459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688459","url":null,"abstract":"From the late 1960s to the mid-1990s, the basic drug-crime policy challenge was to manage social harms associated with the heroin and cocaine epidemics. As they ebbed, the crime-drug policy challenges changed. Alcohol receives greater attention as the leading criminogenic substance. Efforts are under way to improve and expand substance use disorder (SUD) treatment for criminally active populations. Model nontreatment interventions seek to monitor and deter use among individuals whose use endangers others. Two key issues are the continuing high rate of alcohol-related crime and violence and opportunities to expand SUD treatment for criminally active populations under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Alcohol taxes, regulation of alcohol venues, and model programs such as Dakota 24/7 are promising paths to reduced alcohol-related crime. Problem-solving courts can be made more pertinent to the broad range of drug-involved offenders. Existing treatment systems face many challenges in providing mental and behavioral health services mandated under the ACA. Properly implemented, ACA offers many opportunities to prevent offending through provision of appropriate services.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"159 - 200"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688459","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49526097","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
American sentencing laws are rigid, harsh, and often unjust. Mass incarceration is a tragedy and a national embarrassment. Laws enacted in the 1980s and 1990s that mandated lengthy prison terms are the primary causes. The challenges are to undo mass incarceration, repeal or fundamentally overhaul the laws that caused it, and rebuild American sentencing systems. American legislators have not yet seriously addressed the subject. Hundreds of minor changes have recently been enacted, but they nibble at the edges—creating narrow exceptions to harsh laws for first offenders, narrowing criteria for probation and parole revocation, and establishing new treatment and “reentry” programs. These changes are important to individuals they affect but will not reverse mass incarceration or prevent individual injustices. Meaningful change will occur only when the mandatory minimum, three-strikes, life without parole, truth in sentencing, and comparable laws that required prison terms of historically unprecedented severity are repealed and new laws authorizing the release of large numbers of current prisoners are enacted and implemented. Whether these things happen will determine whether mass incarceration and wholesale injustices are much different in 2025 than they were in 2017.
{"title":"Making American Sentencing Just, Humane, and Effective","authors":"M. Tonry","doi":"10.1086/688456","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688456","url":null,"abstract":"American sentencing laws are rigid, harsh, and often unjust. Mass incarceration is a tragedy and a national embarrassment. Laws enacted in the 1980s and 1990s that mandated lengthy prison terms are the primary causes. The challenges are to undo mass incarceration, repeal or fundamentally overhaul the laws that caused it, and rebuild American sentencing systems. American legislators have not yet seriously addressed the subject. Hundreds of minor changes have recently been enacted, but they nibble at the edges—creating narrow exceptions to harsh laws for first offenders, narrowing criteria for probation and parole revocation, and establishing new treatment and “reentry” programs. These changes are important to individuals they affect but will not reverse mass incarceration or prevent individual injustices. Meaningful change will occur only when the mandatory minimum, three-strikes, life without parole, truth in sentencing, and comparable laws that required prison terms of historically unprecedented severity are repealed and new laws authorizing the release of large numbers of current prisoners are enacted and implemented. Whether these things happen will determine whether mass incarceration and wholesale injustices are much different in 2025 than they were in 2017.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"441 - 504"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688456","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47161907","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Two principles should form the bedrock for effective policing in a democratic society. The first is that crimes averted, not arrests made, should be the primary metric for judging police effectiveness. The second is that citizens’ views about the police and their tactics for preventing crime and disorder matter independently of police effectiveness. Each principle is important in its own right and supported by research evidence. Neither has standing to trump the other and must be balanced on a case-by-case basis. In turn, these two principles should guide twenty-first-century efforts to reinvent American policing. Seven steps are essential to reinvention of democratic policing: Prioritize crime prevention over arrest. Create and install systems that monitor citizen reactions to the police and routinely report results back to the public and police supervisors and officers. Reform training and redefine the “craft of policing.” Recalibrate organizational incentives. Strengthen accountability with greater transparency. Incorporate the analysis of crime and citizen reaction into managerial practice. Strengthen national-level research and evaluation.
{"title":"Reinventing American Policing","authors":"C. Lum, D. Nagin","doi":"10.1086/688462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688462","url":null,"abstract":"Two principles should form the bedrock for effective policing in a democratic society. The first is that crimes averted, not arrests made, should be the primary metric for judging police effectiveness. The second is that citizens’ views about the police and their tactics for preventing crime and disorder matter independently of police effectiveness. Each principle is important in its own right and supported by research evidence. Neither has standing to trump the other and must be balanced on a case-by-case basis. In turn, these two principles should guide twenty-first-century efforts to reinvent American policing. Seven steps are essential to reinvention of democratic policing: Prioritize crime prevention over arrest. Create and install systems that monitor citizen reactions to the police and routinely report results back to the public and police supervisors and officers. Reform training and redefine the “craft of policing.” Recalibrate organizational incentives. Strengthen accountability with greater transparency. Incorporate the analysis of crime and citizen reaction into managerial practice. Strengthen national-level research and evaluation.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"339 - 393"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688462","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47850142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Community corrections in the twenty-first century faces three challenges: how to be an alternative to imprisonment, how to be a conduit for reducing recidivism, and how to do less harm to offenders and their families and communities. Community corrections will reduce imprisonment only if its use is viewed as a legitimate form of punishment and is incentivized, which involves subsidizing the use of community sanctions and making communities pay to imprison offenders (e.g., a cap-and-trade system). To reduce recidivism, it will be necessary to hold officials accountable for this outcome, to ensure that evidence-based supervision is practiced, to use technology to deliver treatment services, and to create information systems that can guide the development, monitoring, and evaluation of interventions. Doing less harm—avoiding iatrogenic effects—will require nonintervention with low-risk offenders, reducing the imposition of needless constraints on offenders (i.e., collateral consequences), and creating opportunities for offenders to be redeemed.
{"title":"Reinventing Community Corrections","authors":"F. Cullen, C. Jonson, D. Mears","doi":"10.1086/688457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688457","url":null,"abstract":"Community corrections in the twenty-first century faces three challenges: how to be an alternative to imprisonment, how to be a conduit for reducing recidivism, and how to do less harm to offenders and their families and communities. Community corrections will reduce imprisonment only if its use is viewed as a legitimate form of punishment and is incentivized, which involves subsidizing the use of community sanctions and making communities pay to imprison offenders (e.g., a cap-and-trade system). To reduce recidivism, it will be necessary to hold officials accountable for this outcome, to ensure that evidence-based supervision is practiced, to use technology to deliver treatment services, and to create information systems that can guide the development, monitoring, and evaluation of interventions. Doing less harm—avoiding iatrogenic effects—will require nonintervention with low-risk offenders, reducing the imposition of needless constraints on offenders (i.e., collateral consequences), and creating opportunities for offenders to be redeemed.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"27 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688457","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43572559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
American parole boards have played a critical role in the formulation and administration of states’ prison policies in recent decades—and could play an equally important part in helping end mass incarceration. Long neglected by academic, research, and policy communities, systems of discretionary prison release are in need of improvement, if not “reinvention.” A plan for revitalization of parole release should lay out a comprehensive and aspirational model for the future. It must address the institutional structure of parole boards, how much release discretion they are given, the substantive grounds for release decisions, the use of risk assessments in the decisional process, decision-making tools such as parole release guidelines, the requirements of fair and reliable procedures, victims’ rights at parole hearings, the need for parole supervision in some but not all cases, the intensity of parole conditions, and the length of parole supervision.
{"title":"The Future of Parole Release","authors":"Edward E. Rhine, Joan R. Petersilia, K. Reitz","doi":"10.1086/688616","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688616","url":null,"abstract":"American parole boards have played a critical role in the formulation and administration of states’ prison policies in recent decades—and could play an equally important part in helping end mass incarceration. Long neglected by academic, research, and policy communities, systems of discretionary prison release are in need of improvement, if not “reinvention.” A plan for revitalization of parole release should lay out a comprehensive and aspirational model for the future. It must address the institutional structure of parole boards, how much release discretion they are given, the substantive grounds for release decisions, the use of risk assessments in the decisional process, decision-making tools such as parole release guidelines, the requirements of fair and reliable procedures, victims’ rights at parole hearings, the need for parole supervision in some but not all cases, the intensity of parole conditions, and the length of parole supervision.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"279 - 338"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688616","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45135939","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The United States has an enormous public health and safety problem from guns. The number of American civilian gun deaths in the twenty-first century through 2015 is greater than the sum of all US combat deaths in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Given our love affair with guns, the overriding policy goal has to be to reduce the toll of deaths and injuries without substantially reducing the number of civilians with firearms. There are harm reduction lessons to be learned from many public health successes combating other kinds of foreseeable deaths and injuries. For example, motor vehicle deaths per mile driven have fallen more than 85 percent since the 1950s, primarily by making it harder for drivers to make mistakes or behave inappropriately and by reducing the likelihood of severe injury if they do. The success was not primarily due to changing drivers but to making cars and roads safer. The public health approach to guns is to make it difficult rather than easy for violence-prone, anger-prone, or other at-risk people to shoot and kill. Numerous policies and programs could help. Particularly promising ones include changing guns to make them safer, changing the distribution system, increasing gun owner responsibility, and creating a violence prevention administrative agency.
{"title":"Reducing Firearm Violence","authors":"D. Hemenway","doi":"10.1086/688460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688460","url":null,"abstract":"The United States has an enormous public health and safety problem from guns. The number of American civilian gun deaths in the twenty-first century through 2015 is greater than the sum of all US combat deaths in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Given our love affair with guns, the overriding policy goal has to be to reduce the toll of deaths and injuries without substantially reducing the number of civilians with firearms. There are harm reduction lessons to be learned from many public health successes combating other kinds of foreseeable deaths and injuries. For example, motor vehicle deaths per mile driven have fallen more than 85 percent since the 1950s, primarily by making it harder for drivers to make mistakes or behave inappropriately and by reducing the likelihood of severe injury if they do. The success was not primarily due to changing drivers but to making cars and roads safer. The public health approach to guns is to make it difficult rather than easy for violence-prone, anger-prone, or other at-risk people to shoot and kill. Numerous policies and programs could help. Particularly promising ones include changing guns to make them safer, changing the distribution system, increasing gun owner responsibility, and creating a violence prevention administrative agency.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"201 - 230"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688460","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44086865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many judge the American criminal justice system to have largely failed in its drug enforcement role, and the justice system itself has suffered a loss of community support and internal morale as a consequence. Five principles should guide improvement of drug enforcement, including that drug enforcement be viewed as a preventive activity, whose main goal is reducing drug abuse and related harms, and it should be designed for sustainability. Six more specific proposals are, first, make marijuana enforcement a minor matter for police through decriminalization of possession or outright legalization; second, induce drug users who are under criminal justice supervision to refrain from drug use by imposing appropriate monitoring and graduated sanctions programs; third, expand opioid substitution therapy for heroin- and other opioid-using offenders; fourth, reduce the average severity of sentences for drug offenses, particularly for minor functionaries who are easily replaced; fifth, base sentence length on culpability, danger, and replaceability, not quantity possessed or number of prior convictions; and sixth, reduce prescription drug abuse by policing that reinforces regulatory efforts. Jointly these proposals would provide an evidence-informed approach that should both reduce America’s drug abuse problem and increase the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system.
{"title":"Dealing More Effectively and Humanely with Illegal Drugs","authors":"J. Caulkins, P. Reuter","doi":"10.1086/688458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1086/688458","url":null,"abstract":"Many judge the American criminal justice system to have largely failed in its drug enforcement role, and the justice system itself has suffered a loss of community support and internal morale as a consequence. Five principles should guide improvement of drug enforcement, including that drug enforcement be viewed as a preventive activity, whose main goal is reducing drug abuse and related harms, and it should be designed for sustainability. Six more specific proposals are, first, make marijuana enforcement a minor matter for police through decriminalization of possession or outright legalization; second, induce drug users who are under criminal justice supervision to refrain from drug use by imposing appropriate monitoring and graduated sanctions programs; third, expand opioid substitution therapy for heroin- and other opioid-using offenders; fourth, reduce the average severity of sentences for drug offenses, particularly for minor functionaries who are easily replaced; fifth, base sentence length on culpability, danger, and replaceability, not quantity possessed or number of prior convictions; and sixth, reduce prescription drug abuse by policing that reinforces regulatory efforts. Jointly these proposals would provide an evidence-informed approach that should both reduce America’s drug abuse problem and increase the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system.","PeriodicalId":51456,"journal":{"name":"Crime and Justice-A Review of Research","volume":"46 1","pages":"95 - 158"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1086/688458","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45786780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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