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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
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Results for punishment
156 results foundAuthor: Hoff, Karla Ruth Title: Caste and Punishment: The Legacy of Caste Culture in a Norm Enforcement Summary: Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. This study shows how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy - the caste system - affects individuals' willingness to punishment violations of a cooperation norm. Although the study controls for individual wealth, education, and political participation, low caste individuals exhibit a much lower willingness to punish norm violations that hurt members of their own caste, suggesting a cultural difference across caste status in the concern for members of one's own community. The lower willingness to punishment may inhibit the low caste's ability to sustain collective action and so may contribute to its economic vulnerability. Details: Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 2009. 45p. Source: Discussion Paper Series/IZA; No. 4343; Internet Resource Year: 2009 Country: International URL: Shelf Number: 116385 Keywords: CastePunishmentSocial ClassSocial ExclusionSocioeconomic Status |
Author: Beckenkamp, Martin Title: Beware of Broken Windows! First Impressions in Public-good Experiment Summary: Broken Windows: the metaphor has changed New York and Los Angeles. Yet it is far from undisputed whether the broken windows policy was causal for reducing crime. In a series of lab experiments we show that first impressions are indeed causal for cooperativeness in three different institutional environments: absent targeted sanctions; with decentralised punishment; with decentralised punishment qualified by the risk of counterpunishment. In all environments, the effect of first impressions cannot be explained with, but adds to, participants’ initial level of benevolence. Mere impression management is not strong enough to stabilise cooperation though. It must be combined with some risk of sanctions. Details: Bonn, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, 2009. 32p. Source: Internet Resource Year: 2009 Country: International URL: Shelf Number: 119567 Keywords: Broken Windows TheoryCriminal PolicyPunishment |
Author: Rosenmerkel, Sean Title: Felony Sentences in State Courts, 2006 - Statistical Tables Summary: This report presents findings from the 2006 National Judicial Reporting Program (NJRP), which compiles detailed information on the sentences that felons receive in state courts nationwide and on characteristics of the felons. The survey excludes federal courts and state or local courts that do not adjudicate adult felony cases. The tables in this publication provide data on the number of felony offenders in state courts, sentences received, demographic characteristics of convicted felons, and types of convictions. The report also covers comparisons to felony sentences in federal courts, using data from the Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP). The 2006 NJRP was based on a sample of state courts in 300 counties selected to be nationally representative. The survey included only offenses that state penal codes defined as felonies. Felonies are widely defined as crimes with the potential of being punished by more than 1 year in prison. NJRP surveys have been conducted every 2 years since 1986. Highlights include the following: In 2006 an estimated 69% of all persons convicted of a felony in state courts were sentenced to a period of confinement–41% to state prison and 28% to local jails. State prison sentences averaged 4 years and 11 months in 2006. Men (83%) accounted for a larger percentage of persons convicted of a felony, compared to their percentage (49%) of the adult population. Most (94%) felony offenders sentenced in 2006 pleaded guilty. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2009. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 21, 2010 at: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/fssc06st.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/fssc06st.pdf Shelf Number: 119577 Keywords: Felony OffendersPunishmentSentencing StatisticsState Courts |
Author: Welsh, Brandon C. Title: Effects of Closed Circuit Television Surveillance on Crime Summary: Closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras serve many functions and are used in both public and private settings. The prevention of personal and property crime is among the primary objectives in public space, which is the main focus of this review. CCTV is viewed as a technique of “formal surveillance” and in this regard it is seen to enhance or take the place of security personnel. Results of this review indicate that CCTV has a modest but significant desirable effect on crime, is most effective in reducing crime in car parks, is most effective when targeted at vehicle crimes (largely a function of the successful car park schemes), and is more effective in reducing crime in the United Kingdom than in other countries. These results lend support for the continued use of CCTV to prevent crime in public space, but suggest that it be more narrowly targeted than its present use would indicate. Future CCTV schemes should employ high-quality evaluation designs with long follow-up periods. Details: Oslo: Cambell Collaboration, 2008. 76p. Source: Internet Resource: Campbell Systematic Reviews, 2008: 17: Accessed September 8, 2010 at: http://campbellcollaboration.org/lib/download/243/ Year: 2008 Country: International URL: http://campbellcollaboration.org/lib/download/243/ Shelf Number: 119767 Keywords: Closed-Circuit TelevisionElectronic SurveillanceEvidence-Based PracticesPunishmentRecidivismRisk AssessmentSentencing (U.S.)Situational Crime Prevention |
Author: Kuhnrich, Bernd Title: Attitudes Towards Punishment in the European Union: Results from the 2005 European Crime Survey (ECSS) with Focus on Germany Summary: This report examines the attitudes of Europeans regarding punishment for certain crimes. The aim of the report is to present an analysis of the significant mean differences between Germany and all other European countries. Details: Freiburg, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law, 2005. 71p. Source: Internet Resource: ECSS Project: Research Report MPI (30/12/2005): Accessed October 29, 2010 at: http://www.europeansafetyobservatory.eu/doc/Punitiveness.pdf Year: 2005 Country: Europe URL: http://www.europeansafetyobservatory.eu/doc/Punitiveness.pdf Shelf Number: 120125 Keywords: PrisonsPublic OpinionPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Kaye, Robert Title: Fitting the Crime: Reforming Community Sentences: Mending the Weak Link in the Sentencing Chain Summary: Community sentences are the focus of renewed attention from UK politicians faced with unsustainable demand for prison places and the perceived cost and ineffectiveness of short-term prison sentences. Successions of Ministers in recent years have attempted to reform community disposals to make them more effective and to address legitimate public concern that they do not prevent reoffending and are not appropriate punishments. Before the mid 1990s, community sentences in England and Wales were focused on rehabilitation and designed for first time, less serious offenders. They are now a much more common form of disposal and are routinely used in response to serial recidivists. This mission creep has not been accompanied by systemic reform of community sentences to create a clearly defined and credible punishment. Instead, these sentences continue to suffer from a historic handicap that keeps them linked with rehabilitation instead of punishment, undermining them in the eyes of sentencers and the public. Current community sentences fail because they are fundamentally flawed, poorly administered and confused in their purpose. There is no contradiction between being “tough” and being “effective”. To be made better, community sentences first need to be refocused back to their core function of punishment and then radically reformed to improve compliance and reduce reoffending. Details: London: Policy Exchange, 2010. 111p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 27, 2010 at: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/pdfs/Fitting_the_Crime_-_Nov__10.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/images/publications/pdfs/Fitting_the_Crime_-_Nov__10.pdf Shelf Number: 120290 Keywords: Alternatives to IncarcerationCommunity Based CorrectionsPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Wright, Valerie Title: Deterrence in Criminal Justice: Evaluating Certainty vs. Severity of Punishment Summary: Over the past several decades state and federal incarceration rates have increased dramatically. As a consequence of more punitive laws and harsher sentencing policies 2.3 million people are incarcerated in the nation’s prisons and jails, and the U.S. leads the world in its rate of incarceration. Sentencing systems and incarceration traditionally have a variety of goals, which include incapacitation, punishment, deterrence and rehabilitation. In recent decades, sentencing policy initiatives have often been enacted with the goal of enhancing the deterrent effect of the criminal justice system. Under the rubric of “getting tough on crime,” policies such as mandatory minimums, truth in sentencing, and “three strikes and you’re out” have been designed to deter with the threat of imposing substantial terms of imprisonment for felony convictions. While the criminal justice system as a whole provides some deterrent effect, a key question for policy development regards whether enhanced sanctions or an enhanced possibility of being apprehended provide any additional deterrent benefits. Research to date generally indicates that increases in the certainty of punishment, as opposed to the severity of punishment, are more likely to produce deterrent benefits. This briefing paper provides an overview of criminological research on these relative impacts as a guide to inform future policy consideration. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2010. 9p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 29, 2010 at: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/Deterrence%20Briefing%20.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.sentencingproject.org/doc/Deterrence%20Briefing%20.pdf Shelf Number: 120303 Keywords: DeterrencePunishmentSentencing |
Author: United Nations. General Assembly. Human Rights Council Title: Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Manfred Nowak, on his Mission to Uruguay (21-27 March 2009) Summary: This report presents the findings and recommendations of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment on his mission to Uruguay, which took place from 21 to 27 March 2009. The Special Rapporteur expresses deep appreciation to the Government for the excellent cooperation extended by the authorities during the course of the visit. He notes the Government’s commitment to uphold and promote human rights and the progress made since the end of the dictatorship in 1985. The Special Rapporteur is particularly concerned that children are at great risk of ill-treatment in police stations and detention facilities. He also found consistent allegations of beatings after arrest, as well as excessive use of force and collective punishments after riots and rebellions in detention facilities. The punitive approach applied in the penitentiary system and the lack of activities do not allow for rehabilitation. The use of imprisonment as the first rather than a last resort has failed to reduce the rates of criminality or prevent recidivism. On the contrary, most of the prisons in Uruguay are severely overcrowded and there exists a serious risk of a total collapse of the penitentiary system. Although some efforts have been made to improve overall conditions in prisons and prevent overcrowding, the conditions in some detention facilities, particularly Libertad Penitentiary and the Santiago Vázquez Prison Complex (Complejo Carcelario Santiago Vázquez, known as COMCAR), amount to inhuman and degrading treatment. The overcrowding, the non-separation of pretrial and convicted detainees as well as the limited access to medical services is of concern in practically all of the places visited. A comprehensive reform of the whole administration of justice system, aimed at the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders, should be a high priority. Although the Government has recently introduced the crime of torture in the Law on Cooperation with the International Criminal Court, the provision is unlikely to be applied to perpetrators of individual crimes, as reflected since its entry into force in 2006. Nevertheless, the provision should serve as an inspiration for the reform of the criminal code. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the creation of a National Action Plan on Fighting Domestic Violence and acknowledges that some first steps were taken in this regard. However, its full implementation has been delayed, leading to a situation of inadequate preventive and protective measures afforded by the State. In light of the above, the Special Rapporteur recommends that the Government of Uruguay fully implement its obligations under international human rights law. In particular, he urges the Government to criminalize torture in line with the Convention against Torture, to prevent the use of excessive use of force by the police, to expedite judicial proceedings, to ensure that the perpetrators of human rights violations committed during the dictatorship are brought to justice without further delay and to fully implement the National Action Plan on Fighting Domestic Violence. Moreover, the Government should undertake, without delay, a fundamental reform of the criminal justice and penitentiary systems aimed at the rehabilitation and a better reintegration of offenders into society, introducing and strengthening, inter alia, non-custodial measures of punishment, and continue its efforts to improve the conditions of detention. The Special Rapporteur also urges the closure of prisons with inhuman conditions of detention; particularly “Las Latas” of Libertad Penitentiary and Modules 2–4 of COMCAR. The Special Rapporteur calls upon the international community to assist the Government of Uruguay in its fight against torture and ill-treatment by providing financial and technical support. The Special Rapporteur welcomes Uruguay’s ratification of the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and the recent adoption of a law establishing a National Human Rights Commission, including a national mechanism for the prevention of torture. On the basis of discussions with public officials, judges, lawyers and representatives of civil society, interviews with victims of violence and with persons deprived of their liberty, often supported by forensic medical evidence, the Special Rapporteur found few reports of torture. However, he received frequent allegations of ill-treatment in several detention facilities. Details: Geneva: United Nations General Assembly, 2009. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 1, 2010 at: http://www.crin.org/docs/Nowak_Uruguay_en.pdf Year: 2009 Country: Uruguay URL: http://www.crin.org/docs/Nowak_Uruguay_en.pdf Shelf Number: 117591 Keywords: DetentionPrisons (Uruguay)PunishmentTorture |
Author: Great Britain. Ministry of Justice Title: Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders Summary: The safety and security of the law-abiding citizen is a key priority of the Coalition Government. Everyone has a right to feel safe in their home and in their community. When that safety is threatened, those responsible should face a swift and effective response. We rely on the criminal justice system to deliver that response: punishing offenders, protecting the public and reducing reoffending. This Green Paper addresses all three of these priorities, setting out how an intelligent sentencing framework, coupled with more effective rehabilitation, will enable us to break the cycle of crime and prison which creates new victims every day. Despite a 50% increase in the budget for prisons and managing offenders in the last ten years almost half of all adult offenders released from custody reoffend within a year. It is also not acceptable that 75% of offenders sentenced to youth custody reoffend within a year. If we do not prevent and tackle offending by young people then the young offenders of today will become the prolific career criminals of tomorrow. Details: London: The Stationery Office, 2010. 92p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed December 13, 2010 at: http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm79/7972/7972.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/document/cm79/7972/7972.pdf Shelf Number: 120447 Keywords: Costs of Criminal JusticeCriminal Justice Systems (U.K.)PunishmentRecidivismRehabilitationSentencing |
Author: Great Britain. Ministry of Justice Title: Breaking the Cycle: Effective Punishment, Rehabilitation and Sentencing of Offenders Summary: The Ministry of Justice Structural Reform Plan published in July 2010 set out a commitment to introduce a 'rehabilitation revolution' and conduct a review of sentencing policy. This consultation sets out the resulting proposals which aim to break the destructive cycle of crime and protect the public, through more effectively punishing and rehabilitating offenders and reforming the sentencing framework. Details: London: The Stationery Officer, 2010. 92p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 1, 2011 at: http://www.justice.gov.uk/consultations/docs/breaking-the-cycle.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.justice.gov.uk/consultations/docs/breaking-the-cycle.pdf Shelf Number: 120654 Keywords: Criminal Justice Policy (U.K.)OffendersPunishmentRehabilitationSentencing |
Author: Horne, Christine Title: Using Laboratory Experiments to Study Law and Crime Summary: The 19th and 20th centuries produced breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and the biological sciences. Laboratory research played an important role in the rapid advances made in these fields. Laboratory research can also contribute progress in the social sciences and, in particular, to law and criminology. To make this argument, we begin by discussing what laboratory experiments can and cannot do. We then identify three issues in the criminological and legal literature: why violence is higher in the southern United States than in the North, the relation between the severity of punishment and crime, and the expressive effects of law. We describe the relevant data from laboratory experiments and discuss how these data complement those gained through other methods. Details: Zurich, Switzerland: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, 2010. 33p. Source: Internet Resource: CCSS Working Paper Series 10-010: Accessed February 9, 2011 at: http://web.sg.ethz.ch/wps/pdf/CCSS-10-010.pdf Year: 2010 Country: International URL: http://web.sg.ethz.ch/wps/pdf/CCSS-10-010.pdf Shelf Number: 120732 Keywords: Experimental MethodsPunishmentSentencingViolence |
Author: Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing Title: Report to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives: A Study on the Use and Impact of Mandatory Minimum Sentences: House Resolution 12, Session of 2007 Summary: Mandatory sentences evoke vastly different, but deeply felt responses. Some view mandatory sentences as vital law enforcement tools that yield deterrence, rein in overly lenient Judges, and promote uniformity of punishment. Others view mandatory sentences as counterproductive, if not pernicious, devices that not only fail to deter, but actively promote disparity and injustice. Many of these competing views stem from anecdotes and other small slices of reality. It may be that mandatory sentences fit all of these varied descriptions depending on the circumstances. While much remains to be learned, this report sheds important light on the frequency, effectiveness, and wisdom of mandatory sentences in Pennsylvania. House Resolution 12, adopted October 16, 2007, directed the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing to study the use and impact of mandatory minimum sentences on the criminal justice system in Pennsylvania. In an effort to gather a broad spectrum of input, the Commission established an advisory committee, comprised of legislators, judges, district attorneys, and public defenders. This advisory committee met ten times and offered important guidance to the Commission. In addition, Commission staff conducted interviews, surveys, extensive data analyses and several studies, working in collaboration with faculty and students of The Pennsylvania State University. After considerable study and consultation, the Commission on Sentencing has made numerous findings and issued multiple recommendations, which are discussed in the following pages. For example, the Commission found that: (1) fewer than half of all convictions for mandatory-eligible offenses resulted in the mandatory sentence; (2) only 34% of Pennsylvanians surveyed could correctly name a mandatoryeligible offense; and (3) neither the length of sentence, nor the imposition of the mandatory sentence per se, was a predictor of recidivism. The Commission’s recommendations include specific suggestions for the General Assembly, the Criminal Procedural Rules Committee, and its own future research and actions. Most notably, the Commission recommends that the General Assembly: (1) allow sentencing courts to use existing authorized sentencing options, including State Intermediate Punishment and County Intermediate Punishment, to satisfy lower-level drug trafficking mandatory minimum sentences; (2) amend the drug trafficking statute to increase the threshold for cocaine, eliminate the stacking of previous convictions, link penalties to the aggregate weight of compounds and mixtures in the judicial proceeding, and reduce mandatory fines; and (3) repeal the Drug-Free School Zone mandatory legislation, which is irregularly applied and overbroad geographically, in favor of the existing guidelines-based youth and school sentencing enhancement. Details: State College, PA: Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, 2009. 490p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 10, 2011 at: http://pcs.la.psu.edu/publications/research-and-evaluation-reports/special-reports/house-resolution-12-of-2007-use-and-impact-of-mandatory-minimum-sentences/SpecRptHR12of2007.pdf#navpanes=0 Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://pcs.la.psu.edu/publications/research-and-evaluation-reports/special-reports/house-resolution-12-of-2007-use-and-impact-of-mandatory-minimum-sentences/SpecRptHR12of2007.pdf#navpanes=0 Shelf Number: 120742 Keywords: Mandatory Mimimum SentencesPunishmentSentencing (Pennsylvania) |
Author: Kelaher, Richard Title: Crime and Punishment Revisited Summary: Despite an abundance of empirical evidence on crime spanning over forty years, there exists no consensus on the impact of the criminal justice sys- tem on crime activity. We argue that this may be due to the combined e®ect of simultaneity, omitted variable bias and aggregation bias that may confound many of these studies. We construct a new panel data set of lo- cal government areas in Australia and develop a testing framework for the implications of economic theory on crime behaviour. The empirical results suggest that the criminal justice system can potentially exert a much greater in°uence on crime activity than is the common view in the literature. In addition, we ¯nd that increasing the risk of apprehension and conviction is more in°uential in reducing crime than raising the expected severity of punishment. Violent crime is more persistent and relatively less responsive to law enforcement policies compared to non-violent crime. Details: Sydney: University of Bydnes, Faculty of Economics and Business, 2011. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: MPRA Paper No. 28213: Accessed February 16, 2011 at: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28213/1/MPRA_paper_28213.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28213/1/MPRA_paper_28213.pdf Shelf Number: 120805 Keywords: DeterrenceEconomics and CrimePunishment |
Author: Kelaher, Richard Title: Crime and Punishment Revisited Summary: Despite an abundance of empirical evidence on crime spanning over forty years, there exists no consensus on the impact of the criminal justice sys- tem on crime activity. We argue that this may be due to the combined e®ect of simultaneity, omitted variable bias and aggregation bias that may confound many of these studies. We construct a new panel data set of lo- cal government areas in Australia and develop a testing framework for the implications of economic theory on crime behaviour. The empirical results suggest that the criminal justice system can potentially exert a much greater in°uence on crime activity than is the common view in the literature. In addition, we ¯nd that increasing the risk of apprehension and conviction is more in°uential in reducing crime than raising the expected severity of punishment. Violent crime is more persistent and relatively less responsive to law enforcement policies compared to non-violent crime. Details: Sydney: University of Sydney, Faculty of Economics and Business, 2011. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: MPRA Paper No. 28213: Accessed February 16, 2011 at: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28213/1/MPRA_paper_28213.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/28213/1/MPRA_paper_28213.pdf Shelf Number: 120805 Keywords: DeterrenceEconomics and CrimePunishment |
Author: Bartlett, Tess Title: The Power of Penal Populism: Public Influences on Penal and Sentencing Policy from 1999 to 2008 Summary: This thesis explains the rise and power of penal populism in contemporary New Zealand society. It argues that the rise of penal populism can be attributed to social, economic and political changes that have taken place in New Zealand since the postwar years. These changes undermined the prevailing penal-welfare logic that had dominated policymaking in this area since 1945. It examines the way in which ‘the public’ became more involved in the administration of penal policy from 1999 to 2008. The credibility given to a law and order referendum in 1999, which drew attention to crime victims and ‘tough on crime’ discourse, exemplified their new role. In its aftermath, greater influence was given to the public and groups speaking on its behalf. The referendum also influenced political discourse in New Zealand, with politicians increasingly using ‘tough on crime’ policies in election campaigns as it was believed that this was what ‘the public’ wanted when it came to criminal justice issues. As part of these developments, the thesis examines the rise of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, a unique law and order pressure group that advocates for victims’ rights and the harsh treatment of offenders. The Trust became an increasingly authoritative voice in both the public and political arena, as public sentiments came to overrule expert knowledge in the administration of penal policy. Ultimately, it argues that the power of penal populism is so strong in New Zealand that attempts to resist it are likely to come to little, unless these forces that brought it to prominence can be addressed and negated. To date, this has not happened. Details: Wellington, NZ: School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. 136p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 5, 2011 at: http://www.rethinking.org.nz/assets/Newsletter_PDF/Issue_84/T%20Bartlett%20Thesis%202009.pdf Year: 2009 Country: New Zealand URL: http://www.rethinking.org.nz/assets/Newsletter_PDF/Issue_84/T%20Bartlett%20Thesis%202009.pdf Shelf Number: 121249 Keywords: Criminal Justice PolicyImprisonmentPrisonsPublic AttitudesPunishmentSentencing (New Zealand) |
Author: Weaver, Beth Title: User Views of Punishment: The Dynamics of Community-‐ based Punishment: Insider Views from the Outside Summary: This report explores the experience of community sentences from the perspective of those subject to them and is part of a larger project on ‘User Views of Punishment’ in which we attempt to document what the punished think of punishment: how it works, what it means and how it fits into the larger context of a person’s life. Where a previous SCCJR research report (No.04/2010) explored research findings with a particular focus on the experience and effects of short prison sentences from the perspective of those serving them, this research report provides highlights of findings from the analysis with a specific focus on the experience and effects of both prison and community sanctions from the perspective of those currently subject to community sanctions, whose penal experience includes short prison sentences. Details: Edinburgh: Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research, 2011. 35p. Source: Internet Resoruce: Research Report No. 03/2011: Accessed April 18, 2011 at: http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/documents/Report%202011%2003%20User%20Views%20of%20Punishment-1.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/documents/Report%202011%2003%20User%20Views%20of%20Punishment-1.pdf Shelf Number: 121373 Keywords: Alternatives to ImprisonmentCommunity Based CorrectionsPunishmentSentencing (Scotland) |
Author: Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission Title: 20 Years in Sentencing: A Look at Washington State Adult Felony Sentencing Fiscal Years 1989 to 2008 Summary: In 1981, the Washington State Legislature enacted the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA), creating the Sentencing Guidelines Commission (SGC). The SGC met to develop a structured sentencing system designed to further the purposes of the SRA, as stated in RCW 9.94A.010: The purpose of this chapter is to make the criminal justice system accountable to the public by developing a system for the sentencing of felony offenders which structures, but does not eliminate, discretionary decisions affecting sentences, and to: (1) Ensure that the punishment for a criminal offense is proportionate to the seriousness of the offense and the offender's criminal history; (2) Promote respect for the law by providing punishment which is just; (3) Be commensurate with the punishment imposed on others committing similar offenses; (4) Protect the public; (5) Offer the offender an opportunity to improve him or herself; (6) Make frugal use of the state's and local governments' resources; and (7) Reduce the risk of reoffending by offenders in the community. Upon adoption of the new determinate sentencing system, the SGC was assigned ongoing responsibilities in RCW 9.94A.850. “The legislature finds that the commission, having accomplished its original statutory directive to implement this chapter, and having expertise in sentencing practice and policies, shall: (a) Evaluate state sentencing policy, to include whether the sentencing ranges and standards are consistent with and further: (i) The purposes of this chapter as defined in RCW 9.94A.010; and (ii) The intent of the legislature to emphasize confinement for the violent offender and alternatives to confinement for the nonviolent offender.” This report is offered in response to these statutory directives. Throughout the more than two decades of the existence of the SRA in Washington, two features have remained constant; the Legislature has retained its “plenary power” to set sentencing policy and, with the single exception of the “Determinate Plus” sentences for serious sex offenders, it has maintained the original structure of the SRA to implement the changes in sentencing policy it determined were necessary. However, a number of adjustments to sentencing have been adopted by the Legislature. These policy changes, along with population increases and citizen initiatives, have impacted the number and length of felony sentences. Like other states, Washington has seen an explosion in corrections costs in the last twenty years. On the one hand, Washington is spending far less than most other states. On the other hand, the number of prison sentences has increased at a rate four times that of the adult population in Washington. This report examines trends in jail and prison sentence numbers for adult felony convictions, lengths of prison and jail sentences and factors that contribute to change in sentence characteristics. It is a comprehensive review of what has or has not changed in the realm of criminal felony sentencing in this state. It is intended to be useful to county and state policymakers, bearing in mind that the majority of felony sentences are served in county jails. This analysis provides the foundation for a review of sentencing in light of the expressed intent of the SRA. Adult felony sentence data maintained by the SGC were used to develop this report and include a twenty‐year time period from FY1989 to FY2008. The numbers of sentences referenced in this report are as of May 2009. These are subject to change as missing sentencing data becomes available. Details: Olympia, WA: Washington State Sentencing Guidelines Commission, 2010. 68p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 9, 2011 at: http://www.sgc.wa.gov/Publications/Research/TwentyYearsInSentencing_WASentenceTrends.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.sgc.wa.gov/Publications/Research/TwentyYearsInSentencing_WASentenceTrends.pdf Shelf Number: 121677 Keywords: Determinate SentencingFelony OffendersPunishmentSentencing (Washington State)Sentencing Guidelines |
Author: Victoria. Sentencing Advisory Council Title: Does Imprisonment Deter? A Review of the Evidence Summary: Deterrence can be described as the prevention of crime through the fear of a threatened – or the experience of an actual – criminal sanction. General deterrence is aimed at reducing crime by directing the threat of that sanction at all potential offenders. Specific deterrence is aimed at reducing crime by applying a criminal sanction to a specific offender, in order to dissuade him or her from reoffending. Deterrence is only one of the purposes of sentencing in Victoria, determined by section 5(1) of the Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic). The other purposes are: punishment, denunciation, rehabilitation and community protection (incapacitation). The scope of this paper is limited to examining the sentencing purpose of deterrence only – it does not present an analysis of the evidence of imprisonment’s effectiveness in regard to other sentencing purposes. There is an overlap in some studies when measuring deterrence and incapacitation; however, the paper does not draw conclusions on the effectiveness of imprisonment as a means of reducing crime through incapacitation. Deterrence theory is based upon the classical economic theory of rational choice, which assumes that people weigh up the costs and benefits of a particular course of action whenever they make a decision. Deterrence theory relies on the assumption that offenders have knowledge of the threat of a criminal sanction and then make a rational choice whether or not to offend based upon consideration of that knowledge. Rational choice theory, however, does not adequately account for a large number of offenders who may be considered ‘irrational’. Examples of such irrationality can vary in severity – there are those who are not criminally responsible due to mental impairment, those who are drug affected or intoxicated and those who simply act in a way that is contrary to their own best interests. Research shows that the majority of offenders entering the Victorian criminal justice system have a history of substance use that is directly related to their offending. That people are not perfectly rational and do not always make decisions that are in their own best interests is supported by studies in behavioural economics. Behavioural economic theory proposes that individuals make decisions on the basis of mperfect knowledge by employing ‘rules of thumb’, rather than strict logic, and are subject to limits on their willpower. People are also subject to a great number of patterns of deviation in judgment that occur in particular situations (known as ‘cognitive biases’), which influence decision-making in predictable – but often irrational – ways. The evidence from empirical studies of deterrence suggests that the threat of imprisonment generates a small general deterrent effect. However, the research also indicates that increases in the severity of penalties, such as increasing the length of terms of imprisonment, do not produce a corresponding increase in deterrence. It has been suggested that harsher penalties do not deter because many crimes are committed in circumstances where it is difficult to identify when, or if, offenders have considered the consequences of their criminal behaviour. In addition, otherwise rational individuals are more strongly influenced by the perceived immediate benefits of committing crime and individuals ‘discount’ the cost of future penalties. A consistent finding in deterrence research is that increases in the certainty of apprehension and punishment demonstrate a significant deterrent effect. Perceptions about the certainty of apprehension, for example, may counter the ‘present bias’ and reinforce the potential cost of committing crime. This result is qualified by the need for further research that separates deterrable from non-deterrable populations. Research into specific deterrence shows that imprisonment has, at best, no effect on the rate of reoffending and often results in a greater rate of recidivism. Possible explanations for this include that: prison is a learning environment for crime, prison reinforces criminal identity and may diminish or sever social ties that encourage lawful behaviour and imprisonment is not the appropriate response to many offenders who require treatment for the underlying causes of their criminality (such as drug, alcohol and mental health issues). Harsh prison conditions do not generate a greater deterrent effect, and the evidence shows that such conditions may lead to more violent reoffending. The empirical evidence on the effectiveness of imprisonment as a deterrent to crime suggests that the purposes of sentencing should be considered independently – according to their own merits – and that caution should be exercised if imprisonment is to be justified as a means of deterring all crimes and all kinds of offenders. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2011. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Matters: Accessed July 5, 2011 at: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/does_imprisonment_deter_a_review_of_the_evidence.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/does_imprisonment_deter_a_review_of_the_evidence.pdf Shelf Number: 121964 Keywords: DeterrenceDrug Abuse and CrimeImprisonmentPunishmentRational Choice TheorySentencing (Australia)Substance Abuse |
Author: Gelb, Karen Title: Predictors of Punitiveness: Community Views in Victoria Summary: This Sentencing Matters paper examines the predictors of punitiveness among a sample of Victorians. The paper is based on the Victorian component of a national survey of public attitudes to sentencing. This report shows that, in response to abstract questions about sentencing, members of the Victorian public are moderately punitive. Some people are more punitive than others, with several factors underlying punitive attitudes. Beliefs about the courts and sentencing, and perceptions of increasing crime, bear the strongest relationships with levels of punitiveness. Greater punitiveness is also more evident among those who use commercial/tabloid media as their main source of information on crime and punishment, as well as those with less education and those who attest to being politically conservative. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2011. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Matters: Accessed July 26, 2011 at: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/predictors_of_punitiveness_community_views_in_victoria.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/predictors_of_punitiveness_community_views_in_victoria.pdf Shelf Number: 122162 Keywords: Public OpinionPunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Gelb, Karen Title: Purposes of Sentencing: Community Views in Victoria Summary: This Sentencing Matters paper considers people's preferences for the main purposes of sentencing for offenders in a range of case studies. The paper is based on the Victorian component of a national survey of public attitudes to sentencing. The report shows that views on the purposes of sentencing are complex and nuanced. Participants in this study do not focus solely on punishment as a purpose of sentencing, but also see rehabilitation as an important purpose of sentencing in certain instances. These findings show that people rate prior offending as a significant aggravating factor. Indeed, members of the community who responded to this survey clearly appreciate the complexities of sentencing for different types of offender and offence. This appreciation and understanding has important implications for sentencers. Judges and magistrates are required to balance the various purposes of sentencing for every offender who comes before them. At the same time, they have to consider community concerns and expectations of what sentencing should achieve. This report provides evidence that, like the judges and magistrates themselves, people adopt an individualised approach to sentencing, tailoring their preferences for the main purpose of sentencing to the circumstances of each specific case before them. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2011. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Matters: Accessed July 26, 2011 at: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/purposes_of_sentencing_community_views_in_victoria.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/purposes_of_sentencing_community_views_in_victoria.pdf Shelf Number: 122163 Keywords: Public OpinionPunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Stewart, Felicity Title: Aggravated Burglary: Current Sentencing Summary: The offence of burglary involves entering a premises as a trespasser with the intention to steal anything in the premises or to commit an offence involving assault or property damage. The offence has a maximum penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment. To be guilty of the offence, it is sufficient to enter the premises with the relevant intention. The offence is committed even if, once inside the premises, the person does not actually carry out the additional intended offence involving theft, assault or property damage. Aggravated burglary occurs if, at the time of the burglary, the offender either carried a weapon or knew that a person was in the premises (or was reckless as to the presence of a person in the premises). The aggravated form of the offence has a much higher maximum penalty of 25 years – the second highest level of maximum penalty available in Victoria after life imprisonment. Both burglary and aggravated burglary are preparatory offences, because they involve an act (entering property) with the intention to commit a further offence. If, once the person has entered the premises, he or she actually commits the intended offence involving theft, assault or property damage, he or she would be charged and sentenced separately for both the offence of burglary and that further offence. Although aggravated burglary is a preparatory offence, in terms of the maximum penalty, it is ranked among the most serious offences in Victoria. Yet procedurally aggravated burglary is ranked with much less serious offences, as it is triable summarily in the Magistrates’ Court. Approximately 40% of aggravated burglary cases are sentenced in that court. The longest term of imprisonment that can be imposed by that court for any single charge is two years’ imprisonment. When sentencing a person for an offence, one of the factors that Victorian courts are required to consider is current sentencing practices for that offence. This is particularly difficult to do for aggravated burglary. The preparatory nature of the offence is one reason for this, because the gravity of a particular aggravated burglary will be affected by the nature of the offence that the person entering the premises intended to commit once inside. For example, did they break into the premises intending to steal cash while being aware that someone may have been asleep upstairs? Or did they break in knowing that a woman was alone at home and intending to rape her? The prevalence of aggravated burglary, combined with the unusually wide range of sentences imposed and the difficulty of identifying current sentencing practices for it, prompted the Sentencing Advisory Council to undertake a detailed study of sentencing practices for this offence. The study relies on details set out in written remarks made by judges when delivering their sentences. Because such comments are only available in the higher courts, this study does not include sentences imposed in the Magistrates’ Court other than the broad statistical sentencing patterns. The study is also limited to the variables that could be extracted consistently and reliably from the sentencing remarks. The study examines sentences imposed in 2008–09. The sentences imposed for these charges ranged from adjourned undertakings and fines to imprisonment for seven years. An immediate custodial sentence was the most frequently imposed sentence (55.2%). The median imprisonment term was two years. A wholly suspended sentence was the second most common sentence type (28.2% of charges) and the median term was two years. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (Victoria), 2011. 112p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 27, 2011 at: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/aggravated_burglary_current_sentencing_practices_0.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/aggravated_burglary_current_sentencing_practices_0.pdf Shelf Number: 122176 Keywords: BurglaryPunishmentRobberySentencing (Australia) |
Author: Dhami, Sanjit Title: The Behavioral Economics of Crime and Punishment Summary: The celebrated Becker proposition (BP) states that it is optimal to impose the severest possible punishment (to maintain effective deterrence) at the lowest possible probability of detection (to economize on enforcement costs). However, the BP is not consistent with the evidence. This inconsistency is known as the Becker paradox. In fact, the BP is a general result that applies to all low-probability events that lead to 'unbounded loss' of utility. Hence, it is applicable to a wide class of problems in economics. We clarify the BP and its welfare implications under expected utility, which remains the favoured framework. We argue that none of the proposed explanations of the Becker paradox is satisfactory. We show that the BP also holds under rank dependent expected utility and cumulative prospect theory, the two main alternatives to expected utility. We show that composite prospect theory (CCP), of al-Nowaihi and Dhami (2010a), can resolve the Becker paradox. Our paper opens the way for incorporating non-expected utility theories into the economic analysis of criminal activity. Details: Leicester, UK: University of Leicester, Department of Economics, 2010. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper No. 10/14: Accessed August 15, 2011 at: http://www.le.ac.uk/ec/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp10-14.pdf Year: 2010 Country: International URL: http://www.le.ac.uk/ec/research/RePEc/lec/leecon/dp10-14.pdf Shelf Number: 122387 Keywords: DeterrenceEconomicsPunishment |
Author: Dhami, Sanjit Title: The Hyperbolic Punishment Function Summary: All models in Law and Economics use punishment functions (PF) that incorpo- rate a trade-o¤ between probability of detection, p, and punishment, F. Suppose society wishes to minimize the total costs of enforcement and damages from crime, T (p; F). For a given p, an optimal punishment function (OPF) determines an F that minimizes T(p; F). A popular and tractable PF is the hyperbolic punishment function (HPF). We show that the HPF is an OPF for a very large class of total cost functions. Furthermore, the HPF is an upper bound for an even larger class of pun- ishment functions. If the HPF cannot deter crime then none of the PFs for which the HPF is an upper bound can deter it either. Thus, if one can demonstrate that a particular policy is ine¤ective under the HPF, there is no need to even compute the OPF. Our results should underpin an even greater use of the HPF. Details: Leicester, UK: University of Leicester, Department of Economics, 2010. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 16, 2011 at: http://www.le.ac.uk/ec/sd106/HPF.pdf Year: 2010 Country: International URL: http://www.le.ac.uk/ec/sd106/HPF.pdf Shelf Number: 122406 Keywords: DeterrencePunishment |
Author: Van Slyke, Shanna Title: Social Identification and Public Opinion on White-Collar Crime Summary: White-collar crime accounts for billions of dollars in annual losses but traditionally has been viewed as less serious and less deserving of harsh punishment compared with street crime. This pattern can be observed in public opinion surveys, law-enforcement resource allocations, and criminal justice system sanctioning. Scholars usually distinguish between different types of white-collar crime — bitterly noting the irony that broadened definitions of white-collar crime have perpetuated status-based disparities the very concept was designed to bring to light. Some of these scholars, particularly those study public perceptions, have begun to question the conventional wisdom of widespread public apathy toward the crimes of U.S. economic and political elites. They have pointed at Watergate in the 1970s, the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the wave of national corporate financial failures emerging in 2001–2002, and they have proposed that public outrage stemming from these widely publicized political and economic scandals should serve as a catalyst for sentencing reform that would more accurately tailor punishments to the harms caused. Lengthy prison sentences given to corporate executives and chairman—such as Bernie Madoff’s June 2009 150-year prison sentence—seem to support the argument that a national attitudinal shift has translated into more severe punishments for white-collar offenders. But one could characterize recent severe white-collar sentences—most notably in this regard, Shalom Weiss’s 840-year prison term — as aberrations that are both expressively powerful and functionally indistinguishable from a life sentence with no chance of parole. As such, far from bridging the gap between harm and punishment, these extreme reactions would also fail to represent the majority of white-collar offenders’ experiences with the criminal justice system. Despite financial losses stemming from white-collar crime, most white-collar offenders are not prosecuted as criminal offenders and do not comprise the bulk of U.S. jail and prison populations. The present study addresses this paradox between harm caused, perceived seriousness and desired punitiveness, and the theoretical void in the white-collar crime literature by incorporating the concepts of ingroup favoritism and outgroup hostility from the social psychological literature on social identity theory. The study’s purposes, then, are to determine whether there are observable differences in punitiveness toward white-collar and street offenders and then to test the applicability of the proposed integrated theory to explaining punitiveness by employing a representative telephone survey of 400 Floridian adults in 2008. The survey tested 10 hypotheses in several ways: An offense- and an offender-based definition of white-collar crime is used as well as nonviolent economic street crime, incarceration and disenfranchisement support serve as dependent variables; and two forms of offender identification (social and racial) and two forms of threats (offense seriousness and victim identification) are assessed. Incarceration support is modeled for six offenses: elite white-collar crime (corporate fraud and government bribery), consumer fraud white-collar crimes (false advertising and car sales fraud), and nonviolent economic street crimes (motor vehicle theft and burglary). The six offenses were then collapsed into three crime categories designed to represent three basic social status groups and to address the white-collar crime definitional debate: elite white-collar crime (high-status white-collar crime), consumer fraud white-collar crime (middle-status white-collar crime), and nonviolent economic street crime (low-status non-white-collar crime). No violent street crimes were included to enhance the comparability between the street crimes and white-collar crimes; likewise, the selected street crimes were economically motivated so they would also have the same basic motive (unlike non-violent street crimes like vandalism or drug use). Bivariate correlations revealed differences in public opinion, but the definition of white-collar crime (i.e., offense or offender based) and the measure of punitiveness (i.e., support for incarceration and for disenfranchisement) impacted the results. Multivariate logistic regression results indicate that offense seriousness had the consistent effect on increasing punitiveness for street crimes, but rarely influenced punishment recommendations for white-collar crimes—particularly those of the powerful corporate and government elites. However, little support emerged supporting the hypotheses derived from social identity theory. Rarely have past studies identified variables that are related to punitiveness toward white-collar offenders, be they theoretical or control variables. The present study, on the other hand, drew from the available research literature, identified the theoretical concept of social identification, and empirically tested this concept’s association with incarceration and disenfranchisement recommendations for white-collar and street property offenders. Social identification was not always related to punitiveness; moreover, the hypothesized positive effect of social identification interacting with perceived seriousness failed to materialize. Yet social identification itself increased punitiveness in several models and this is an advancement of our knowledge about public opinion on white-collar crime—albeit an advancement in need of refinement. Theoretically, this study introduced the idea of social identity to the study of white-collar crime, a phenomenon that has long been anecdotally characterized as crime by seemingly normal and respectable individuals, but which has recently exhibited signs of increased governmental intervention and sanctioning. The unexpected findings were explained by drawing upon labeling theory and by discussing the differential roles of information in influencing punitive attitudes. A different causal model is then suggested wherein strength of incriminating evidence is predicted to moderate the effect of social identification on punitiveness toward white-collar offenders. In this revised model to be tested in future research, social identification is not predicted to interact with seriousness to influence punitiveness; rather, it is hypothesized to influence punitiveness indirectly through its influence on perceptions of guilt. The conclusion focuses upon the contradiction between the U.S. government’s relative neglect of white-collar crime and contemporary empirical evidence on public punitiveness toward white-collar and street offenders. Bernie Madoff’s recent 150-year is revisited, and it is concluded that recent examples of harsh white-collar crime sanctioning do not reflect a significant shift in attitudes. Instead, returning to social identity theory, it is proposed that certain offenders have gotten singled out in order to for the government send a symbolic message of intolerance toward corporate crime while at the same time, the criminogenic opportunity and motivation structures of U.S. finance capitalism are left untouched and ineffectively regulated, thus perpetuating the problem of white-collar crime. Details: Tallahassee: Florida State University, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2009. 144p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed August 17, 2011 at: http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-10272009-160114/ Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-10272009-160114/ Shelf Number: 122424 Keywords: Consumer FraudPublic AttitudesPublic OpinionPunishmentWhite-Collar Crime |
Author: Gelb, Karen Title: Predictors of Confidence: Community Views in Victoria Summary: This report is the fourth in a series1 on community views about crime, courts and sentencing. It presents evidence about the predictors of confidence in the courts and sentencing in a random sample of 1,200 Victorians. This report shows that members of the Victorian public are moderately confident in their courts and in judges’ ability to impose appropriate sentences. Some people are more confident than others, with several factors underlying confidence in the courts and sentencing. People who are less punitive, who are more accepting of information presented by the media and who do not perceive crime to be increasing have the highest levels of confidence in the courts and sentencing. Higher levels of confidence are also evident among those with a higher income and younger respondents. The prominence of the attitudinal factors highlights the connections among confidence in sentencing, punitiveness and knowledge of crime. These connections have implications for the ways in which the courts and the criminal justice system more generally tackle the question of public confidence. Public confidence in the criminal justice system is a high priority for governments in many western countries, with public education and information campaigns, court media liaison officers, accessible websites, large national conferences and public surveys all contributing to efforts to promote confidence in the administration of justice. Understanding the drivers of confidence in the courts and sentencing is another important facet of these efforts. With greater understanding come greater opportunities for developing initiatives to improve public confidence. Given the strong constellation of factors identified in this report, any attempt to improve public confidence in the courts will, of necessity, need to consider levels of public punitiveness and people’s perceptions of crime as well. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2011. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Matters: Accessed September 2, 2011 at: http://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/predictors_of_confidence_community_views_in_victoria_0.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Austria URL: http://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/predictors_of_confidence_community_views_in_victoria_0.pdf Shelf Number: 122621 Keywords: CourtsPublic OpinionPunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Gelb, Karen Title: Predictors of Confidence: Community Views in Victoria Summary: This report is the fourth in a series1 on community views about crime, courts and sentencing. It presents evidence about the predictors of confidence in the courts and sentencing in a random sample of 1,200 Victorians. This report shows that members of the Victorian public are moderately confident in their courts and in judges’ ability to impose appropriate sentences. Some people are more confident than others, with several factors underlying confidence in the courts and sentencing. People who are less punitive, who are more accepting of information presented by the media and who do not perceive crime to be increasing have the highest levels of confidence in the courts and sentencing. Higher levels of confidence are also evident among those with a higher income and younger respondents. The prominence of the attitudinal factors highlights the connections among confidence in sentencing, punitiveness and knowledge of crime. These connections have implications for the ways in which the courts and the criminal justice system more generally tackle the question of public confidence. Public confidence in the criminal justice system is a high priority for governments in many western countries, with public education and information campaigns, court media liaison officers, accessible websites, large national conferences and public surveys all contributing to efforts to promote confidence in the administration of justice. Understanding the drivers of confidence in the courts and sentencing is another important facet of these efforts. With greater understanding come greater opportunities for developing initiatives to improve public confidence. Given the strong constellation of factors identified in this report, any attempt to improve public confidence in the courts will, of necessity, need to consider levels of public punitiveness and people’s perceptions of crime as well. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2011. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Matters Series: Accessed September 6, 2011 at: http://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/predictors_of_confidence_community_views_in_victoria_0.pdf Year: 2011 Country: Australia URL: http://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/predictors_of_confidence_community_views_in_victoria_0.pdf Shelf Number: 122648 Keywords: CourtsPublic OpinionPunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Seal, Susan Title: A Dynamical Interpretation of the Three-Strikes Law Summary: California’s Three Strikes Law has been in effect since 1994. Advocates of this policy claim it acts as a deterrent for violent crime; yet critics allege it acts solely as an incapacitant–a device used to segregate a population of “undesirables” from the total population in an attempt to lower criminal susceptibility. To determine the true relationship between these two intimately connected phenomena, we construct a dynamical model of the Three-Strikes Law within the framework of inner-city communities located in Los Angeles County. We then compare this model to one of Los Angeles County before California implemented the Three-Strike policy–the classical incarceration model. Through qualitative analysis we determine the basic reproductive number, R0, for each of the models. Using numerical simulations, we then determine the net change in the total population of reformed inmates and the total number of incarcerated individuals due to the Three-Strikes Law. We also analyze the impact of population density on crime rates in states that utilize the Three-Strikes Law. Finally, we construct and examine a hypothetical One-Strike model to determine the impact of different strike policies on the reformed, criminal and incarcerated populations. We find that the Three-Strikes policy deters crime better than the classical incarceration policy in densely populated areas like Los Angeles County. In the context of population density, the Three-Strikes Law is a better deterrent in a sparsely populated region than a densely populated region. The optimal policy is found to be one that consists of more than three strikes. Details: Tempe, AZ: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Arizona State University, 2007. 45p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 13, 2011 at: http://mtbi.asu.edu/files/A%20Dynamical%20Interpretation%20of%20the%20Three%20Strikes%20Law.pdf Year: 2007 Country: United States URL: http://mtbi.asu.edu/files/A%20Dynamical%20Interpretation%20of%20the%20Three%20Strikes%20Law.pdf Shelf Number: 122729 Keywords: DeterrencePunishmentRepeat OffendersSentencingThree-Strikes Law (California) |
Author: Doob, Anthony N. Title: Concern with Leniency: An Examination of Sentencing Patterns in British Columbia Summary: There is no question that the topic of sentencing is controversial in Canada, generally, and in British Columbia in particular. As just one illustration of this issue, 69% of all Canadians and 74% of British Columbians indicated that they believed that sentences in criminal matters are too lenient. Such responses are best thought of as ‘beliefs’ since nobody in Canada has completely adequate data on which to evaluate such a statement since completely adequate data on this issue do not exist. The difference between there being some sentences that are demonstrably wrong and sentences generally being too lenient is, of course, important. ‘Fixing’ incorrect sentences is a routine activity of Courts of Appeal. It is most likely that if asked about evidence that sentences were too lenient, people would, at best, give a few examples of apparently lenient sentences rather than systematic data about sentencing patterns. British Columbians may believe sentences are too lenient in part because they, like most Canadians, undoubtedly believe that if the severity of sentences was ‘turned up’, rates of crime would decrease. Compared to the rest of Canada, British Columbia has a relatively high crime rate as measured by crimes reported to the police. However, it is important to note that victimization is not, uniformly, associated with the view that sentences are too lenient. Indeed, in British Columbia those who were victimized in the 12 months prior to being asked their views on the severity of sentences were less likely to say that sentences were too lenient than were those who had not been victimized. Nevertheless, British Columbians are more likely than people in other regions to hold relatively poor views of the criminal courts. However, British Columbians also appear less favourable about other criminal justice institutions - prisons and parole, and the police. It is possible that the special concern that British Columbians have about sentences reflects deeper distrust, in British Columbia than elsewhere in Canada, in the effects of public institutions. One likely explanation for people’s views that sentences are too lenient is that they may believe that judges, at sentencing, could reduce crime if they would only hand down harsher sentences. But there are other reasons. Given that close to three-quarters of Canadians think that sentences are too lenient, this view is seldom challenged. Indeed, in British Columbia, a statement in the Speech from the Throne in February 2008 may easily have been interpreted by the public as suggesting that sentences across all offence categories are more lenient in British Columbia than in other parts of Canada. Publicly available data (from Statistics Canada) certainly support the actual statement that appeared in the Throne Speech. However, if one looks at these data in detail – across all categories of offences – the measures of severity of sentences do not show such a consistent picture. More importantly, the measures that most people may think of when they think about sentence severity do not give an adequate picture of the complexity of the problem. We need to understand the nature of sentences being handed down before we can evaluate their severity. There is no doubt that there is what might be called ‘unexplained’ variation in sentences across judges, court locations, and provinces and territories. Part of the reason for this variability is that the sentencing structure contained in Canada’s Criminal Code does not lay out specific sentences that are appropriate for individual cases. Hence individual judges, interpreting the sentencing provisions of the Criminal Code, might well hand down different patterns of sentences. But there is another important consideration. People often talk about ‘short’ and ‘long’ sentences as if the only relevant dimension of sentences is the average (median or mean) length of a prison sentence that is imposed. It is not that simple. To illustrate the inadequacy of the ‘average length of a prison sentence’ as a measure of sentence severity, one could look at some Statistics Canada data tables presenting the median and mean length of prison sentences for all offences imposed in 2003. These measures were almost identical for British Columbia and for Canada as a whole. One might conclude, on the basis of these comparisons, that sentencing in British Columbia and in Canada, more generally, was of equal severity. However, approximately 40% of cases in British Columbia resulted in a prison sentence as compared to about 35% of cases in all of Canada. Is British Columbia harsher than the rest of Canada? Looking at the proportion of cases with a finding of guilt resulting in a prison sentence, one would easily arrive at this conclusion. Looking at the average length of these prison sentences, one would not. The problem of ‘scaling’ the severity of sentences becomes even more salient when these two indicators – prison sentence length and percent receiving a prison sentence – directly conflict with one another. Take for example, the offence category of “uttering threats.” Statistics Canada reports that in 2003, the average (median and mean) prison sentences in British Columbia were shorter than for Canada as a whole. The mean prison sentence in Canada was reported to be 83 days, whereas for British Columbia it was 61 days. One could easily conclude, therefore, that prison sentences were ‘shorter’ in British Columbia and that sentences for this offence were more lenient in British Columbia than in Canada as a whole. But in British Columbia, 41% of the cases of ‘uttering threats’ resulted in a prison sentence compared to 35.5% of cases in Canada as a whole. What may be happening in British Columbia, therefore, is that cases of uttering threats are receiving relatively short prison sentences that, elsewhere in Canada, would have received a non-custodial sentence. By averaging in a number of relatively short sentences for British Columbia that are not part of the calculation elsewhere in Canada, British Columbia’s average prison sentence decreases because more people convicted of this offence are being sent to prison. We strongly believe that what is needed to compare sentencing patterns across jurisdictions is a comprehensive picture that does not reduce overall sentencing in a jurisdiction to a single number. Hence we have suggested that there be multiple measures of sentencing patterns and that one should look at all available categories of offences. It is natural – and not necessarily inappropriate – to find that there is some variation in sentencing across jurisdictions. After all, under our current law, judges have to decide, within the context of their own jurisdictions, how serious offences are, and what the goals of sentencing should be in determining the sentence. Notwithstanding the ease with which sentences can be described by the average length of a prison sentence, we conclude that these measures (mean or median sentence) have too high a probability of failing to accurately describe sentencing to justify their use. We demonstrated in the full report, for example, that one could have a situation in which five jurisdictions all had the same mean and median sentences for a particular offence category, but the proportion of those found guilty who were given harsh sentences could simultaneously vary, in our hypothetical example, from 1% of those found guilty to 35% of those found guilty. If 1% of all guilty findings in a jurisdiction were to result in a penitentiary sentence and 35% of all guilty findings in another resulted in a penitentiary sentence, we argue that a description of the mean and median sentences of these two jurisdictions as being identical is not terribly helpful, nor descriptive. In order to understand variation in sentencing across Canada, we concluded that it was important to look at data in as much detail as possible. First of all, this meant looking at individual offence groupings as well as comparisons between British Columbia and individual provinces, rather than ‘Canada’ as a single unit. Second, it meant using multiple measures of sentence severity that acknowledge that the distribution of sentences can vary in a number of different ways. The core of our analysis, therefore, presents comparisons between British Columbia and other individual provinces. For various reasons described in the full report, we felt that comparisons between British Columbia, on the one hand and the three territories, Manitoba, and Quebec, on the other hand, should not be made. The most compelling reason for not including the territories in our analysis is their small sample sizes. Comparisons with Manitoba and Quebec were excluded because of the (in)completeness of the data from these two jurisdictions. Hence we present comparisons of British Columbia with each of the remaining 7 provinces. We present five inter-related measures of sentence severity for each offence grouping: the percent of all guilty findings resulting in a prison sentence; the percent of prison sentences that are greater than 3 months in length; the percent of prison sentences that are greater than 6 months in length; the percent of all guilty findings that resulted in a prison sentence of greater than 3 months in length; and the percent of all guilty findings that resulted in a prison sentence of greater than 6 months in length. Details: Toronto: University of Toronto, Centre of Criminology; Ottawa: Department of Criminology, University of Ottawa, 2008. 94p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 17, 2011 at: http://www.criminaljusticereform.gov.bc.ca/en/reports/pdf/ConcernLeniency.pdf Year: 2008 Country: Canada URL: http://www.criminaljusticereform.gov.bc.ca/en/reports/pdf/ConcernLeniency.pdf Shelf Number: 122766 Keywords: PunishmentSentencing (Canada)Sentencing Disparities |
Author: Bandes, Susan Title: The Heart Has Its Reasons: Examining the Strange Persistence of the American Death Penalty Summary: The debate about the future of the death penalty often focuses on whether its supporters are animated by instrumental or expressive values, and if the latter, what values the penalty does in fact express, where those values originated, and how deeply entrenched they are. In this article I argue that a more explicit recognition of the emotional sources of support for and opposition to the death penalty will contribute to the clarity of the debate. The focus on emotional variables reveals that the boundary between instrumental and expressive values is porous; both types of values are informed (or uninformed) by fear, outrage, compassion, selective empathy and other emotional attitudes. More fundamentally, though history, culture and politics are essential aspects of the discussion, the resilience of the death penalty cannot be adequately understood when the affect is stripped from explanations for its support. Ultimately, the death penalty will not die without a societal change of heart. Details: Chicago: University of Chicago, Law School, 2008. 51p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 378 U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 200: Accessed October 29, 2011 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1019615 Year: 2008 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1019615 Shelf Number: 123171 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath PenaltyPunishment |
Author: Abram, David S. Title: Building Criminal Capital vs Specific Deterrence: The Effect of Incarceration Length on Recidivism Summary: In evaluating the efficacy of most modern criminal justice systems, a vital relationship to understand is that between incarceration length (and likelihood) and recidivism. Because most previous attempts to estimate this relationship suffer from omitted variables bias, even the sign is unknown. In this paper, I build on previous work identifying substantial heterogeneity in attorney ability in a public defender office with random case assignment. I make use of this variation to address the omitted variables problem by instrumenting for sentence length and incarceration rate using the randomly assigned public defender. A negative relationship between recidivism and sentence length goes away when instrumenting for sentence. Similarly, a positive and statistically significant relationship between recidivism and incarceration becomes insignificant in the IV regressions. However the regression results do not reveal the full story, as the relationships are rather nonlinear. A graphical examination reveals a negative relationship between recidivism and sentence length and also recidivism and incarceration rate, particularly for shorter sentences and lower incarceration rates. In addition, longer sentences tend to lead to more severe crimes upon offender release. Put together, these findings provide some evidence for a mild specific deterrent effect, but one that rapidly diminishes. Details: Berkeley, CA: Law and Economics Workshop, 2010. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 29, 2011 at: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fj8691d Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/2fj8691d Shelf Number: 123179 Keywords: DeterrencePunishmentRecidivismSentencing |
Author: Slobogin, Christopher Title: Prevention as the Primary Goal of Sentencing: The Modern Case for Indeterminate Dispositions in Criminal Cases Summary: Among modern-day legal academics determinate sentencing and limiting retributivism tend to be preferred over indeterminate sentencing, at least in part because the latter option is viewed as immoral. This Article contends to the contrary that, properly constituted, indeterminate sentencing is both a morally defensible method of preventing crime and the optimal regime for doing so. More specifically, the position defended in this Article is that, once a person is convicted of such an offense, the duration and nature of sentence should be based on a back-end decision made by experts in recidivism reduction, within very broad ranges set by the legislature. The territory covered in this Article, particularly as it addresses the debate between deontological retributivists and utilitarians, is well-trodden. But this Article seeks to provide new perspectives on the morality, legality, and practicality of indeterminate sentencing. It starts with an outline of what a properly constituted indeterminate sentencing regime would look like. It then defends this regime against numerous objections. Details: Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Law School, 2011. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Vanderbilt University Law School, Public Law & Legal Theory Working Paper Number 11-31 Law & Economics Working Paper Number 11-43: Accessed November 16, 2011 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1959489 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1959489 Shelf Number: 123368 Keywords: Indeterminate SentencesPunishmentRisk AssessmentSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Gogia, Giorgi Title: Administrative Error: Georgia’s Flawed System for Administrative Detention Summary: Georgian authorities have used the Code of Administrative Offenses in recent years to lock up protestors and activists at times of political tension. The code allows for a person to be imprisoned for up to 90 days for certain administrative offenses, or misdemeanors. However, as this report describes, the code lacks due process and fair trial protections required for punishment of this severity. It does not explicitly require that police promptly inform defendants of their rights or give reasons for their detention. Detainees are often not allowed to contact their families, and if retained, lawyers often have difficulties in finding detainees in custody. Nor do detainees enjoy fair trial rights in court. Trials are often perfunctory, rarely last more than 15 minutes, and judicial decisions often rely exclusively on police testimonies. If lawyers are present, they lack time to prepare an effective defense. Lawyers and their clients also face obstacles exercising the right to appeal. Those handed terms of administrative imprisonment serve sentences in temporary detention isolators not intended for long-term occupancy, where conditions often fall short of international standards. As a party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, Georgia should ensure full due process protections for administrative defendants, particularly with regard to the right to notify a third party about detention, the right to lawyer of one’s choosing, and the right to a fair trial. Details: New York: Human Rights Watch, 2012. 43p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 10, 2012 at: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/georgia0112ForUpload.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Georgia URL: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/georgia0112ForUpload.pdf Shelf Number: 123550 Keywords: Administrative Detention (Georgia)CourtsDetentionHuman RightsMisdemeanorsPunishmentTrials |
Author: Yeh, Brian T. Title: Drug Offenses: Maximum Fines and Terms of Imprisonment for Violation of the Federal Controlled Substances Act and Related Laws Summary: This is a chart of the maximum fines and terms of imprisonment that may be imposed as a consequence of conviction for violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and other drug supply and drug demand related laws. It lists the penalties for: heroin, cocaine, crack, PCP, LSD, marihuana (marijuana), amphetamine, methamphetamine, listed (precursor) chemicals, paraphernalia, date rape drugs, rave drugs, designer drugs, ecstasy, drug kingpins, as well as the other substances including narcotics and opiates assigned to Schedule I, Schedule II, Schedule III, Schedule IV, and Schedule V of the Controlled Substances Act and the Controlled Substances Import and Export Act (Title II and Title III of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse and Control Act). Details: Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2011. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: RL30722: Accessed January 12, 2012 at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL30722.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL30722.pdf Shelf Number: 123561 Keywords: Drug OffendersDrug OffensesDrug SmugglingDrug TraffickingFinesImprisonmentPunishment |
Author: Kunkle, Susan M. Title: Bind Over and Blended Sentencing in Ohio Summary: In the early 1990s, juvenile crime in the US appeared to be increasing in frequency and seemed to be exceedingly more violent. In state after state, legislative efforts increased the mechanisms of transfer, made transfer mandatory for a larger number of offenses, and generally sought to remove more serious and violent juveniles from the special jurisdiction of the juvenile courts. This research is an effort to understand how those legislative actions were operationalized by the juvenile courts, specifically by identifying the relationship between legal and extra legal variables and dispositional outcomes. In Ohio, three outcomes are salient in the disposition of cases of youthful offenders who engage in felony-level, violent, and/or repetitive criminal offending – retain in the juvenile court, a blended sentence that straddles both the juvenile and adult criminal court system, and a transfer of the case from the juvenile to the adult criminal court system. Data were collected from five Ohio Juvenile Courts and the Ohio Department of Youth Services and consist of populations of transferred and blended sentence cases and a sample of felony adjudication cases from the years of 2002 through 2006. Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the data; retained in the juvenile court was identified as the reference factor. The use of a weapon, the severity of the offense, if the offense was violent, prior record, the age of the offender at the time of the offense, and the age of the offender at first contact with the juvenile justice system were significant in the decision to transfer a case to the adult criminal court system. The use of a weapon, the severity of the offense, prior record, and the age of the offender at the time of the offense were significant in the decision to dispose of a case through a blended sentence. Details: Kent, OH: Kent State University, Department of Political Science, 2011. 161p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed January 13, 2012 at: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/Kunkle%20Susan%20M.pdf?kent1302131672 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/Kunkle%20Susan%20M.pdf?kent1302131672 Shelf Number: 122527 Keywords: Blended SentencesJuvenile Court TransferJuvenile CourtsJuvenile OffendersPunishmentSentencing (Ohio)Waiver (of Juvenile Court Disposition) |
Author: United States Sentencing Commission Title: Report to Congress: Mandatory Minimum Penalties in the Federal Criminal Justice System Summary: This report assesses the impact of mandatory minimum penalties on federal sentencing, particularly in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Booker v. United States, which rendered the federal sentencing guidelines advisory. The United States Sentencing Commission prepared this report pursuant to a congressional directive contained in section 4713 of the Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, Pub L. No. 111–84, and the Commission's general authority under 28 U.S.C. §§ 994–995, as well as its specific authority under 28 U.S.C. § 995(a)(20) to "make recommendations to Congress concerning modification or enactment of statutes relating to sentencing, penal, and correctional matters that the Commission finds to be necessary and advisable to carry out an effective, humane, and rational sentencing policy." Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Commission, 2011. 369p., app. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 1, 2012 at: http://www.ussc.gov/Legislative_and_Public_Affairs/Congressional_Testimony_and_Reports/Mandatory_Minimum_Penalties/20111031_RtC_Mandatory_Minimum.cfm Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.ussc.gov/Legislative_and_Public_Affairs/Congressional_Testimony_and_Reports/Mandatory_Minimum_Penalties/20111031_RtC_Mandatory_Minimum.cfm Shelf Number: 123919 Keywords: Booker v. United StatesMandatory Minimum SentencesPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Prison Reform Trust Title: Public Want Offenders to Make Amends Summary: As the full social and economic cost of the recent riots in English cities is revealed, people will be looking to our courts to deliver justice in the weeks and months ahead and to nationally and locally elected politicians to agree on how best to prevent crime and disorder in future. The results of an ICM telephone poll of 1,000 members of the public across Great Britain, conducted one month after the disturbances, show overwhelming popular support for constructive ways in which offenders can make amends to victims for the harm they have caused. A huge majority of those surveyed (94%) support opportunities for offenders to do unpaid work in the community, as part of their sentence, to pay back for what they have done. Restorative measures, giving victims the opportunity to inform offenders of the harm caused and a say in how the offender can best make amends, attracted strong support. Lower income groups, who are more likely to be victims of crime, are most in favour of adopting community payback and a restorative justice approach. While 84% feel that better supervision of young people by parents would be effective in preventing crime and disorder, and the vast majority back better mental health care (80%) or making amends to victims (79%), fewer than two thirds (65%) believe a prison sentence would be effective. One in four feels expressly that it would not be effective in preventing crime and disorder. A clear majority of people surveyed by ICM is in favour of the courts having a range of measures available for offenders to make amends to victims. With a justice bill before parliament, the poll indicates that there is scope for a profound change in the way we respond to crime that would both improve victim satisfaction and reduce reoffending. Details: London: Prison Reform Trust, 2011. 8p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 10, 2012 at: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Riots%20poll%20briefing%20lo.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Documents/Riots%20poll%20briefing%20lo.pdf Shelf Number: 124035 Keywords: Criminal Justice PolicyPublic Opinion (U.K.)Punishment |
Author: Denmark. Rockwool Foundation Research Unit. Title: Criminals pay a high price after completing sentences Summary: The sentence in the court is: "You will go to prison for four months, and then pay a fine of 15% of your earnings each month for the rest of your life." No such harsh and unusual sentence has ever been pronounced in a Danish court, but nevertheless that is precisely the punishment that a criminal can look forward to in Denmark if he or she ends up in prison. New research from the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit shows that criminals have a great deal more punishment awaiting them after their release from prison: a form of indirect punishment. No sentence to such punishment has been handed down, but it is no less real and immediate for all that. According to Torben Tranaes, Research Director at the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, this additional punishment lies in the greater difficulty offenders experience in finding work than they had before the crime and punishment took place, and the greater difficulty they have in re-establishing and maintaining the same level of income as before. The analysis shows that this indirect punishment is relatively heavy in Denmark, compared for example with similar punishment in the USA. The Danish analysis was based on the incomes of all those who received their first unconditional prison sentence in the period 1994-2003. Details of the analysis are presented in a Rockwool Foundation Research Unit book entitled Forbryderen og samfundet (The offender and society) (Gyldendal, 2008), which also contains details of research into the consequences of crime for relationships and into the connection between unemployment and crime. The Danish book is summarized in the newsletter. Details: Copenhagen, Denmark: Rockwool Foundation Research Unit, 2010. 12p. Source: Rockwool Foundation Research Unit Newsletter: Internet Resource: Accessed February 12, 2012 at http://www.rff.dk/files/RFF-site/Publikations%20upload/Newsletters/Engelsk/2010_April_eng_sik.pdf Year: 2010 Country: International URL: http://www.rff.dk/files/RFF-site/Publikations%20upload/Newsletters/Engelsk/2010_April_eng_sik.pdf Shelf Number: 124105 Keywords: Economics and CrimePunishmentSentencing (Denmark) (U.S.)Unemployment and Crime |
Author: Rehavi, M. Marit Title: Racial Disparity in Federal Criminal Charging and Its Sentencing Consequences Summary: This paper assesses the extent to which the large disparities in sentencing outcomes between black and white defendants can be explained by disparities in prosecutors' initial choice of charges, a critical stage overlooked by existing studies of sentencing disparities. To analyze charging, we pair newly constructed measures of charge severity with a newly linked dataset that traces federal cases from the arrest through sentencing. We find that black arrestees, especially black males, face significantly more severe charges conditional on arrest offense and other observed characteristics. The disparities in the use of charges that carry mandatory minimum sentences are particularly striking. These disparities appear to be major drivers of sentencing disparity. Black males face significantly longer sentences than white males do, on average and at almost every decile of the sentence-length distribution, even after conditioning on arrest offense, criminal history, district, and age. However, the addition of controls for initial charges renders most of these disparities insignificant. Indeed, the otherwise-unexplained racial disparities at the mean and at most of the deciles can be almost entirely explained by disparities in a single prosecutorial decision: whether to file a charge carrying a mandatory minimum sentence. Details: Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Law School, 2012. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Michigan Law & Econ, Empirical Legal Studies Center Paper No. 12-002: Accessed March 2, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377 Shelf Number: 124348 Keywords: ProsecutionProsecutorial DiscretionProsecutorsPunishmentRacial DisparitiesSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Armstrong, Sarah Title: User Views of Punishment: The comparative experience of short prison sentences and community-based punishments Summary: Despite a substantial knowledge base about experiences of prison, there is scant research on the most common penal experience in Scotland – doing a short prison sentence (but see Criminal Justice Forum, 2003). Short prison sentences are one of the characteristic features of imprisonment in Scotland, where the vast majority of custodial sentences issued in a year (ranging anywhere between 75% and 80%) are for six months or less (Scottish Government, 2010). The current Government is pursuing an agenda to reduce the short sentence culture in Scotland, by expanding the use of community-based forms of punishment and creating a legal presumption against the use of very short stays in prison. In addition, there is also growing belief that bringing the voices of ‘users’ into policy deliberations and development are essential for the effective design and delivery as well as the credibility of public services (Weaver, 2010). Prisoners and offenders – like victims, communities, and criminal justice professionals – are a key user group of criminal justice services, and the Government has expressed interest in learning more about the perspectives of various users. In light of these developments, we sought the views of people experiencing typically brief jail sentences as well as the views of those who have experience of community-based sanctions, the intended alternative. This research was proposed to begin filling our gap in knowledge as well as to provide relevant information to policy makers and others involved in or affected by the current reform programme. This report highlights emerging themes of the analysis with a particular focus on the experience and effects of imprisonment. A forthcoming research report will focus on the experiences and effects of community sanctions. We are continuing to review interview transcripts as well as explore the relevant theoretical frameworks being used to interpret the voices of offenders and would be happy to present this work to interested groups. Details: Edinburgh: Scottish Centre for Crime & Justice Research, 2010. 35p. Source: Research Report No. 04/2010: Internet Resource: Accessed March 20, 2012 at http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/documents/Report%202010%2004%20-%20User%20Views%20of%20Punishment.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.sccjr.ac.uk/documents/Report%202010%2004%20-%20User%20Views%20of%20Punishment.pdf Shelf Number: 124589 Keywords: Alternatives to ImprisonmentCommunity Based CorrectionsPunishmentSentencing (Scotland) |
Author: Appleman, Laura I. Title: Justice in the Shadowlands: Pretrial Detention, Punishment, & the Sixth Amendment Summary: In a criminal system that tips heavily to the side of wealth and power, we routinely detain the accused in often horrifying conditions, confined in jails while still maintaining the presumption of innocence. Here, in the rotting jail cells of impoverished defendants, are the Shadowlands of Justice, where the lack of criminal procedure has produced a darkness unrelieved by much scrutiny or concern on the part of the law. This article contends that our current system of pretrial detention lies in shambles, routinely incarcerating the accused in horrifying conditions often far worse than those convicted offenders existing in prisons. Due to these punitive conditions of incarceration, pretrial detainees appear to have a cognizable claim for the denial of their Sixth Amendment jury trial right, which, at its broadest, forbids punishment for any crime unless a cross-section of the offender’s community adjudicates his crime and finds him guilty. This article argues that the spirit of the Sixth Amendment jury trial right might apply to many pretrial detainees, due to both the punishment-like conditions of their incarceration and the unfair procedures surrounding bail grants, denials and revocations. In so arguing, I expose some of the worst abuses of current procedures surrounding bail and jail in both federal and state systems. Additionally, I also propose some much needed reforms in the pretrial release world, including better oversight of the surety bond system, reducing prison overcrowding by increasing electronic bail surveillance and revising the bail hearing procedure to permit a community “bail jury” to help decide the defendant’s danger to the community. Details: Unpublished paper, 2012. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 5, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2031196 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2031196 Shelf Number: 124819 Keywords: IncarcerationJailsPretrial DetentionPunishmentSixth Amendment |
Author: Stys, Yvonne Title: Conditional Release of Federal Offenders Convicted of Criminal Organization Offences Summary: Past research on criminal organization offenders has typically centred on the nature of the offences committed and profiling those offenders. This study extended the extant knowledge of criminal organization offenders by updating past profiles, focusing on community outcomes while on conditional or statutory release, and identifying risk factors related to re-offending for these offenders. Overall, 451 offenders were identified in the Correctional Service of Canada’s (CSC) Offender Management System (OMS) as being convicted of a criminal organization offence, as outlined in Sections 467.11 to 467.13 of the Criminal Code of Canada (CCC), between April 25, 1997 and March 31, 2009. This included 418 non-Aboriginal males, 19 Aboriginal males, and 14 women offenders, with an average sentence length of 5.2 years. Most offenders convicted of a criminal organization offence had some prior involvement with the criminal justice system, with 21.5% having served a previous adult term in a federal penitentiary. Along with their current criminal organization conviction, offenders were most commonly also convicted of drug offences (59.6%) or attempted murder (8.2%). Examination of criminogenic risk, need and reintegration potential found that the typical criminal organization offender was assessed as being “medium” risk (58.1%) and “high” need (45.9%), with “high” reintegration potential (68.8%). Domain-level analyses of need illustrated that criminal organization offenders were significantly more likely to have some or considerable need in the areas of criminal attitudes and criminal associates than a matched sample of CSC offenders. Of the 451 offenders who were convicted of a criminal organization offence, 332 (73.6%) had been released to the community. The majority were released on day parole (51.8%) or statutory release (44.9%). Most (76.4%) had been employed at some point during release, and 14.8% of those released were participating in some sort of community intervention program, with the most common programs including education, Counter-Point, and living skills programs. Of those who were released, 12.7 % (42) were re-admitted to a federal institution. Most had their release revoked without a new offence (76.2%), while 14.3% (n=6) were convicted of a new offence. Survival analyses conducted to determine the risk of failure upon release found that those convicted of criminal organization offences were significantly less likely than the matched group to be returned to custody. Risk factors found to be especially predictive of readmission or re-conviction included age at release and type of release, with younger offenders and those on statutory release more likely to fail than those released at an older age or released on day or full parole. Details: Ottawa: Correctional Service of Canada, 2010. 47p. Source: Internet Resource: Research Report 2010 No R-227: Accessed April 16, 2012 at: http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/rsrch/reports/r227/r227-eng.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Canada URL: http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/text/rsrch/reports/r227/r227-eng.pdf Shelf Number: 124986 Keywords: Conditional Release (Canada)Criminal OrganizationsDay ParoleGangsOrganized CrimeParolePunishmentRecidivism |
Author: Victoria (Australia). Sentencing Advisory Council Title: Baseline Sentencing Report Summary: This report is the Sentencing Advisory Council’s response to the Attorney-General’s request for advice on the introduction of baseline sentences for specified offences. The Council was requested to provide advice on the following matters: a. the levels of baseline sentence to be legislated for offences to which the baseline sentencing regime will apply; b. whether offences additional to those committed to by the government should be included, either in the initial introduction of baseline sentences or subsequently; c. whether the legislation should provide for different levels of baseline sentence for a particular offence to be applicable in different circumstances, or for certain offences to be redefined to achieve better applicability of baseline sentences in different circumstances; d. how baseline sentences should best apply in cases involving multiple offences; e. the amendments required to relevant legislation to introduce baseline sentencing; f. the likely effects of recommendations and options put forward by the Council on sentencing levels for the relevant offences and on the numbers of persons serving custodial and non-custodial sentences; and g. any other matters the Council considers relevant. This report contains recommendations relating to proposed baseline levels as well as recommendations about how these levels should be applied in practice. The Council has formulated these recommendations in accordance with the policy objectives and intent of the terms of reference. The recommendations are closely interrelated and are all based on the implementation of the recommended baseline model. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2012. 236p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 3, 2012 at: https://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/baseline_sentencing_report.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Australia URL: https://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/baseline_sentencing_report.pdf Shelf Number: 125132 Keywords: PunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Victoria (Australia). Sentencing Advisory Council Title: Community Attitudes to Offence Seriousness Summary: The Community Attitudes to Offence Seriousness report presents key findings from community panels conducted by the Council throughout Victoria. The report outlines the 244 participants’ judgments of offence seriousness and how they weighed the factors that render different offences more or less serious. The research was conducted as part of the Maximum Penalties project, a review by the Council of the maximum penalties for 250 offences to be included in a new Crimes Bill. The findings indicate that community members have divergent views about the relative seriousness of offences. The judgment of offence seriousness is subjective and can be influenced by a range of factors. Judgments of offence seriousness by individual members of the community can vary according to each person’s experiences, perceptions and views. If the views of this group of respondents are representative of community thinking, it appears the community does not share a single set of common attitudes towards relative offence seriousness. However, despite the variation in attitudes to offence seriousness for some offences, there was consensus among participants that offences involving direct harms to people are considered the most serious. In particular, there was a high level of agreement among participants that offences involving the deliberate infliction of harm, sexually violent offences and sexual offences against children are among the most serious offences. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 108p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessede May 8, 2012 at: https://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/community_attitudes_to_offence_seriousness.pdf Year: 0 Country: Australia URL: https://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/community_attitudes_to_offence_seriousness.pdf Shelf Number: 125181 Keywords: Offense SeriousnessPublic OpinionPunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Hafemeister, Thomas L. Title: The Ninth Circle of Hell: An Eighth Amendment Analysis of Imposing Prolonged Supermax Solitary Confinement on Inmates with a Mental Illness Summary: The increasing number of inmates with a mental disorder in America’s prison population and the inadequacy of their treatment and housing conditions have been issues of growing significance in recent years. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that “over one and a quarter million people suffering from mental health problems are in prisons or jails, a figure that constitutes nearly sixty percent of the total incarcerated population in the United States.” Furthermore, a person suffering from a mental illness in the United States is three times more likely to be incarcerated than hospitalized, with as many as forty percent of those who suffer from a mental illness coming into contact with the criminal justice system every year and police officers almost twice as likely to arrest someone who appears to have a mental illness. As a result, the United States penal system has become the nation’s largest provider of mental health services, a “tragic consequence of inadequate community mental health services combined with punitive criminal justice policies.” This growth in the number of inmates with a mental disorder, combined with the recent rise of prolonged supermax solitary confinement and the increasingly punitive nature of the American penological system, has resulted in a disproportionately large number of inmates with a mental disorder being housed in supermax confinement. The harsh restrictions of this confinement often significantly exacerbate these inmates’ mental disorders or otherwise cause significant additional harm to their mental health, and preclude proper mental health treatment. Given the exacerbating conditions associated with supermax settings, this setting is not only ill-suited to the penological problems posed by the growing number of these inmates, but intensifies these problems by creating a revolving door to supermax confinement for many such inmates who may be unable to conform their behavior within the prison environment. Housing inmates with a mental disorder in prolonged supermax solitary confinement deprives them of a minimal life necessity as this setting poses a significant risk to their basic level of mental health, a need “as essential to human existence as other basic physical demands . . . .”, and thereby meets the objective element required for an Eighth Amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim. In addition, placing such inmates in supermax confinement constitutes deliberate indifference to their needs as this setting subjects this class of readily identifiable and vulnerable inmates to a present and known risk by knowingly placing them in an environment that is uniquely toxic to their condition, thereby satisfying the subjective element needed for an Eighth Amendment claim. Whether it is called torture, a violation of evolving standards of human decency, or cruel and unusual punishment, truly “a risk this grave — this shocking and indecent — simply has no place in civilized society.” Details: Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia School of Law; University of Virginia School of Medicine, 2012. 62p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 18, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2032139 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2032139 Shelf Number: 125245 Keywords: Conditions of ConfinementInmatesMental HealthPrisoners (U.S.)PunishmentSolitary ConfinementSupermax Prisons |
Author: Covey, Russell D. Title: Death in Prison: The Right Death Penalty Compromise Summary: The death penalty today provides virtually none of the benefits its advocates proffer as justifications for its existence. The tiny number of death sentences imposed, the even tinier number actually carried out, the enormous drain on public resources, and the decade-long delays that inevitably occur thoroughly undermine any deterrent or retributive benefits today’s death penalty might otherwise provide. In this paper, I argue for a compromise position that promises to better serve penal purposes and that will save states money at the same time: abandon the current dysfunctional death penalty in favor of a new ultimate sentence: death-in-prison. A sentence of death-in-prison would be exactly what it says: a prisoner sentenced to death-in-prison would remain in prison until he or she died. Death-in-prison would be a kind of hybrid sentence: like life in prison without possibility of parole (“LWOP”), death-in-prison would entail lifetime incarceration but no affirmative state action to terminate the prisoner’s life, but death-in-prison would also share several features of the conventional death penalty. As with the conventional death penalty, a special penalty trial would be needed to impose the ultimate death-in-prison sentence. In addition, persons sentenced to death-in-prison might continue to serve their sentences in special segregated “death rows.” Death-in-prison sentences would also be imposed with all the magisterial weightiness of conventional death sentences. Persons so sentenced would be told, like those in conventional death penalty states, that the punishment for their crime is the ultimate one — death. If adopted, death-in-prison would reduce criminal justice expenditures, facilitate community healing, discourage divisive and ineffective commutation campaigns, and diminish wrongful executions, without forgoing what is arguably the greatest benefit of the current death penalty: the expressive value of imposing a “death” rather than a “life” sentence on highly culpable offenders. Details: Atlanta, GA: George State University College of Law, 2012. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 20, 2012 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2080076 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2080076 Shelf Number: 125388 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath PenaltyPrisonsPunishment |
Author: Ramiriz, Mary Kreiner Title: Criminal Affirmance: Going Beyond the Deterrence Paradigm to Examine the Social Meaning of Declining Prosecution of Elite Crime Summary: Recent financial scandals and the relative paucity of criminal prosecutions against elite actors that benefited from the crisis in response suggest a new reality in the criminal law system: some wrongful actors appear to be above the law and immune from criminal prosecution. As such, the criminal prosecutorial system affirms much of the wrongdoing giving rise to the crisis. This leaves the same elites undisturbed at the apex of the financial sector, and creates perverse incentives for any successors. Their incumbency in power results in massive deadweight losses due to the distorted incentives they now face. Further, this undermines the legitimacy of the rule of law and encourages even more lawlessness among the entire population, as the declination of prosecution advertises the profitability of crime. These considerations transcend deterrence as well as retribution as a traditional basis for criminal punishment. Affirmance is far more costly and dangerous with respect to the crimes of powerful elites that control large organizations than can be accounted for under traditional notions of deterrence. Few limits are placed on a prosecutor’s discretionary decision about whom to prosecute, and many factors against prosecution take hold, especially in resource-intensive white collar crime prosecutions. This article asserts that prosecutors should not decline prosecution in these circumstances without considering its potential affirmance of crime. Otherwise, the profitability of crime promises massive future losses. Details: Topeka, KS: Washington University School of Law, 2012. 87p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 26, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2039785 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2039785 Shelf Number: 125404 Keywords: Elite CrimeFinancial CrimesProsecutorial DiscretionPunishmentWhite-Collar Crime |
Author: Bushway, Shawn D. Title: Sentencing Guidelines and Judicial Discretion: Quasi-experimental Evidence from Human Calculation Errors Summary: There is a debate about whether advisory non-binding sentencing guidelines affect the sentences outcomes of individuals convicted in jurisdictions with this sentencing framework. Identifying the impact of sentencing guidelines is a difficult empirical problem because court actors may have preferences for sentencing severity that are correlated with the preferences that are outlined in the guidelines. But, in Maryland, ten percent of the recommended sentences computed in the guideline worksheets contain calculation errors. We use this unique source of quasi-experimental variation to quantify the extent to which sentencing guidelines influence policy outcomes. Among drug offenses, we find that the direct impact of the guidelines is roughly ½ the size of the overall correlation between recommendations and outcomes. For violent offenses, we find the same ½ discount for sentence recommendations that are higher than they should have been, but more responsiveness to recommendations that are too low. We find no evidence that the guidelines themselves directly affect discretion for property offenders, perhaps because judges generally have substantial experience with property cases and therefore do not rely on the errant information. Sentences are more sensitive to both accurate and inaccurate recommendations for crimes that occur less frequently and have more complicated sentencing. This suggests that when the court has more experience, the recommendations have less influence. More tentative findings suggest that, further down the decision chain, parole boards counteract the remaining influence of the guidelines. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2011. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper Series; Working Paper 16961: Accessed July 2, 2012 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16961 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16961 Shelf Number: 125444 Keywords: Judicial DiscretionPunishmentSentencingSentencing Guidelines (U.S.) |
Author: Northern Ireland Criminal Justice Inspection Title: The Management of life and Indeterminate Sentence Prisoners in Northern Ireland Summary: The management of life sentence prisoners is essential for public protection and public confidence in the criminal justice system. It is important that life sentence prisoners are subject to thorough assessment and testing before they can be considered for release as they have been convicted of the most serious offences. This inspection examined progress in implementing the recommendations of Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland’s 2009 review1 of how life prisoners were prepared for release. We also assessed the Probation Board for Northern Ireland’s (PBNI) supervision of released life prisoners in the community. The 2009 CJI review made a total of 18 recommendations: 13 for the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) and five for the Parole Commissioners for Northern Ireland (PCNI). There were no recommendations for the PBNI. This inspection does not revisit matters that were addressed in CJI’s recent report on corporate governance in the Parole Commissioners.2 It does however, deal with the administration of the PCNI’s business and their operational engagement with other agencies. On this occasion Inspectors found strengths in a number of important areas. They were as follows: • the legislative basis for managing indeterminate sentenced prisoners in Northern Ireland was good, and had been informed by serious pitfalls that arose in England and Wales. The PBNI and the PCNI had comprehensive rules and standards to guide Probation Officers and Parole Commissioners in the detail of their work; • the NIPS had improved their response across a number of areas, including: - the NIPS arrangements for indeterminate sentence prisoners to progress and regress within the prison system were more systematic and transparent than in 2008; and - a dedicated lifer house at Maghaberry Prison was providing a better environment for many of the prisoners held there; • the Parole Commissioners administration and operational level contact with criminal justice agencies was much improved. This was leading to better case management; and • life licensees were being carefully supervised in the community by the PBNI. The inspection report did find a number of areas for improvement: • the NIPS Prisoner Assessment Unit (PAU) had serious problems and needed fundamental re-design. No effective action had been taken in respect of previous NIPS internal reviews or inspection recommendations into the PAU, and it was suspended in April 2011 when things reached crisis point. A pre-release scheme based at a step-down facility is a very important element of preparing life prisoners for release and continuing suspension of the PAU was a major problem; • current methods of delivering psychology services within the NIPS were not greatly valued. There were not enough psychologists to undertake all the forensic assessments, and while Offending Behaviour Programme (OBP) delivery had improved, external substitution was required and was proving costly; • there was scope to further develop prison lifer regimes, for example, for staff to actively engage with lifers at an earlier stage in their sentence, to better identify and respond to the needs of potential lifers, and to transfer more lifers to Magilligan Prison; and • the PBNI needed better access to victims’ relatives in order to offer a valuable service. This report makes a total of 14 recommendations. The three main strategic recommendations are for the NIPS and others to urgently establish a new step-down facility for lifers; to reconfigure the respective roles of the PBNI and the NIPS psychology; and to improve delivery of OBPs in the prisons. If properly implemented these should significantly enhance the quality of risk management and prisoner resettlement, while also delivering financial savings. While there were areas in which operational practice can be significantly improved, CJI’s overall conclusion is that indeterminate sentence prisoners were being well-managed in Northern Ireland, both in prison and while under supervision in the community. The improvements we recommend should be quite manageable in a small jurisdiction which has singular prison, probation and parole organisations. Details: Belfast: Criminal Justice Inspection Northern Ireland, 2012. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 9, 2012 at: http://www.dojni.gov.uk/de/index/ni-prison-service/nips-publications/nips-cjini-inspection-reports/cjini-report---the-management-of-life-and-indeterminate-sentence-prisoners-in-northern-ireland-july-2012.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.dojni.gov.uk/de/index/ni-prison-service/nips-publications/nips-cjini-inspection-reports/cjini-report---the-management-of-life-and-indeterminate-sentence-prisoners-in-northern-ireland-july-2012.pdf Shelf Number: 125521 Keywords: Life ImprisonmentLife SentencesPrisonersPunishmentSentencing (Northern Ireland) |
Author: Bandyopadhyay, Siddhartha Title: Acquisitive Crime: Imprisonment, Detection and Social Factors Summary: This report measures the impact of several factors determining crime rates in 43 Police Force Areas in England and Wales between 1993 and 2008. They use new local sentencing data released by the Ministry of Justice following a Freedom of Information request. The report estimates that a one-month increase of the average sentence length for each offence type in a typical year would prevent, in the following year: •4,800 recorded burglaries •4,700 recorded frauds The report also estimates the effect of a radical change in the current policy of early release at the half-way stage. If offenders were made to serve two-thirds of their sentence in custody by default rather than the current half, England and Wales would see in the following year: •21,000 fewer recorded burglaries •11,000 fewer recorded frauds Details: London: Civitas, 2012. 15p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 11, 2012 at: http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crimeanalysis2012.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.civitas.org.uk/crime/crimeanalysis2012.pdf Shelf Number: 125538 Keywords: Crime RatesImprisonment (U.K.)PunishmentSentencing |
Author: Lai, Gloria Title: Drugs, Crime and Punishment: Proportionality of Sentencing for Drug Offences Summary: Proportionality is one of the key principles of the rule of law aiming to protect people from cruel or inhumane treatment. The principle has been established in international and regional human rights agreements and many countries have adopted reflections of it in their constitution or penal code. Its application to drug-related offences is firstly the responsibility of the legislators, in defining the level of penalisation of certain behaviours. The level of penalisation should be determined according to the severity of damage that a certain behaviour causes to others or to society. Download the briefing (PDF) In the second instance, the courts and judges have to apply the principle of proportionality in defining the appropriate punishment for a particular case; and finally, proportionality also plays a role in the execution of this punishment. This briefing paper looks at specific criteria of proportionality developed in the context of drug control and describes a number of recent attempts to recalibrate the often grossly disproportionate nature of current drug laws and their enforcement around the world. The core requirement of proportionality is that an individual’s rights and freedoms may only be limited to the extent that it is appropriate and necessary for achieving a legitimate aim. Such standards further require that of the range of available options for restricting an individual’s rights and freedoms in order to achieve a legitimate aim, the option that is least intrusive to fundamental rights should be adopted. In the context of drug offences, a legitimate aim of punishment should correspond with the basic objective of the UN drug control conventions: to improve the health and welfare of mankind. As a result, a proportionate sentence for a drug offence should be determined in accordance with the potential harm that a controlled substance may cause to the health and welfare of a community. The principle of proportionality is understood in international law as an essential means for safeguarding fundamental human rights. Unfortunately, its application has often been limited to scaling the severity of punishment without questioning in principle the need to inflict a punishment at all – a problematic limitation, especially in the context of the contemporary drug policy debate where punishment is no longer assumed to be a necessary response for all drug-related activities. Applying the principle of proportionality to drug control should transcend any predisposition towards punishment per se. The trend towards decriminalisation of possession for personal use is a clear example that abstaining from punishment may well be the most appropriate outcome of a proportionality check of drug laws and sentencing practices for certain drug-related activities. RECOMMENDATIONS • Governments should review their laws, sentencing guidelines and practices for drug offences to evaluate their compliance with existing standards of proportionality. • A proportionality check should consider as an option that activities relating to certain acts or substances may be dealt with outside the realm of criminal law. For example, the possession, purchase or cultivation of drugs for personal use should not constitute offences. • Proportionate sentencing frameworks should distinguish between the type of drugs and the scale of the illicit activity, as well as the role and motivation of the offender : serious or organised traffickers; micro-traffickers (low-level dealers or smugglers); people dependent on drugs; and people who use drugs occasionally (or ‘recreationally’). • For drug-related offences committed due to drug dependency or to meet basic economic needs, services such as treatment, education, aftercare, rehabilitation or social integration should be offered as more humane, effective and proportionate alternatives to conviction. • For micro-trafficking offences, reduced or provisional sentences, as well as alternatives to imprisonment, should be promoted. The socio-economic circumstances in which an offence was committed and the financial gains of the offender should be considered as important mitigating factors. • Ensuring the consistent application of proportionate sentencing laws and guidelines should include addressing institutional biases against drug offenders, for example amongst judges. • The death penalty for drug offences should be entirely abolished. Details: Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2012. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Series on Legislative Reform of Drug Policies Nr. 20: Accessed July 20, 2012 at: http://www.druglawreform.info/images/stories/documents/dlr20.pdf Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.druglawreform.info/images/stories/documents/dlr20.pdf Shelf Number: 125695 Keywords: Drug OffendersDrug OffensesPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Mahoney, Barry Title: The Ventura Day Fine Pilot Project: A Report on the Planning Process and the Decision to Terminate the Project, With Recommendations Concerning Future Development of Fines Policy Summary: A day-fine is a monetary sanction that can be used as a sentence in criminal cases. Initially developed in Europe, the day fine is based on a simple concept: that punishment by a fine should be proportionate to the seriousness of the offense and should have similar impact—in terms of economic "sting"—upon persons with differing financial resources. Thus, day fine amounts are typically set through a two-step process that determines the severity of the punishment separately from assessment of a specific dollar amount. First, the number of day-fine units for the offense for which the defendant has been convicted is determined, by reference to a scale that ranks offenses according to their gravity. Second, the amount of the fine is determined by multiplying the number of day fine units by a portion of the defendant's net daily income. By contrast, fines in most American courts are typically set on a "tariff" basis— i.e., imposition of a single fixed amount (or an amount that is within a narrow range), based solely on the perceived seriousness of the offense. Under a tariff fine system, there is little or no variance in fine amount to take into account an offender's income level or assets. The result, according to critics of the tariff system, is that fines are all too frequently set at amounts that are too high for poor defendants to pay yet too low to be a meaningful punishment or deterrent for affluent offenders. In 1991 the California Legislature enacted a statute authorizing In 1991 the California Legislature enacted a statute authorizing the California Judicial Council to establish a pilot program in one county, to test the feasibility of using day fines as a sanction for misdemeanor offenses. In enacting this law, the Legislature [F]ine punishment should be proportionate to the severity of the offense but equally impact individuals with differing financial resources . . . . [T]he implementation of a pilot program in California which is designed to use a [day-fine system similar to those used in Sweden, West Germany, and, experimentally, in Staten Island, NY and Phoenix, AZ)] would serve as a test for a fairer method in California of dispensing criminal justice and as a program which could possibly help alleviate the presently overcrowded conditions of our county jails. For more than a year following enactment of the authorizing legislation, no court could be found that was willing to undertake the project. Then, in the spring of 1993, state-level judicial leaders asked the judges of the Ventura Municipal Court to consider becoming the pilot court. The judges agreed, contingent upon approval by the County's Board of Supervisors. On April 27, 1993 the Board of Supervisors voted to approve the project with one important proviso—assurance by the state that participation in the project would not result in a loss of revenue to the county. Initial planning of the project began in June 1993, and involved a broad range of policymakers and practitioners involved in the administration of criminal justice in Ventura County. By mid-1994, basic plans for implementation of the project had been developed and the California legislature had amended the authorizing legislation to address a number of issues identified during the first year of the planning process. A target date of January 19, 1995, was set for initial implementation of the project. During the fall of 1994, however, detailed planning for implementation came to a sudden halt and funding earmarked for assistance in implementation was placed on hold. Early in 1995, the pilot project was officially terminated. This report has three main purposes: (1) to describe the sixteen month Phase I planning process (June 1, 1993-September 30, 1994); (2) to examine the reasons why the project was terminated; and (3) to assess what has been learned from this experience and develop recommendations concerning future development of policy with respect to the use of fines as criminal sanctions. declared that: Details: Denver, CO: The Justice Management Institute, 1995. 79p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 25, 2012 at: http://www.jmijustice.org/publications/ventura-day-fine-project-final-report-may-1995 Year: 1995 Country: United States URL: http://www.jmijustice.org/publications/ventura-day-fine-project-final-report-may-1995 Shelf Number: 125780 Keywords: CourtsDay FinesFines (California)Punishment |
Author: Beckenkamp, Martin Title: First Impressions Engender (Anti-)Social Behaviour An Experimental Test of a Component of Broken Windows Theory Summary: Broken Windows: the metaphor has changed New York and Los Angeles. Yet it is far from undisputed whether the broken windows policy was causal for reducing crime. In a series of lab experiments we put one component of the theory to the test. We show that first impressions are causal for cooperativeness in three different institutional environments: absent targeted sanctions; with decentralised punishment; with decentralised punishment qualified by the risk of counterpunishment. In all environments, the effect of first impressions cannot be explained with, but adds to, participants’ initial level of benevolence. Mere impression management is not strong enough to stabilise cooperation though. It must be combined with some risk of sanctions. Details: Bonn, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, 2009. 37p. Source: Internet Resource: Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Bonn 2009/21: Accessed August 3, 2012 at: http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2009_21online.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2009_21online.pdf Shelf Number: 125846 Keywords: Broken Windows PolicingBroken Windows TheoryNeighborhoods and CrimePunishment |
Author: Harvard Law School. Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice Title: Three Strikes: The Wrong Way to Justice. A Report on Massachusetts' Proposed Habitual Offender Legislation Summary: This report provides critical information to the public and to Massachusetts state legislators about the likely long-term impact of the proposed changes to Massachusetts’ Habitual Offender Law (S 2080 AND H 3818). These changes are currently being debated in the Legislature’s Conference Committee. At a time when many states are moving to repeal or amend their “three strikes” laws in order to take a more balanced approach to public safety, Massachusetts has inexplicably chosen to move in the “wrong direction.” The report offers a detailed analysis of the most problematic provisions of the bills that are almost certain to cost taxpayers far more than originally estimated, increase the likelihood of unnecessarily lengthy prison sentences for low-level offenders, further burden an already severely overcrowded prison system—putting employees and prisoners at risk—and divert precious state resources away from education, basic services, infrastructure improvement, and job creation. The legislation will almost certainly further exacerbate the stark racial disparities that characterize the state’s prison population. There is still time for the Commonwealth to take a different approach to public safety. Justice Reinvestment is a project of the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center. It can offer Massachusetts a consensus-building, data-driven process for reducing the state’s prison population without sacrificing public safety. This approach has been effectively employed in seventeen other states, including many of our New England neighbors. Details: Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, 2012. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 8, 2012 at: http://charleshamiltonhouston.org/assets/documents/publications/CHHIRJ%203%20Strikes%20Report-Merged.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://charleshamiltonhouston.org/assets/documents/publications/CHHIRJ%203%20Strikes%20Report-Merged.pdf Shelf Number: 125905 Keywords: Habitual OffendersPunishmentSentencingThree Strikes Laws |
Author: Ritchie, Donald Title: How Much Does Imprisonment Protect the Community Through Incapacitation? Summary: Sentences in Victoria may be imposed for one or more of the following purposes (Sentencing Act 1991 (Vic) s 5(1)): 1. punishment; 2. denunciation; 3. rehabilitation; 4. deterrence; and 5. community protection. As part of the Council’s statutory function of conducting research and disseminating information on sentencing matters, this paper examines the effectiveness of imprisonment in achieving community protection through incapacitative methods. While deterrence and rehabilitation also seek to protect the community from further offending, incapacitation is a means of protecting the community by removing or reducing the physical capacity of an offender to offend. The most obvious form of incapacitation is a sentence of imprisonment. However, there are other forms of limited or partial incapacitation, including curfews and restrictions on movement (such as home detention), monitoring and reporting requirements as well as forms of drug therapy. This paper focuses on imprisonment, as it is the most severe, iconic and resource-intensive form of incapacitation. It is the form most commonly assumed to be effective and is the focus of most empirical research into this subject. The incapacitative effect of imprisonment presents a compelling logic: while in prison, an offender cannot offend in the community. Consequently, the incapacitation of an offender may be expected to prevent crime that an offender would commit were he or she at liberty in the community. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, Victoria, 2012, 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Matters: Accessed August 8, 2012 at: https://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/how_much_does_imprisonment_protect_the_community_through_incapacitation_0.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Australia URL: https://sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/files/how_much_does_imprisonment_protect_the_community_through_incapacitation_0.pdf Shelf Number: 125908 Keywords: ImprisonmentIncapacitationPunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Gerber, Monica Title: Retribution as Revenge and Retribution as Just Deserts Summary: Public attitudes towards law-breakers shape the tone and tenor of crime-control policy. The desire for retribution seems to be the main motivation underpinning punitive attitudes towards sentencing, yet there is some confusion in the research literature over what retribution really means. In this paper we distinguish between retribution as revenge (as the desire to punish criminal offenders to retaliate a past wrong by making the offender suffer) and retribution as just deserts (as the preference to restore justice through proportional compensation from the offender). Results from an online survey (n=176) provide evidence of two distinct dimensions of retribution, but we also show that these two dimensions have different ideological and motivational antecedents, and have different consequences in terms of the treatment of criminal offender. We find that retribution as revenge is associated with the motivation to enforce status boundaries with criminal offenders, as well as ideological preferences for power and dominance (as expressed by social dominance orientation) and in-group conformity (as expressed by right-wing authoritarianism). Endorsement of retribution as revenge also predicts the support of harsh punishment and the willingness to deny fair procedures. By contrast, retribution as just deserts is mainly predicted by a value restoration motive and by right-wing authoritarianism. After controlling for revenge, retribution as just deserts predicts support for procedural justice in the criminal courts. We conclude with the idea that beliefs about proportionality and compensation work as a buffer against the negative effects of revenge. Details: London: London School of Economics & Political Science - Methodology Institute, 2012. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Working Paper; Accessed September 21, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2136237 Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2136237 Shelf Number: 126397 Keywords: Just DesertsProcedural JusticePunishmentRetributionRevengeSentencing |
Author: LaChance, Daniel Title: Condemned To Be Free: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States, 1945-Present Summary: This dissertation examines the waning of capital punishment in the immediate post-World War II period and its resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s. Some scholars understand the revival of the death penalty in the United States as part of a socially conservative backlash in a society undergoing immense social change. Qualifying and building upon these accounts, I argue that the migration of Americans‘ sense of political community away from the public sphere and a concomitant resurgence of individualism in the post-World War II period played an under-examined role in the growth of the American demand for capital punishment. State killing, I show, was compatible with a cultural consensus that social problems could be solved only by individual acts of will and not by large-scale social engineering. The revival of the death penalty reflected Americans‘ discomfort with the way that modern, utilitarian approaches to punishment, which peaked in the years after World War II, failed to take individuals seriously, prioritizing social goals over individual autonomy. In this context, capital punishment legitimized, rather than simply masked, the state‘s withdrawal of its claim to being the central provider of social, economic, and personal security. And it denied, rather than endorsed, the state‘s role as a dispenser of traditional morality. Contradictory understandings of the role of the killing state as normatively and descriptively strong and weak worked, moreover, to sustain the practice of capital punishment in the United States. Details: Minneapolis, MN: Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota, 2011. 228p. Source: Dissertation: Internet Resource: Accessed September 23, 2012 at http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/101797/1/LaChance_umn_0130E_11760.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/101797/1/LaChance_umn_0130E_11760.pdf Shelf Number: 126409 Keywords: Capital PunishmentDeath PenaltyPublic OpinionPunishment |
Author: Starr, Sonja B. Title: Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases Summary: This paper assesses gender disparities in federal criminal cases. It finds large gender gaps favoring women throughout the sentence length distribution (averaging over 60%), conditional on arrest offense, criminal history, and other pre-charge observables. Female arrestees are also significantly likelier to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted. Prior studies have reported much smaller sentence gaps because they have ignored the role of charging, plea-bargaining, and sentencing fact-finding in producing sentences. Most studies control for endogenous severity measures that result from these earlier discretionary processes and use samples that have been winnowed by them. I avoid these problems by using a linked dataset tracing cases from arrest through sentencing. Using decomposition methods, I show that most sentence disparity arises from decisions at the earlier stages, and use the rich data to investigate causal theories for these gender gaps. Details: East Lansing, MI: University of Michigan Law School, 2012. 41p. Source: Internet Resource: University of Michigan Law and Economics Research Paper, No. 12-018: Accessed September 27, 2012 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002 Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2144002 Shelf Number: 126473 Keywords: DiscretionDiscriminationGenderPunishmentSentencing Disparities |
Author: George, Thomas P. Title: Domestic Violence Sentencing Conditions and Recidivism Summary: This study examined the types of sentence conditions imposed on domestic violence offenders, the combination of conditions that formed offenders’ sentences, and the relationship between the type of sentence received and recidivism. A total of 66,759 individuals charged with a domestic violence offense from 2004 through 2006 in Washington State courts were included in the study, 41% of whom had conditions imposed at sentencing. Over 100 different types of conditions were used during the study period, which were then reduced to 14 condition categories. Offenders received, on average, over six different conditions. Proscriptions, fines, jail, and probation were the most common conditions imposed, each included in over half of all sentences. The combinations of conditions within sentences were then examined, and ten types of sentences were selected for analysis. Logistic regression was used to predict both domestic violence recidivism and any type of subsequent offense, controlling for a number of offender and case characteristics. Results indicated that, when compared to offenders who received sentences involving only fines and/or proscriptions, those who also complied with either probation, victim-oriented treatment, or probation and treatment had lower odds of committing another domestic violence offense during the five-year follow-up period. Any sentence that included a jail term along with fines and/or proscriptions was associated with higher odds of domestic violence recidivism. Results were similar when examining recidivism in general with one exception; sentences that included anger management interventions were also associated with lower odds of recidivating. Offenders who completed state-certified domestic violence treatment, on the other hand, did not have significantly lower or higher odds of recidivating when compared to offenders who received only fines and/or proscriptions. Results suggest a need to re-examine how domestic violence offenders are sentenced as well as whether current models of domestic violence treatment are effective in preventing further violence. Details: Olympia, WA: Washington State Center for Court Research, Administrative Office of the Courts, 2012. 31p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 27, 2012 at: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/sac/nchip/DV_sentencing_conditions_recidivism.pdf Year: 2012 Country: United States URL: http://www.ofm.wa.gov/sac/nchip/DV_sentencing_conditions_recidivism.pdf Shelf Number: 126477 Keywords: Abusive MenDomestic Violence Offenders (Washington, State)Family ViolencePunishmentRecidivismSentencingViolence Against Women |
Author: Haas, Gordon Title: Life Without Parole: A Reconsideration Summary: In Massachusetts, the maximum penalty for murder is life in prison without the possibility of a parole (hereinafter LWOP). Often, when murder is discussed, the most heinous or bizarre murders take center stage, as if their perpetrators, the Charles Mansons or Ted Bundys, are representative of all those serving life sentences. The nearly one thousand men and women serving LWOP in Massachusetts, however, include those who were juveniles at the time of the murder, those who participated in a joint enterprise in which another person committed the actual murder, as well as some who have served decades in prison and who no longer pose a threat to society by reason of rehabilitation and/or age. A considerable number of these thousand individuals both recognize and are repentant of the suffering they have caused, and have done the difficult work needed to transform themselves into, and become agents of, constructive change for others. There should be no gainsaying that any killing of a human being is horrendous. As with all killing, murder, the unlawful taking of a life, sows pain and suffering much beyond the immediate victim or victims. A murder rips through, and often rips apart, close families and friends of the victim, and most often does the same to the murderer’s family and friends. Murders also impact less close associates of the victim and of the offender as well; murder destroys a part of the social fabric of the broader community. It is impossible to deny these impacts. Nothing can absolve the murderer of the responsibility for the consequences of this act, as nothing can reverse that loss of life. All affected survivors are forced to come to terms with the murder, its consequences, and suffer the voids which murder creates. This process can take years, often a lifetime. That said, life is not frozen at the point of a murder. People move on, struggling to self-mend, perhaps even those who perceive themselves as to be frozen by that act. The community is better served by recognizing that movement and embracing such healing in perpetrators and their families and friends as it intends to do in the families, friends and associates of the victims. It is in that healing that the community’s social fabric can be rewoven. There is substantive literature addressing the devastation of murder and the impact on survivors. This paper only intends to address one aspect immediately impacting certain individuals—the murderers—as well as the community, which aspect has not received such attention: the punishment of life-without-parole. This paper argues for the introduction of a parole hearing after twenty-five years of incarceration for those sentenced to LWOP as a way to recognize the healing which can occur in all people, even those who have committed murder. Details: Norfolk, MA: Criminal Justice Policy Coalition, Norfolk Lifers Group, 2010. 51p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed october 9, 2012 at: http://www.realcostofprisons.org/materials/Haas_LWOP.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://www.realcostofprisons.org/materials/Haas_LWOP.pdf Shelf Number: 126652 Keywords: Life ImprisonmentLife Sentences (U.S.)Punishment |
Author: Jacobson, Jessica Title: Public Attitudes to the Sentencing of Drug Offences Summary: This study explored public attitudes to the sentencing of a variety of drug offences. The study used a qualitative methodology, involving focus groups conducted in various locations across England and Wales. A short pre-discussion questionnaire was also used to collect basic demographic information on participants and to gauge early views on the sentencing of drug offences. The findings provide valuable insights into public reactions to this issue, although they should not be regarded as necessarily representative of the views of the wider population. The key findings from the research are presented below. • Participants did not generally wish to see custodial penalties for drug possession offences; nor did they necessarily want substantial custodial penalties for small-scale supply and small to medium-scale importation offences. • However, they wanted lengthy custodial sentences for medium to large-scale supply and large-scale importation offences. • They tended to favour sentences that were more punitive than current practice, although this may have been a function of the group dynamics within the focus groups; however, their preferences for medium-scale importation offences were often more lenient. • The punitiveness of attitudes towards serious supply and importation offences reflects a focus on the harm caused by this kind of offending, which was expressed through concerns with: - the distinction between possession offences and other kinds of drug offences; - the impact of different types of drug on users; and - the quantity of the drug(s) involved in a given offence. • Overall, notions of offender culpability played a lesser part than harm in participants’ sentencing preferences; nevertheless offences were deemed to be substantially more serious where: - the offender made a large amount of profit from the offence; - the offender had previous convictions; or - minors were exploited in the offence. • Participants expressed a wide range of views on the relevance of personal factors that may aggravate or mitigate a sentence, and some were resistant to the general principle of taking the offender’s personal circumstances into account in sentencing. Details: London: Sentencing Council, 2011. 77p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Council Research Series 01/11; http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/Drugs_research_report.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/Drugs_research_report.pdf Shelf Number: 126754 Keywords: Drug OffendersDrug OffensesPublic Attitudes (U.K.)Public OpinionPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Dawes, William Title: Attitudes to Guilty Plea Sentence Reductions Summary: This report presents findings from research Ipsos MORI carried out for the Sentencing Council to examine attitudes towards guilty plea sentence reductions. It consisted of a face-to-face quantitative survey with the general public, discussion groups with the general public, interviews with those who had been a victim of crime or who had witnessed a crime and interviews with offenders. Key findings include: The public often perceive sentencing as too lenient. They feel that too often it can work in favour of offenders, rather than providing justice for victims. For the public, sentence lengths given to offenders are an important indicator of justice being served. The public in this research had limited knowledge of the workings of the Criminal Justice System (CJS), especially sentencing, and they reported their views as being highly influenced by the media and word of mouth. Whilst the quantitative survey revealed a degree of familiarity with the principles of guilty plea sentence reductions, qualitative discussions indicated awareness was based on the broad concept of sentences receiving reductions, with participants less certain of the role guilty pleas played in determining sentence outcome. Therefore, the public were generally unaware of the nuances of the guilty plea reductions principle and initially tended to be generally unsupportive of reductions in sentencing for those entering a guilty plea. Those who had a better understanding of the system and how it works were more likely to report confidence in the system and in sentencing policies. As such those who had been a victim or who had witnessed a crime were more likely to be supportive of sentence reductions than a broader general public audience. While the general public’s view of justice being served centred largely on the sentence handed down, victims and witnesses tended to have a more holistic view. They gave consideration to offender circumstances and whether the punishment allowed for rehabilitation and support as well as closure for victims and witnesses. For many, re-offending was a key concern and so there was support for punishments that acted as a deterrent and changed offender behaviour. Indeed, both the general public and victims and witnesses thought that persistent offenders, through their actions, have forfeited their right to a reduction. The public assume that the key motivation for the guilty plea sentence reduction is to reduce resources (time and money), but they prefer the idea of it as something which helps prevent victims having to give evidence and experiencing emotional trauma whilst doing this. There is a strong sense that the drive for cost savings should not impact on a system effectively delivering justice. There is more support for sentence reductions if the guilty plea is entered at an early point. The benefits – both economic and emotional – are more tangible at this point, and both the public and victims and witnesses are less likely to feel that the offender can ‘play the system’. On the other hand offenders say they are less likely to enter an early plea, but prefer to weigh up the evidence against them first. There is generally little support for a reduction for a guilty plea made at the court door or once the trial has started amongst the public and many victims and witnesses, although the small number of victims of more serious offences included in this study often felt that reductions at this stage could be acceptable. There was an indication that the prospect and reality of attending court proved more traumatic for this group, and they therefore may be more open to late reductions. For the general public, there was weak support for higher levels of reductions beyond the current guideline range of up to 33% and a fifth (20%) felt that there should be no reduction at all. Supporting this, when survey respondents were asked whether the reduction should be increased from a third if an offender pleads guilty at the earliest opportunity, 58% disagreed and only 22% agreed. A small number of victims of more serious offences were, however, more supportive if it spared them having to testify in court. The public (and some victims and witnesses) do not like the idea of a universal approach to reductions – in fact, the public in the survey were less likely to say that an offender pleading guilty to an offence should be given a more lenient sentence in most/all cases (21%) and more likely to say it never should result in a more lenient sentence (29%). They instead think that this should depend on certain factors/circumstances relating to the offender or offence type. For instance, views were often much more punitive towards violent crimes as opposed to those against businesses, and likewise towards repeat offenders versus first time offenders. The language and discourse of the reductions did not sit well with people. They were very resistant to the idea of an offender being ‘rewarded’ for admitting they were guilty of an offence; rather they spontaneously suggested that defendants should be further penalised for not admitting guilt if they are subsequently found guilty. Offenders in this study were often unsure what their sentence was likely to be when weighing up how to plead, and felt that decisions on sentence lengths were inconsistent. This made it difficult for them to calculate exactly what the impact of a set reduction to their sentence would be. Offenders also questioned the extent to which reductions for early guilty pleas were actually being applied, with a number feeling that it was very difficult to understand exactly how their final sentence had been determined. However, when probed on the level of reductions, offenders in this study were broadly content with the current discount of a third for an early guilty plea, and felt that without the reduction there was little incentive to admit guilt. The main factor determining whether or not offenders plead guilty was the likelihood of being found guilty at trial. The key ‘tipping point’ here was when offenders realised that the chances of them being found guilty were greater than being found not guilty. Weight of evidence and advice from solicitors/barristers were pivotal in offenders’ assessments of whether they were likely to be found guilty and therefore crucial in determining when a guilty plea was entered. There was little evidence from the research that increasing the reduction further would encourage more offenders to plead guilty at an earlier stage, given the reduction only becomes a driver of entering a guilty plea at such a point that an offender considers a conviction to be the likely outcome. Details: London: Sentencing Council, 2011. 89p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Council Research Series 02/11; Accessed October 19, 2012 at: http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/Attitudes_to_Guilty_Plea_Sentence_Reductions_(web).pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/Attitudes_to_Guilty_Plea_Sentence_Reductions_(web).pdf Shelf Number: 126755 Keywords: Guilty Pleas (U.K.)Public AttitudesPublic OpinionPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Hunnicutt, Wendell Allen Title: Romilly and Rush: The Parallel Paths of Penal Reform in Britain and America, 1780 - 1830 Summary: After the end of the American Revolution, efforts were made in both American and in Britain to alter the penal code in order to reduce the number of offenses that carried the death penalty and to replace capital punishment with incarceration in a penitentiary. In Pennsylvania, Dr. Benjamin Rush achieved apparent success in this matter since, by the time of his death, the local jail was well on its way to being transformed into the total penal institution recognizable in the nineteenth-century penitentiary. Sir Samuel Romilly, on the other hand, faced relentless opposition in Parliament in his efforts to repeal the numerous statutes that constituted England’s “Bloody Code.” The revolutionary spirit in America allowed for the alteration in the penal code and the experimentation with less severe forms of punishment. In Britain, the spirit of revolution seemed too real and threatening to the entrenched elites and therefore efforts to alleviate the law’s harshness came to naught as long as Napoleon Bonaparte remained in power. By the 1820s American interests had changed and penal reform slowed; in Britain, the absence of revolutionary threat allowed Britons to establish a police force and to relax their harsh laws. Details: Arlington, TX: University of Texas at Arlington, 2010. 174p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed October 19, 2012 at: http://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/handle/10106/5134/Hunnicutt_uta_2502D_10749.pdf?sequence=1 Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/handle/10106/5134/Hunnicutt_uta_2502D_10749.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 126762 Keywords: Benjamin RushCapital Punishment (U.S., U.K.)Correctional Reform MovementsDeath PenaltyPrison ReformPunishmentSamuel Romilly |
Author: Smits, Jan Title: If You Shoot My Dog, I Ma Kill Yo' Cat: An Enquiry Into the Principles of Hip-Hop Law Summary: This article investigates how the law is perceived in hip-hop music. Lawyers solve concrete legal problems on basis of certain presuppositions about morality, legality and justice that are not always shared by non-lawyers. This is why a thriving part of academic scholarship deals with what we can learn about laymen’s perceptions of law from studying novels (law and literature) or other types of popular culture. This article offers an inventory and analysis of how the law is perceived in a representative sample of hip-hop lyrics from 5 US artists (Eminem, 50 Cent, Dr. Dre, Ludacris and Jay-Z) and 6 UK artists (Ms Dynamite, Dizzee Rascal, Plan B, Tinie Tempah, Professor Green and N-Dubz). After a methodological part, the article identifies four principles of hip-hop law. First, criminal justice is based on the age-old adage of an eye for an eye, reflecting the desire to retaliate proportionately. Second, self-justice and self-government reign supreme in a hip-hop version of the law: instead of waiting for a presumably inaccurate community response, it is allowed to take the law into one’s own hands. Third, there is an overriding obligation to respect others within the hip-hop community: any form of ‘dissing’ will be severely punished. Finally, the law is seen as an instrument to be used to one’s advantage where possible, and to be ignored if not useful. All four principles can be related to a view of the law as a way to survive in the urban jungle. Details: Maastricht, Netherlands: Maastricht University, 2012. 17p. Source: Working Paper Series: Internet Resource: Accessed October 22, 2012 at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2158178 Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2158178 Shelf Number: 126781 Keywords: Law and Popular CultureMusic, Hip-HopPunishment |
Author: Nicholls, Carol McNaughton Title: Attitudes to Sentencing Sexual Offences Summary: This report outlines findings of research conducted by Natcen Social Research on victim/survivor1 and public attitudes to sentencing sexual offences. This research was conducted on behalf of the Sentencing Council for England and Wales, to inform their current review of guidelines on sentencing sexual offences, and in accordance with their statutory duties to “produce analysis and research on sentencing”, “promote a clear, fair and consistent approach to sentencing”, and “work to improve public confidence in sentencing.”2 An evidence review was completed as phase one of the research, and suggested that there was a need for up-to-date and methodologically robust research on public and victim/survivor views and sexual offences sentencing. The review identified that new research was needed to explore a range of offences and that not only concentrated on offences such as rape. Qualitative research was the favoured methodology as it allowed research participants the opportunity to provide explanations for the reasons given for suggested sentences, discuss their level of awareness of sentencing, and in the case of research with victim/survivors, enabled interviews to be conducted that were responsive and tailored to personal experience. There are, however, limits to the scope of any research project and this study is no exception – the focus here was on exploring public and victim/survivors’ attitudes and experiences of the sentencing of different sexual offences, and there was not scope to explore a range of additional issues, such as views on the existing sentencing guidelines for sexual offences or the effectiveness of different sanctions. Aims and objectives In this context the aims and objectives of the research were to: map awareness of the various sanctions for sexual offences that are available; understand what are considered to be appropriate sanctions and sentences for a range of sexual offences, the reasons for this and the relative gravity of sexual offences against each other and in comparison to other offences; identify the range of aggravating and mitigating factors that influenced the nature of participants’ responses to the appropriate type and length of sentence, including which factors are more or less important when considering the sentence; and discuss the purpose of sentencing sexual offences. And in addition, with victim/survivors of sexual offences and their family: describe the experiences of people affected by sexual offences and the seriousness and harm of the offence; and where relevant, understand their experience of the sentencing process and the personal impact of the sentence. Details: London: Sentencing Council, 2012. 118p. Source: Internet Resource: Sentencing Council Research Series 01/12: Accessed November 2, 2012 at: http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/Attitudes_to_Sentencing_Sexual_Offences_(web).pdf Year: 2012 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/Attitudes_to_Sentencing_Sexual_Offences_(web).pdf Shelf Number: 126817 Keywords: Public AttitudesPublic OpinionPunishmentSentencingSex Offenders (U.K.)Sex Offenses |
Author: Warner, Kate Title: Jury Sentencing Survey Summary: The study has three immediate aims: To investigate a new method of ascertaining public opinion by assessing the feasibility of using juries as a source of informed public opinion. To develop a new way of improving public knowledge about sentencing by using jurors as conduits of information. To ascertain attitudes to sentencing from an informed sector of the public. The broader aim of the study is to counter populist penal punitiveness by addressing the "comedy of errors"; namely, the situation that criminal justice policy and practice is not based on a proper understanding of public opinion, and public opinion is not based on a proper understanding of policy and practice. Public opinion surveys conducted across the world over the last four decades consistently find that between 70 and 80 percent of respondents think that sentences are too lenient. More sophisticated research has led researchers to label this „a methodological artefact "a result of the way in which public opinion has been measured" (Gelb 2008a: 45). It has been found that people have little accurate knowledge of crime and the criminal justice system, that those who have better knowledge are less punitive and that when given more information, people become less punitive. This suggests that a strategy to counter penal punitiveness is to improve public knowledge about crime and sentencing matters and to devise better methods of ascertaining informed public opinion. The provision of a better measure of informed public attitudes (in contrast to uninformed and flawed public opinion polls) will provide the basis for a reasoned argument for politicians and policy advisers to use when resisting calls made by the popular print and broadcasting media to increase penalties and to get tough on crime. Providing a source of informed public opinion, which can be fed into the criminal justice system, has the potential to improve public confidence in the system. Because of the relationship between ratings of confidence in the courts and perceptions of severity - those who report that sentences are too lenient are less confident in the courts - improving confidence in the courts can also reduce punitiveness. The Research Questions: The following six research questions were formulated: 1. How can juries be utilised as a source of public opinion about sentencing? Do they have the willingness and capacity to participate in a study exploring their views on sentencing? How willing are jurors to respond to invitations to stay and listen to sentencing proceedings? Do they have the willingness to read and the capacity to understand briefing information about sentencing? Are jurors willing to complete a survey form about sentencing? Are jurors willing to respond to requests to be interviewed about their views? 2. How receptive are jurors to learning about crime trends and sentencing? 3. To what extent are jurors (as newly informed members of the public) satisfied with the sentence imposed by the judge? 4. What kind of information affects public satisfaction with sentencing? Listening to the sentencing submissions? Knowledge of crime trends? Information about sentencing law and sentencing patterns? 5. What variables affect jurors' satisfaction with sentence? Variables relating to juror demographics? Variables relating to the offence type? Variables relating to the offender? Variables relating to the victim? 6. To what extent do the views of jurors as members of the public coincide or differ from those of the judge as expressed in the sentencing comments? Details: Report to the Australian Criminology Research Council, 2010. 156p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 14, 2013 at: http://www.criminologyresearchcouncil.gov.au/reports/0607-4.pdf Year: 2010 Country: Australia URL: http://www.criminologyresearchcouncil.gov.au/reports/0607-4.pdf Shelf Number: 127618 Keywords: Juries (Australia)JurorsPublic OpinionPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Owens, Emily G. Title: Truthiness in Punishment: The Far Reach of Truth-in-Sentencing Laws in State Courts Summary: Truth-in-Sentencing laws require that violent felons serve large fractions of their sentences behind bars. While generally assumed to increase time behind bars, there is wide scope for TIS laws to be undone; prosecutors and defense attorneys may strategically manipulate charges to make defendants TIS ineligible, and judges may reduce sentences for individuals convicted of TIS eligible crimes. Using a large sample of defendants arrested for violent felonies and charged between 2000 and 2004, I find no evidence of charge or sentence manipulation associated with conviction for a TIS eligible offense. In contrast, I find that people who are arrested for TIS eligible crimes, but avoid the law by pleading guilty to TIS ineligible misdemeanors are dealt with more severely by the criminal justice system. This spillover effect of TIS laws into misdemeanor sanctions suggests that instead of undoing legislative intent, judges honor the spirit of TIS by increasing punishment for all violent offenders, not just those technically subject to the law. Details: Unpublished paper, 2011. 30p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 1, 2013 at: http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0912/Owens.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.socialsciences.cornell.edu/0912/Owens.pdf Shelf Number: 127745 Keywords: Judicial Decision MakingPunishmentSentencingTruth-In-Sentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Mendez, Juan E. Title: Report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Summary: The present report focuses on certain forms of abuses in health-care settings that may cross a threshold of mistreatment that is tantamount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. It identifies the policies that promote these practices and existing protection gaps. By illustrating some of these abusive practices in health-care settings, the report sheds light on often undetected forms of abusive practices that occur under the auspices of health-care policies, and emphasizes how certain treatments run afoul of the prohibition on torture and ill-treatment. It identifies the scope of State‟s obligations to regulate, control and supervise health-care practices with a view to preventing mistreatment under any pretext. The Special Rapporteur examines a number of the abusive practices commonly reported in health-care settings and describes how the torture and ill-treatment framework applies in this context. The examples of torture and ill-treatment in health settings discussed likely represent a small fraction of this global problem. Details: Vienna: United Nations Human Rights Council, 2013. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: A/HRC/22/53: Accessed March 18, 2013 at: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A.HRC.22.53_English.pdf Year: 2013 Country: International URL: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/HRCouncil/RegularSession/Session22/A.HRC.22.53_English.pdf Shelf Number: 128000 Keywords: Cruel and Unusual PunishmentHealth-Care SettingsPunishmentTorture |
Author: Haugh, Todd Title: Sentencing the Why of White Collar Crime Summary: “So why did Mr. Gupta do it?” That question was at the heart of Judge Jed Rakoff’s recent sentencing of Rajat Gupta, a former Wall Street titan and the most high-profile insider trading defendant of the past 30 years. The answer, which the court actively sought by inquiring into Gupta’s psychological motivations, resulted in a two-year sentence, eight years less than the government requested. What was it that Judge Rakoff found in Gupta that warranted such a modest sentence? While it was ultimately unclear to the court exactly what motivated Gupta to commit such a “terrible breach of trust,” it is exceedingly clear that Judge Rakoff’s search for those motivations impacted the sentence imposed. This search by judges sentencing white collar defendants — the search to understand the “why” motivating defendants’ actions — is what this article explores. When judges inquire into defendants’ motivations, they necessarily delve into the psychological justifications defendants employ to free themselves from the social norms they previously followed, thereby allowing themselves to engage in criminality. These “techniques of neutralization” are precursors to white collar crime, and they impact courts’ sentencing decisions. Yet the role of neutralizations in sentencing has been largely unexamined. This article rectifies that absence by drawing on established criminological theory and applying it to three recent high-profile white collar cases. Ultimately, this article concludes that judges’ search for the “why” of white collar crime, which occurs primarily through the exploration of offender neutralizations, is legally and normatively justified. While there are potential drawbacks to judges conducting these inquiries, they are outweighed by the benefits of increased individualized sentencing and opportunities to disrupt the mechanisms that make white collar crime possible. Details: Chicago: llinois Institute of Technology - Chicago-Kent College of Law, 2013. 69p. Source: Internet Resource: Chicago-Kent College of Law Research Paper: Accessed April 6, 2013 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2244569 Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2244569 Shelf Number: 128296 Keywords: PunishmentSentencingWhite Collar Crime (U.S.) White Collar Offenses |
Author: Chmura, Thorsten Title: Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment Summary: For a rational choice theorist, the absence of crime is more difficult to explain than its presence. Arguably, the expected value of criminal sanctions, i.e. the product of severity times certainty, is often below the expected benefit. We rely on a standard theory from behavioral economics, inequity aversion, to offer an explanation. This theory could also explain how imperfect criminal sanctions deter crime. The critical component of the theory is aversion against outperforming others. To test this theory, we exploit that it posits inequity aversion to be a personality trait. We can therefore test it in a very simple standard game. Inequity averse individuals give a fraction of their endowment to another anonymous, unendowed participant. We have prisoners play this game, and compare results to findings from a meta-study of more than 100 dictator games with non-prisoners. Surprisingly, results do not differ, not even if we only compare with other dictator games among close-knit groups. To exclude social proximity as an explanation, we retest prisoners on a second dictator game where the recipient is a charity. Prisoners give more, not less. Details: Bonn, Germany: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, 2013. 33p. Source: Internet Resource: Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Bonn 2013/5: Accessed April 6, 2013 at: http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2013_05online.pdf Year: 2013 Country: Germany URL: http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2013_05online.pdf Shelf Number: 128314 Keywords: Criminal SanctionsMoral BeliefsPunishmentRational Choice TheorySelfishnessSentencingSeverity of Punishment |
Author: FAMM (Families Against Mandatory Minimums) Title: Turning Off the Spigot. How Sentencing Safety Valves Can Help States Protect Public Safety and Save Money Summary: During the 1980s and 1990s, lawmakers with good intentions voted to enact many mandatory minimum sentences in an effort to reduce crime. Lawmakers across the country were led to believe that mandatory minimum prison sentences were necessary to remove drug dealers from the streets and stop the flow of illegal drugs into our communities. This national movement toward harsh punishment has had the opposite effect of its intentions as many states have seen an unprecedented increase in their inmate populations without a proportionate benefit to public safety. Mandatory minimums are a one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing that have taken away judges’ discretion and force the sentencing of offenders without consideration of the individual circumstances of a case. Mandatory sentences have been extended from applying to “big-time dealers” to many smaller fish who deal drugs to support their own addiction. At least two-thirds of our inmates have drug addiction issues. Mandatory minimums have been a driving force behind Pennsylvania’s inmate population increase from 8,000 in 1980 to 51,000 in 2011. FAMM’s work on fair sentencing issues is changing attitudes here in Pennsylvania and across the country as many states are now moving toward fairer sentencing practices. FAMM has provided valuable advice and insight to the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee and to me personally as we work toward prison reform. This report examines several states’ “safety valve” statutes — legislation that allows judges to bypass a mandatory sentence under certain circumstances. I support legislation that would provide a safety valve for cases where the mandatory minimum sentence would be unjust. A federal law providing for a safety valve was enacted in 1994. Since that time nearly 80,000 federal drug offenders facing mandatory minimum sentences have received the benefit of the safety valve, saving the federal government an estimated $25,000 per prisoner, per year for each year shaved off of the sentence. About one-third of states have enacted some type of safety valve statute, with considerable cost savings and without a reduction in public safety. The following report should serve as a guide to lawmakers and policy advisors across the country who are seeking to reduce their states’ inmate populations and save precious resources currently spent on incarceration. FAMM has demonstrated that we can be tough on crime as well as smart on crime. Details: Washington, DC: FAMM, 2013. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 16, 2013 at: http://www.famm.org/Repository/Files/Turning%20Off%20the%20Spigot%20web%20final.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.famm.org/Repository/Files/Turning%20Off%20the%20Spigot%20web%20final.pdf Shelf Number: 128382 Keywords: Costs of CorrectionsDrug OffendersMandatory Minimum Sentences (U.S.)PunishmentSentencing |
Author: Osler, Mark Title: Amoral Numbers and Narcotics Sentencing Summary: Americans are fascinated with lists and rankings. Magazines catch the eye with covers promising “92 Cute Summer Looks,” college football fans anxiously await the release of pre-season rankings, and law schools have reshaped themselves in reaction to the rankings released by U.S. News and World Report. With each of these, though, the lists often do more to create a reality than to reflect one, with distinct negative effects. The same problem plagues federal narcotics sentencing, where rankings of the relative seriousness of crimes are embedded in sentencing guidelines and minimum sentences required by statutes, though they are rooted neither in empirical evidence nor a consistent theory of problem-solving. Details: Minneapolis: University of St. Thomas School of Law, 2013. 22p. Source: Internet Resource: U of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 13-21: Accessed June 3, 2013 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2271380 Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2271380 Shelf Number: 128920 Keywords: Drug OffendersPunishmentSentencing GuidelinesWar on Drugs |
Author: Iakobishvili, Eka Title: Inflicting Harm: Judicial corporal punishment for Drug and Alcohol Offences in Selected Countries Summary: Thousands of drug users and alchohol consumers - and people found in possession of small amounts of drugs and alcohol - are subjected to judicially - sanctioned caning, flogging, lashing, or whipping each year. In a landmark study, released by Harm Reduction International in Malaysia recently, it has been found that over forty states apply some type of judicial corporal punishment for drug and alcohol offences. The vast majority of these sentences are handed down in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Iran and Saudi Arabia. The reports states that state-sanctioned violence such as this is in clear violation of international law. The use of caning, flogging, lashing and whipping is in direct violation of international law that prohibits the use of corporal punishment. UN human rights monitors have expressed their concern number of times about the legislation in various countries that allow law enforcement to inflict these types of cruel, inhumane and degrading punishments. Judicial corporal punishment is practiced in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Libya, Brunei, Darussalam, Maldives, Indonesia (Aceh) and Nigeria (northern states) and many more. Details: London: Harm Reduction International, 2011. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 28, 2013 at: http://www.ihra.net/files/2011/11/08/IHRA_CorporalPunishmentReport_Web.pdf Year: 2011 Country: International URL: http://www.ihra.net/files/2011/11/08/IHRA_CorporalPunishmentReport_Web.pdf Shelf Number: 129208 Keywords: Alcohol OffensesAlcohol Related Crime, DisorderCorporal Punishment (International)Drug OffensesPunishment |
Author: Munyo, Ignacio Title: The Juvenile Crime Dilemma Summary: I develop a dynamic model of behavior to analyze juvenile crime. The consistent decisions between crime and legal activities of forward-looking youths depend upon their work- and criminal-specifi c human capital, which in turn are shaped by their history of past choices. The model explicitly recognizes the contrasting levels of punishment of the juvenile and adult criminal systems. In order to evaluate whether the model explains the evolution of crime, I calibrate it and test whether it can account for the observed variations in crime levels, as economic and legal factors change over time. The model is able to reproduce virtually all the recent increase in juvenile crime by a¤ecting key model parameters in line with observed facts. Additional counterfactual results suggest an increase in the expected punishments of young offenders within the juvenile justice system is a better way to fi ght juvenile crime than the reduction of the age of criminal responsibility. Details: Unpublished paper, 2013. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 13, 2013 at: http://www.ceres-uy.org/pdfs/the_juvenile%20crime_dilemma_june%202013.pdf Year: 2013 Country: International URL: http://www.ceres-uy.org/pdfs/the_juvenile%20crime_dilemma_june%202013.pdf Shelf Number: 129392 Keywords: Criminal ResponsibilityEconomics and CrimeJuvenile OffendersPunishment |
Author: Côté-Lussier, Carolyn Title: The Evil, Poor, Disliked and Punished: Criminal stereotypes and the effects of their cognitive, affective and behavioural outcomes on punitiveness toward crime Summary: Why does the public so staunchly support harsh criminal justice policies when the social, fiscal and political costs are so great? Individuals in countries such as Canada, the UK and USA continue to want criminal offenders to receive stiffer sentences despite growing prison populations and some indication of lower crime rates (Cullen, Fisher & Applegate, 2000; Donohue, 2007; King, 2008; Raphael, 2009; Tseloni et al., 2010; Useem et al., 2003; Walmsley, 2009). Criminological research has identified cognitive and affective pathways that predict punitiveness toward crime, such as the judged wrongfulness and harmfulness of crime, and moral outrage (Carlsmith & Darley, 2008). The overall contribution of the five papers presented in this thesis is to identify the cognitive, affective and behavioural pathways that link social perception of criminals to punitiveness toward crime. Working at the intersection of social psychology and criminology, the thesis applies theoretical frameworks such as the Stereotype Content Model (Fiske, Cuddy, Glick & Xu, 2002) and Behaviour from Intergroup Affect and Stereotypes map (Cuddy, Fiske & Glick, 2007) to identify the functional relation between social perception and punitiveness. Using different methodologies and at different levels of analysis, this thesis provides strong evidence that the content of criminal stereotypes is associated with specific cognitive (e.g., perceiving crime as being more serious), affective (e.g., feeling anger and a lack of compassion) and behavioural (e.g., wanting to exclude and attack) responses. In turn, criminal stereotypes and their outcomes engender punitive intuitions, decisions and attitudes. These findings reconcile extant criminological research on punitiveness with social psychological research on the function of social stereotypes. This thesis also speaks more broadly to the association between punitiveness toward crime and basic social psychological processes related to interpersonal perception and relations. In this respect, this thesis makes a significant contribution to the study of punitiveness toward crime and has important social policy implications. Details: London: The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), 2012. 312p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed July 16, 2013 at: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/475/ Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/475/ Shelf Number: 129397 Keywords: Criminal Justice PolicyPunishmentPunitivenessSocial Pathology |
Author: Pivot Legal Society Title: Throwing Away the Keys: The human and social cost of mandatory minimum sentences Summary: Crime rates in Canada are at their lowest point since 1972, yet last year Canada’s federal government introduced sweeping legislative reforms to our criminal justice system. The stated goal of these expansive and expensive measures is to increase the safety and security of Canadians by getting “tough on crime” and holding offenders accountable. The Safe Streets and Communities Act (SSCA), alternately known as Bill C-10 and the “Omnibus Crime Bill,” was passed by Parliament on March 12, 2012. When the SSCA was debated in Parliament, Canadians were told that many provisions of the Act, including the introduction of mandatory minimum sentences for a number of drug offences, would target “serious organized drug crime” rather than people struggling with drug dependence. Many well-respected commentators, including the Canadian Bar Association, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, and the Assembly of First Nations have argued, however, that these amendments will affect a spectrum of drug offenders, including people involved in the sale and/or production of illicit substances as a result of their struggle with drug dependence. Pivot Legal Society undertook this research in order to assess the potential scope and nature of the effects of the Safe Streets and Communities Act on low-income drug users. We also sought to examine whether new criminal law provisions were likely to raise constitutional issues, particularly when applied to members of Charter-protected groups, such as Aboriginal people and people with disabilities (including drug dependence). Our conclusion is that several provisions of the SSCA, including mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offences, are unlikely to achieve their stated goals of deterrence and disruption of organized crime. Our findings also suggest that these “tough on crime” measures will be costly, both economically and socially, and will have disproportionate negative effects for people living with drug dependence, Aboriginal people, and youth in or leaving the foster care system. Finally, we make the argument that the application of a number of provisions of the SSCA may result in violations of the Charter rights of low-income drug users and other protected groups and may therefore be vulnerable to constitutional challenge. Details: Vancouver, BC: Pivot Legal Society, 2013. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 5, 2013 at: http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/pivotlegal/pages/395/attachments/original/1372448744/Final_ThrowingAway_lo-res_-_v2.pdf?1372448744 Year: 2013 Country: Canada URL: http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/pivotlegal/pages/395/attachments/original/1372448744/Final_ThrowingAway_lo-res_-_v2.pdf?1372448744 Shelf Number: 129530 Keywords: Mandatory Minimum SentencesPunishmentSentencing (Canada) |
Author: Yalincak, Orhun Hakan Title: Critical Analysis of Acquitted Conduct Sentencing in the U.S.: 'Kafka-Esque', 'Repugnant', 'Uniquely Malevolent' and 'Pernicious'? Summary: The use of acquitted at sentencing is a highly contested practice in sentencing theory and policy. In federal court and many state courts across the United States, once a defendant is convicted, judges are routinely permitted, in fact, required to increase a defendant’s sentence based on relevant conduct, of which he was acquitted at trial, or conduct for which he was never charged. This essay highlights the issues that arise from the use of acquitted conduct sentencing under the now advisory U.S. Sentencing Guidelines. The use of acquitted conduct under the relevant conduct provisions of the Guidelines has resulted in substantially longer prison sentences with a disparate impact on racial and ethnic minorities. Acquitted conduct sentencing treats the offence admitted by a defendant, or proven to a judge or jury’s satisfaction beyond a reasonable doubt as simply a starting point in calculating a defendant’s sentence; the modified real offense approach, which incorporates relevant conduct and mandates consideration of acquitted conduct, determines the end sentence. This essay concludes that use of acquitted conduct should be prohibited both on constitutional and normative grounds. While it is outside the scope of this essay to offer a comprehensive solution or alternative to the use of acquitted conduct at sentencing, the key observation is that, since the common thread linking the constitutional and normative issues arise from the fragmented nature of U.S. sentencing policy, the solution must start with re-conceptualizing the theories underlying sentencing in the U.S. Details: Unpublished paper: 2013. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 6, 2013 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2293449 Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2293449 Shelf Number: 129563 Keywords: JuriesPunishmentSentencing (U.S.)Sentencing Guidelines |
Author: Subramanian, Ram Title: Sentencing and Prison Practices in Germany and the Netherlands: Implications for the United States Summary: Germany and the Netherlands have significantly lower incarceration rates than the United States and make much greater use of non-custodial penalties, particularly for nonviolent crimes. In addition, conditions and practices within correctional facilities in these countries - grounded in the principle of "normalization" whereby life in prison is to resemble as much as possible life in the community - also differ markedly from the U.S. In February 2013 - as part of the European-American Prison Project funded by the California-based Prison Law Office and managed by Vera - delegations of corrections and justice system leaders from Colorado, Georgia, and Pennsylvania together visited Germany and the Netherlands to tour prison facilities, speak with corrections officials and researchers, and interact with inmates. Although variations in the definitions of crimes, specific punishments, and recidivism limit the availability of comparable justice statistics, this report describes the considerably different approaches to sentencing and corrections these leaders observed in Europe and the impact this exposure has had (and continues to have) on the policy debate and practices in their home states. It also explores some of the project's practical implications for reform efforts throughout the United States to reduce incarceration and improve conditions of confinement while maintaining public safety. Details: New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2013. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed October 1, 2013 at: http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/european-american-prison-report.pdf Year: 2013 Country: International URL: http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/european-american-prison-report.pdf Shelf Number: 131576 Keywords: PunishmentSentencingSentencing Reform |
Author: Linnemann, Travis Title: Beyond the Ghetto: Methamphetamine and Punishment of Rural America Summary: Since the early 1970s, the United States has grown increasingly reliant on the criminal justice system to manage a wide array of social problems. Aggressive drug control policies and an over-reliance on imprisonment helped produce the world's largest prison and correctional population, often described as mass imprisonment. Within this context, the study provides an explanatory account of the political, cultural, and social conditions that encourage states like Kansas to pursue methamphetamine as a major public concern, and to a greater degree than other states with relatively higher meth problems. Ultimately, and most important, the study makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating how meth control efforts, analogous to previous drug control campaigns, extends punitive drug control rationalities to new cultural contexts and social terrains beyond the so-called ghetto of the inner city, thereby reinforcing and extending the logics of mass imprisonment. Details: Manhattan, KS: Kansas State University, 2011. 248p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed November 23, 2013 at: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/12021/TravisLinnemann2011.pdf?sequence=5 Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://krex.k-state.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2097/12021/TravisLinnemann2011.pdf?sequence=5 Shelf Number: 131676 Keywords: Drug ControlDrug EnforcementDrug PolicyMethamphetamine (U.S.)PunishmentRural Areas |
Author: American Civil Liberties Union Title: A Living Death: Life without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses Summary: Life in prison without a chance of parole is, short of execution, the harshest imaginable punishment. Life without parole (LWOP) is permanent removal from society with no chance of reentry, no hope of freedom. One should expect the American criminal justice system to condemn someone to die in prison only for the most serious offenses. Yet across the country, thousands of people are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for nonviolent crimes as petty as siphoning gasoline from an 18-wheeler, shoplifting three belts, breaking into a parked car and stealing a woman's bagged lunch, or possessing a bottle cap smeared with heroin residue. In their cruelty and harshness, these sentences defy common sense. They are grotesquely out of proportion to the conduct they seek to punish. They offend the principle that all people have the right to be treated with humanity and respect for their inherent dignity. This report documents the thousands of lives ruined and families destroyed by sentencing people to die behind bars for nonviolent offenses, and includes detailed case studies of 110 such people. It also includes a detailed fiscal analysis tallying the $1.784 billion cost to taxpayers to keep the 3,278 prisoners currently serving LWOP for nonviolent offenses incarcerated for the rest of their lives. Our findings are based on extensive documentation of the cases of 646 prisoners serving LWOP for nonviolent offenses in the federal system and nine states. The data in this report is from the United States Sentencing Commission, Federal Bureau of Prisons, and state Departments of Corrections, obtained pursuant to Freedom of Information Act and open records requests filed by the ACLU. Our research is also based on telephone interviews conducted by the ACLU with prisoners, their lawyers, and family members; correspondence with prisoners serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses; a survey of 355 prisoners serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses; and media and court records searches. Details: New York: ACLU, 2013. 240p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 23, 2013 at: https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/111813-lwop-complete-report.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/111813-lwop-complete-report.pdf Shelf Number: 131697 Keywords: Life ImprisonmentLife Sentence (U.S.)Life Without ParolePunishmentSentencing |
Author: Rupp, Thomas Title: Meta Analysis of Crime and Deterrence: A Comprehensive Review of the Literature Summary: Crime matters to society. As reported elsewhere - and according to common sense - crime causes huge economical and psychological damage to individuals, the economy and to society itself. Therefore, it is natural that a society - through its legislative, executive and judiciary - tries to control crime. For thousands of years the idea that the fear of arrest and subsequent punishment will deter people from committing crimes, has been a major tool in this concept. While punishment has several motivations such as revenge, retribution, normative guidance, correction and deterrence, the latter was theorized late in the 18th and 19th century by Marchese Beccaria (1819); Bentham (1830) and Chadwick (1829). Deterrence is recognized as a method for preventing potential delinquents from committing crimes by the threat of punishment. As far as deterrence is concerned, punishment is not meant to be anything like a fair compensation for a crime already committed but as a price potential offenders would have to pay for a future crime. Empirical tests of the effectiveness of deterrence began just recently in the 20th century. However, after the formulation of a formal model by Becker (1968) and its empirical verification by Ehrlich (1973) an increasing amount of literature emerged which scrutinized the theory of deterrence and its empirical application. Deterrence is embedded in a body of theories of understanding crime. While it is based on the idea that people adjust their unlawful behavior to changing incentives - expressed by the probability and severity of punishment - many other theories exist on why people offend; from genetic characteristics to social and cultural differences. We describe a selection of such theories in more detail in subsection 2.1.3. Nevertheless, most of these theories can be encompassed by an economic framework: a crime will be committed if the benefits from it exceed its expected costs. While any exact identification and determination of these abstract measures seem to be impossible, criminal behavior - very often expressed by official crime rates - should change when the probability and severity of punishment changes. Most of the empirical studies exploit this principle and make it subject to statistical tests to find out whether any evidence of a deterrent effect can be found. Literally hundreds of such studies have emerged in the last four decades and have been subject of an intense debate. The discussion has been - and still is - especially heated about the question whether the death penalty deters crime or not. However, for almost all offenses two studies can be found which come to completely different results; one finding strong support for a deterrent effect while the other cannot find any evidence of it being at work. This situation is, at least, very unsatisfying from a scientific point of view. Moreover, public policy would obviously greatly benefit from a better understanding of the effectiveness of deterrence. The large number of available studies, the heterogeneity of their results, the scope of studied populations, offenses and implemented techniques offer a perfect playground for a quantitative analysis of the literature. While many qualitative literature surveys of studies covering the deterrence issue have been published (see subsection 2.1.2) there are almost no analytical reviews to be found. While Antony and Entorf (2003) and Muller (2003) were first steps and feasibility studies of a meta analysis, we are only aware of Pratt (2004) as one further quantitative literature survey. However, the latter considers deterrence only at the margin and focusses on the differences between several selected theories of crime. To the best of our knowledge, the cross-disciplinary project Metaanalyse empirischer Abschreckungsstudien - ein quantitiver methodenkritischer Vergleich kriminologischer und okonomischer Untersuchungen zur negativen Generalpravention was the first comprehensive attempt to use the existing bulk of studies to identify the driving factors behind the heterogeneity of results and to analytically assess the current situation of research. Some preliminary results - with a snapshot of the acquired data - are published in Dolling et al. (2006) and Dolling et al. (2007). This thesis originates from this work and utilizes the full data set of all 700 acquired studies. In the following chapters we address several questions in more detail: are there any key factors which determine the results of a study (e.g., the studied population, the statistical methods employed, the cultural background of the authors, the studied offense, etc.)? Is there any significant deterrent effect overall? How reliable is the retrieved information? Since there are almost no prior theories about the strength and direction of any potential key factors we resort to methods of data mining. Afterwards, we employ several tests to assess the quality of the calculated estimators, i.e., how well the estimators perform in reproducing and forecasting results. Indeed, we can identify several elements of the design of a study, the cultural background of an author and offense-specific properties which affect the outcome of a study. Whether or not these elements measure a direct effect or - to some extent - pick up other neglected effects belongs to the subsequent interpretation. Nonetheless, our results should contribute to the knowledge of crime and the understanding of its literature. The thesis is organized as follows. Chapter 2 summarizes the theoretical background of several theories about deterrence and - with a focus on the rational choice approach - the corresponding problems and empirical and statistical issues. It also shows the large variety of fields the theory of deterrence is applied in and that a lot of contradictory results exist in the literature. The large body of inconsistent results is one of the main reasons why a meta analysis should be helpful to increase the understanding of deterrence. Chapter 3 contains the creation of the data base and its statistical analysis. Several techniques are used to identify important factors which may determine the results of an individual study. Chapter 4 then puts these results into perspective and shows how reliable, trustworthy and usable these estimates are. Subsequently, the results of the best models, in regard to precision and fit, are discussed in more detail. Finally, chapter 5 concludes this thesis and recapitulates the main issues and results. Furthermore, the appendix contains some minor findings which are interesting but not essential as well as an extensive description of all available variables and displays all included studies (accompanied with some important additional information). Details: Darmstadt: Technische Universitat Darmstadt, 2008. 323p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed February 3, 2014 at: http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/1054/2/rupp_diss.pdf Year: 2008 Country: International URL: http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/1054/2/rupp_diss.pdf Shelf Number: 131839 Keywords: Deterrence Meta-Analysis Punishment |
Author: Subramanian, Ram Title: Playbook for Change? States Reconsider Mandatory Sentences Summary: Since 2000, at least 29 states have taken steps to roll back mandatory sentences, with 32 bills passed in just the last five years. Most legislative activity has focused on adjusting penalties for nonviolent drug offenses through the use of one or a combination of the following reform approaches: 1) expanding judicial discretion through the creation of so-called "safety value" provisions, 2) limiting automatic sentence enhancements, and 3) repealing or revising mandatory minimum sentences. In this policy report, Vera's Center on Sentencing and Corrections summarizes state-level mandatory sentencing reforms since 2000, raises questions about their impact, and offers recommendations to jurisdictions considering similar efforts Details: New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2014. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 19, 2014 at: http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/mandatory-sentences-policy-report-v2b.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/mandatory-sentences-policy-report-v2b.pdf Shelf Number: 132066 Keywords: Drug OffendersMandatory Minimum SentencesPunishmentSentencingSentencing Reform |
Author: Sentencing Project Title: The State of Sentencing 2013: Developments in Policy and Practice Summary: The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and keeps 7.2 million men and women under correctional supervision. More than 2.2 million are in prison or jail while nearly five million are monitored in the community on probation or parole. The scale of the nation's correctional population results from a mix of crime rates and legislative and administrative policies that vary by state. Today, there is general agreement that the high rate of incarceration resulted from deliberate policy choices that impose punitive sentences which have increased both the numbers of people entering the system and how long they remain under correctional control. These policies include an expansion of life without parole as a sentencing option and lengthy terms under community supervision. Despite the nation's four-decade era of mass incarceration, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that the prison population dropped in 2012 for the third consecutive year. About half of the 2012 decline - 15,035 prisoners - occurred in California, which decreased its prison population in response to a 2011 Supreme Court order to relieve prison overcrowding. But eight other states - Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia - showed substantial decreases of more than 1,000 inmates, and more than half the states reported some drop in the number of prisoners. Previous changes in policy and practice may have contributed to the modest decline. Lawmakers have cited the growth in state corrections spending at the expense of other priorities as a reason to change sentencing policies and practices. During 2013, legislators in at least 31 states adopted 47 criminal justice policies that may help to reduce the prison population, improve juvenile justice outcomes, and eliminate the barriers that marginalize persons with prior convictions. The policy reforms outlined in this report document changes in sentencing, probation and parole, collateral consequences and juvenile justice. Highlights include: Six states - Colorado, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Oregon, South Dakota, and Vermont - expanded alternatives to incarceration for certain drug offenses. Three states - Kansas, Oregon, and South Dakota - authorized earned discharge from community supervision. Maryland abolished the death penalty as a sentencing option. Today, 18 states and the District of Columbia no longer authorize the death penalty. Oregon became the third state to authorize racial impact statements for any change to criminal laws or sentencing codes. Five states - California, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, and Rhode Island - adopted or expanded policies to address employment barriers for persons with a prior criminal history. Georgia and Nebraska enacted comprehensive juvenile justice measures that included provisions to expand alternatives to incarceration for certain youth. At least eight states - Arkansas, Delaware, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Texas, Wyoming, and Utah - modified juvenile list without parole policies. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2014. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 22, 2014 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/sen_State%20of%20Sentencing%202013.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Arab Emirates URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/sen_State%20of%20Sentencing%202013.pdf Shelf Number: 132114 Keywords: Criminal Justice PoliciesCriminal Justice ReformPrison SentencesPrisonersPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Klein, Susan R. Title: Why Federal Prosecutors Charge: A Comparison of Federal and New York State Arson and Robbery Filings, 2006-2010 Summary: Academic, judges, lobbyists, special interest groups, and the defense bar all love to complain about the undue discretion held by federal prosecutors. Criticism has intensified over the last few decades, as the federal criminal code has grown to more than 4,500 prohibitions, a fair number of which replicate nearly identical state offenses. Little empirical evidence, however, attempts to discern what, if anything, is distinctive about the cases charged in federal rather than state court, and what might be motivating federal prosecutors to make their charging decisions. Our study aims to shed some light on this subject. In Part II, we describe our efforts to collect data on the characteristics of cases prosecuted under arson and robbery statutes from three sources: (1) the United States Sentencing Commission ("USSC"); (2) the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services ("DCJS"); and (3) Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports. In Part III, we explain how we combined the USSC and New York State DCJS data before proceeding to our empirical analysis. First, we conduct a simple, bivariate analysis comparing the frequency with which our independent variables are observed in federal versus state arson and robbery cases. We note where we believe the observed, bivariate relationship is likely explained by confounding variables. Second, we proceed to utilize a more sophisticated logistic regression model to simultaneously examine the effect of our independent variables on the choice between federal versus state prosecution for arson and robbery. We find statistically significant evidence that cases prosecuted under federal arson and robbery statutes are more likely to include circumstances such as a conspiracy, a minor victim, use of a weapon, and serious recidivism. In Part IV, we conclude by discussing the higher plea rates and longer sentences imposed under federal as opposed to state criminal justice systems. We argue that where crimes involve the above-noted more egregious circumstances, federal prosecutors are more likely motived to prosecute the crime in expectation of a likely guilty plea and longer sentence. Our study provides much needed empirical evidence to support this rational view of federal prosecutorial discretion. Details: Austin, TX: University of Texas School of Law, 2014. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Texas Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 557 : Accessed April 22, 2014 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2422582 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2422582 Shelf Number: 132116 Keywords: ArsonistsProsecutionProsecutorial DiscretionPunishmentRobberySentencing |
Author: Dana, Shahram Title: Blood Diamonds and Mass Atrocities: Cutting a New Paradigm from Coarse Jurisprudence Summary: 150,000 human beings dead; 200,000 women raped; thousands of limbs amputated; countless children forced to kill their own parents, forced into sexual slavery, and forced into the battlefields; and 2.6 million persons displaced. These are just some of the facts and figures of the 10 year war in Sierra Leone. There is another number of significance: Nine. That is the number of individuals held criminally responsible for these atrocities. After more than 10 years and 300 million dollars, the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) convicted and sentenced just nine men. With the work of the court near complete, we are afforded an opportunity to evaluate its work and legacy. While writers have reviewed the work of international tribunals from a variety of perspectives, an examination of their sentencing legacy has been largely ignored or discounted. This article fills that lacuna in scholarship by advancing an innovative sentencing framework for international trials and articulating a new theory on atrocity sentencing that is both explanatory and instructive. My theory and framework both have general applicability to all international criminal tribunals, including the International Criminal Court (ICC). The article also contributes to the development of international law and legal scholarship in other ways. It is the first law review article to provide a comprehensive critique of all sentencing judgments of the SCSL. In addition to filling that gap, this article goes further to systematize the sentencing jurisprudence, identify key contributions, provide a normative assessment, link sentencing narratives to broader ones about the Sierra Leone conflict and atrocities, and advance an original theory and legal framework that breaks new ground on international sentencing and punishment. Consequentially, the article has immediate legal significance because, inter alia, the theory advanced herein speaks to punishing and sentencing Heads of State, an issue currently on appeal. Beyond its immediate impact, the article makes an enduring contribution by, inter alia, its legal and normative analysis that orders and illuminates ICL and develops a sentencing framework of general applicability. Parts II and III provide, respectively, a background to the Sierra Leona decade long war and a legal analysis of the cases and sentencing jurisprudence. Part IV offers an assessment of the SCSL's sentencing legacy by identifying its key contributions to the ICL sentencing law and linking its sentencing discourse to narratives about the conflict, just war, legitimacy, justice, and Sierra Leonean society. Part V develops a normative assessment of the court's judgments and sentencing practice. I argue that the judges at the SCSL have adopted punitive model for international criminal justice and that this reorientation is a positive development. I also criticize the court's failure to develop a sentencing framework capable of implementing the punitive model. Part VI contributes an original theory and sentencing framework to international law and ICL scholarship. Here, I also re-conceptualize concepts at the heart of ICL and its sentencing practice, such as gravity, modes of liability, and the role of the accused. My theory pulls together these three major outcome determinative sentence variables to effectuate their harmonized consideration for the purpose of sentence allocations and just distribution of punishment among actors responsible for atrocity crimes. l call this theory "enabler responsibility" or "enabling atrocity." I argue that enabler responsibility influences the sentence, especially of atrocity perpetrators at the very top of the hierarchy, even if unarticulated as a factor. The "enabler responsibility" theory closes the explanatory gap in sentencing judgments, including Charles Taylor's punishment. Details: Unpublished paper, 2014. 78p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 28, 2014 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2244391 Year: 2014 Country: Sierra Leone URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2244391 Shelf Number: 132198 Keywords: Blood DiamondsCrimes Against HumanityInternational Criminal CourtPunishmentSentencingWar Crimes |
Author: Howard League for Penal Reform Title: The Never-Ending Story: Indeterminate Sentencing and the Prison Regime. Research Briefing Summary: The Imprisonment for Public Protection sentence (IPP) was poorly planned and implemented and resulted in unjust punishments, particularly for those sentenced prior to 2008. Despite the abolition of the sentence in 2012, serious implications for the prison estate remain - There are currently 5,809 people in prison serving an IPP; over half (3,570) have passed their tariff date - Urgent action needs to be taken to enable the safe release of people serving post-tariff IPPs into the community - The analysis is based on information provided by 103 senior prison governors, whose responses drew almost exclusively on their experience of working with IPP prisoners. The majority reported that IPP sentences had a negative impact on prisoners, prison staff, and the prison regime - The findings suggest that there are insufficient resources to deliver IPPs effectively. Resource shortages often lead to resentment between IPP prisoners and other prisoners and may threaten the safety and stability of the prison regime - Ninety-two per cent reported that IPPs decreased staff job satisfaction as they undermined staff credibility, prevented staff treating all prisoners fairly, and often meant staff were unable to assist prisoners in progressing through their sentences - The majority recommended that the government enable post-tariff IPP prisoners to be safely managed into the community. To achieve this, respondents said it was necessary to increase resources, enhance the role of probation, alter the release process for IPP prisoners and convert IPP sentences with short minimum terms to determinate sentences. Details: London: Howard League for Penal Reform, 2014. 6p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 14, 2014 at: https://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/online_publications/never-ending_story_IPP.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/online_publications/never-ending_story_IPP.pdf Shelf Number: 104822 Keywords: Imprisonment for Public ProtectionIndeterminate SentencesPunishmentSentencing (U.K.) |
Author: Hansen, Benjamin Title: Punishment and Deterrence: Evidence from Drunk Driving Summary: Traditional economic models of criminal behavior have straightforward predictions: raising the expected cost of crime via apprehension probabilities or punishments decreases crime. I test the effect of harsher punishments on deterring driving under the influence (DUI). In this setting, punishments are determined by strict rules on Blood Alcohol Content (BAC) and previous offenses. Regression discontinuity derived estimates suggest that having a BAC above the DUI threshold reduces recidivism by up to 2 percentage points (17 percent). Likewise having a BAC over the aggravated DUI threshold reduces recidivism by an additional percentage point (9 percent). The results suggest that recent recommendations to lower the BAC limit to .05 would save relatively few lives, while increasing marginal punishments and sanctions monotonically along the BAC distribution would more effectively deter the drunk drivers most likely to be involved in fatal crashes. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014. 53p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper 20243: Accessed June 26, 2014 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20243.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20243.pdf Shelf Number: 132548 Keywords: Driving Under the Influence Drunk Driving PunishmentRecidivism |
Author: Human Rights Watch Title: Nation Behind Bars: A Human Rights Solution Summary: Far too many US laws violate basic principles of justice by requiring disproportionately severe punishment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 36-page report, "Nation Behind Bars: A Human Rights Solution," notes that laws requiring penalties that are far longer than necessary to meet the purposes of punishment have given the United States the world's highest reported rate of incarceration. These laws have spawned widespread and well-founded public doubts about the fairness of the US criminal justice system. Details: New York: Human Rights Watch, 2014. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 30, 2014 at: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/2014_US_Nation_Behind_Bars_0.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/related_material/2014_US_Nation_Behind_Bars_0.pdf Shelf Number: 132562 Keywords: Human Rights AbusesPrison SentencesPrisonersPunishmentSentencing Reform |
Author: Boda, Zsolt Title: Literature Review on Fear of Crime and Public Attitudes Towards Crime, Justice and Punishment Summary: Research under WP4 "State-of-the-Art Public Perceptions" focused on drawing the general picture on attitudes towards crime, justice and punishment, as well as mapping the phenomena by their geographical and social location in Europe, and resulted in a paper featuring a literature review on fear of crime and public attitudes towards crime, justice and punishment. Specifically, the paper provides a systematic, up-to-date literature review of the key European research on fear of crime, punitive attitudes and trust in justice. The task is subdivided into sections on "trust in justice", "fear of crime", and "punitive attitudes". The aim is to identify the most common explanations that can be found in academic literature about the patterns and possible causes of fear of crime, punitive attitudes and trust in justice. Details: Fiducia (New European Crimes and Trust-Based Policy), 2012. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 7, 2014 at: http://www.fiduciaproject.eu/media/press_releases/8/D4.1.Literature%20review%20on%20fear%20of%20crime%20and%20public%20attitudes%20towards%20crime,%20justice%20and%20punishment.pdf Year: 2012 Country: International URL: http://www.fiduciaproject.eu/media/press_releases/8/D4.1.Literature%20review%20on%20fear%20of%20crime%20and%20public%20attitudes%20towards%20crime,%20justice%20and%20punishment.pdf Shelf Number: 132629 Keywords: Fear of CrimePublic AttitudesPublic OpinionPunishment |
Author: Nellis, Ashley Title: Life Goes On: The Historic Rise in Life Sentences in America Summary: n recent years, states around the country have been reconsidering the value of using incarceration as the primary tool for responding to criminal behavior. After a decades-long surge, modest declines in prison populations are now occurring nationally and various state legislatures have reformed sentencing laws that reduce the incarceration of people convicted of certain offenses. In 2011 and 2012, this led to 17 states closing some of their prisons. Despite these developments, the number of prisoners serving life sentences continues to grow even while serious, violent crime has been declining for the past 20 to correlate with increasingly lengthy sentences. This report details the rise of the lifer population in America's prisons, now standing at nearly 160,000, with almost 50,000 people serving life sentences without parole (LWOP). In order to comprehensively assess trends in the use of life imprisonment we undertook a survey of persons serving life sentences in the corrections systems in all 50 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons during 2012. We sought to obtain data on the number of persons serving such sentences, demographic characteristics, type of offense, and trends in the use of life sentences over time. The lifer population has more than quadrupled in size since 1984. One in nine people in prison is now serving While release could be attained through a successful application for executive clemency, this mechanism for release is rarely utilized. In our 2009 report, No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America, we noted that there were 41,095 people serving LWOP sentences and a total of 140,610 people serving life sentences nationally. Some state departments of corrections have revised these numbers slightly since our last report. The updated numbers are provided.a life sentence and nearly a third of lifers will never have a chance at a parole hearing; they are certain to die in prison. This analysis documents long-term trends in the use of life imprisonment as well as providing empirical details for the offenses that comprise the life-sentenced population. KEY FINDINGS - As of 2012, there were 159,520 people serving life sentences, an 11.8% rise since 2008. - One of every nine individuals in prison is serving a life sentence. - The population of prisoners serving life without parole (LWOP) has risen more sharply than those with the possibility of parole: there has been a 22.2% increase in LWOP since just 2008, an increase from 40,1745 individuals to 49,081. - Approximately 10,000 lifers have been convicted of nonviolent offenses. - Nearly half of lifers are African American and 1 in 6 are Latino. - More than 10,000 life-sentenced inmates have been convicted of crimes that occurred before they turned 18 and nearly 1 in 4 of them were sentenced to LWOP. - More than 5,300 (3.4%) of the life-sentenced inmates are female. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2013. 30p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 7, 2014 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Life%20Goes%20On%202013.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/inc_Life%20Goes%20On%202013.pdf Shelf Number: 130017 Keywords: IncarcerationLife ImprisonmentLife SentencePrisonersPunishmentRacial Disparities |
Author: Evans, Douglas N. Title: Punishment Without End Summary: Criminal justice punishments are an investment that societies make to protect the safety and order of communities. Following decades of rising prison populations, however, U.S. policymakers are beginning to wonder if they have invested too much in punishment. Policies adopted in previous decades now incarcerate large numbers of Americans and impose considerable costs on states. Mass incarceration policies are costly and potentially iatrogenic-i.e. they may transform offenders into repeat offenders. Public officials and citizens alike often assume that known offenders pose a permanent risk of future offending. This belief entangles millions of offenders in the justice system for life, with little hope of being fully restored to a non-criminal status. Yet, research indicates that risks posed by ex-offenders decline over time. At some point, which this report terms "risk convergence," the probability that an ex-offender will commit a new offense reaches a level that is indistinguishable from the general public. Societies gain nothing from ineffective and inefficient criminal justice policies that impose punishments on offenders far beyond the point of risk convergence. These policies waste resources and hinder ex-offenders struggling to rebuild legitimate lives when they pose no greater risk to the public safety than any of their neighbors. There are, of course, solutions to this problem. This report addresses some of the solutions being implemented across the country. Details: New York: John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Research & Evaluation Center, 2014. 21p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 16, 2014 at: http://jjrec.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/jf_johnjay1.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://jjrec.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/jf_johnjay1.pdf Shelf Number: 132688 Keywords: Mass IncarcerationPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Amnesty International Title: Entombed: Isolation in the U.S. Federal Prison System Summary: The USA incarcerates thousands of prisoners in long-term or indefinite solitary confinement. This report describes Amnesty International's concerns about conditions of severe isolation at the United States Penitentiary, Administrative Maximum (ADX) facility in Colorado, currently the only super-maximum security prison operated by the federal government. It also examines conditions in Special Management Units (SMUs) and Security Housing Units (SHUs) operated at other federal prison facilities. Since Amnesty International toured ADX prison in 2001 subsequent requests to return to the facility have been denied. The organisation is concerned that as conditions of isolation within federal prisons have become more severe, external oversight of the facilities has declined. With prisoners held in their cells for 22-24 hours a day in severe physical and social isolation, Amnesty International believes the conditions described in this report breach international standards for the humane treatment of prisoners. Many have been held in isolation for prolonged or indefinite periods - without a means to change their circumstances - amounting to a violation of the prohibition against cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment under international law. The report also details disturbing evidence of prisoners with serious mental illness being detained in harsh isolated conditions without adequate screening, treatment or monitoring. Details: London: AI, 2014. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 16, 2014 at: http://www.amnesty.org/sites/impact.amnesty.org/files/P4384USAEntombedReportFinalWeb15072014.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.amnesty.org/sites/impact.amnesty.org/files/P4384USAEntombedReportFinalWeb15072014.pdf Shelf Number: 132691 Keywords: Federal PrisonsMaximum Security PrisonsPrisonersPunishmentSolitary ConfinementSupermax Prisons |
Author: Victoria (Australia). Sentencing Advisory Council Title: The Imposition and Enforcement of Court Fines and Infringement Penalties in Victoria: Report Summary: Court fines and infringement penalties are the most common sanctions for criminal behavior imposed in Victoria. For most members of the community, the only interaction they will experience with the criminal justice system as offenders is as the recipient of an infringement notice, most likely for a driving- or parking-related offence. While infringement offending is of a relatively low level of seriousness when compared with offending sentenced in the courts, the sheer volume of infringement notices issued each year (some 6 million in 2012-13) means that their enforcement has far reaching consequences for the credibility of the criminal justice system. Similarly, given the large number of sentences handed down in Victorian courts that are fines, the enforcement of court fines affects both the credibility of, and judicial confidence in, the imposition of fines as a sentence. Currently, a substantial number of people do not pay their court fines and infringement penalties. Around a third of all infringement penalties are not paid prior to enforcement action, and around two-fifths of Magistrates' Court fines are neither paid nor discharged. Until a fine or penalty is paid or discharged, the recipient has effectively avoided the penal consequence of their offending behaviour. Enforcement - through payment, or through discharge by non-monetary means - is therefore crucial to achieving the purposes of an infringement penalty or the purposes of sentencing for which a fine was imposed. This report represents the Sentencing Advisory Council's response to the Attorney-General's request for advice on the imposition and enforcement of fines as a sentence by Victorian courts. This report also presents recommendations in relation to the Attorney's request for advice on particular matters, such as the number of infringement matters heard in open court, the conversion of fines to an order for community work or an order for imprisonment, and harmonising the enforcement procedures for court fines with those for infringement penalties. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2014. 435p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 28, 2014 at: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/Imposition%20and%20Enforcement%20of%20Court%20Fines%20and%20Infringement%20Penalties%20in%20Victoria.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Australia URL: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/Imposition%20and%20Enforcement%20of%20Court%20Fines%20and%20Infringement%20Penalties%20in%20Victoria.pdf Shelf Number: 132785 Keywords: Fines (Australia)PunishmentSentencing |
Author: British Academy Title: A Presumption Against Imprisonment: Social Order and Social Values Summary: The British Academy has today published a report, which urges that the UK stop relying so heavily on imprisonment as a form of punishment. Instead of imprisoning so many people for so long, the new report argues that in many cases, alternative measures will provide better, and more sustainable, long term outcomes. The report, titled 'A Presumption Against Imprisonment: Social Order and Social Values', was written by a group of academic experts including Professor Andrew Ashworth FBA, Professor Roger Cotterrell FBA, Professor Andrew Coyle, Professor Antony Duff FBA, Professor Nicola Lacey FBA, Professor Alison Liebling and Professor Rod Morgan. The report illustrates how changes to criminal law and policy have led to progressively harsher sentencing regimes, with longer periods of imprisonment imposed on persistent offenders and the increased use of mandatory minimum and indeterminate sentences for certain crimes. The prison population in England and Wales almost doubled between 1992 and 2011, rising from just under 45,000 to 88,000. Although it has fallen back to about 85,500 today, it is estimated that by 2018 the prison population could reach more than 90,000. (A similar increase has occurred in Scotland.) The report suggests a range of strategies to reduce our reliance on imprisonment, including reviewing sentence lengths, using diversion from the courts more extensively and promoting greater use of alternative forms of sentence. In addition to these strategies, the report recommends three 'overarching institutional proposals': - the creation of a Penal Policy Committee, accountable to Parliament, to formulate policies on the appropriate use of imprisonment; - greater attention by the Sentencing Council to the costs and effectiveness of different forms of sentence; - an urgent review of cases of Imprisonment for Public Protection in which the minimum term has been served, with a view to release. Details: London: The British Academy, 2014. 116p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 4, 2014 at: http://www.britac.ac.uk/policy/Presumption_Against_Imprisonment.cfm Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: http://www.britac.ac.uk/policy/Presumption_Against_Imprisonment.cfm Shelf Number: 132878 Keywords: Alternatives to IncarcerationCriminal Justice ReformPrison ReformPrisons (U.K.)Punishment |
Author: Ghandnoosh, Nazgol Title: Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies Summary: The American criminal justice system is at a critical juncture. In recent years, federal policymakers have called for reforms, following the lead of states that have reduced prison populations without compromising public safety. Nationwide prison counts have fallen every year since 2010, and the racial gap in imprisonment rates has also begun to narrow. Yet the recent tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri - where the killing of an unarmed African American teenager has sparked outrage - highlight the ongoing relevance of race in the criminal justice system. To guide and give greater momentum to recent calls for reform, this report examines a key driving force of criminal justice outcomes: racial perceptions of crime. A complex set of factors contributes to the severity and selectivity of punishment in the United States, including public concern about crime and racial differences in crime rates. This report synthesizes two decades of research establishing that skewed racial perceptions of crime - particularly, white Americans' strong associations of crime with racial minorities - have bolstered harsh and biased criminal justice policies. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2014. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 10, 2014 at: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_Race_and_Punishment.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://sentencingproject.org/doc/publications/rd_Race_and_Punishment.pdf Shelf Number: 133263 Keywords: Criminal Justice ReformMinorities and CrimePunishmentRace and Crime (U.S.)Racial BiasRacial Disparities |
Author: Natapoff, Alexandra Title: Misdemeanor Decriminalization Summary: As the U.S. rethinks its stance on mass incarceration, misdemeanor decriminalization is an increasingly popular reform. Seen as a potential cure for crowded jails and an overburdened defense bar, many states are eliminating jail time for minor offenses such as marijuana possession and driving violations, and replacing those crimes with so-called "nonjailable" or "fine-only" offenses. This form of reclassification is widely perceived as a way of saving millions of state dollars - nonjailable offenses do not trigger the right to counsel - while easing the punitive impact on defendants, and it has strong support from progressives and conservatives alike. But decriminalization has a little-known dark side. Unlike full legalization, decriminalization preserves many of the punitive features and collateral consequences of the criminal misdemeanor experience, even as it strips defendants of counsel and other procedural protections. It actually expands the reach of the criminal apparatus by making it easier - both logistically and normatively - to impose fines and supervision on an ever-widening population, a population who ironically often ends up incarcerated anyway when they cannot afford the fines or comply with the supervisory conditions. The turn to fine-only offenses and supervision, moreover, has distributive implications. It captures poor, underemployed, drug-dependent, and other disadvantaged defendants for whom fines and supervision are especially burdensome, while permitting well-resourced offenders to exit the process quickly and relatively unscathed. Finally, as courts turn increasingly to fines and fees to fund their own operations, decriminalization threatens to become a kind of regressive tax, turning the poorest populations into funding fodder for the judiciary and other government budgets. In sum, while decriminalization appears to offer relief from the punitive legacy of overcriminalization and mass incarceration, upon closer inspection it turns out to be a highly conflicted regulatory strategy that preserves and even strengthens some of the most problematic aspects of the massive U.S. penal system. Details: Los Angeles: Loyola Los Angeles School of Law, 2014. 63p. Source: Internet Resource: Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2014-43 : Accessed September 11, 2014 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2494414 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2494414 Shelf Number: 133276 Keywords: Alternatives to IncarcerationDecriminalizationJail OvercrowdingMass IncarcerationMisdemeanors (U.S.)Prison OvercrowdingPunishment |
Author: Victoria. Sentencing Advisory Council Title: Calculating the Baseline Offence Median: Report Summary: This report has been prepared to assist Victorian courts and legal practitioners, as well as interested members of the community, to understand the implications of the Sentencing Amendment (Baseline Sentences) Act 2014 (Vic) (the Act) for current sentencing practices. The Act provides that the baseline sentence represents 'the sentence that Parliament intends to be the median sentence for sentences imposed for that offence'. Median (midpoint average) sentences are set for six offences: culpable driving causing death, incest, persistent sexual abuse of a child under 16, sexual penetration of a child under 12, trafficking in a large commercial quantity of a drug of dependence, and murder. In the report, the Council explains: - basic information about medians and how they are calculated - the baseline median counting rules set under the Act and how they differ from those used in the Council's Sentencing Snapshot series - the difference between baseline medians now and the median set under the Act - how the median sentence for an offence will vary according to the number of years' sentencing data analysed - why it is difficult to predict what new sentencing patterns will emerge following implementation of the Act - how baseline medians can be achieved even if the courts impose non-imprisonment sentences for baseline offences, and/or imprisonment sentences that diverge from the baseline median. Details: Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council, 2014. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 23, 2014 at: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/Calculating%20the%20Baseline%20Offence%20Median%20Report.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Australia URL: http://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/Calculating%20the%20Baseline%20Offence%20Median%20Report.pdf Shelf Number: 133397 Keywords: PunishmentSentencing (Australia) |
Author: Farrall, Stephen Title: Intelligent Justice: Balancing the effects of community sentences and custody Summary: The paper draws on evidence from the United States, where research has shown that imprisoning a large number of people for longer periods causes crime to fall in the short term but rise in the long term when they are eventually released. Places where many people are jailed see a range of negative consequences, including increased rates of sexually transmitted diseases, teenage births and serious juvenile delinquency. This results in more people being imprisoned and creates a system 'that feeds upon itself', exacerbating the very social problems that led to increases in crime. The pamphlet states that prison's effect of deterring people from committing crime can be overestimated. The key factor which prevents most people from offending is how likely they are to be punished, rather than how severe the punishment is. Crime reduction caused by prison taking offenders out of the community can also be overestimated, the pamphlet adds. For example, evidence suggests that, in some cases, imprisoning one person creates a 'job vacancy' for another to take their place and commit offences. The paper illustrates that, by the Ministry of Justice's own admission, current data such as reconviction statistics do not reliably measure the true impact of probation supervision and offender management programmes. This has important ramifications for the government's desire to use payment by results in prisons and probation. Finally, the pamphlet offers suggestions on how people who have committed crime should be reintegrated into society. Emphasising the importance of redemption, the paper says that it is usually more effective - and cheaper - to get people to 'buy into' behaviour rather than compel or cajole or supervise them into it. Details: London: Howard League for Penal Reform, 2014. 22p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 27, 2014 at: https://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/online_publications/Intelligent_Justice.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/online_publications/Intelligent_Justice.pdf Shelf Number: 133450 Keywords: Criminal Justice ReformDeterrencePrison Construction (U.K.)Prison ReformPunishment |
Author: Phelps, Michelle S. Title: Mass Probation: Toward a More Robust Theory of State Variation in Punishment Summary: Scholarship on the expansion of the criminal justice system in the U.S. has almost exclusively focused on imprisonment, investigating why some states lead the world in incarceration rates while others have restrained growth. Yet for most states, the predominant form of punishment is probation, and many seemingly progressive states supervise massive numbers of adults on community supervision. Drawing on Bureau of Justice Statistics data from 1980 and 2010, I analyze this expansion of mass probation and develop a typology of control regimes that theorizes both the scale and type of formal punishment states employ. The results demonstrate that mass probation rearranges scholars' conclusions about the causes and consequences of the penal state. Details: Unpublished paper, 2014. 41p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 1, 2014 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2476051 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2476051 Shelf Number: 133534 Keywords: Community CorrectionsMass ImprisonmentMass IncarcerationProbation (U.S.)Punishment |
Author: Florida TaxWatch Title: Over-Criminalization in Florida: An Analysis of Nonviolent Third-degree Felonies Summary: Over-criminalization is the new buzzword among criminologists and legislators looking for ways to reform federal and state criminal justice systems and reduce the cost of corrections. Headline stories once monopolized by tough on crime terminology and prison building and expansion plans, now ask whether over-criminalization is making us a nation of felons. This concern led the federal government in 2013 to create a bipartisan Over-Criminalization Task Force comprised of ten congressmen from large population states like California, Texas, and New York, and southeast regional neighbors Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The work of this committee, which is focused on reducing the federal prison population, which has skyrocketed tenfold since 1980 (now 219,000 inmates at $7 billion annually), was renewed last month to review the 4,500 statutory federal crimes in the U.S. Code. Federal and state research regarding prison populations support the need for critical analysis. America leads the world in incarceration, with 760 prisoners per 100,000 compared to Britain with 153, Germany with 90 and Japan with 63.4 America incarcerates more than Cuba, China, Venezuela and Russia. America makes up 5% of the world's population, but has 25% of the world's prison Florida statistics reveal an even more acute situation than the national picture. The state prison population (102,225 as of January 2014) is projected to increase to 106,793 by 2017. To add context, in the last 35 years the state population increased 102.8%, but the prison population jumped 402.5%, resulting in state spending on corrections during this same period increasing by 1200%, to $2.4B. This despite the fact that crime statistics have steadily declined during this period, and have reached 30 year lows. Florida has 1.5 million felons living within the state, or one in ten adults. Prison populations are not the only numbers growing dramatically, so are the number of actions criminalized by Florida laws. Thousands of different offenses are now scattered throughout Florida statutes. Some drug and environmental laws do not even require criminal intent. Removing the element of intent means anyone found with illegal substances, or disposing of hazardous waste improperly, commits a felony whether the offense was committed inadvertently or not. Details: Tallahassee: TaxWatch, 2014. 8p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 20, 2014 at: http://floridataxwatch.org/resources/pdf/ThirdDegreeFINAL.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://floridataxwatch.org/resources/pdf/ThirdDegreeFINAL.pdf Shelf Number: 133745 Keywords: Cost-Benefit AnalysisCosts of CorrectionsCriminal Justice PolicyImprisonment, Economic Impacts ofPrisoners (Florida)Punishment |
Author: Bowers, Mark Title: Solitary Confinement as Torture Summary: The Immigration/Human Rights Policy Clinic (I/HRP)(now the Human Rights Policy Seminar) at the University of North Carolina School of Law is committed to exposing violations of the basic human rights of both citizens and visitors of this state and nation. This policy report seeks to contribute to a growing national advocacy movement that has identified solitary confinement as cruel, inhuman, and degrading form of punishment that is - or at the very least approximates - torture and a severe form of human rights violation and seeks to bring about the end of its use. Torture is one of the basest violations of human rights and shared democratic ideals. Under North Carolina's state constitution, the federal constitution, as well as international law, the nation and the state of North Carolina must not be complicit in any act that falls within this category of atrocity. The duty to take responsibility for human rights violations encompasses the obligation to enlarge an understanding of that which constitutes torture and how it is manifested in various institutions and implemented by various actors. In this interest, as citizens, as concerned human beings, and as advocates, students, faculty, and collaborating advocacy partners endeavored to investigate and shine a light on the realities of the use of solitary confinement within the prison system with a focus on the state of North Carolina. To this end, the authors have relied on a wide range of sources to parse out not only the practice and the outcomes of isolation, but also the evolution of the substantive response to this condition of confinement. This report examines the U.S. Constitution and its protections, the international standards that the United States as a nation has endorsed, as well as North Carolina state legal protections. The conclusion reached is stark and straightforward: solitary confinement is ineffective at decreasing violence within prisons; it is ineffective at preserving public safety; it is ineffective at managing scarce monetary resources; and it violates the boundaries of human dignity and justice. Present efforts to redress this injustice have been, thus far, largely ineffective. Laws and the courts that interpret them must evolve according to the growing body of research that demonstrates that solitary confinement violates basic constitutional and human rights. This report is presented in three parts. SECTION ONE gathers data on the issue of solitary confinement and seeks to define, expose, and delegitimize the practice as inhumane and ineffective. It commences with the narratives of prisoners who have suffered or are suffering long term isolation. These in-depth stories are complemented by the results of a survey that was sent to North Carolina prisoners as a means to get a broader view of conditions of confinement from those on the inside. Added to this evidence are statistics derived from the Department of Public Safety's own database. SECTION ONE also recounts narratives from prisoners in other states who tell similar stories of deprivation and the struggle to maintain their sanity while confined to conditions of isolation. It then reviews the findings of research and studies by mental health professionals, penologists, and criminologists and summarizes the effects of solitary confinement from the perspectives of these experts. SECTION ONE concludes with an overview of the findings from other national advocacy and reform efforts. SECTION TWO explores the substantive legal policy issues related to solitary confinement. It begins with an overview of constitutional jurisprudence, with a focus on Eighth Amendment concerns and the applicability of due process protections. It demonstrates how the current state of the law fails prisoners who would try to challenge their conditions of solitary confinement as a matter of conceptual legal norms and application. It reveals the obstacles prisoners face even when they can show objectively that solitary confinement puts them at extreme risk of irreparable mental or other harm, and the difficulties they face in overcoming the burden of showing deliberate indifference by the officers who sent them to solitary because those officers can point to forty years of jurisprudence holding otherwise. It reveals the need for a different and evolved Eight Amendment interpretation - one that is based on the reality of the practices of prolonged isolation, the research that demonstrates its wrongfulness and ineffectiveness, and basic principles of human dignity. SECTION TWO then turn to the standards of international human rights that have been established by various treaties to which this nation is a signatory. The Convention Against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as other firmly established international and regional human rights norms prohibit the use of torture under any circumstances, and these prohibitions are fully applicable to solitary confinement. Lastly SECTION TWO considers national standards promulgated by the American Bar Association and the American Correctional Association, possible approaches and remedies based on the laws of state of North Carolina and then compares North Carolina to such national standards. Finally, SECTION THREE offers recommendations for reform. It begins from the premise that solitary confinement is both immoral and ineffective. It considers, as preliminary steps toward the abandonment of the use of isolation as a form of punishment, "technical" reforms that would strictly limit and regulate the practice. More to the point, it then suggests systemic reforms including reducing prison populations, emphasizing rehabilitation, changing institutional prison culture, and ultimately advocates for a complete ban on solitary confinement. SECTION THREE identifies advocacy strategies for reaching reform goals, including litigation, legislative initiatives, and community outreach and organizing. As stated at the outset of this Executive Summary, the conclusion reached is stark and straightforward: solitary confinement is ineffective at decreasing violence within prisons; it is ineffective at preserving public safety; it is ineffective at managing scarce monetary resources; and it violates the boundaries of human dignity and justice. Details: Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina School of Law Immigration/Human Rights Clinic; North Carolina Prisoners Legal Services; In Cooperation With American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, 2014. 225p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 12, 2014 at: http://www.law.unc.edu/documents/academics/humanrights/solitaryconfinement/fullreport.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.law.unc.edu/documents/academics/humanrights/solitaryconfinement/fullreport.pdf Shelf Number: 134023 Keywords: Human Rights AbusesIsolationPrisonersPunishmentSolitary Confinement (U.S.; North Carolina)Torture |
Author: Schroeder, Kari Britt Title: Local norms of cheating and the cultural evolution of crime and punishment: a study of two urban neighborhoods Summary: The prevalence of antisocial behavior varies across time and place. The likelihood of committing such behavior is affected by, and also affects, the local social environment. To further our understanding of this dynamic process, we conducted two studies of antisocial behavior, punishment, and social norms. These studies took place in two neighborhoods in Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. According to a previous study, Neighborhood A enjoys relatively low frequencies of antisocial behavior and crime and high levels of social capital. In contrast, Neighborhood B is characterized by relatively high frequencies of antisocial behavior and crime and low levels of social capital. In Study 1, we used an economic game to assess neighborhood differences in theft, third-party punishment (3PP) of theft, and expectation of 3PP. Participants also reported their perceived neighborhood frequency of cooperative norm violation ("cheating"). Participants in Neighborhood B thought that their neighbors commonly cheat but did not condone cheating. They stole more money from their neighbors in the game, and were less punitive of those who did, than the residents of Neighborhood A. Perceived cheating was positively associated with theft, negatively associated with the expectation of 3PP, and central to the neighborhood difference. Lower trust in one's neighbors and a greater subjective value of the monetary cost of punishment contributed to the reduced punishment observed in Neighborhood B. In Study 2, we examined the causality of cooperative norm violation on expectation of 3PP with a norms manipulation. Residents in Neighborhood B who were informed that cheating is locally uncommon were more expectant of 3PP. In sum, our results provide support for three potentially simultaneous positive feedback mechanisms by which the perception that others are behaving antisocially can lead to further antisocial behavior: (1) motivation to avoid being suckered, (2) decreased punishment of antisocial behavior, and (3) decreased expectation of punishment of antisocial behavior. Consideration of these mechanisms and of norm-psychology will help us to understand how neighborhoods can descend into an antisocial culture and get stuck there. Details: PeerJ 2:e450; DOI 10.7717/peerj.450. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 13, 2014 at: https://peerj.com/articles/450.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://peerj.com/articles/450.pdf Shelf Number: 134072 Keywords: Antisocial Behavior (U.K.)CheatingNeighborhoods and CrimePunishmentSocial CapitalStealingTheftUrban Areas |
Author: Light, Michael T. Title: The New Face of Legal Inequality: Noncitizens and the Long-Term Trends in Sentencing Disparities Across U.S. District Courts, 1992-2009 Summary: In the wake of mass immigration from Latin America, legal scholars have shifted focus from racial to ethnic inequality under the law. A series of studies now suggest that Hispanics may be the most disadvantaged group in U.S. courts, yet this body of work has yet to fully engage the role of citizenship status. The present research examines the punishment consequences for non-U.S. citizens sentenced in federal courts between 1992 and 2009. Drawing from work in citizenship studies and sociolegal inequality, I hypothesize that non-state members will be punished more severely than U.S. citizens, and any trends in Hispanic ethnicity over this period will be linked to punitive changes in the treatment of noncitizens. In line with this hypothesis, results indicate a considerable punishment gap between citizens and noncitizens - larger than minority-white disparities. Additionally, this citizenship 'penalty' has increased at the incarceration stage, explaining the majority of the increase in Hispanic-white disparity over the past two decades. As international migration increases, these findings call for greater theoretical and empirical breadth in legal inequality research beyond traditional emphases, such as race and ethnicity. Details: West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University, Department of Sociology, 2014. 37p. Source: Internet Resource: Criminal Justice, Borders and Citizenship Research Paper : Accessed November 20, 2014 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2507448 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2507448 Shelf Number: 134173 Keywords: HispanicsImmigrantsPunishmentRacial DisparitiesSentencing Disparities (U.S>) |
Author: Valadez, Mercedes Title: "We have got enough criminals in the United States without importing any": An Examination of the Influence of Citizenship Status, Legal Status, and National Origin among Latino Subgroups in Federal Sentencing Outcomes Summary: The study of non-U.S. citizens in criminal justice system outcomes has often been neglected in the sentencing literature. When citizenship is considered, there are generally no distinctions made within this group. The research fails to consider differences according to legal status, race/ethnicity, nationality, and other distinctive markers that might play a role in sentencing outcomes. Using federal sentencing data collected by the United States Sentencing Commission for fiscal year 2006 through fiscal year 2008, this study examines the effect of offender citizenship status, legal status, and national origin on the likelihood of imprisonment and length of imprisonment for offenders convicted of drug offenses. The current study considers differences among foreign-born and Latino immigrant subgroups (e.g., Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, and Mexican nationals). The key findings in this dissertation include: (1) non-U.S. citizens have greater odds of imprisonment than U.S. citizens. However, non-U.S. citizen offenders receive significantly shorter prison terms relative to U.S. citizen offenders; (2) undocumented immigrants are more likely to be incarcerated compared to similarly situated authorized immigrants and U.S. citizens. However, legal status does not have an effect on sentence length; and (3) with respect to national origin, Mexican nationals are significantly more likely than Colombians to be incarcerated and are given significantly longer prison sentences than Dominican nationals. The implications of these findings and future research are addressed in the concluding chapter. Details: Phoenix, AZ: Arizona State University, 2013. 144p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed January 16, 2015 at: http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110555/content/Valadez_asu_0010E_12976.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://repository.asu.edu/attachments/110555/content/Valadez_asu_0010E_12976.pdf Shelf Number: 134412 Keywords: Alien CriminalsLatinosPunishmentSentencing (U.S.) |
Author: Cox, Robynn Title: Where Do We Go From Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights Summary: On the surface, crime and punishment appear to be unsophisticated matters. After all, if someone takes part in a crime, then shouldn't he or she have to suffer the consequences? But dig deeper and it is clear that crime and punishment are multidimensional problems that stem from racial prejudice justified by age-old perceptions and beliefs about African Americans. The United States has a dual criminal justice system that has helped to maintain the economic and social hierarchy in America, based on the subjugation of blacks, within the United States. Public policy, criminal justice actors, society and the media, and criminal behavior have all played roles in creating what sociologist Loic Wacquant calls the hyper-incarceration of black men. But there are solutions to rectify this problem. To summarize the major arguments in this essay, the root cause of the hyper-incarceration of blacks (and in particular black men) is society's collective choice to become more punitive. These tough-on-crime laws, which applied to all Americans, could be maintained only because of the dual legal system developed from the legacy of racism in the United States. That is, race allowed for society to avoid the trade-off between societies "demand" to get tough on crime and its "demand" to retain civil liberties, through unequal enforcement of the law. In essence, tying crime to observable characteristics (such as race or religious affiliation) allowed the majority in society to pass tough-on-crime policies without having to bear the full burden of these policies, permitting these laws to be sustained over time. What's more, the history of racism, which is also linked to the history of perceptions of race and crime, has led society to choose to fight racial economic equality using the criminal justice system (i.e., incarceration) instead of choosing to reduce racial disparities through consistent investments in social programs (such as education, job training, and employment, which have greater public benefits), as King (1968) lobbied for before his assassination. In other words, society chose to use incarceration as a welfare program to deal with the poor, especially since the underprivileged are disproportionately people of color. At the same time, many communities attempted to benefit economically from mass incarceration by using prisons as a strategy for economic growth, making the incarceration system eerily similar to the system of slavery. Given all of the documented social and economic costs of mass incarceration (e.g., inferior labor market opportunities, increases in the racial disparity in HIV/AIDS, destruction of the family unit), it can be concluded that it has helped to maintain the economic hierarchy, predicated on race, in the United States. In order to undo the damage that has been done, and in order to move beyond our racial past, we must as a nation reeducate ourselves about race; and then, as a society, commit to investing in social programs targeted toward at-risk youth. We must also ensure diversity in criminal justice professionals in order to achieve the economic equality that King fought for prior to his death. Although mass incarceration policies have recently received a great deal of attention (due to incarceration becoming prohibitively costly), failure to address the legacy of racism passed down by our forefathers and its ties to economic oppression will only result in the continued reinvention of Jim Crow. Details: Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2015. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 21, 2015 at: http://s2.epi.org/files/2014/MassIncarcerationReport.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://s2.epi.org/files/2014/MassIncarcerationReport.pdf Shelf Number: 134424 Keywords: Economic AnalysisMass Incarceration (U.S.)MinoritiesPrisonersPunishmentRacial DisparitiesRacism |
Author: Lee, Evan Title: Regulating Crimmigration Summary: In the last decade, federal prison populations and deportations have both soared to record numbers. The principal cause of these sharp increases has been the leveraging of prior criminal convictions - mostly state convictions - into federal sentencing enhancements and deportations. These increases are controversial on political and policy grounds. Indeed, the political controversy has overshadowed the fact that the Nation's Article III and immigration courts have struggled with an exquisitely difficult set of technical problems in determining which state criminal convictions should qualify for federal sentencing enhancements and/or deportation. The crux of the problem is that the underlying crime can be viewed in a fact-sensitive manner - which usually benefits the government - or in an abstract, "categorical" manner - which usually benefits the individual. In two recent decisions, Descamps v. United States and Moncrieffe v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court has squarely sided with a categorical approach. Yet the implementation of a categorical approach faces three huge challenges: first, it cuts against the widely shared intuition that just punishment should turn on the facts of the case in question; second, it presupposes that federal courts will always be able to ascertain the essential elements of state offenses; and third, a categorical approach resists application to a significant number of existing federal statutes. This Article sketches out a coherent framework for administering a categorical approach across both federal sentencing and immigration, in the process reconciling seemingly inconsistent Supreme Court decisions and suggesting how several circuit splits should be resolved. Details: San Francisco: University of California Hastings College of the Law, 2015. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: UC Hastings Research Paper No. 128: Accessed February 12, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2559485 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2559485 Shelf Number: 134604 Keywords: DeportationImmigrantsImmigrationPunishmentSentencing (U.S.)Sentencing Enhancements |
Author: Berry, William W., III Title: Eighth Amendment Presumptions: A Constitutional Framework for Curbing Mass Incarceration Summary: The Supreme Court's conceptualization of the Eighth Amendment over the past decade has focused on narrow exceptions to the ability of the states to punish criminal offenders, excising particular punishments based on characteristics of the offender or crime. What is missing, however, is a set of broader guiding principles delineating the line between acceptable and impermissible punishments. The Court itself, in Kennedy v. Louisiana, acknowledged as much, describing the case law as "still in search of a unifying principle." In light of this vacuum, this article proposes a new approach to the application of the Eighth Amendment. The absence of regulation of excessive and disproportionate punishments by state legislatures over the past two decades has resulted in the largest prison population in the history of the human race. Instead of merely being a tool that merely removes a few types of offenses and offenders from the purview of state legislatures, the Eighth Amendment should also serve as a more robust guide to shape state penal practices. To that end, this Article argues for the development of a series of Eighth Amendment presumptions - guiding principles that would govern the punishment practices of legislatures without excluding them from the conversation. Currently, the Eighth Amendment serves to identify the constitutional "exceptions" to the "rules" promulgated by the legislatures. This Article's approach would reverse that status quo, with the Court articulating general rules and the legislatures then developing (and justifying through careful study) the exceptions to the rules. Indeed, an examination of the Court's Eighth Amendment cases suggests this "presumptive" sentiment is already implicit in much of the thinking of the Court. Part I of the Article briefly explains the shortcomings of the current evolving standards of decency doctrine and its devastating consequences. Part II of the Article explores the concept of presumptions, exploring how presumptions operate and demonstrating their virtues. The Article then argues in Part III for the reimagining of the Eighth Amendment as an Amendment of constitutional presumptions combining elements from the Court's past cases with the needs arising from three decades of neglecting the decisions of legislatures. Finally, Part IV demonstrates how this conceptual framework would work in practice. Details: University, MS: University of Mississippi School of Law, 2015. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 26, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2567962 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2567962 Shelf Number: 134680 Keywords: Death Penalty (U.S.)Mandatory SentencingParolePunishmentSentencingSupreme Court |
Author: Trebilcock, Julie Title: No winners: The reality of short term prison sentences Summary: Every year over 60,000 adults receive a short prison sentence of less than 12 months. These prisoners usually serve half of their sentence in custody and the remainder in the community. Although they can be returned to prison during the second half of their sentence if they commit another crime, they are not subject to post-release supervision or intervention from probation (unless they are aged between 18 and 21 years). While in prison, the short time available often means there is little opportunity to adequately address the needs of this population, with limited access to offending behaviour programmes, education and work (Lewis et al, 2003; National Audit Office, 2002, 2008, 2010; Social Exclusion Unit, 2002). On release, short sentence prisoners often face a number of barriers to their resettlement, highlighting that 'those serving short sentences, receive little practical support, before release or afterwards' (Social Exclusion Unit, 2002). This is despite the fact that short sentence prisoners have the highest re-conviction rates amongst adult prisoners (Lewis et al, 2003; National Audit Office, 2010). In 2009, the Commission on English Prisons Today called for 'radical and transformational change' and for short prison sentences to be replaced with community penalties (Howard League, 2009:6). In the same year a motion was passed by the Prison Governors' Association (PGA) to abolish prison sentences of 12 months and under on the basis that they do not work. Since then, a number of other key stakeholders have also expressed concern about the ineffectiveness of short prison sentences, including NAPO (the Trade Union and Professional Association for Family Court and Probation Staff) and the Howard League for Penal Reform. Following the new coalition government and Kenneth Clarke's appointment as the Justice Secretary, a full review of sentencing and rehabilitation policy was promised (Hansard, 2010) leading to the publication of a green paper entitled Breaking the cycle: Effective punishment, rehabilitation and sentencing of offenders in December 2010 (Ministry of Justice, 2010a). It is within this context that this research sought to give further consideration to the reality of short term imprisonment from the perspective of both prisoners and prison staff. In May 2010 the Howard League for Penal Reform, in collaboration with the PGA, commissioned a piece of research to consider the reality of short term imprisonment from the perspective of prisoners, prison staff and prison governors. The research was interested to explore three key research questions: - What are the day-to-day experiences and views of male prisoners serving short term prison sentences of 12 months and under? - What are the views of prison staff working with male prisoners serving short term prison sentences of 12 months and under? - What are the views of PGA members and other key stakeholders regarding short term prison sentences of 12 months and under? In order to explore these key questions the study relied on a number of interlinked investigations. These were: - an interview survey of short sentence prisoners; - an interview survey of prison staff; - an electronic questionnaire survey of PGA members; and, - an electronic questionnaire survey of other key stakeholders. This research was conducted with prisoners and prison staff in three male prisons in one National Offender Management Service (NOMS) region. The three study sites were selected on the basis that they all held male prisoners serving prison sentences of 12 months and under. At each site fieldwork was completed by an independent academic and a small team of retired prison governors. Interviews ranged from between 30 and 60 minutes. A total of 44 interviews with short sentence prisoners and twenty-five with prison staff were conducted. This report presents the findings of the interview surveys with short sentence prisoners and prison staff only. The findings from the electronic questionnaire surveys of PGA members and other key stakeholders will be reported elsewhere. Details: London: Howard League for Penal Reform, 2011. 52p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed March 19, 2015 at: https://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/pdf/Publications/No_Winners.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United Kingdom URL: https://d19ylpo4aovc7m.cloudfront.net/fileadmin/howard_league/user/pdf/Publications/No_Winners.pdf Shelf Number: 134973 Keywords: InmatesPrisonersPunishmentSentencing (U.K.)Sentencing ReformShort Term Imprisonment |
Author: Shavell, Steven Title: A Simple Model of Optimal Deterrence and Incapacitation Summary: The deterrence of crime and its reduction through incapacitation are studied in a simple multi-period model of crime and law enforcement. Optimal imprisonment sanctions and the optimal probability of sanctions are determined. A point of emphasis is that the incapacitation of individuals is often socially desirable even when they are potentially deterrable. The reason is that successful deterrence may require a relatively high probability of sanctions and thus a relatively high enforcement expense. In contrast, incapacitation may yield benefits no matter how low the probability of sanctions is - implying that incapacitation may be superior to deterrence. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2014. 27p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working Paper No. 20747: Accessed April 1, 2015 at: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20747.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20747.pdf Shelf Number: 135111 Keywords: Criminal DeterrenceImprisonmentIncapacitationPunishment |
Author: Slobogin, Christopher Title: Plea Bargaining and the Substantive and Procedural Goals of Criminal Justice: From Retribution and Adversarialism to Preventive Justice and Hybrid-Inquisitorialism Summary: Plea bargaining and guilty pleas are intrinsically incompatible with the most commonly-accepted premises of American criminal justice - to wit, retributivism and adversarialism. This article argues that the only way to align plea bargaining with the substantive and procedural premises of American criminal justice is to change those premises. It imagines a system where retribution is no longer the lodestar of criminal punishment, and where party-control of the process is no longer the desideratum of adjudication. If, instead, plea bargaining were seen as a mechanism for implementing a sentencing regime focused primarily on individual crime prevention rather than retribution (as in the salad days of indeterminate sentencing), and if it were filtered through a system that is inquisitorial (i.e., judicially-monitored) rather than run by the adversaries, it would have a much greater chance of evolving into a procedurally coherent mechanism for achieving substantively accurate results. Details: Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University - Law School, 2014. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Vanderbilt Public Law Research Paper No. 15-4 : Accessed April 2, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2583898 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2583898 Shelf Number: 135141 Keywords: Plea BargainingPunishmentRetributionSentencing |
Author: Kantorowicz, Elena Title: Cognitive Biases and Procedural Rules: Enhancing the Use of Alternative Sanctions Summary: The practice of short-term imprisonment has been long criticised due to its criminogenic effect and costs. To minimise its use, many countries introduced alternative sanctions such as community service or home confinement with electronic monitoring. Unfortunately, in practice those sanctions are often imposed on non-prison bound offenders, a phenomenon termed "the net-widening problem". Consequently, instead of reducing the prison population, the alternative sanctions substitute lighter punishments such as fine or conditional imprisonment. The discretion power whether to impose a prison sentence or its alternatives lies in the hands of the courts. Therefore, the way to enhance the use of alternative sanctions as a substitute to short-term imprisonment is to change the behaviour of judges. This paper adopts the unique approach of behavioural law and economics in order to discuss procedural rules that have the potential to achieve the above-mentioned goal. Each of the analysed procedural rules explains the cognitive biases, which judges are subject to when choosing between a prison sentence and an alternative punishment. Following that, this paper analyses how the suggested procedural rules overcome or use those biases in order to promote the use of alternative sanctions. Details: Rotterdam: Erasmus University Rotterdam , 2014. 22p. Source: Internet Resource: Rotterdam Institute of Law and Economics (RILE) Working Paper Series No. 2014/10 : Accessed April 6, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2531418 Year: 2014 Country: International URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2531418 Shelf Number: 135162 Keywords: Alternatives to IncarcerationCriminal LawJudgesJudicial DiscretionNet-WideningPunishment |
Author: Galik, Lauren Title: Smart on Sentencing, Smart on Crime: An Argument for Reforming Louisiana's Determinate Sentencing Laws Summary: Over the past several decades, Louisiana legislators have passed a number of determinate sentencing laws aimed at reducing crime and incapacitating certain types of offenders. Because these laws have been disproportionately applied to nonviolent crimes, nonviolent offenders now account for the majority of inmates and admissions to prison in the state. This has produced a number of unfortunate consequences, such as an increase in the state's prison population from 21,007 in 1992 to 39,709 in 2011 and a $315 million increase in correction expenditures during the same time period, from $442.3 million (in 2011 dollars) in 1992 to $757.4 million in 2011. Meanwhile, there is little evidence that the laws have done anything to reduce Louisiana's violent crime rate, which remains considerably above both the national average and the rates in its neighboring states. Today, Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, with 868 of every 100,000 of its citizens in prison. Louisiana's citizens could benefit considerably from changes to the way in which convicted criminals are sentenced. As things stand, nonviolent offenders who pose little or no threat to society are routinely sentenced to long terms in prison with no opportunity for parole, probation or suspension of sentence. In most cases, this is a direct result of the state's determinate sentencing laws. These prisoners consume disproportionate amounts of Louisiana's scarce correctional resources, which could be better utilized to ensure that violent criminals are more effectively kept behind bars. Among the more serious problems with Louisiana's determinate sentencing laws are: - A large number of crimes that carry mandatory minimum prison sentences in Louisiana are drug-related and nonviolent in nature. Indeed, numerous violent crimes, such as negligent homicide, manslaughter, aggravated assault with a firearm, aggravated battery, simple rape and simple kidnapping carry no mandatory minimum sentences at all. - Mandatory minimum sentences eliminate judicial discretion over sentencing by prohibiting judges from taking into account factors specific to the crime or offender when determining the sentence. - Mandatory minimum sentences create arbitrary outcomes by drawing essentially trivial lines between degrees of criminal activity that can result in dramatic differences in punishment. This happens most commonly with sentences for drug crimes, where different weights or quantities of drugs carry varying degrees of punishment. For example, possession of 199.9 grams of cocaine carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years of hard labor in prison and a $50,000 fine. However, possession of 200 grams of cocaine carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years of hard labor in prison and a $100,000 fine-double the punishment for a negligible 0.1 gram more of cocaine. Other states have gone further. In Maine, legislators passed safety valve provisions that allow judges to depart below mandatory minimum sentences in certain instances. In Rhode Island, legislators repealed mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. These reforms have allowed Maine and Rhode Island to save prison space and resources for criminals who pose a real threat to society, while reducing corrections costs. Louisiana could benefit from similar changes to sentencing policy. Details: Los Angeles: Reason Foundation, 2013. 36p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Study 425: Accessed April 8, 2015 at: http://reason.org/files/louisiana_sentencing_reform.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://reason.org/files/louisiana_sentencing_reform.pdf Shelf Number: 135182 Keywords: Costs of Criminal JusticeDeterminate SentencingImprisonment, Economic Aspects ofPunishmentSentencing (Louisiana)Sentencing Reform |
Author: Borden, Barbara Ann Title: Summary: This study examined the impact of risk factors and existing federal sentencing policies and practices on the likelihood of recidivism for female white collar offenders. The research combined and expanded prior literature on female offending, white collar crime, and recidivism, by creating a "profile" of the female white collar offender, identifying risk factors of recidivism from female offending and feminist pathways literature present in the population of federal female white collar offenders, and informing revision of current federal sentencing policies that result in the imposition of unnecessarily harsh sanctions for this group of low-risk, first-time (and likely one-time), female offenders. No prior studies have applied theories of feminist pathways offending to recidivism by female white collar offenders. Data from a recent national data set of offenders who began a term of federal probation or supervised release between October 1, 2004 and September 30, 2007 were used to provide a fresh look at female white collar offenders sentenced after implementation of the mandatory United States Sentencing Guidelines, but before judicial discretion was returned to federal sentencing courts by the United States Supreme Court. Overall, the study found that female white collar offenders are plagued by risks of recidivism common to all types of female offenders, including those recognized in pathways literature, and their profile more closely resembles the female offender than the public's image of a "white collar" offender. Details: Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, 2014. 164p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/13389/2014_Borden_Barbara_A_Dissertation.pdf?sequence=2 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: https://shareok.org/bitstream/handle/11244/13389/2014_Borden_Barbara_A_Dissertation.pdf?sequence=2 Shelf Number: 135501 Keywords: Female OffendersPunishmentRecidivismSentencingWhite Collar Offenders (U.S.) |
Author: Mastrobuoni, Giovanni Title: Criminal Careers and Criminal Firms Summary: This study presents new evidence on that nature of criminal careers. Criminologists have studied and described "criminal careers" for over 80 years, beginning with 500 Criminal Careers, the landmark 1930 Glueck and Glueck study documenting the lives of the residents of a Massachusetts juvenile reform school. Our view of criminal careers differs from this long standing and esteemed research, much of which builds on Blumstein et al. (1986) and is recently reviewed in Piquero et al. (2013), in the sense that we will use the framework of labor economics to provide structure to our description of men who engage in robbery in Milan during the early 2000s. Our approach builds on the field of the "Economics of Crime" (Becker, 1968), where criminal behavior is assumed to respond to incentives, much like the behavior of workers and firms. This does not imply that only incentives matter; sociological and psychological factors are likely to matter as well but are not going to be discussed in this study. The contribution of this chapter follows from the comparative advantage that economists have in the quantitative analysis of large data sets derived from administrative records, as well as a clear understanding of concepts like endogeneity, causality, efficiency, incentives, opportunity cost, and general equilibrium. The questions we shed light on are also classics in economics: what is the relationship between age, nationality, or education and labor market entry, job mobility, or retirement? How do periods of unemployment affect future labor market activity? Does experience increase human capital, or are their simply high and low quality workers? We will use economic and econometric reasoning to think about recidivism and victim selection, and will also compare the distribution and productivity of "firms" in the robbery industry with basic facts about "legal firms" in the United States. The ultimate goal of our efforts is to derive sound policy implications that might improve the social wellbeing. There are four social "goods" that are derived from arrest, conviction, and incarceration. First, punishment deters potential criminals by increases the cost associated with criminal behavior. Second, incarceration in particular can physically prevent crime by removing offenders from society. Third, the experience of punishment can have a specific deterrent effect on established criminals, causes them to update their beliefs about the disutility associated with future punishments. Finally, knowing that a criminal has been punished provides non-criminal members of society with a sense of justice or, less diplomatically, vengeance for the committed offenses. In addition to describing the anatomy of criminal careers in Milan, we will also evaluate the extent to which governments in Milan are allocating their scarce resources in a way that achieves these goals. We address these old questions in economics and criminology in a new way, using two sources of administrative data from criminal justice agencies in Milan - the Questura di Milano and records of Dipartimento di Amministrazione Penitenziaria. Both data sources are used to highlight observed characteristics of robbers, and their robberies, that are associated with particularly destructive and socially harmful offenses, and also what characteristics are associated with harsher punishments. If judges assigned sentences in such a way that, in equilibrium, equated the marginal benefit of crime to its marginal cost, we would expect that characteristics that are associated with costly robberies are also associated with harsher punishments. Details: Unpublished paper, 2013. 102p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 13, 2015 at: http://www.frdb.org/upload/file/Report%202.pdf Year: 2013 Country: Italy URL: http://www.frdb.org/upload/file/Report%202.pdf Shelf Number: 135619 Keywords: Criminal CareersEconomics of CrimePunishmentRobberiesRobbers |
Author: Mastrobuoni, Giovanni Title: Optimizing Behavior During Bank Robberies: Theory and Evidence on the Two Minute Rule Summary: I use data on individual bank robberies to estimate the distribution of criminals' disutility of jail. The identification rests on the money versus risk trade-off that criminals face when deciding whether to stay an additional minute while robbing the bank. The observed (optimal) duration of successful robberies identifies the individual compensating variation of jail, called disutility of jail. The distribution of the disutility which is often assumed to be degenerate, resembles instead an earnings distribution, and highlights heterogeneity in the response to deterrence. General deterrence effects are increasing in criminal's disutility. Details: Unpublished paper, 2014. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 13, 2015 at: http://www.ceistorvergata.it/public/ceis/file/seminari/2014/mastrobuoni.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Italy URL: http://www.ceistorvergata.it/public/ceis/file/seminari/2014/mastrobuoni.pdf Shelf Number: 135622 Keywords: DeterrencePunishmentRobbersRobberyRobbery (Italy)Sentencing Enhancements |
Author: Chalfin, Aaron Title: Criminal Deterrence: A Review of the Literature Summary: We review economics research regarding the effect of police, punishments, and work on crime, with a particular focus on papers from the last 20 years. Evidence in favor of deterrence effects is mixed. While there is considerable evidence that crime is responsive to police and to the existence of attractive legitimate labor market opportunities, there is far less evidence that crime responds to the severity of criminal sanctions. We discuss fruitful directions for future work and implications for public policy. Details: Unpublished paper, 2014. 44p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 14, 2015 at: http://eml.berkeley.edu/~jmccrary/chalfin_mccrary2014.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://eml.berkeley.edu/~jmccrary/chalfin_mccrary2014.pdf Shelf Number: 135640 Keywords: Deterrence Economics of Crime Employment Punishment |
Author: United States Sentencing Commission Title: Alternative Sentencing in the Federal Criminal Justice System Summary: January 2009 the United States Sentencing Commission issued a report, Alternative Sentencing in the Federal Criminal Justice System. The report analyzed data from the prior decade concerning the imposition of alternative sentences by federal courts. In particular, that report found "the proportion of federal offenders sentenced to alternatives . . . remained low and decreased slightly" during the prior decade. As a supplement to the 2009 publication, the Commission is releasing this new report, using data from 2005 through 2014, to examine more recent trends in the rates of alternative sentences using a methodology that expands that of the prior report. Notably, this new report updates the previous analysis to include federal sentencing data since the U.S. Supreme Court's December 2007 decision in Gall v. United States, which reinforced sentencing courts' discretion to vary below the sentencing ranges recommended by the Guidelines Manual. This current report examines how sentencing courts use their discretion to impose alternative sentences, specifically combinations of probation and confinement options that substitute for the full prison terms permitted by law. This analysis shows a continued decreasing trend in the imposition of alternative sentences and explores factors associated with the decrease. In examining these trends, this report demonstrates: - Alternative sentences were imposed for a small proportion of federal offenders, in part, as a result of the large number of federal offenders who were ineligible for such sentences due to convictions under certain statutes or their status as deportable aliens. - During the past ten years, rates of alternative sentences declined among U.S. citizen federal offenders who were eligible for such sentences despite 1) a steady overall increase in sentences below the guideline range due to downward departures or variances and 2) overall consistency in offense severity and criminal history among those offenders. - In recent years, the decrease in rates of alternative sentences for eligible offenders, in part, is a reflection of the Commission's 2010 amendment that expanded Zones B and C of the Sentencing Table. The amendment added to Zones B and C offenders whose sentencing ranges previously were in Zones C and D, thereby increasing the proportion of offenders eligible for alternatives. However, as to be expected, courts imposed alternatives for these more serious offenders less frequently than for offenders whose sentencing ranges otherwise were in Zones B and C. This has contributed to the decrease in the rate of alternative sentences for eligible offenders. - Alternative sentences were imposed at notably different rates for offenders in different race categories with White offenders receiving such sentences at higher rates than Black and Hispanic offenders. - During the past ten years, alternative sentences have been imposed at a consistently low rate among U.S. citizen offenders whose sentencing ranges were in Zone D of the Sentencing Table. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Sentencing Commission, 2015. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed July 9, 2015 at: http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-projects-and-surveys/alternatives/20150617_Alternatives.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-projects-and-surveys/alternatives/20150617_Alternatives.pdf Shelf Number: 135975 Keywords: Alternatives to IncarcerationCourtsPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Uhlmann, David M. Title: The Pendulum Swings: Reconsidering Corporate Criminal Prosecution Summary: For more than a decade, the Justice Department morphed its approach to corporate crime, eschewing criminal prosecutions in favor of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements that allowed large corporations to avoid the ignominy of criminal convictions. There seemingly were no crimes that did not qualify for corporate absolution. Then, with public alarm increasing over the lack of criminal prosecutions for the financial crisis, the pendulum swung, and criminal prosecutions were back in vogue. In 2014, the Justice Department brought record-setting criminal prosecutions against two European banks for currency manipulation, followed by similar prosecutions against five American and European banks during 2015. What explains the conflicted approach to criminal prosecution of corporations - and what does it reveal about the theoretical basis for corporate criminal liability? I argue that the Justice Department's erratic approach reflects a lack of agreement among practitioners about what is accomplished by the criminal prosecution of corporations, a disagreement that also exists in scholarly accounts of corporate criminal liability focused on retributive and utilitarian purposes of punishment. The emphasis on retributive and utilitarian theory, while instructive, obscures the expressive function of criminal law and the societal need for condemnation, accountability, and justice when crime occurs, particularly in the corporate setting. In this article, I offer a more complete account of corporate criminal prosecution, which reveals the moral content of corporate crime, considers the deterrent value of corporate prosecution, and explains why the expressive value of the criminal law is indispensable in the corporate context. Corporate wrongdoing has pernicious effects on our communities, the economy, and the environment, which warrant the condemnation the criminal law provides. Criminal prosecution of corporations upholds the rule of law, validates the choices of law-abiding companies, and promotes accountability. Together those values contribute to our sense that justice has been done when crime occurs, which enhances trust in the legal system, provides the opportunity for societal catharsis, and allows us to move forward in the aftermath of criminal activity. When corporations face no consequences for their criminal behavior, we minimize their lawlessness, and increase cynicism about the outsized influence of corporations in our society. Details: Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Law School, 2015. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 24, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2642455 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2642455 Shelf Number: 136536 Keywords: Corporate CrimeCriminal LawPunishmentWhite Collar Crime |
Author: Stinneford, John F. Title: Dividing Crime, Multiplying Punishments Summary: When the government wants to impose exceptionally harsh punishment on a criminal defendant, one of the ways it accomplishes this goal is to divide the defendant's single course of conduct into multiple offenses that give rise to multiple punishments. The Supreme Court has rendered the Double Jeopardy Clause, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, and the rule of lenity incapable of handling this problem by emptying them of substantive content and transforming them into mere instruments for effectuation of legislative will. This Article demonstrates that all three doctrines originally reflected a substantive legal preference for life and liberty, and a systemic bias against over-punishment. A punishment was deemed excessive under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause if it was greater than an offender's retributive desert, as measured against longstanding punishment practice. Prior to the twentieth century, if prosecutors proposed a novel unit of prosecution for a given crime, judges asked two questions: (1) Does this unit of prosecution give the government the opportunity to bring multiple charges based on a single course of conduct?; and (2) If so, would the bringing of multiple charges create an arbitrary relationship between the offender's culpability and his cumulative punishment, measured in light of prior punishment practice? If the answer to both questions was yes, judges would declare the punishment invalid under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, the Double Jeopardy Clause, or the rule of strict construction of penal statutes (the forerunner to today's rule of lenity). By recovering this methodology for addressing prosecutorial efforts to divide crime and multiply punishments, we can ameliorate our current mass incarceration crisis and make the American criminal justice system more just. Details: University of Florida Levin College of Law, 2014. 82p. Source: Internet Resource: University of Florida Levin College of Law Research Paper No. 15-7: Accessed September 5, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2526268 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2526268 Shelf Number: 136688 Keywords: Cruel and Unusual PunishmentDouble JeopardyPunishment |
Author: Biddulph, Sarah Title: Punishments in the Post Re-Education Through Labour World: Questions About Minor Crime in China Summary: As controversial as it was during its lifetime, the administrative detention power of Re-education through Labour (RETL) after its abolition has continued to create waves in the Chinese system of punishments. RETL was abolished without putting a clear alternative power or powers in its place. In the post-RETL world a number of basic questions about the scope and structure of China's system of punishments remain unresolved. What gaps, if any, has abolition of RETL left in the system of punishments? If these gaps exist, what measures, if any, will fill them? This paper first examines the question of whether there is a gap in the system of punishments left by abolition of RETL, and if so what it looks like. It goes on to discuss reforms in criminal and administrative law and debates circulating around the two concepts of minor crime and security punishments. Details: Melbourne: Melbourne Law School, 2015. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: U of Melbourne Legal Studies Research Paper No. 719 : Accessed October 8, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2664864 Year: 2015 Country: China URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2664864 Shelf Number: 136965 Keywords: Hard LaborMisdemeanorsPunishment |
Author: Donna, Javier Title: Let the Punishment Fit the Criminal Summary: We investigate the role of punishment progressivity and individual characteristics in the determination of crime. To analyze welfare implications we model individuals' response to judges' optimal punishment in a dynamic setting. We introduce two distinctive features motivated by our empirical setting. First, judges rarely imposes maximum punishment for first time offenders. Instead, we observe low fines (or just a warning) even when crime detection technology is efficient and punishment is not costly. We account for this by allowing an unobservable (to the judge) individual state to be correlated with a public signal (the environment). This generates an optimal punishment that is conditional on individual observables. Second, judges punishments follow a progressive system: conditioning on type, recidivists are punished harsher than first-time offenders for the same crime. We account for these dynamics by introducing a persistent unobservable (to the judge) component. Judges update their beliefs about individuals depending on whether they committed a crime in the previous period; this gives rise to progressivity in the optimal punishment system. For the empirical analysis we examine a novel trial data set from a self-governed community of farmers in Southern Spain. We find that judges vary the degree of imposed punishments based on individual characteristics - such as when victims or accused have a Don honorific title indicating they are wealthy. Recidivists are punished harsher than first time offenders. Details: Working Paper, 2013. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 19, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2667588 Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2667588 Shelf Number: 137014 Keywords: FinesPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Harcourt, Bernard E. Title: The '73 Graft: Punishment, Political Economy, and the Genealogy of Morals Summary: In this essay, I explore the place of a genealogy of morals within the context of a history of political economy. More specifically, I investigate the types of moralization - of criminals and delinquents, of the disorderly, but also of political economic systems, of workers and managers, of rules and rule-breaking - that are necessary and integral to making a population accept new styles of political and economic governance, especially the punitive institutions that accompany modern political economies in the contemporary period. The marriage of political economy and a genealogy of morals: this essay explores how the moralization of certain groups of people has been necessary to render tolerable the great American paradox of laissez-faire and mass incarceration. How, in effect, practices of moralization are necessary to make tolerable the intolerable. Details: New York: Columbia Law School, 2015. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-485 : Accessed October 26, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2673062 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2673062 Shelf Number: 137054 Keywords: EthicsFoucaultMoralsPunishment |
Author: Bagaric, Mirko Title: Saving the United States from Lurching to Another Sentencing Crisis: Taking Proportionaltiy Seriously and Implementing Fair Fixed Penalties Summary: Unabated tough-on-crime policies in the United States for the past two decades in response to a crime problem have now produced another crisis: too many prisoners. Prison gates are currently literally being opened to release prisoners in a bid to ameliorate the unsustainable cost of detaining more than two million Americans. More than 40,000 drug offenders may be released early from prison pursuant to retrospective sentence reductions which have been implemented for no greater reason than the prison walls are crumbling from overuse. Sentencing is the sharp end of the criminal law. It is the domain where the State acts in its most coercive manner against citizens. The cardinal interests at stake are too important for it to continue to be dictated by reflexive legislative hunches. Yet, it is the area of law where there is the biggest gap between what is implemented and what theory informs us is achievable. This Article attempts to correct that failing and in the process makes concrete proposals to prevent the United States making another macro-political and social error by over-reacting to the present crisis. Mandatory harsh penalties have caused the incarceration crisis. The solution to the problem involves maintaining the overarching architecture of this approach but fundamentally alerting its content. The core problem with the current approach to sentencing in United States is not its prescriptive nature. It is that the sanctions are generally too severe; devoid of any attempt to match the gravity of the crime to the harshness of the penalty. Proportionality is the missing component in United States sentencing. Drug traffickers, for example, deserve punishment, but any system that treats them as severely as murderers is afflicted with a fundamental doctrinal deformity. This Article proposes a model to remedy such flaws. It gives meaning and content to proportionality. As a result, it is suggested that most non-violent and non-sexual offenses should be dealt with less harshly. This is especially because the cost and burden of imprisonment to the community needs to be factored into the sentencing calculus. Moreover, prison should be principally reserved for offenders who are a threat to public safety; not those whom we simply dislike. This will result in a rapid emptying of many prisons, but it will be principled - not reflexive. To illustrate the manner in which our recommendations should operate we develop a sentencing grid which, if implemented, would make United States sentencing fair, efficient and profoundly less expensive to the taxpayer. Details: Geelong, VIC, AUS: Deakin University, 2015. 76p. Source: Internet Resource: Deakin Law School Research Paper No. 15-03 : Accessed November 3, 2015 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2680474 Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2680474 Shelf Number: 137186 Keywords: PunishmentSentencing Sentencing Reform |
Author: Selin, Klara Hradilova Title: Longer prison sentences for serious violent crime in Sweden: An evaluation of the 2010 sentencing reform Summary: In 2010, the Swedish Parliament passed a bill focused on increasing the severity of the sentences imposed for serious violent offences. Bra (the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention) has evaluated what effect the sentencing reform had produced. This report presents the results of the evaluation, and is organised on the basis of three central research questions: - Have the sentences imposed for serious violent offences become more severe - Has there been an increase in the degree of variation in the length of the sentences imposed? - Has the clarification of the requirement to consider recidivism produced any measurable effects? Details: Stockholm: Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, 2014. 9p. Source: Internet Resource: English summary of Bra report No. 2014:6: Accessed March 9, 2016 at: https://www.bra.se/download/18.221265bc145ae05f27a19ec/1401195419581/2014_Longer+prison+sentences+for+serious+violent+crime+in+Sweden.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Sweden URL: https://www.bra.se/download/18.221265bc145ae05f27a19ec/1401195419581/2014_Longer+prison+sentences+for+serious+violent+crime+in+Sweden.pdf Shelf Number: 138141 Keywords: PunishmentSentencing |
Author: Pew Charitable Trusts Title: The Punishment Rate: New metric evaluates prison use relative to reported crime Summary: Researchers, policymakers, and the public rely on a variety of statistics to measure how society punishes crime. Among the most common is the imprisonment rate - the number of people in prison per 100,000 residents. This metric allows for comparisons of prison use over time and across jurisdictions and is widely seen as a proxy for punishment. States with high imprisonment rates, for example, are considered more punitive than those with low rates. A more nuanced assessment of punishment than the ratio of inmates to residents is that of inmates to crime - what The Pew Charitable Trusts calls the "punishment rate." This new metric gauges the size of the prison population relative to the frequency and severity of crime reported in each jurisdiction, putting the imprisonment rate in a broader context. Using the punishment rate to examine the U.S. criminal justice system, Pew found that all states became more punitive from 1983 to 2013, even though they varied widely in the amount of punishment they imposed. The analysis also shows that the nation as a whole has become more punitive than the imprisonment rate alone indicates. Details: Philadelphia: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2016. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Brief: Accessed March 24, 2016 at: http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2016/03/the_punishment_rate.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2016/03/the_punishment_rate.pdf Shelf Number: 138410 Keywords: InmatesPrisonersPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Council of Europe Title: Report to the Greek Government on the visit to Greece carried out by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) from 14 to 23 April 2015 Summary: The purpose of the April 2015 ad hoc visit to Greece was to assess the implementation of the CPT's previous recommendations, notably those contained in the reports on the 2011 and 2013 visits. To this end, its delegation examined the treatment of persons in police custody and the practical application of safeguards surrounding their detention. A specific focus of the visit was to look into the effectiveness of investigations of police ill-treatment allegations. It also reviewed the treatment and detention conditions of inmates in several prison establishments, including Korydallos Prison Hospital, and examined the situation of juveniles and foreign nationals deprived of their liberty. The delegation received, with a few exceptions, very good cooperation from both the Greek authorities and staff at the establishments visited. However, cooperation also entails that decisive action be taken to improve the situation in the light of the CPT's recommendations. This has still not happened. The findings of the 2015 visit demonstrate clearly that the situation in prisons has become critical and that urgent action is required for their recovery starting with tackling the excessive overcrowding and chronic understaffing in most establishments. Further, the serious problem of police ill-treatment needs to be fully recognised and a mechanism put in place to effectively investigate ill-treatment allegations. Details: Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2016. 76p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 16, 2016 at: http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/grc/2016-04-inf-eng.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Greece URL: http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/grc/2016-04-inf-eng.pdf Shelf Number: 138691 Keywords: Human Rights AbusesPunishmentTorture |
Author: Nese, Annamaria Title: Cooperation, Punishment and Organized Crime: A Lab-in-the Field Experiment in Southern Italy Summary: This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation which allows a deeper insight into the nature of social preferences amongst organized criminals and how these differ from "ordinary" criminals on the one hand and from the non-criminal population in the same geographical area on the other. We provide experimental evidence on cooperation and response to sanctions by running Prisoner's Dilemma and Third Party Punishment games on three different pools of subjects; students, 'Ordinary Criminals' and Camorristi (Neapolitan 'Mafiosi'). The latter two groups being recruited from within prisons. We are thus able to separately identify 'Prison' and 'Camorra' effects. Camorra prisoners show a high degree of cooperativeness and a strong tendency to punish, as well as a clear rejection of the imposition of external rules even at significant cost to themselves. In contrast, ordinary criminals behave in a much more opportunistic fashion, displaying lower levels of cooperation and, in the game with Third Party punishment, punishing less as well as tending to punish cooperation (almost as much) as defection. Our econometric analyses further enriches the analysis demonstrating inter alia that individuals' locus of control and reciprocity are associated with quite different and opposing behaviours amongst different participant types; a strong sense of self-determination and reciprocity both imply a higher propensity to cooperate and to punish for both students and Camorra inmates, but quite the opposite for ordinary criminals, further reinforcing the contrast between the behaviour of ordinary criminals and the strong internal mores of Camorra clans. Details: Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), 2016. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: IZA Discussion Paper No. 9901: Accessed April 27, 2016 at: http://ftp.iza.org/dp9901.pdf Year: 2016 Country: Italy URL: http://ftp.iza.org/dp9901.pdf Shelf Number: 138823 Keywords: Economics of CrimeInmatesMafiaOrganized CrimePrisonersPunishment |
Author: Rovner, Laura Title: Dignity and the Eighth Amendment: A New Approach to Challenging Solitary Confinement Summary: The use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons and jails has come under increasing scrutiny. Over the past few months, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy all but invited constitutional challenges to the use of solitary confinement, while President Obama asked, "Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for 23 hours a day for months, sometime for years at a time?" Even some of the most notorious prisons and jails, including California's Pelican Bay State Prison and New York's Rikers Island, are reforming their use of solitary confinement because of successful litigation and public outcry. Rovner suggests that in light of these developments and "the Supreme Court's increasing reliance on human dignity as a substantive value underlying and animating constitutional rights," there is a strong case to make that long-term solitary confinement violates the constitutional right to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Details: Washington, DC: American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, 2015. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Issue Brief: Accessed May 6, 2016 at: Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 138961 Keywords: Conditions of ConfinementCruel and Unusual PunishmentInmatesMental HealthPunishmentSolitary Confinement |
Author: Bantjes, Megan Title: Finding our way: Developing a community work model for addressing torture Summary: Why do community interventions? And why do community interventions in relation to torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment (CIDT) in South Africa ? The literature points to a number of gains as regards community interventions: they are likely to be more efficient in reaching the large numbers of beneficiaries; they are arguably more effective than one - on - one interventions for addressing large - scale psychosocial suffering; they potentially impact on a systemic level rather than on an individual level, and thereby have further reach; and they can mobilise people to engage in challenging and changing policies and institutions so that the realities of th eir daily lives improve (see, e.g., Bracken et al. 1997; Naidoo 2000; Veary 2011). All of these potential gains are relevant in relation to torture and CIDT in South Africa. Individual and specialised services are hard to access for people in poor neighbo urhoods, and there are few specialised service providers for large numbers of victims. As torture and CIDT in South Africa are caused by structural inequalities between rich and poor, we argue that prevention efforts should address these inequalities. Fina lly, torture and CIDT are, for the general public and in policy circles, often associated with the apartheid regime's policing practices or viewed as something that occurs outside South Africa's borders (Dissel et al. 2009). This means that today's victims are often unaware that their rights have been violated, or unlikely to name the violation "torture" and are therefore unlikely to seek help. Only by assisting these victims and empowering them to demand their rights can torture and CIDT be prevented. Whil e these potential gains are all worth pursuing, community interventions in general have suffered from theoretical and methodological shortcomings. As noted by Jessen et al. (2010) in their analysis of psychosocial community interventions in Latin America, community interventions are seldom evaluated or assessed in systematic ways; they are grounded in normative assumptions about what ought to happen rather than tested, theoretically informed causal relations; and they often lack clearly defined target group s. Shortcomings like these prompted CSVR - Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation in South Africa and DIGNITY - Danish Institute Against Torture (formerly RCT - Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims) to engage in systematic and critical reflections on how to produce a theoretically informed model of community work with clear and relevant target groups that can also be systematically evaluated and assessed. The aim of this report is to document and reflect on the process of producing such a theoretically informed approach to community intervention in ways that might prove 7 useful to other organisations working with human rights and psychosocial interventions. It is in this sense that we talk about finding our way. In "Finding Our Way," we have tapped a number of sources. First, we discuss different theoretical perspectives on community work that we have identified in the academic literature (Chapter 2). Second, we explore different practical examples of community interventions that we have identified in organisations in SVR's and DIGNITY's broader network (Chapter 3). Third, we discuss some of CSVR's own experiences with community work in relation to a refugee women's empowerment project and home visits aimed at support and referrals (Chapter 4). On the basis of these practical and theoretical inputs, we outline the parameters for a CSVR approach to community intervention for torture and CIDT as it emerged towards the end of 2011. This model is now being implemented and tried out in three places around the Gauteng area in South Africa. We will report on the progress of the work at a later stage. In this report, we present how we arrived at the model through systematically combining practical experiences and theoretical inputs. The hope is that these inputs - and the process of putting them into concrete use in the model - might be of use and inspiration to other organisations within the broader DIGNITY and CSVR networks and beyond. Details: Johannesburg, South Africa: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation; and Copenhagen:Dignity: Danish Institute Against Torture, 2012. 76p. Source: Internet Resource: DIGNITY Publication Series on Torture and Organised Violence, no. 1: Accessed July 18, 2016 at: https://www.dignityinstitute.org/media/2065754/pubseries_no1.pdf Year: 2012 Country: South Africa URL: https://www.dignityinstitute.org/media/2065754/pubseries_no1.pdf Shelf Number: 139656 Keywords: Community InterventionsPunishmentTorture |
Author: Guarin, Arlen Title: The Effects of Punishment of Crime in Colombia on Deterrence, Incapacitation, and Human Capital Formation Summary: Based on individual data on the population of those arrested in Medellin, we assess whether the change in punishment at age 18, mandated by law, has a deterrent effect on arrests. No deterrent effect was found on index, violent or property crimes, but a deterrence effect was found on non-index crimes, specifically those related to drug consumption and trafficking. This implies an elasticity of arrests with respect to punishment that varies between -1.0 and -6.7 percent. The number of days that arrested individuals take to recidivate is 300, higher for index crimes if they are arrested right after, rather than before, reaching 18 years of age, in which case they are less likely to recidivate in any type of crime. The change in criminal penalties at 18 years of age does not explain future differences in human capital formation among the population that had been arrested immediately after versus immediately before reaching 18 years of age. There is no evidence that the longer length of time to recidivate on the part of individuals arrested for the first time immediately after reaching 18 implies future differences in human capital formation. This suggest that our estimated incapacitation effect would not be explained by the impossibility of the arrested population to recidivate due to their having been imprisoned, but rather by a specific deterrence effect resulting from the harsher experience while in prison of those arrested right after, rather than before, reaching 18. Details: Bogota, Colombia: Banco de la Repblica, 2013. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: : Accessed August 5, 2016 at: http://www.banrep.gov.co/en/borrador-774 Year: 2013 Country: Colombia URL: http://www.banrep.gov.co/en/borrador-774 Shelf Number: 130037 Keywords: DeterrenceDrug CartelsDrug TraffickingPunishment |
Author: Illinois Sentencing Policy Advisory Council Title: Trends Analysis: Unlawful Use of a Weapon Summary: Has increasing the sentencing penalties for unlawful use of a weapon offenses had a positive effect on public safety over the last 10 years? This report uses basic trend analysis to examine whether the increased penalties for unlawful use of a weapon (UUW) offenses preceded any change in measurable public safety outcomes. In this report, measurable public safety outcomes are the number of reported violent gun crime offenses and the rate that UUW offenders are reconvicted of crime within three years of release (i.e., recidivism). If the UUW penalty enhancements were effective deterrents, fewer violent gun crimes would be committed. This analysis finds minimal effects on the public safety outcomes: - The 10-year trends for UUW crimes and overall violent crime, represented by incidents reported in Chicago, matched national downward trends in violent crime - Arrest data indicate that Cook County accounted for 65% of all UUW arrests in 2012 - Recidivism rates for UUW offenders are similar immediately before and after the sentencing enhancements This analysis finds an increase in the number of prisoners held by the state: - The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) prisoner population increased after each penalty enhancement This analysis concludes that the increase in UUW prisoners is likely caused by the cumulative effect of (1) a decrease in the use of probation and (2) an increase in technical violations of UUW offenders on supervised release . Details: Springfield, IL: SPAC, 2014. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 20, 2016 at: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/spac/pdf/SPAC_Trends_Analysis_Report_09_2014.pdf Year: 2014 Country: United States URL: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/spac/pdf/SPAC_Trends_Analysis_Report_09_2014.pdf Shelf Number: 140381 Keywords: Gun ViolenceGun-Related ViolencePunishmentSentencingViolenceViolent Crime |
Author: Perrin, Benjamin Title: Punishing the Most Heinous Crimes: Analysis and recommendations related to Bill C-53 (Life Means Life Act) Summary: Life in prison for a first-degree murder in Canada currently doesn't mean exactly that. The longest period of ineligibility for parole is 25 years, outside cases of multiple murders. While all murders are of course deplorable, many would argue that some killings are so heinous, so offensive to the public and damaging to Canadian society, that the killers should be imprisoned for the rest of their natural lives. This would include violent predators who plan and deliberate about not only killing another human being, but do so while committing egregious crimes such as sexual assault, kidnapping, or terrorist activities. Or they involve the planned and deliberate killing of police officers or other officials tasked with keeping Canadians safe. To address this issue, the federal government has introduced Bill C-53, the Life Means Life Act, which would make life imprisonment without parole a mandatory sentence for certain heinous murders and a discretionary sentence in other instances. These lifers could apply after 35 years to the federal Cabinet for "executive release". There are legitimate reasons for adding life without parole to the Criminal Code, but there are also legitimate criticisms of Bill C-53. The legislation requires amendments if it is to achieve its stated goals without being struck down based on a challenge under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The main arguments supporting Bill C-53 are that it: enhances proportionality in murder sentencing; reflects denunciation and retribution in sentencing On the other hand, the main concerns about Bill C-53 are that it: is unnecessary and will not increase public safety; denies a second chance to convicted murderers; increases pressure on the corrections system and risk to staff and fellow inmates; includes "executive release" as an illusory hope and it is unlikely to be used in practice; and infringes the Charter. After canvassing these arguments, this paper concludes that life without parole would be appropriate and just in certain cases, but that Bill C-53 is vulnerable to being struck down for infringing the Charter as presently drafted. The following recommendations should be adopted: 1) Bill C-53 should be amended so that life without parole would be a discretionary - not a mandatory - sentencing option for heinous murders. The judge should also have the option of ordering a fixed-term parole ineligibility period of between 25 and 75 years. A jury recommendation, if it is a jury trial, should be sought in these cases. 2) The situations where Bill C-53 would currently provide for discretionary life without parole should not provide for that penalty but instead give the sentencing judge the option of ordering a fixed-term parole ineligibility period of between 25 and 75 years, with a jury recommendation where there is a jury. 3) All offenders serving life sentences with parole ineligibility periods greater than 35 years should be eligible to apply for executive release (not simply those sentenced to life without parole), up until the time that they become eligible for parole. 4) The Parole Board of Canada should provide an assessment to the Minister of Public Safety of all offenders serving a sentence of life imprisonment without parole when they apply for executive release at least 35 years after beginning to serve their sentence. 5) The purposes of Bill C-53 should be clearly articulated. Heinous murderers are not sentenced as severely as they should be in Canada and there is constitutional room to enhance their penalties. However, Bill C-53 overreaches in this effort and thus risks failing to achieve needed reform.heinous murders, which are very important sentencing principles for serious and violent crime; spares victims the ordeal of frequent and ongoing automatic parole board hearings for murderers after their parole ineligibility periods have expired; ensures the protection of victims and society; and potentially contributes to general deterrence. Details: Ottawa, ONT: Macdonald-Laurier Institute, 2015. 34p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 21, 2016 at: http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/MLI-BPerrinPunishingTheMostHeinousCrimes-05-15-WebReady-v2.pdf Year: 2015 Country: Canada URL: http://www.macdonaldlaurier.ca/files/pdf/MLI-BPerrinPunishingTheMostHeinousCrimes-05-15-WebReady-v2.pdf Shelf Number: 145612 Keywords: Life ImprisonmentLife Without ParoleMurderersPunishmentSentencingViolent Crime |
Author: Long, Wei Title: Does Longer Incarceration Deter or Incapacitate Crimes? New Evidence from Truth-in-Sentencing Reform Summary: This paper estimates how violent crimes respond to a policy change which requires violent offenders to serve a substantial propertion of their sentenced terms before being eligible to release to community supervision. Focusing on states with effective TIS laws which meet the federal 85 percent rule, we utilize the differences-in-differences design to investigate both deterrent and incapacitative effect of TIS on crimes. We observe statistically significant -7 percent deterrent effect of TIS on growth of violent crime two years after its passage. A series of placebo tests confirm the robustness of the estimates and inferences. In the long-run, additional incapacitative effect also becomes significant, making the treatment effect of TIS even greater in magnitude. Even though insignificant in the first two years after TIS was passed, growth of non-violent property crime rates decreases by 7 percent in the long-run in TIS states, indicating relative greater importance of incapacitative effect which locks up offenders who commit both types of crimes. A rough approximation shows that TIS is an economically efficient method to decrease crimes. Details: New Orleans, LA: Tulane University, 2016. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Tulane Economics Working Paper Series 1607: Accessed September 23, 2016 at: http://econ.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul1607.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://econ.tulane.edu/RePEc/pdf/tul1607.pdf Shelf Number: 146112 Keywords: DeterrenceImprisonmentIncapacitationPunishmentSentencingTruth-in-SentencingViolent Crime |
Author: van Loon, A.J. Title: Law and Order in Ancient Egypt: The Development of Criminal Justice from the Pharaonic New Kingdom until the Roman Dominate Summary: In one way or another, the civilizations who ruled over Egypt in antiquity could all boast a close connection to the concepts of 'law' and 'justice'. Balance, justice, and order - all personified by the goddess Ma'at - were the cornerstones of Ancient Egyptian religion and society. The Greek Ptolemies, who ruled over Egypt between 323 and 30 BC, would become famous for their advanced and intricate bureaucracy, which also featured a highly effective law enforcement system. The Romans, more than any, prided themselves on their laws, which remain influential in modern societies to this day. This thesis sets out to discover the manner in which criminal justice in Egypt developed from the times of the New Kingdom, through the Ptolemaic era, and under Roman rule. Not only for the above-mentioned anecdotal reasons, but also because the capability to deal with crime and to maintain order can serve as an indicator for a successful administration in general. Because criminal law forms an integral part of a legal system as a whole, which, in turn, is inseparable from the general administrative system of a country, all of these will be taken into account. The following questions will be answered in this thesis: how were the various legal and administrative systems organized?; which actions were considered to be crimes by the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans?; who possessed the legal authority to deal with these matters?; and in what manner were criminal transgressions dealt with in practice? In the end, the aim is to not only find out how criminal justice developed in the course of nearly two millennia, but also to offer an explanation as to why these developments took their specific course. Details: Leiden, NETH: Leiden University, 2014. 63p. Source: Internet Resource: Thesis: Accessed September 27, 2016 at: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/30196/Law%20and%20Order%20in%20Ancient%20Egypt.pdf?sequence=1 Year: 2014 Country: Egypt URL: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/30196/Law%20and%20Order%20in%20Ancient%20Egypt.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 146152 Keywords: CrimeCriminal Justice SystemsCriminal LawHistorical StudyLaw EnforcementPunishment |
Author: Khadjavi, Menusch Title: Deterrence Works for Criminals Summary: Criminal law and economics rests on the expectation that deterrence incentives can be employed to reduce crime. Prison survey evidence however suggests that a majority of criminals are biased and may not react to deterrence incentives. This study employs an extra-laboratory experiment in a German prison to test the effectiveness of deterrence. Subjects either face potential punishment when stealing, or they can steal without deterrence. We confirm Gary Becker's deterrence hypothesis that deterrence works for criminals. Details: Kiel, Germany: Kiel Institute for the World Economy, 2014. 16p. Source: Internet Resource: Kiel Working Paper no. 1938: Accessed October 12, 2016 at: https://www.ifw-members.ifw-kiel.de/publications/deterrence-works-for-criminals/KWP1938_Deterrence%20works%20for%20criminals_Khadjavi.pdf Year: 2014 Country: Germany URL: https://www.ifw-members.ifw-kiel.de/publications/deterrence-works-for-criminals/KWP1938_Deterrence%20works%20for%20criminals_Khadjavi.pdf Shelf Number: 145426 Keywords: DeterrencePrisonPunishmentStealingTheft |
Author: Jaqua, Daniel Title: How to Catch Capone: The Optimal Punishment of Interrelated Crimes Summary: This paper characterizes optimal criminal punishments when there are multiple interrelated crimes. Optimal punishments are functions of the extent to which related crimes are complements or substitutes weighted by their relative harms to society. The available empirical evidence on the relationship between index crimes in the United States suggests that tailoring criminal punishments properly to incorporate relationships between crimes could reduce the aggregate harm to victims by 3%, or about $8 billion dollars annually, holding enforcement expenditures fixed. The actual harm reduction of a marginal increase in arrests for an index crime is on average about 1.5-3 times greater than the harm reduction calculated without these effects. Details: Working paper, 2016. 32p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed October 12, 2016 at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2831590 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2831590 Shelf Number: 145431 Keywords: Criminal SanctionsDeterrencePunishment |
Author: Chiarini, Bruno Title: Is the Severity of the Penalty an Effective Deterrent? A Strategic Approach for the Crime of Tax Evasion Summary: In order to analyze the severity of sentencing, and to show how the probabilistic interpretation of strategic behavior can be tricky, this paper uses the crime strategic model (inspection game) proposed by Tsebelis. This model shows that any attempts to increase the severity of punishment will alter the payoff of the individuals involved, leaving unchanged the frequency of violation at equilibrium. This result is misleading: payoffs are not independent and the crime game can not be simply read with mixed strategies. These are inconclusive on how the players act rationally. This is undeniably true for the crime of tax evasion, where the dishonest taxpayers are rational agents, motivated by the comparison of payoffs, considering the risk of breaking the law. Although an irreducible minimum of uncertainty remains, the Nash equilibrium in mixed strategies provides us with the necessary information on equilibria in pure strategies that will be played. In this context, tougher sentencing deters crime, although, as the Italian historical experience teaches, the necessary condition required is the certainty of punishment and the ability of the government to enforce it. Details: Munich: Center for Economic Studies & Ifo Institute (CESifo, 2016. 19p. Source: Internet Resource: CESifo Working Paper No. 6112: Accessed October 19, 2016 at: https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_6112.html Year: 2016 Country: Italy URL: https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_6112.html Shelf Number: 145894 Keywords: DeterrenceFinancial CrimePunishmentTax EvasionWhite-Collar Crime |
Author: United States Sentencing Commission Title: Life Sentences in the Federal System Summary: Life imprisonment sentences are rare in the federal criminal justice system. Virtually all offenders convicted of a federal crime are released from prison eventually and return to society or, in the case of illegal aliens, are deported to their country of origin. Yet in fiscal year 2013 federal judges imposed a sentence of life imprisonment without parole on 153 offenders. Another 168 offenders received a sentence of a specific term of years that was so long it had the practical effect of being a life sentence. Although together these offenders represent only 0.4 percent of all offenders sentenced that year, this type of sentence sets them apart from the rest of the offender population. This report examines life sentences in the federal system and the offenders on whom this punishment is imposed. There are numerous federal criminal statutes that authorize a life imprisonment sentence to be imposed as the maximum sentence. The most commonly used of these statutes involve drug trafficking, racketeering, and firearms crimes. Additionally, there are at least 45 statutes that require a life sentence to be imposed as the minimum penalty. These mandatory minimum penalties generally are required in cases involving the killing of a federal official or other government employee, piracy, or repeat offenses involving drug trafficking or weapons. In fiscal year 2013, 69 of the 153 offenders who received a sentence of life imprisonment were subject to a mandatory minimum penalty requiring the court to impose that sentence. Details: Washington, DC: United States Sentencing Commission, 2016. 26p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 7, 2016 at: http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-projects-and-surveys/miscellaneous/20150226_Life_Sentences.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-publications/research-projects-and-surveys/miscellaneous/20150226_Life_Sentences.pdf Shelf Number: 145309 Keywords: Federal PrisonersLife ImprisonmentLife Sentences Life Without Parole (U.S.) Punishment Sentencing |
Author: Mendez, Juan E. Title: Seeing into Solitary: A Review of the Laws and Policies of Certain Nations Regarding Solitary Confinement of Detainees Summary: The report, Seeing into Solitary: A Review of the Laws and Policies of Certain Nations Regarding Solitary Confinement of Detainees was the subject of a UN event on October 17 featuring speakers from the ACLU, National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and Vance Center for International Justice, among others. The report includes within its scope 35 jurisdictions, including eight U.S. states (California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas) and twenty-six countries, including the U.S. federal prison system and immigration detention system. Seeing into Solitary builds on a prior groundbreaking report by Mendez, presented to the UN in 2011, that for the first time declared that solitary confinement may amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and in some cases torture, and may thus, under certain conditions, be prohibited under international law. In that 2011 report, Mendez further called for a categorical ban on subjecting juveniles and people with mental illness to solitary confinement, and to end the practice of prolonged and indefinite solitary confinement. The 2016 report contains six substantive areas of focus: - the ostensible purposes of solitary confinement across jurisdictions, - how the practice is authorized, - whether and how its imposition can be challenged or appealed legally, - what limits are in place, - regulations pertaining to physical conditions such as the use of restraints, and - general trends or developments toward reform. Purpose The report found that seven of the thirty-five jurisdictions analyzed allow for solitary confinement to be used only for disciplinary purposes, one of which is the U.S. state of Colorado. It further found that solitary confinement is often imposed in response to remarkably minor offenses. According to research from the Vera Institute of Justice cited in the report, 85 percent of people held in solitary confinement in Illinois' state prison system were sent there "as punishment for minor infractions, such as abusive language." Mendez has long opposed the use of even short-term solitary for punishment, as opposed to safety reasons. The other thirty-two jurisdictions claim other justifications, usually in addition to discipline, for using solitary confinement. The most common, according to the report, are for "protection of vulnerable people," to maintain security, or"as a method of prison administration and managing cell space." However, consideration of specific policies, many from the United States, prove that these justifications are similarly disproportionate or arbitrary. In both the U.S. immigration detention and federal prison systems, for example, people can be held in solitary confinement for the sole reason that they will be released, removed, or transferred within 24 hours. Also under U.S. federal law, people can be held in solitary confinement if they are HIV-positive and there is "reliable evidence" that they may "pose a health risk" to others. In California, people may be subject to isolation just because they are "a relative or associate of a staff member." In Pennsylvania, people may be subject to solitary confinement, against their will and consent, because they are "at a high risk of sexual victimization" if there exists no "alternative means of separation from the likely abuser." Also in Pennsylvania, people may be subject to solitary confinement simply because "there is no other appropriate bed space." Details: Vienna: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), 2016. 87p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 16, 2016 at: http://www.weil.com/~/media/files/pdfs/2016/un_special_report_solitary_confinement.pdf Year: 2016 Country: International URL: http://www.weil.com/~/media/files/pdfs/2016/un_special_report_solitary_confinement.pdf Shelf Number: 144849 Keywords: Immigrant DetentionIsolationPunishmentSolitary Confinement |
Author: Boda, Zsolt Title: Report on an empirical assessment of fear of crime and Punitive Sentiment across Europe Summary: The research project FIDUCIA (New European Crimes and Trust-based Policy) is funded primarily by the European Commission from the 7th Framework Programme for Research. FIDUCIA will shed light on a number of distinctively 'new European' criminal behaviors that have emerged in the last decade as a consequence of technology developments and in the increased mobility of populations across Europe. The central idea behind the project is that public trust in justice is important for social regulation, and proposes a 'trust-based' policy model in relation to emerging forms of criminality. Work package 4 reviews what is currently known about fear of crime, trust in justice and punitive attitudes of citizens across Europe. The theoretical assumption is that current public opinion about crime across Europe will shift in the wake of new forms of crime and new inter-ethnic tensions. Nurtured in part by tabloid media and radicalizing political discourse, "popular punitive" sentiments are characterized among other things by an emphasis on unexpected and growing crime, the blaming of certain social groups, distrust in the police and justice, and the endorsement of harsh, punitive measures. D4.3 reports on an empirical assessment of punitive sentiment across Europe using the European Social Survey Data. This analysis offers new and important insights into the phenomenon of ‘punitivity’ across Europe. We have examined two pairs of measures of punitivity: subjective measures of public opinion, and actual-penal-practice punitivity. We have labelled our two measures of subjective punitivity 'expressive' and 'considered'. Expressive punitivity reflects a desire for tougher penalties and considered punitivity reflects preferences for heavy sentences in a sentencing exercise. We have presented two measures of country-level punitivity in actual-penal-practice: numbers of prisoners per 100,000 population, and number of prisoners per 1,000 recorded crimes. Details: Fiducia (New European Crimes and Trust-Based Policy), 2012. 38p. Source: Internet Resource: accessed November 17, 2016 at: http://www.fiduciaproject.eu/media/press_releases/9/D4.3%20Report%20on%20an%20empirical%20assessment%20of%20fear%20of%20crime%20and%20punitive%20sentiment%20across%20Europe.pdf Year: 2012 Country: Europe URL: http://www.fiduciaproject.eu/media/press_releases/9/D4.3%20Report%20on%20an%20empirical%20assessment%20of%20fear%20of%20crime%20and%20punitive%20sentiment%20across%20Europe.pdf Shelf Number: 144859 Keywords: Fear of CrimePublic AttitudesPublic OpinionPunishment |
Author: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) Title: Drug trafficking penalties across the European Union: a survey of expert opinion. Technical report Summary: The results of a study on national drug trafficking laws and their application in the Member States of the European Union are presented in this report. It is based on an analysis of the national laws and on the opinions of legal practitioners — judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers — from 26 countries. The penalties set out in national laws for trafficking cannabis, amphetamine, cocaine and heroin are compared with the sentencing outcomes expected by the legal practitioners, including penalties imposed and the estimated time likely to be spent in prison. Details: Lisbon, Portugal: Praca Europa, 2017. 132p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 1, 2017 at: http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/3573/Trafficking-penalties.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Europe URL: http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/publications/3573/Trafficking-penalties.pdf Shelf Number: 140778 Keywords: Drug EnforcementDrug PolicyDrug TraffickersDrug TraffickingPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Iyengar, Radha Title: I'd Rather be Hanged for a Sheep than a Lamb The Unintended Consequences of 'Three-Strikes' Laws Summary: Strong sentences are common "tough on crime" tool used to reduce the incentives for individuals to participate in criminal activity. However, the design of such policies often ignores other margins along which individuals interested in participating in crime may adjust. I use California's Three Strikes law to identify several effects of a large increase in the penalty for a broad set of crimes. Using criminal records data, I estimate that Three Strikes reduced participation in criminal activity by 20 percent for second-strike eligible offenders and a 28 percent decline for third-strike eligible offenders. However, I find two unintended consequences of the law. First, because Three Strikes flattened the penalty gradient with respect to severity, criminals were more likely to commit more violent crimes. Among third strike eligible offenders, the probability of committing violent crimes increased by 9 percentage points. Second, because California's law was more harsh than the laws of other nearby states, Three Strikes had a "beggar-thy-neighbor" effect increasing the migration of criminals with second and third-strike eligibility to commit crimes in neighboring states. The high cost of incarceration combined with the high cost of violent crime relative to non-violent crime implies that Three Strikes may not be a cost-effective means of reducing crime. Details: London: London School of Economics and Political Science, Centre for Economic Performance, 2010. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: CEP Discussion Paper No 1017: Accessed February 13, 2017 at: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1017.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1017.pdf Shelf Number: 145122 Keywords: DeterrencePunishmentSentencingThree Strikes Laws |
Author: Omega Research Foundation Title: Compliance through pain: Electric shock equipment in South African prisons Summary: The authorization of various kinds of electric shock devices for use in South African prisons, are designed to enforce compliance through pain, incapacitation or fear of activation. However, their use has been associated with acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This policy brief produces an overview of electric shock equipment and describes known harmful medical effects associated with its use. It highlights the use and misuse of these types of equipment in correctional institutions in South Africa, and outlines how and why this equipment is in breach of local, regional and international standards. This brief is designed to raise awareness of these concerns and to provide recommendations for change in how electric shock equipment is used in South Africa. Details: Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2016. 10p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Brief 86: Accessed February 13, 2017 at: http://dspace.africaportal.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/35856/1/PolicyBrief86.pdf?1 Year: 2016 Country: South Africa URL: http://dspace.africaportal.org/jspui/bitstream/123456789/35856/1/PolicyBrief86.pdf?1 Shelf Number: 147293 Keywords: Electric ShockPunishmentStun GunsTasersTorture |
Author: Nellis, Ashley Title: Still Life: America's Increasing Use of Life and Long-Term Sentences Summary: The number of people serving life sentences in U.S. prisons is at an all-time high. Nearly 162,000 people are serving a life sentence - one of every nine people in prison. An additional 44,311 individuals are serving "virtual life" sentences of 50 years or more. Incorporating this category of life sentence, the total population serving a life or virtual life sentence reached 206,268 in 2016. This represents 13.9 percent of the prison population, or one of every seven people behind bars. A mix of factors has led to the broad use of life sentences in the United States, placing it in stark contrast to practices in other nations. Every state and the federal government allow prison sentences that are so long that death in prison is presumed. This report provides a comprehensive profile of those living in this deep end of the justice system. Our analysis provides current figures on people serving life with parole (LWP) and life without parole (LWOP) as well as a category of long-term prisoner that has not previously been quantified: those serving "virtual" or de facto life sentences. Even though virtual life sentences can extend beyond the typical lifespan, because the sentences are not legally considered life sentences, traditional counts of life-sentenced prisoners have excluded them until now KEY FINDINGS - As of 2016, there were 161,957 people serving life sentences, or one of every nine people in prison. - An additional 44,311 individuals are serving "virtual life" sentences, yielding a total population of life and virtual life sentences at 206,268 - or one of every seven people in prison. - The pool of people serving life sentences has more than quadrupled since 1984.The increase in the LWOP population has far outpaced the changes in the LWP population. - There are 44,311 people serving prison sentences that are 50 years or longer. In Indiana, Louisiana, and Montana, more than 11 percent of the prison population is serving a de facto life sentence. - Nearly half (48.3%) of life and virtual life-sentenced individuals are African American, equal to one in five black prisoners overall. - Nearly 12,000 people have been sentenced to life or virtual life for crimes committed as juveniles; of these over 2,300 were sentenced to life without parole. - More than 17,000 individuals with an LWP, LWOP, or virtual life sentence have been convicted of nonviolent crimes. - The United States incarcerates people for life at a rate of 50 per 100,000, roughly equivalent to the entire incarceration rates of the Scandinavian nations of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. Details: Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project, 2017. 37p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 6, 2017 at: http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still-Life.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still-Life.pdf Shelf Number: 145329 Keywords: Life SentencesLife without ParolePunishmentSentencing |
Author: Polinsky, A. Mitchell Title: Deterrence and the Optimal Use of Prison, Parole, and Probation Summary: In this article we derive the sentence - choosing among the sanctions of prison, parole, and probation - that achieves a target level of deterrence at least cost. Potential offenders discount the future disutility of sanctions and the state discounts the future costs of sanctions. Prison has higher disutility and higher cost per unit time than parole and probation, but the cost of prison per unit of disutility can be lower or higher than the cost of parole and probation per unit of disutility. The optimal order of sanctions depends on the relative discount rates of potential offenders and the state, and the optimal duration of sanctions depends on the relative costs per unit of disutility among the sanctions and on the target level of deterrence. We focus on the case in which potential offenders discount the disutility of sanctions at a higher rate than the state discounts the costs of sanctions. In this case, if prison is more cost-effective than parole and probation - that is, has a lower cost per unit of disutility - prison should be used exclusively. If prison is less cost-effective than parole and probation, probation should be used if the deterrence target is low enough, and prison followed by parole should be used if the deterrence target is relatively high. Notably, it may be optimal to employ a prison term even if prison is less cost-effective than parole and probation and even if prison is not needed to achieve the target level of deterrence, because of what we refer to as the front-loading advantage of imprisonment. Details: Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017. 50p. Source: Internet Resource: NBER Working paper No. 23436: Stanford Law and Economics Olin Working Paper No. 507: Accessed May 22, 2017 at: Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: Shelf Number: 145662 Keywords: Costs of CorrectionsDeterrenceImprisonmentParolePrisonProbationPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Ketelaar-Jones, Taya Title: A Comparative Review of National Legislation for the Indefinite Detention of 'Dangerous Criminals' Summary: Courts in Tasmania have long had the power to detain prisoners indefinitely. The Tasmanian dangerous prisoner regime, contained in the Sentencing Act 1997 (Tas), has never been reviewed. This is despite it receiving criticism from various quarters, including the Supreme Court bench. There are several differences between the Tasmanian indefinite detention provisions and those of other Australian jurisdictions. The implications of these legislative anomalies have not been explored. This paper examines the operation of the Tasmanian scheme by undertaking a cross-jurisdictional analysis of dangerous prisoner legislation in Australia. Problematic aspects of the current provisions are examined, and potential areas for reform are identified. This is done so with a view to the modernisation of the law and a shift towards uniformity with other Australian jurisdictions. This paper first provides a brief history of indefinite detention regimes and outlines the nature of the exercise of the discretion to impose an indefinite sentence. The paper proceeds with an assessment of the various problematic aspects of the Tasmanian indefinite detention regime contained in the Sentencing Act 1997 (Tas). The first section considers the issues associated with the making of a dangerous criminal declaration, including the test and standard of proof for imposition of a declaration and whether separate indefinite detention provisions applying specifically to sex offenders should be introduced. The paper recommends that the test for the imposition of a declaration in the Sentencing Act 1997 (Tas) be amended to reflect the common law test. In addition, it recommends that the Act should explicitly provide for the standard of proof and provide a comprehensive and mandatory list of factors to be considered when determining whether to make a dangerous criminal declaration. Further, the Act should be amended to clarify that it is intended to operate as a post-sentence preventative detention regime, as well as an indefinite (at the time of sentencing) regime. Finally, the introduction of separate indefinite detention provisions for sex offenders is not recommended. The second section considers the issues associated with the discharge of a dangerous criminal declaration. Key issues discussed in this section are the test for the discharge of a dangerous criminal declaration, the inability of the court to impose conditions upon discharge, and the absence of provisions for periodic review of a declaration. The key recommendations are that the Sentencing Act 1997 (Tas) be amended to mandate a system of periodic review of a dangerous criminal declaration. On a review of a declaration, or on an application for discharge of a declaration, the prosecution (rather than the offender) should retain the onus of proof. The assessment should be guided by the same principles applicable to the exercise of the discretion to impose the declaration at first instance. Finally, the court should be empowered to impose conditions upon the discharge of a dangerous criminal declaration. Details: Hobart: Tasmania Law Reform Institute, 2017. 53p. Source: Internet Resource: Research Paper No. 4: Accessed September 7, 2017 at: http://apo.org.au/system/files/97951/apo-nid97951-353691.pdf Year: 2017 Country: Australia URL: http://apo.org.au/system/files/97951/apo-nid97951-353691.pdf Shelf Number: 147144 Keywords: Dangerous PersonsImprisonmentPunishmentSentencing |
Author: Piehl, Anne Morrison Title: Putting Time Limits on the Punitiveness of the Criminal Justice System Summary: Over the past 30 years, both the incarcerated population and the limitations placed on those with criminal records have dramatically expanded. The consequences of a criminal conviction can last long beyond any imposed sentence, but current efforts to reduce the punitiveness of the criminal justice system tend to focus on sentencing reform rather than consequences for those who have already served prison terms. I offer three principles for reform efforts aimed at reducing criminal justice punitiveness. First, negative consequences of prior criminal convictions should be targeted to enhance public safety. Second, processes for time-limiting information about convictions should be implemented. Finally, decreases in the severity of criminal punishment should generally be automatically and retroactively applied. Reform efforts that follow these principles can better target society's resources toward people with the highest risk of offending. Details: Washington, DC: Brookings Institute, Hamilton Project, 2016. 28p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Memo 2016-03: Accessed September 14, 2017 at: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/es_20161021_reducing_punitiveness_piehl.pdf Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/es_20161021_reducing_punitiveness_piehl.pdf Shelf Number: 147239 Keywords: Criminal Justice PolicyCriminal Justice ReformPunishmentSentencing Reform |
Author: Leibovitch, Adi Title: Punishing on a Curve Summary: Does the punishment of one defendant change because of how she fares in comparison to the other defendants on the judge's docket? This article demonstrates that the troubling answer is yes. Judges sentence the same case more harshly when their caseloads contain relatively milder offenses, and more leniently when their caseloads contain more serious crimes. I call this problem "punishing on a curve." Consequently, the article shows how such relative sentencing patterns put into question the prevailing practice of establishing specialized courts or courts of limited jurisdiction. Because judges are punishing on a curve, the court's jurisdiction systematically shapes sentencing outcomes. Courts of limited jurisdiction usually specialize in relatively less serious crimes (such as misdemeanors, drug offenses, or juvenile cases). They treat the mild offenses on their docket more harshly than generalist courts, that also see severe crimes, would have treated them. This leads to the disturbing effect of increasing punitive outcomes vis-aa-vis these offenses, wholly contradictory to the missions of these courts. Such sentencing patterns undermine notions of justice and equitable treatment. They also undermine retributive principles and marginal deterrence across crimes of increasing severity. In light of the profound normative and practical implications, the article offers a remedy to standardize sentences through "statistical curving." In addition to consulting the sentencing range recommended by the sentencing guidelines for a particular offense, a judge should see the distribution of sentences for the same offense across different courts. The article illustrates the feasibility of the proposal empirically using sentencing data from neighboring judicial districts in Pennsylvania. It also explains how this proposal fits within the Supreme Court's jurisprudence following United States v. Booker, which rendered the sentencing guidelines advisory, and its potential advantage in improving appellate review. Details: Northwestern University Law Review, Vol. 111, 2017, Forthcoming. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2820197 Source: Internet Resource: Accessed Oct. 6, 2017 at: Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2820197 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2820197 Shelf Number: 147593 Keywords: Criminal CourtsJudicial Decision-MakingPunishmentSentencingSentencing Bias |
Author: Victorian Ombudsman Title: Implementing OPCAT in Victoria: report and inspection of the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre Summary: 1. This report considers the practical implications of implementing the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT) in Victoria. It sets out: - practical changes needed to implement the OPCAT protocol - the results of a pilot OPCAT-style inspection at Victoria's main women's prison, the Dame Phyllis Frost Centre (DPFC). 2. OPCAT is an international human rights treaty that aims to prevent abuse of people in detention by opening places where people are deprived of liberty - prisons, police cells, psychiatric hospitals and so on - to regular independent inspections by: - a United Nations (UN) committee of international experts - local inspection bodies called National Preventative Mechanisms (NPMs). 3. In February 2017, the Commonwealth Government announced that Australia will ratify OPCAT by the end of 2017. 4. In Victoria, this means the Victorian Government will need to open places of detention to the UN committee from 2018. The Victorian Government will have three years to 'designate' or appoint one or more local NPMs to conduct regular inspections. 5. Implementing OPCAT will require changes. While Victoria already has human rights laws and monitoring bodies, OPCAT will introduce more rigorous standards for inspecting places of detention. 6. On 31 March 2017, the Ombudsman notified the Attorney-General, the Minister for Corrections and the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Regulation of her intention to conduct an 'own motion' investigation into the conditions in a custodial facility, with a view to contributing to the debate about OPCAT's implementation in Victoria. 7. The investigation mapped places of detention in Victoria, how they are monitored, and what needs to change to implement OPCAT. 8. The investigation also tested how OPCAT inspections work in practice by conducting a pilot inspection at DPFC using OPCAT standards where possible. Details: Melbourne: Victorian Ombudsman, 2017. 136p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 18, 2018 at: https://www.ombudsman.vic.gov.au/getattachment/432871e4-5653-4830-99be-8bb96c09b348 Year: 2017 Country: Australia URL: https://www.ombudsman.vic.gov.au/getattachment/432871e4-5653-4830-99be-8bb96c09b348 Shelf Number: 148864 Keywords: Female InmatesPrisonsPunishmentTortureWomen Prisoners |
Author: Appleman, Laura I. Title: Cashing in on Convicts: Privatization, Punishment, and the People Summary: For-profit prisons, jails, and alternative corrections present a disturbing commodification of the criminal justice system. Though part of a modern trend, privatized corrections has well-established roots traceable to slavery, Jim Crow, and current racially-based inequities. This monetizing of the physical incarceration and regulation of human bodies has had deleterious effects on offenders, communities, and the proper functioning of punishment in our society. Criminal justice privatization severs an essential link between the people and criminal punishment. When we remove the imposition of punishment from the people and delegate it to private actors, we sacrifice the core criminal justice values of expressive, restorative retribution, the voice and interests of the community, and systemic transparency and accountability. This Article shows what we lose when we allow private, for-profit entities to take on the traditional community function of imposing and regulating punishment. By banking on bondage, private prisons and jails remove the local community from criminal justice, and perpetuate the extreme inequities within the criminal system. Details: Salem, OR: Willamette University College of Law, 2017. 56p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 8, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2989260 Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2989260 Shelf Number: 149038 Keywords: Costs of Corrections Private Prisons Privatization Punishment |
Author: Laske, Katharina Title: Do Fines Deter Unethical Behavior? The Effect of Systematically Varying the Size and Probability of Punishment Summary: Unethical behavior is widespread, with large economic consequences. Understand- ing how to deter it is important. In experiments in which participants can lie to achieve an economic advantage, we systematically vary the fine and probability associated with being audited. In all our experiments, lying decreases with the size of the fine. For probabilities, the results are mixed: when participants decide only once, and deterrence parameters are presented in isolation, lying behavior is insensitive to changes in detection probabilities. However, when individuals can compare different detection probabilities, or when they experience the same probability level over time in a repeated setting, lying decreases with higher detection probabilities. In all settings, changes in the magnitude of fines are more effective than equivalent changes in expected earnings obtained by altering the probability of punishment. We organize previous findings in light of our results and propose policy interventions aimed at deterring unethical behavior. Details: Unpublished paper, 2018. 64p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 23, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3157387 Year: 2018 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3157387 Shelf Number: 150342 Keywords: Criminal Fines Deterrence PunishmentUnethical Behavior |
Author: Victoria (Australia). Sentencing Advisory Council Title: A Sentencing Guidelines Council for Victoria; Report Summary: A perennial struggle within the criminal law is how to balance the need for equality, transparency and consistency with the need for individualised justice when deciding how people found guilty of crimes should be punished. On the one hand, it is a fundamental principle of the rule of law that like cases be treated alike, that justice be dispensed equally. The legitimacy of the law, especially the criminal law, is largely dependent on it being perceived as fair. This requires not only that decisions are fair in and of themselves, but also that the process by which those decisions are made is perceived as fair. Justice must not just be done; it must be seen to be done. This means that decisions must not appear arbitrary, nor can they appear to treat people differently without good reason. On the other hand, the unique circumstances of every case, and of every offender, mean that discretion is essential to the process of sentencing. Judges and magistrates are required to take into account the culpability of the offender, the harm the offender has caused to any victims and to the broader community, the particular circumstances of the offender's life and prior history, and a number of distinct (and often competing) objectives of punishment. Judges and magistrates must then determine both the type and the level of punishment that is most proportionate to the offending and that accords with numerous legislative schemes and broader principles of the common law. Sentencing is a complex and unenviable task. In Australia, the approach to sentencing known as instinctive synthesis involves courts simultaneously balancing all the relevant considerations in a case to reach an appropriate outcome. This approach preserves the court's discretion to impose a just and proportionate sentence that takes into account all the circumstances of the case. The intent of sentencing guidelines is not to remove that discretion, but rather to structure its exercise in a way that is transparent and understandable without unnecessarily tying the court's hands. Indeed, recent research in the United Kingdom suggests that sentencing guidelines have improved not only the consistency in how courts sentence offenders, but also the individualisation of those sentences. Sentencing guidelines aim to guide - not supplant - judicial decision-making. This is in stark contrast to proposals for mandatory sentencing, which curtail judicial discretion and inevitably lead to injustice. Further, the process for the development of sentencing guidelines aims to engage the broader community in the informed consideration of sentencing policy, allowing greater reflection of community standards in sentencing practices, and greater public confidence in the sentencing process. A sentencing guidelines council for Victoria represents one of the most significant changes to sentencing in Australia in recent memory. It also represents a unique opportunity to better achieve the necessary balance between consistency, transparency and discretion in sentencing, in a way not seen before in any Australian jurisdiction. Details: Melbourne: The Council, 2018. 146p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 31, 2018 at: https://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/A_Sentencing_Guidelines_Council_for_Victoria_Report.pdf Year: 2018 Country: Australia URL: https://www.sentencingcouncil.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/publication-documents/A_Sentencing_Guidelines_Council_for_Victoria_Report.pdf Shelf Number: 150417 Keywords: Punishment Sentencing Guidelines Sentencing Reform |
Author: Institute for Integrated Transitions Title: The Limits of Punishment: Transitional Justice and Violent Extremism Summary: The Limits of Punishment is a research project led by the United Nations University's Centre for Policy Research, in partnership with the Institute for Integrated Transitions, and supported by the UK Department for International Development. It seeks to understand if, when and how transitional justice, in combination with other conflict resolution tools, can contribute to transitions away from conflict in settings affected by major jihadist groups. Specifically, it aims to answer two questions: 1. What are the effects of current approaches toward punishment and leniency for individuals accused of association with jihadist groups in fragile and conflict-affected states? 2. What factors should policymakers consider in designing alternative and complementary strategies leveraging transitional justice tools to better contribute to sustainable transitions away from conflict? To answer the first question, the project undertook three fieldwork-based case studies that assessed nationally-led approaches to handling individuals accused of having been associated with: al Shabaab in Somalia; Boko Haram in Nigeria; and the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. The case studies look at a broad range of formal and informal mechanisms of punishment and leniency. These include, inter alia: amnesties; prosecutions; traditional justice; and disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration (DDR), rehabilitation, and similar programs that, in practice, offer some individuals alternatives to criminal justice. The case studies demonstrate the risks of excessively heavy-handed and at times indiscriminate approaches that penalise broad sectors of local populations accused of association with these groups, and assess the quality and limitations of existing leniency programs for such individuals. To answer the second question, the Institute for Integrated Transitions' Law and Peace Practice Group - a group of leading transitional justice experts - analysed the empirical evidence of the case studies in light of broader lessons learned from decades of international practice in the field of transitional justice. On this basis, the Group developed a framework to assist national policymakers and practitioners - as well as their international partners - in applying transitional justice tools as part of a broader strategy to resolve conflicts involving groups deemed violent extremist. The framework offers a range of approaches toward effectively balancing leniency and accountability, that can be tailored to conflict settings marked by violent extremism. Details: Tokyo: United Nations University, 2018. 146p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed June 29, 2018 at: http://ifit-transitions.org/resources/publications/major-publications-briefings/the-limits-of-punishment-transitional-justice-and-violent-extremism/final-the-limits-of-punishment-01062018.pdf/view Year: 2018 Country: International URL: http://ifit-transitions.org/resources/publications/major-publications-briefings/the-limits-of-punishment-transitional-justice-and-violent-extremism/final-the-limits-of-punishment-01062018.pdf/view Shelf Number: 150732 Keywords: Conflict ResolutionExtremist GroupsJihadistsPunishmentRadical GroupsTerroristsTransitional JusticeViolent Extremism |
Author: Crino, Rosario Title: Marginal Deterrence at Work Summary: We test the rational economic model of marginal deterrence of law enforcement --- i.e., the need for graduating the penalty to the severity of the crime. We use a unique data set, which combines individual-level data on sentence length for a representative sample of US inmates with proxies for maximum punishment and monitoring costs across US states over 50 years. We show that the penalty is increasing in the level of the offense. Consistent with the marginal deterrence framework, we also document that a decrease in maximum penalty or an increase in monitoring cost are associated with longer sentences and higher monitoring rates. We also provide evidence that the effects of maximum penalty and monitoring cost are stronger in states where income inequality is higher. Finally, we show that steeper sanctions are associated with less harmful crimes. Overall, these findings favor the marginal deterrence framework over the maximal penalty principle and other competing theories of justice. Details: Munich: Munich Society for the Promotion of Economic Research - CESifo GmbH, 2017. 42p. Source: Internet Resource: CESifo Working Paper No. 6665: Accessed September 14, 2018 at: https://www.cesifo-group.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6665.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://www.cesifo-group.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp6665.pdf Shelf Number: 151539 Keywords: Capital Punishment Death Penalty Deterrence Punishment |
Author: Acosta Mejia, Camilo Andres Title: The Cost of Crime and Criminality: Evidence from Colombian Case Summary: One recurrent debate in the literature on crime control is whether increasing the probability of punishment is a more effective deterrent than an increase in the severity of the sanction. From an empirical stance, the results have been mixed, yielding ambiguous conclusions. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to fill this gap in the literature, particularly for the Colombian case. To do this, this work uses a natural policy experiment to estimate how changes in the "costs" associated with criminal activity may influence individuals' decisions to commit a crime. More specifically, through the use of a difference-in-difference approach, this work compares changes in criminal rates before and after introduction of the new Adversarial System of Criminal Justice in Colombia. The results suggest that the individuals are more sensitive to changes in the probability of received punishment than to a variation in the magnitude of the sanction. Details: Colombia: Universidad de Los Andes, 2018. 35p. Source: Internet Resource: November 1, 2018 at: https://lacer.lacea.org/handle/123456789/64686 Year: 2018 Country: Colombia URL: https://lacer.lacea.org/bitstream/handle/123456789/64686/lacea2014_crime_criminality_colombia.pdf?sequence=1 Shelf Number: 153141 Keywords: Certainty of Punishment Colombia Crime Criminal Law Criminal Procedure Criminal Rates Punishment |
Author: Ryo, Emily Title: Legal Attitudes of Immigrant Detainees Summary: A substantial body of research shows that people's legal attitudes can have wide-ranging behavioral consequences. In this paper, I use original survey data to examine long-term immigrant detainees' legal attitudes. I find that the majority of detainees express a felt obligation to obey the law, and do so at a significantly higher rate than other U.S. sample populations. I also find that the detainees' perceived obligation to obey U.S. immigration authorities is significantly related to their evaluations of procedural justice, as measured by their assessments of fair treatment while in detention. This finding remains robust controlling for a variety of instrumental and detainee background factors, including the detainees' experiences with the legal system and legal authorities in their countries of origin. Finally, I find that vicarious procedural justice evaluations based on detainees assessments of how others are treated are as important to detainees perceived obligation to obey U.S. immigration authorities as their personal experiences of fair or unfair treatment. I discuss the broader implications of these findings and their contributions to research on procedural justice and legal compliance, and research on legal attitudes of noncitizens. Details: USC Law Legal Studies Paper, 2017. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed November 1, 2018 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2925337 Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/lasr.12252 Shelf Number: 153134 Keywords: Illegal Immigration Immigration Immigration Detainees Procedural Justice Punishment |
Author: Galle, Brian D. Title: Optimal Enforcement with Heterogeneous Private Costs of Punishment Summary: We formalize the idea that regulatory devices may generate different incentive effects for different individuals. These unequal incentive effects can generate social costs by causing some individuals to be over-deterred and others to be under-deterred. This is an underappreciated dimension over which one ought to compare the efficiency of various regulatory tools. We then note various methods to reduce inefficiencies caused by unequal incentive effects. Among others, we show that combining tools which have negatively correlated effects can improve welfare; increasing the probability of detection can be preferable to imposing large transferable sanctions; and fines can be inferior to other regulatory instruments when the harm from offenses vary across offenders. Details: Fairfax, VA: George Mason University - Antonin Scalia Law School, 2019. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 19-11: Accessed May 17, 2019 at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3380273 Year: 2019 Country: United States URL: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3380273 Shelf Number: 155888 Keywords: Fines and Fees Punishment |