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Forecasting the Racial and Ethnic Impacts of ‘Race-Neutral’ Legislation through Researcher and Policymaker Partnerships
Abstract
This article describes a unique researcher and policymaker partnership aimed at assessing the racial and ethnic impact of proposed criminal justice legislation. Using data from several Florida agencies, Florida State University projected trends in population and criminal justice outcomes to assess the potential impact on racial and ethnic disparities of ten bills. This article describes the project phases, provides examples of the bill analyses, and discusses the lessons learned and impact on racial/ethnic disparities. The results of the analyses show that race-neutral reform initiatives often fall short in reducing racial/ethnic disparities. Criminal justice downsizing efforts should explicitly aim to reduce racial and ethnic disparities and incorporate this goal in their design. Specific provisions that exclude individuals with prior records or those convicted of violent offenses could prove detrimental to the goal of reducing disparities. The benefits and challenges of researcher and policymaker partnerships for designing effective and race-sensitive criminal justice policy are discussed.
... This study also has important policy implications. Since the 1980s many sentencing reforms aimed at eliminating extralegal disparities have included strict exclusionary criteria depending on the extensiveness, or seriousness, of a defendant's criminal history (see Chouhy et al., 2023). If extralegal effects are concentrated in certain pockets of the criminal history spectrum, it is important to know exactly where so egalitarian minded reforms do not exclusively target situations where extralegal effects are negligible to begin with. ...
... As a result, policy makers should be wary of reforms aiming to eliminate sex-based (or any extralegal) disparities while simultaneously setting criminal history eligibility requirements. For example, it is common for diversionary programs aiming to eliminate extralegal disparity to exclude certain defendants based on the seriousness or number of prior convictions (see Chouhy et al. 2023). Given that the largest disparity is amongst those who would be excluded from such programs, these kind of reforms (while laudable) likely will not have their intended effects and may actually aggravate disparities in the system. ...
The goal of this study is to examine how, and when, criminal history conditions the effect of defendant sex on incarceration and prison sentence length decisions in Minnesota state courts. Results suggest that sex differences in sentencing are largely concentrated amongst those who have extensive criminal histories, bypassing those who have little or no criminal history. Moreover, criminal history’s aggravating contextual effect on sex often depends on the dependent variable examined and type of offense committed. Study results shed light on the situations where extralegal disparities are “hidden” in the nuances of case characteristics.
... Understanding the potential equity implications of criminal justice reforms should be a key consideration for policymakers and applied researchers alike. However, an explicit focus on reducing racial disparities is often excluded from the policymaking process, seen as a secondary concern to other policy goals, or framed in ways that focus on race-neutral processes rather than race-equitable outcomes (Chouhy et al., 2021;Donnelly, 2017). But this need not be the case; examinations of how elements of a given policy (e.g., goals, target population, eligibility criteria) and proposed changes to procedure or practice might impact different groups can be incorporated into policy design and evaluation. ...
... As one example, racial equity impact statements (REIS), a policy tool that incorporates an empirical analysis of the projected impacts of a change in law, policy, or practice on racial and ethnic groups (Porter, 2021), are used in some states. Modeled after the now-routine environmental impact and fiscal impact statements, racial impact statements may be conducted in advance of a hearing or vote on any proposed change to policy, or can even be incorporated in the policy formulation stages (Chouhy et al., 2021;Mauer, 2007). Researchers, analysts, and policymakers should also examine potential differential effects of existing policies and pay special attention to how structural inequalities intersect with policy features to contribute to-and potentially mitigate-disparate impacts of justice reforms (Anderson et al., 2022;Mooney et al., 2022). ...
How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. But consensus is hard to come by, and there has long been a distinction between “policy talk” or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, and “policy action” or the design and adoption of certain policies. In this essay, we seek to promote productive thinking and talking about, as well as designing of, effective and sustainable criminal justice reforms. To this end, we offer reflections on underlying conceptual and practical considerations relevant for both criminal justice policy talk and action.
In recent years, gun violence has surged in many cities along with increasing demands for effective intervention and prevention. Researcher-practitioner partnerships (RPPs) have been identified as a promising practice to effectively respond to a particular community’s gun violence with appropriately aligned intervention and prevention programs. However, recently, numerous sources have called for RPPs to include the perspectives of those with lived experiences as part of the RPP model, yet inclusion of these voices can present unique challenges for research translation. This case study contributes to the budding understanding of these specific RPPs by documenting the experienced procedures and challenges of a local community-engaged RPP. Specifically, we describe the development of this partnership, the research partner’s activities during the planning phase of this partnership, and, primarily, outline and assess the challenges encountered through the inclusion of community partners and voices during this phase and discuss the impact of these challenges on project progress. Documented challenges included weighing community perceptions of crime versus empirical data, putting the “cart before the horse,” and managing expectations. These challenges contributed to goals, roles, and expectations being misaligned with the focus of the partnership, competing priorities and recommendations for implementation strategies, and resistance to research translation. We conclude with tangible recommendations for the initiation of a community-engaged approach to RPPs, focusing on how to preemptively circumvent or more adeptly navigate these distinctive challenges.
To reduce opioid-involved overdoses, law enforcement agencies have taken proactive steps to connect people to treatment and supportive services. This study evaluates the impact of a law enforcement-based outreach and treatment referral program known as Hero Help on the incidence and costs of overdoses occurring in the jurisdiction of Delaware’s New Castle County Division of Police (NCCPD). It first compares observed and predicted fatal and nonfatal overdoses between 2013 and 2021. A time series analysis shows an average decrease of 7.25 nonfatal and 1.85 fatal overdoses per month since the program’s two expansions of its civilian care team. It then adapts Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and health care cost data to estimate the cost reductions of fewer overdoses. These metrics suggest Hero Help saved the community $21.5 million per month. Police departments can then reduce the incidence and economic burden of overdoses through outreach and referrals to treatment.
This paper examines the modelling and forecasting Murder crimes using Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average models (ARIMA). Twenty-nine years data obtained from Nigeria Information Resource Center were used to make predictions. Among the most effective approaches for analyzing time series data is the method propounded by Box and Jenkins, the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA). The augmented Dickey-Fuller test for unit root was applied to the data set to investigate for Stationarity, the data set was found to be non-stationary hence transformed using first-order differencing to make them Stationary. The Stationarities were confirmed with time series plots. Statistical analysis was performed using GRETL software package from which, ARIMA (0, 1, 0) was found to be the best and adequate model for Murder crimes. Forecasted values suggest that Murder would slightly be on the increase.
Research on inequality in punishment has a long and storied history, yet the overwhelming focus has been on episodic disparity in isolated stages of criminal case processing (e.g., arrest, prosecution, or sentencing). Although theories of cumulative disadvantage exist in criminology, they are seldom adapted to account for treatment in the criminal justice system. We provide an overview of the concept of cumulative disadvantage in the life course and review evidence on the development of cumulative disadvantages across stages of the criminal justice system. In doing so, we appraise the empirical research on policing, prosecution, and the courts and consider how these largely separate bodies of scholarship are inherently connected. We conclude with a call for future research that focuses more explicitly on the ways that life-course disadvantages shape contact with the criminal justice system and how these processes work to perpetuate patterns of disadvantage within the system and in subsequent life outcomes.
Despite much positive change in the post civil rights era, U.S. notions of racism and white supremacy remain powerful elements of American culture. The adaptability and enduring power of these forces can be seen in the emergence of a new historical epoch best describe as the era of Laissez Faire Racism. Prevalent attitudes among white Americans, certain theoretical arguments and hypotheses in American sociology, as well the election of Donald Trump rest upon the on-going operation of racism. In particular, I attribute Trump's electoral success to three critical dilemmas of race that defined contours of the 2016 presidential election: (1) worsening economic inequality in the presence of rapidly changing ethno-racial demography; (2) intensified political partisanship in the presence of well-institutionalized racially coded campaign strategies and rhetoric; and (3) the failure of the Clinton campaign to simultaneously champion the interests of working and middle class families and galvanize the previously powerful multiracial Obama coalition. I speculate on how to forge more effective multiracial coalitions in the future.
One way to unwind mass incarceration without compromising public safety is to use risk assessment instruments in sentencing and corrections. Although these instruments figure prominently in current reforms, critics argue that benefits in crime control will be offset by an adverse effect on racial minorities. Based on a sample of 34,794 federal offenders, we examine the relationships among race, risk assessment [the Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA)], and future arrest. First, application of well-established principles of psychological science revealed little evidence of test bias for the PCRA—the instrument strongly predicts arrest for both Black and White offenders, and a given score has essentially the same meaning—that is, the same probability of recidivism—across groups. Second, Black offenders obtain higher average PCRA scores than do White offenders (d = .34; 13.5 percent nonoverlap in groups’ scores), so some applications could create disparate impact. Third, most (66 percent) of the racial difference in PCRA scores is attributable to criminal history—which is already embedded in sentencing guidelines. Finally, criminal history is not a proxy for race, but instead it mediates the relationship between race and future arrest. Data are more helpful than rhetoric if the goal is to improve practice at this opportune moment in history.
Objectives
In 2013, the Chicago Police Department conducted a pilot of a predictive policing program designed to reduce gun violence. The program included development of a Strategic Subjects List (SSL) of people estimated to be at highest risk of gun violence who were then referred to local police commanders for a preventive intervention. The purpose of this study is to identify the impact of the pilot on individual- and city-level gun violence, and to test possible drivers of results. Methods
The SSL consisted of 426 people estimated to be at highest risk of gun violence. We used ARIMA models to estimate impacts on city-level homicide trends, and propensity score matching to estimate the effects of being placed on the list on five measures related to gun violence. A mediation analysis and interviews with police leadership and COMPSTAT meeting observations help understand what is driving results. ResultsIndividuals on the SSL are not more or less likely to become a victim of a homicide or shooting than the comparison group, and this is further supported by city-level analysis. The treated group is more likely to be arrested for a shooting. Conclusions
It is not clear how the predictions should be used in the field. One potential reason why being placed on the list resulted in an increased chance of being arrested for a shooting is that some officers may have used the list as leads to closing shooting cases. The results provide for a discussion about the future of individual-based predictive policing programs.
After decades of the steady growth of inmate populations, the mass imprisonment movement has stalled and serious attempts are being undertaken to downsize prisons. At issue, however, is whether the American public will endorse this policy agenda. This issue is explored with data from a 2010 survey of 1,569 Oregon adults. On a broad level, the respondents favored a preventative-rehabilitative approach to crime control and endorsed a range of reentry services for inmates. Most significant, the sample supported specific policies, including community sanctions and several forms of early release, to reduce prison populations. Notably, however, they did not embrace downsizing for the purpose of lowering spending—a finding that should be explored in other states. These results indicate that, at least in Oregon, the public is willing to consider efforts to downsize prisons. Capitalizing on this public support remains the challenge to be addressed.
Current research on criminal case processing typically examines a single decision-making point, so drawing reliable conclusions about the impact that factors such as defendants’ race or ethnicity exert across successive stages of the justice system is difficult. Using data from the New York County District Attorney's Office that tracks 185,275 diverse criminal cases, this study assesses racial and ethnic disparity for multiple discretionary points of prosecution and sentencing. Findings from multivariate logistic regression analyses demonstrate that the effects of race and ethnicity vary by discretionary point and offense category. Black and Latino defendants were more likely than White defendants to be detained, to receive a custodial plea offer, and to be incarcerated—and they received especially punitive outcomes for person offenses—but were more likely to benefit from case dismissals. The findings for Asian defendants were less consistent but suggest they were the least likely to be detained, to receive custodial offers, and to be incarcerated. These findings are discussed in the context of contemporary theoretical perspectives on racial bias and cumulative disadvantage in the justice system.
Fiscal constraints and shifting political climates in corrections have recently led to a renewed interest in intermediate punishments. Despite their growing prevalence, though, relatively little empirical research has examined the judicial use of alternative sanctions as a sentencing option. By using 3 years of data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS), this study investigates little‐researched questions regarding the use of sentencing alternatives among offenders and across contexts. Results indicate that male and minority offenders are the least likely to receive intermediate sanctions, both as a diversionary jail or prison sentence and as a substitute for probation. The probability of receiving an intermediate sanction also varies significantly across judges and court contexts and is related to county‐level funding for these programs, among other factors. Findings are discussed as they relate to contemporary theoretical perspectives on the perceived suitability of intermediate punishments and on the unique role that offender agency plays in the sentencing of these cases. Directions for future research are discussed.
Objective: To explore whether the impact of racial and ethnic pejorative stereotypes and prejudice on White support for the death penalty changes over time. Methods: The data were drawn from the 1990 and 2000 General Social Surveys. This trend analysis included a four-item racial–ethnic prejudice scale and two stereotype or “typification” measures that assessed the extent to which the respondents believed that African Americans and Hispanics were more prone to violence than Whites. Controls were introduced for standard demographic measures and for known covariates of punitiveness, such as conservative political ideology and religious beliefs and involvement. The dependent variable was whether the respondents favored the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. Results: The analyses revealed that racial and ethnic prejudice increases Whites' embrace of capital punishment in both periods of time. By contrast, the negative stereotypes that typify African Americans and Hispanics as prone to violence exerted a significant impact on support for the death penalty in 1990 but not in 2000. Conclusions: These findings suggest that Whites' views on minority group members' proneness to violence potentially shift over time and exert significant impacts on death penalty support depending on the broader social context that prevails at a given historical juncture. Racial–ethnic feelings of animus appear to be a stable, if not intractable source of punitiveness. Future research should continue to unpack the complex nature of Whites' racial and ethnic views and to explore how, in given sociopolitical contexts, they potentially serve to justify punitive policy agendas.
In the United States, there are well-known racial, ethnic, age, and sex differences in incarceration rates. Younger offenders are more likely to be sentenced to prison than are older offenders. Black and Hispanic rates of incarceration are six to eight times that of White offenders and males are 14 times as likely as women to be sentenced to prison. This research explores how the combined effects of race, ethnicity, age, and sex, net of legally relevant factors, influence the decision to incarcerate. We examine these effects across nine offense categories. The analysis is based on Florida felony conviction data for the years 2000 to 2006. We find that legally relevant factors significantly influence the incarceration decision. Young Black males are most disadvantaged at the incarceration decision.
Objective
This paper addresses previous shortcomings in the literature on racial disparities in incarceration for drug offenders by taking advantage of a change in sentencing policy in California and a rich administrative dataset that is able to create a sample of comparable White and Black offenders.
Method
We use a nonparametric propensity weighting approach to identify similarly situated White and Black male offenders charged with drug-related offenses. We combine this approach with a difference-in-differences model to estimate the effect that a change in California sentencing law for convicted non-violent drug offenders had on racial disparities in prison and drug treatment dispositions.
Results
We find substantial reductions in the probability of a prison sentence after the policy change, but not differentially for Blacks. Blacks remain more likely to go to prison than similarly situated Whites after the policy, although the policy does lead to more referrals to treatment for Blacks.
Conclusions
This paper shows that even after comparing Blacks and Whites in similarly situated contexts that racial disparities in prison commitments remain after sentencing law changes that mandate diversion to drug treatment. The results suggests that addressing racial gaps in the commitments to state prisons will likely require more than shifting the eligibility of drug convictions for prison, as accumulated criminal histories are the primary driver of prison sentences. This means that expanding diversion options from prison alone will not reduce the racial gap in commitments to prison for drug offenses more than incrementally.
Using data from the 2000 National Election Study, this research investigates the sources of the racial divide in support for capital punishment with a specific focus on white racism. After delineating a measure of white racism, we explore whether it can account for why a majority of African Americans oppose the death penalty while most whites support it. The results indicate that one-third of the racial divide in support for the death penalty can be attributed to the influence of our measure of white racism. The analyses also revealed that when other factors are controlled, support for capital punishment among nonracist whites is similar to that of African Americans. We examine the implications of these findings for using public opinion to justify the death penalty.
In recent decades, crime has emerged as a prominent policy focus nationally. Accordingly, a large literature on public views about crime has developed, one strand of which highlights the racialization of crime as a factor central to public opinion and policy discourse. Drawing on this work and studies on the effects of interracial contact, the authors seek to advance theory and research on public opinion about crime.To this end, they draw on data from an ABC News and Washington Post poll to test competing hypotheses about the effects of interracial friendship among Whites on concern about local and national crime. The results suggest that interracial contact increases concern about crime among urban Whites.The authors discuss the implications of these findings for theory, research, and policy.
This study examines the effects of mandatory terms and sentencing enhancements on Black and White men’s state-level prison admission rates. Four major findings emerge from the analysis. First, both mandatory terms and sentencing enhancements increase prison admission rates for Black and White men. Second, these policies disproportionately increase Black men’s admissions. Third, the effects of these policies—on both scale and disparity—are strongest and most consistent on admissions for violent offenses. Finally, although sentencing enhancements increase admission rates more consistently than mandatory terms, mandatory terms have larger effects on admission rates for the categories—for example, violent admissions for Black men—where they do increase admission rates. The findings are consistent with theories of modern racism, which argue that, in the post-civil rights era, racial disparities are primarily produced and maintained by colorblind policies and practices.
Drawing on a systematic assessment of the accumulated empirical literature and interviews with 25 race and sentencing scholars, this paper argues that the standard approach adopted in research on race and sentencing in criminology is insufficient for addressing the key underlying questions that motivate this work, including whether, where, how, and why race may matter. In light of this assessment, the paper lays out some additional directions for empirical research in this area that would bolster the validity and reliability of our knowledge about how race shapes sentencing and enhance the policy relevance of this work.
In Pennsylvania, the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences presents an important opportunity to examine relatively “pure” prosecutorial discretion over sentencing outcomes. The authors present a multilevel analysis of the prosecutorial decision to apply a mandatory minimum among mandatory eligible offenders sentenced for drug crimes or as repeat, “three-strikes” offenders. They find that prosecutors’ decisions to apply the mandatory minimum are significantly affected by the type and characteristics of offenses and guideline sentence recommendations, prior record, mode of conviction, and gender. They also find that Hispanic males are more likely to receive mandatory minimums and that Black-White differences in mandatory application increase with county percentage Black. The authors frame and interpret their analysis and findings in light of the uncertainty reduction theory of prosecutorial discretion, the view of courts as communities, and an integrative focal concerns perspective on criminal justice decision-making.
Several K-12 and university systems have adopted race-neutral affirmative action in place of race-based alternatives. This paper explores whether these plans are effective substitutes for racial quotas in Chicago Public Schools (CPS), which now employs a race-neutral, place-based affirmative action system at its selective exam high schools. The CPS plan is ineffective compared to plans that explicitly consider race: about three-quarters of the reduction in average entrance scores at the top schools could have been avoided with the same level of racial diversity. Moreover, the CPS plan is less effective at adding low-income students than was the previous system of racial quotas. We develop a theoretical framework that motivates quantifying the inefficiency of race-neutral policies based on the distortion in student preparedness they create for a given level of diversity and use it to evaluate several alternatives. The CPS plan can be improved in several ways, but no race-neutral policy restores minority representation to prior levels without substantially greater distortions, implying significant efficiency costs from prohibitions on the explicit use of race. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J15)
As in economics, racial discrimination has long been a focus of research in sociology. Yet the disciplines traditionally have differed in how they approach the topic. While some studies in recent years show signs of cross-disciplinary influence, exposing more economists to sociological perspectives on racial discrimination would benefit both fields. We offer six propositions from the sociology of racial discrimination that we believe economists should note. We argue that independent of taste and statistical discrimination, economists should study institutional discrimination; that institutional discrimination can take at least two forms, organizational and legal; that in both forms the decisions of a contemporary actor to discriminate can be immaterial; that institutional discrimination is a vehicle through which past discrimination has contemporary consequences; that minor forms of everyday interpersonal discrimination can be highly consequential; and that whether actors perceive they have experienced discrimination deserves attention in its own right.
The First Step Act, a legislative endeavor half nearly a decade in the making and advocated for by President Trump, represented the most significant easing of federal criminal punishment to date. This article discusses the historical antecedents for the prison and sentencing reform legislation and discusses its path through the 115th Congress of the United States.
The election of 45 brought significant questions about race (and race-class) that merit theoretical consideration. My goal in this article is to discuss how racial theory applies to three main themes that followed the 2016 election: (a) dealing with the “racists”?, (b) the anxieties of the poor and White working class, and (c) hegemonic racism in Trumpamerica. I also briefly outline where I think racial theory needs to develop to combat racism in Trumpamerica.
en American public policy is and has always been profoundly racialized. Yet, the literature on policy feedback lacks cohesive theorization of how race matters for feedback processes. This article offers a conceptual road map for studying policy feedback in the context of racialized politics. Drawing together the substantial (but largely disconnected) work that already exists in the fields of public policy and racial politics, I develop the racialized feedback framework to provide theoretical guidance on (i) when race should be a core focus of policy feedback research and (ii) how race structures the relationship between policy and polity. I argue that both the scope of the questions that scholars ask and the nature of the answers they find are altered when race is afforded an appropriately central role in research on policy feedback.
Abstract
zh 美国的公共政策一直带有强烈的种族色彩。然而，关于种族如何影响政策反馈过程的文献仍缺乏系统性的理论整合。本文提出了一种概念性分析方法，以用于研究在种族化政治背景下的政策反馈。结合公共政策和种族政治领域内已经存在的大量研究，本文提出了种族化反馈框架（RFF），并为以下问题提供了理论指导：1）种族何时应成为政策反馈研究的核心焦点；2）种族如何构建政策与政体之间的关系。本文认为，当种族在政策反馈研究中发挥适当的核心作用时，研究学者所提出的问题的范围以及他们所发现的答案的性质都会发生变化。
This study explored the achievement, engagement, and school climate perceptions of African American males in urban high schools. Hierarchical regression and focus group interviews were used to analyze male sample (n = 114) data from a larger study. Findings suggest that students’ perceptions were influenced by having information about and access to advanced placement (AP) courses, teacher patience and support, student–teacher relationships, and racial fairness in student discipline. Providing more information about and support in AP courses, ongoing cultural proficiency training, and investments in racially fair discipline systems are among the recommendations.
Research Summary
Our study represents the first effort to evaluate systematically Proposition 47's (Prop 47's) impact on California's crime rates. With a state‐level panel containing violent and property offenses from 1970 through 2015, we employ a synthetic control group design to approximate California's crime rates had Prop 47 not been enacted. Our findings suggest that Prop 47 had no effect on homicide, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, or burglary. Larceny and motor vehicle thefts, however, seem to have increased moderately after Prop 47, but these results were both sensitive to alternative specifications of our synthetic control group and small enough that placebo testing cannot rule out spuriousness.
Policy Implications
As the United States engages in renewed debates regarding the scale and cost of its incarcerated population, California stands at the forefront of criminal justice reform. Although California reduced its prison population by 13,000 through Prop 47, critics argue anecdotally that the measure is responsible for recent crime upticks across the state. We find little empirical support for these claims. Thus, our findings suggest that California can downsize its prisons and jails without compromising public safety.
In the era of mass incarceration, over 600,000 people are released from federal or state prison each year, with many returning to chaotic living environments rife with violence. In these circumstances, how do former prisoners navigate reentering society? In Homeward, sociologist Bruce Western examines the tumultuous first year after release from prison. Drawing from in-depth interviews with over one hundred individuals, he describes the lives of the formerly incarcerated and demonstrates how poverty, racial inequality, and failures of social support trap many in a cycle of vulnerability despite their efforts to rejoin society. Western and his research team conducted comprehensive interviews with men and women released from the Massachusetts state prison system who returned to neighborhoods around Boston. Western finds that for most, leaving prison is associated with acute material hardship. In the first year after prison, most respondents could not afford their own housing and relied on family support and government programs, with half living in deep poverty. Many struggled with chronic pain, mental illnesses, or addiction-the most important predictor of recidivism. Most respondents were also unemployed. Some older white men found union jobs in the construction industry through their social networks, but many others, particularly those who were black or Latino, were unable to obtain full-time work due to few social connections to good jobs, discrimination, and lack of credentials. Violence was common in their lives, and often preceded their incarceration. In contrast to the stereotype of tough criminals preying upon helpless citizens, Western shows that many former prisoners were themselves subject to lifetimes of violence and abuse and encountered more violence after leaving prison, blurring the line between victims and perpetrators. Western concludes that boosting the social integration of former prisoners is key to both ameliorating deep disadvantage and strengthening public safety. He advocates policies that increase assistance to those in their first year after prison, including guaranteed housing and health care, drug treatment, and transitional employment. By foregrounding the stories of people struggling against the odds to exit the criminal justice system, Homeward shows how overhauling the process of prisoner reentry and rethinking the foundations of justice policy could address the harms of mass incarceration.
Racial inequalities in criminal justice are pressing problems for policymakers. Prior literature suggests elected officials promulgate punitive, racially disparate criminal justice policies due to partisanship and racial fears, but scholarship has yet to explain how and why elected officials address racial problems in criminal processing. This article introduces the framework of racial disparity reform policymaking. A racial disparity reform is a policy that seeks to reduce distinctions in criminal justice institutions’ treatment of racial groups. Elected officials pursue these policies due to ideological beliefs in civil rights ideals and political interests in appearing to solve social problems. Using an original database of policy enactments, this article first presents the distribution and types of reform measures adopted by elected officials in all 50 states between 1998 and 2011. It then examines social and political explanations for when state legislatures and executives adopt racial disparity reforms. Policy enactment is predicted by worsening problems of racial disproportion in criminal processing, Democratic control of elected branches, and the absence of judicial efforts to improve racial fairness within a state’s criminal justice system. Similar dynamics encourage the development of different measures types within policies. Such ideological and problem-solving explanations for racial disparity reform show a potential for elected officials to forge more racially just criminal justice practices.
“Backed up by the best science, Todd Clear and Natasha Frost make a compelling case for why the nation’s forty-year embrace of the punitive spirit has been morally bankrupt and endangered public safety. But this is far more than an exposé of correctional failure. Recognizing that a policy turning point is at hand, Clear and Frost provide a practical blueprint for choosing a different correctional future-counsel that is wise and should be widely followed.”-Francis T. Cullen, Distinguished Research Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati Over the last 35 years, the US penal system has grown at a rate unprecedented in US history-five times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. This growth was part of a sustained and intentional effort to “get tough” on crime, and characterizes a time when no policy options were acceptable save for those that increased penalties. In The Punishment Imperative, eminent criminologists Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost argue that America’s move to mass incarceration from the 1960s to the early 2000s was more than just a response to crime or a collection of policies adopted in isolation it was a grand social experiment. Tracing a wide array of trends related to the criminal justice system, The Punishment Imperative charts the rise of penal severity in America and speculates that a variety of forces-fiscal, political, and evidentiary-have finally come together to bring this great social experiment to an end. Clear and Frost stress that while the doubling of the crime rate in the late 1960s represented one of the most pressing social problems at the time, this is not what served as a foundation for the great punishment experiment. Rather, it was the way crime posed a political problem-and thereby offered a political opportunity-that became the basis for the great rise in punishment. The authors claim that the punishment imperativeis a particularly insidious social experiment because the actual goal was never articulated, the full array of consequences was never considered, and the momentum built even as the forces driving the policy shifts diminished. Clear and Frost argue that the public’s growing realization that the severe policies themselves, not growing crime rates, were the main cause of increased incarceration eventually led to a surge of interest in taking a more rehabilitative, pragmatic, and cooperative approach to dealing with criminal offenders. The Punishment Imperative cautions that the legacy of the grand experiment of the past forty years will be difficult to escape. However, the authors suggest that the United States now stands at the threshold of a new era in penal policy, and they offer several practical and pragmatic policy solutions to changing the criminal justice system’s approach to punishment. Part historical study, part forward-looking policy analysis, The Punishment Imperative is a compelling study of a generation of crime and punishment in America.
Research Summary
Based on a 2013 survey of 1,001 likely voters in Texas, public support for correctional reform in a “red state” was examined. Four major conclusions were revealed. First, the respondents displayed strong support for rehabilitation. Second, at least for nonviolent and/or drug offenders, the sample members showed a clear preference for the use of alternatives to incarceration as opposed to imprisonment. Third, when asked about a specific policy reform that used treatment rather than prison for nonviolent drug offenders, more than eight in ten Texans approved of the measure, and strong majorities endorsed various rationales for it. Fourth, with some minor variation, the respondents revealed substantial consensus across demographic groups in their embrace of rehabilitation and correctional reform.
Policy Implications
With the growth of mass imprisonment arguably at its end, the existence of strong public support for correctional reform even in the major red state of Texas, suggests that a new “sensibility” about crime control has taken hold. There is now an emergent national consensus that the overuse of incarceration is unsustainable and that low‐risk offenders no longer should be sanctioned with a prison sentence. The American public, in Texas and beyond, is willing to support a policy agenda that includes offender treatment, prison downsizing, and alternatives to incarceration. The challenge for elected officials is to take advantage of this ideological space and to pursue this agenda. Notably, politicians in Texas and in other red states are using this opportunity to implement correctional policy reforms. The data in this study indicate that they will face no public backlash and, if anything, will gain political capital for their efforts.
At no time in history, and certainly in no other democratic society, have prisons been filled so quickly and to such capacity than in the United States. And nowhere has this growth been more concentrated than in the disadvantaged-and primarily minority-neighborhoods of America's largest urban cities. In the most impoverished places, as much as 20% of the adult men are locked up on any given day, and there is hardly a family without a father, son, brother, or uncle who has not been behind bars. While the effects of going to and returning home from prison are well-documented, little attention has been paid to the impact of removal on neighborhoods where large numbers of individuals have been imprisoned. In the first detailed, empirical exploration of the effects of mass incarceration on poor places, this book demonstrates that in high doses incarceration contributes to the very social problems it is intended to solve-it breaks up family and social networks; deprives siblings, spouses, and parents of emotional and financial support; threatens the economic and political infrastructure of already struggling neighborhoods; and destabilizes the community, thus further reducing public safety. Especially at risk are children who, research shows, are more likely to commit a crime if a father or brother has been to prison. Demonstrating that the current incarceration policy in urban America does more harm than good, from increasing crime to widening racial disparities and diminished life chances for youths, the book argues that we cannot overcome the problem of mass incarceration concentrated in poor places without incorporating an idea of community justice into our failing correctional and criminal justice systems.
A confluence of factors — a perfect storm — interfered with the intractable rise of imprisonment and contributed to the emergence of a new sensibility defining continued mass imprisonment as non-sustainable. In this context, reducing America’s prisons has materialized as a viable possibility. For progressives who have long called for restraint in the use of incarceration, the challenge is whether the promise of downsizing can be met. The failure of past reforms aimed at decarceration stand as a sobering reminder that good intentions do not easily translate into good results. Further, a number of other reasons exist for why meaningful downsizing might well fail (e.g., the enormous scale of imprisonment that must be confronted, limited mechanisms available to release inmates, lack of quality alternative programs). Still, reasons also exist for optimism, the most important of which is the waning legitimacy of the paradigm of mass incarceration, which has produced efforts to lower inmate populations and close institutions in various states. The issue of downsizing will also remain at the forefront of correctional discourse because of the court-ordered reduction in imprisonment in California. This experiment is ongoing, but is revealing the difficulty of downsizing; the initiative appears to be producing mixed results (e.g., reductions in the state’s prison population but increased in local jail populations). In the end, successful downsizing must be “liberal but not stupid.” Thus, reform efforts must be guided not only by progressive values but also by a clear reliance on scientific knowledge about corrections and on a willingness to address the pragmatic issues that can thwart good intentions. Ultimately, a “criminology of downsizing” must be developed to foster effective policy interventions.
Suburbs across the US are experiencing dramatic demographic shifts, yet there is little research available on how suburban school districts are dealing with these changes. In this article, we examine the discourses surrounding race and demographic change in three suburban school districts that have been undergoing rapid demographic changes and which contain demographically distinct areas within their district boundaries. Utilizing a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach, we analyze how the policy context (federal and state) frames actors’ discourses and understandings of race, paying particular attention to the political and institutional factors affecting school policy. We illustrate how the discourse, in turn, is related to the actions (or inactions) taken by district and school leaders to respond to demographic change. We conclude the article by discussing policy implications and potential challenges districts may face in the future if efforts to purposively address racial changes continue to be avoided.
When and if the will to roll back mass incarceration and to create just, fair, and effective sentencing systems becomes manifest, the way forward is clear.
First, three‐strikes, mandatory minimum sentence, and comparable laws should be repealed.
Second, any three‐strikes, mandatory minimum sentence, and comparable laws that are not repealed should be substantially narrowed in scope and severity.
Third, any three‐strikes, mandatory minimum sentence, and comparable laws that are not repealed should be amended to include provisions authorizing judges to impose some other sentence “in the interest of justice.”
Fourth, life‐without‐possibility‐of‐parole laws should be repealed or substantially narrowed.
Fifth, truth‐in‐sentencing laws should be repealed.
Sixth, criminal codes should be amended to set substantially lower maximum sentences scaled to the seriousness of crimes.
Seventh, every state that does not already have one should establish a sentencing commission and promulgate presumptive sentencing guidelines.
Eighth, every state that does not already have one should establish a parole board and every state should establish a parole guidelines system.
Ninth, every state and the federal government should reduce its combined rate of jail and prison confinement to half its 2014 level by 2020.
Tenth, every state should enact legislation making all prisoners serving fixed terms longer than 5 years, or indeterminate terms, eligible for consideration for release at the expiration of 5 years, and making all prisoners 35 years of age or older eligible for consideration for release after serving 3 years.
These proposals are evidence‐based and mostly technocratic. Those calling for prison population targets and reducing the lengths of sentences being served may seem bold to some. Relative to the problems they address, they are modest and partial. Decreasing rates of imprisonment by half in the United States, a country with comparatively low crime rates, to a level that will remain 3 to 3.5 times those of other developed Western countries, can hardly be considered overly ambitious.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to gain insight about the experience of multicultural administrators who oversee bridge program designed to recruit and retain historically underrepresented students of color. The study was also designed to capture the experience of the multicultural administrator as well as what meaning they made of their role as a diversity leader, and the challenges they face as they try to meet diversity goals under the constraints of race neutrality.
Design/methodology/approach
– This is a descriptive qualitative multi-case study. In order to gain a better understanding of the experience of multicultural administrators as they try to enact diversity leadership under race-neutral policies a qualitative phenomenological multi-case designed was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with multicultural administrators from four institutions within a southern state of the USA.
Findings
– Data reveals that seeking to increase and foster diversity on predominantly white campuses under race neutrality is challenging. Many of the administrators expressed concern about how they would maintain and increase diversity and campus inclusiveness without specifically marketing and targeting to groups that are traditionally marginalized. Overall, they described the experience as one filled with heightened awareness of the social and political environment and how senior-level administrators and other offices on campus perceived them and their work.
Research limitations/implications
– Using a qualitative multi-case study limits generalizability. Also, there are many other factors such as institutional type, location, student population, and institutional capacity that may impact the institutional conditions in which each of these administrators work.
Practical implications
– The findings of this study can be used to inform institutional policy makers of these struggles as well as provide campus administrators and staff helpful recommendations for dealing with the politics of race neutrality as they continue to fulfill their responsibility to increase diversity on their campuses.
Social implications
– This paper may raise awareness about the challenges of employing race neutrality, particularly for states and institutions concerned with diversifying higher education. It also highlights the challenges leaders face when dealing with reduced funding and policies that do not support their work.
Originality/value
– The paper discusses an understudied and under-recognized group of diversity leaders dealing with a current race-neutral policies. It will be of interests to institutional leaders, multicultural administrators, and other types of diversity leaders in higher education.
Few criminological topics are as controversial as the relationships between race, ethnicity, crime, and criminal justice outcomes—especially incarceration. This paper assesses whether Blacks and Hispanics are disadvantaged at the sentencing phase of the justice system and whether the findings depend on the use of traditional regression-based methods to control for legally relevant variables vs. the use of precision matching methods, which attend to potential sample selection bias that occurs when there are not exact matches for those sentenced to incarceration and non-incarceration. Analysis of the population of Florida offenders from 1994 to 2006 using both methodologies indicates that Black offenders continue to be disproportionately incarcerated compared to White or Hispanic offenders, and that Hispanic offenders were slightly more likely than White offenders to be incarcerated.
The Hispanic population is now the largest and fastest growing minority in the United States, so it is not surprising that ethnic threat linked to Hispanics has been associated with harsher crime control. While minority threat research has found that individuals who associate blacks with crime are more likely to support harsh criminal policies, the possibility that this relationship exists for those who typify Hispanics as criminal has yet to be examined. Using a national random sample, this study is the first to use HLM to find that perceptions of Hispanics as criminals do increase support for punitive crime control measures, controlling for various individual and state influences. Moderated and contextual analyses indicate this relationship is most applicable for individuals who are less apt to typify criminals as black, less prejudiced, less fearful of victimization, politically liberal or moderate, not parents, and living in states with relatively fewer Latin American immigrants.
Little is known about the predictors of sentencing for the typical female offender—one who commits a misdemeanor or lesser offense. Moreover, although ample discussions of racial/ethnic disparity in sentencing may be found in the extant literature, most researchers have focused on what happens to males who commit felonies. Thus, to help fill a void I examine the likelihood of receiving a jail sentence among a sample of cases for female misdemeanants. All were convicted in New York City's Criminal Court. I account for direct and indirect effects by estimating a causal model that predicts the sentencing outcome. Race/ethnicity did not directly affect sentencing. Indirect effects, however, were found. Black and Hispanic females were more likely to receive jail sentences than their White counterparts due to differences in socio-economic status, community ties, prior record, earlier case processing, and charge severity.
This paper capitalizes on information about firearm use available in a standard sentencing guideline worksheet to study who is ultimately convicted with a mandatory minimum firearm penalty in the state of Maryland. Findings show that the mandatory firearm penalty is applied in only 37% of all eligible cases, and it is associated with an additional 41 months of prison time. The penalty is not applied randomly, but appears to be part of an organized effort to punish more serious offenders convicted of more serious offenses. Race and gender are also significant predictors of being convicted under this penalty. It is possible that race and gender are only proxies for other unobserved characteristics, but this finding serves as an upper bound on the size of the gender and race effect in prosecutorial discretion, and demonstrates the potential for disparity in the charge bargaining stage of the sentencing process.
Many respondents to opinion surveys say that the citizen's race influences how police officers treat the public, yet recent expert social-science panels have declared that research findings are too contradictory to form a conclusion on whether American police are biased against racial minorities. We perform a meta-analysis of quantitative research that estimates the effect of race on the police decision to arrest. Screening nearly 4,500 potential sources, we analyze the results based on 27 independent data sets that generated 40 research reports (both published and unpublished) that permitted an estimate of the effect size of the suspect's race on the probability of arrest. The meta-analysis shows with strong consistency that minority suspects are more likely to be arrested than White suspects. Depending on the method of estimation, the effect size of race varied between 1.32 and 1.52. Converting the race effect size to probabilities shows that compared with the average probability in these studies of a White being arrested (.20), the average probability for a non-White was calculated at .26. The significant race effect persists when taking into account the studies’ variations in research methods and the nature of explanatory models used in the studies. Implications for future research are presented.