The Limits of Expectations and the Minimization of Collateral Consequences: The Experience of Electronic Home Monitoring

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Kirk
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Home Monitoring ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Collateral Consequences ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
House Arrest ◽  
Alternative To Incarceration

Abstract Electronic home monitoring (EHM), also known as house arrest, is often described by policy makers as a less punitive, more humane alternative to incarceration. However, studies on its use have found it is often not used as an alternative, but rather as an increase in the level of supervision for individuals in the criminal justice system. This fact calls into question whether the language of alternatives and direct comparisons to incarceration obscures our understanding of both the sanction and how individuals experience it. Although previous studies of the experience of EHM have concluded that individuals do not find the sanction overly burdensome, this article articulates the importance of considering 1) how respondents frame their experience on EHM in comparison to incarceration and 2) how they draw on expectations surrounding their legal alternatives. Using 30 interviews with individuals who have been on EHM in Chicago, Illinois, I argue that the pervasiveness of the prison distorts expectations of the legal process and causes respondents to minimize the hardships they detail. Both the existing framing of studies on EHM and the ways in which individuals experience it demonstrate the hegemony of carceral logics in an era of mass incarceration.

Mass Incarceration in the United States and its Collateral Consequences

Sociology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Meaghan Mingo ◽  
Anna R. Haskins
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Spillover Effects ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Collateral Consequences

Mass incarceration is characterized by comparatively and historically extreme rates of imprisonment in the United States, which rose drastically from the early 1970s through 2007 or so. Disproportionately affecting young, Black men from neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, many factors contributed to the steady increase in incarceration from the early 1970s forward. While rising crime rates and harsh societal attitudes toward those convicted of crimes played a part, scholars largely argue that increases in both the likelihood of imprisonment for committing a crime and the length of prison sentences drove the increase in incarceration. Supported by more-intensive and place-based forms of policing, individuals and entire communities faced increasing contact with the criminal justice system. Underlying these policy changes lay deeper social, political, and economic drivers, which often varied by state or other jurisdictions. Ultimately, policy changes mandating longer sentences for repeat offenses (such as three-strike laws) and state and federal laws that increased the length of prison sentences for drug-related and violent crime led to a rising incarceration rate, which meant that far more Americans were serving time and for much-longer sentences than ever before. While the rate of incarceration for men has started to decline slightly, rates for women have risen. During the first two decades of the 21st century, researchers have increasingly focused their efforts on understanding and documenting the collateral consequences of mass incarceration. Beyond the individuals directly impacted, incarceration affects the lives of children and families, neighborhoods, communities, and broader society. Individuals and families especially experience detrimental effects in the education, labor market, and health spheres, while communities suffer “spillover effects,” with even those not directly touched by incarceration affected. With nearly one in thirty-six adults living under some form of correctional supervision (whether in prison or jail, or on probation or parole), and many others “marked” by their past experience with the system, mass incarceration has touched the lives of millions of Americans. Further, racial disparities throughout each phase of the criminal justice system, including in policing, arrest, conviction, and sentencing, have resulted in Americans of color disproportionately experiencing incarceration and its attendant effects. As such, mass incarceration is understood to be a major contributor to 21st-century American inequality along lines of race, class, and gender.

Conclusion

Outlaw Women ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 217-232
Author(s):  
Susan Dewey ◽  
Bonnie Zare ◽  
Catherine Connolly ◽  
Rhett Epler ◽  
Rosemary Bratton
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Dominant Culture ◽  
Frontier Myth ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
The U.S

Our Wyoming study offers direct implications for the U.S. prison system, which has reached a new frontier in terms of the sheer number of people incarcerated, on probation or parole, or experiencing the lifelong consequences of a felony conviction. Much like the frontier myth that continues to exercise influence in U.S. politics and dominant culture, mass incarceration is the result of popular acceptance of beliefs that ignore pervasive socioeconomic inequalities. These beliefs encourage the U.S. voting public to endorse addressing deeply rooted social problems, particularly addiction, through criminal justice solutions designed by the politicians they elect. Such is the nature of democracy in a society characterized by ever-widening inequalities between rich and poor, those with stable jobs and contingent workers, where the criminal justice system is fodder for countless films, series, and other entertainment, and where individuals rely far more on electronic communication than on meaningful social interaction. Social isolation and inequality breed fear, and three fear-based beliefs undergird the existence of the criminal justice system in its present form: drug-abusing women are a threat to public safety, law breaking is an individual choice rather than a community problem, and women released from prison pose a long-term risk to society.

After the Crime

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-396
Author(s):  
Paul H. Robinson ◽  
Muhammad Sarahne
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Preferential Treatment ◽  
Collateral Consequences ◽  
Probation And Parole ◽  
Principles Of Justice

Although an offender’s conduct before and during the crime is the traditional focus of criminal law and sentencing rules, an examination of post-offense conduct can also be important in promoting criminal justice goals. After the crime, different offenders make different choices and have different experiences, and those differences can suggest appropriately different treatment by judges, correctional officials, probation and parole supervisors, and other decision makers in the criminal justice system. Positive post-offense conduct ought to be acknowledged and rewarded, not only to encourage it but also as a matter of fair and just treatment. This essay describes four kinds of positive post-offense conduct that merit special recognition and preferential treatment: the responsible offender, who avoids further deceit and damage to others during the process leading to conviction; the debt-paid offender, who suffers the full punishment deserved (according to true principles of justice rather than the sentence actually imposed); the reformed offender, who takes affirmative steps to leave criminality behind; and the redeemed offender, who out of genuine remorse tries to atone for the offense. The essay considers how one might operationalize a system for giving special accommodation to such offenders. Positive post-offense conduct might be rewarded, for example, through the selection and shaping of sanctioning methods, through giving preference in access to education, training, treatment, and other programs, and through elimination or restriction of collateral consequences of conviction that continue after the sentence is completed.

Suggestibility in the Courtroom

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona Gabbert ◽  
Lorraine Hope
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
System P ◽  
Investigative Process

Due to the constructive nature of memory, recollections for events are easily contaminated or distorted by information encountered after the event took place. People can therefore mistakenly report information that has been suggested to them, but that they have not in reality experienced. In light of this well-documented memory fallibility, the current chapter explores how memory can be distorted during the investigative and legal process. Key factors affecting the reliability of eyewitness statements are discussed, including stress and arousal, intoxication, and individual differences in vulnerability to suggestion. The chapter examines when people are most likely to be vulnerable to suggestion and focuses, in particular, on how memory can be distorted during the investigative process as a result of poor interviewing practice and co-witness contamination. The chapter concludes with consideration of how best to minimize the negative effects of suggestibility for the criminal justice system

The Criminal Justice System and the Racialization of Perceptions

2013 ◽  
Vol 651 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliya Saperstein ◽  
Andrew M. Penner ◽  
Jessica M. Kizer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Longitudinal Data ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Racial Perceptions

Recent research on how contact with the criminal justice system shapes racial perceptions in the United States has shown that incarceration increases the likelihood that people are racially classified by others as black, and decreases the likelihood that they are classified as white. We extend this work, using longitudinal data with information on whether respondents have been arrested, convicted, or incarcerated, and details about their most recent arrest. This allows us to ask whether any contact with the criminal justice system triggers racialization, or only certain types of contact. Additional racial categories allow us to explore the racialization of crime beyond the black-white divide. Results indicate even one arrest significantly increases the odds of subsequently being classified as black, and decreases the odds of being classified as white or Asian. This implies a broader impact of increased policing and mass incarceration on racialization and stereotyping, with consequences for social interactions, political attitudes, and research on inequality.

Impediments to the Recovery of Restitution by Crime Victims

1990 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan T. Harland ◽  
Cathryn J. Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Crime Victims ◽  
Actual Case ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Technical Data ◽  
Victims Of Crime ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Case Dispositions

Restitution is unique among criminal justice policies by virtue of the widespread support it has attained from many diverse constituencies. Restitution has received such universal praise as a panacea for victims of crime that in recent years a number of American jurisdictions have adopted legislation that creates a presumptive norm that restitution be awarded in appropriate cases. Despite popular support for its increased use and enactment of enabling legislation, restitution continues to be underutilized in actual case dispositions. The authors suggest that the underuse problem will not be cured and the powerful potential that restitution holds as a criminal justice sanction will not be realized until a consensus regarding the definition of restitution is achieved, significant gaps in the technical data about how restitution is effectuated are closed, and practical impediments to awarding and collecting restitution are dissolved. These goals, in turn, cannot be met until policy makers confront and begin to resolve the inherent conflicts posed when a restorative sanction, such as restitution, is pursued in a criminal justice system that is primarily punitive in nature.

scholarly journals Putting a face on the dark figure: Describing victims who don’t report crime

Temida ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie Fohring
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Dark Figure

Since the inception of large scale victimisation surveys a considerable amount of research has been conducted investigating the so called ?dark figure? of unreported crime. Although this figure has consistently hovered around 60% of all victims, recent research reveals little about those who choose not to pursue formal avenues of justice. This article thus seeks to open a dialogue which focuses on the actual people behind the dark figure. It uses examples from the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey to describe these individuals and to explore explanations for their non-reporting. It highlights the importance of deprivation and vulnerability with regards to reporting crime but also the initial risk of victimisation. It concludes by arguing that the lack of focus on victims who don?t report leaves them vulnerable and invisible to the eyes of policy makers and the criminal justice system.

scholarly journals Gender and Financialization of the Criminal Justice System

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 446
Author(s):  
Lisa Servon ◽  
Ava Esquier ◽  
Gillian Tiley
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Health Needs ◽  
Exploratory Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
System 2 ◽  
Depth Interviews

(1) The increase in women’s mass incarceration over the past forty years raises questions about how justice-involved women experience the financial aspects of the criminal justice system. (2) We conducted in-depth interviews with twenty justice-involved women and seven criminal law and reentry professionals, and conducted courtroom observations in southeastern Pennsylvania. (3) The results from this exploratory research reveal that women’s roles as caregivers, their greater health needs, and higher likelihood of being poor creates barriers to paying fines and fees and exacerbates challenges in reentry. (4) These challenges contribute to a cycle of prolonged justice involvement and financial instability.

The Political Theology of Mass Incarceration

2020 ◽  
pp. 65-104
Author(s):  
Joshua Dubler ◽  
Vincent W. Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Law And Order ◽  
Religious Imagination

Chapter 2 tracks the way American political elites talked about justice and punishment before and during the rise of mass incarceration. The authors show how these concepts were once closely connected with the religious imagination. When that link was severed, justice was reduced to the proper functioning of the law, to a criminal justice system, and a new set of ideas and institutions promoting law and order and victims’ rights took over. The chapter demonstrates how, at the level of political rhetoric, religion—along with economics and race—was essential for promoting incarceration as the sole mechanism for effecting justice.

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