scholarly journals From Mass Incarceration to Mass Control, and Back Again: How Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform May Lead to a For-Profit Nightmare

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Takei
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
For Profit

scholarly journals The Consensus Myth in Criminal Justice Reform

2018 ◽  
pp. 259
Author(s):  
Benjamin Levin
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Law ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
The Troubles ◽  
Mass Frame ◽  
Pragmatic Turn ◽  
Policy Proposals ◽  
Policy Solutions

It has become popular to identify a “consensus” on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is much more limited than it initially appears. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society. The Article maps two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of criminal law: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the “over” frame); and (2) the qualitative approach (what I call the “mass” frame). The “over” frame grows from a belief that criminal law has an important and legitimate function, but that the law’s operations have exceeded that function. This critique assumes that there are optimal rates of incarceration and criminalization, but the current criminal system is suboptimal in that it has criminalized too much and incarcerated too many. In contrast, the “mass” frame focuses on criminal law as a sociocultural phenomenon. This reformist frame indicates that the issue is not a mere miscalculation; rather, reforms should address how the system marginalizes populations and exacerbates both power imbalances and distributional inequities. To show how these frames differ, this Article applies the “over” and the “mass” critique, in turn, to the maligned phenomena of mass incarceration and overcriminalization. The existing literature on mass incarceration and overcriminalization displays an elision between these two frames. Some scholars and reformers have adopted one frame exclusively, while others use the two interchangeably. No matter how much scholars and critics bemoan the troubles of mass incarceration and overcriminalization, it is hard to believe that they can achieve meaningful reform if they are talking about fundamentally different problems. While many scholars may adopt an “over” frame in an effort to attract a broader range of support or appeal to politicians, “over” policy proposals do not necessarily reach deeper “mass” concerns. Ultimately, this Article argues that a pragmatic turn to the “over” frame may have significant costs in legitimating deeper structural flaws and failing to address distributional issues of race, class, and power at the heart of the “mass” critique.

For a Human Rights Approach to Reforming the American Penal State

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 346-356
Author(s):  
Jonathan Simon
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
Penal State ◽  
Promising Avenue

Abstract Economic arguments seem to be the most promising avenue for driving reform of America’s bloated penal state in the aftermath of mass incarceration. Raising human rights concerns has limited appeal beyond cultural elites and, on occasion, courts, but today reform is coming from elected branches. Talk of human rights for criminals, or human dignity for prisoners, can risk backlash as happened around the death penalty in the 1970s. This essay challenges this conventional account in three ways. First, I argue that historical conditions make the potential for backlash limited. Second, that economic arguments will always be limited by the political and institutional frameworks that define the current meanings of criminal justice; only a human rights approach can drive a truly abolitionist reform agenda, one aimed at rethinking the institutions themselves, not just their budgets. Third, human rights campaigns can, if properly conceived, expand the constituency for deep criminal justice reform.

Monumental Promises, Incremental Gains

2021 ◽  
pp. 222-244
Author(s):  
Khalilah L. Brown-Dean
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Crime Control ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Individual Responsibility ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
President Obama ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Key Policy

There were growing public demands to address ongoing tensions over biased policing, excessive sentencing, and the often lethal consequences of disproportionate minority contact. However, the Obama administration’s professed commitment to comprehensive criminal justice and mass incarceration reform was constrained by institutional norms, federalism, and a skepticism about individual responsibility that most frequently came from Republican detractors. Hyperincarceration in the United States has garnered substantial attention from scholars, activists, and analysts. Yet beyond crime rates, the racially disparate consequences of this autonomous system hold significant implications for the institutionalization of Black political power. African Americans are disproportionately represented in every realm of punitive control, from surveillance to arrest to conviction to incarceration to postrelease supervision. Crime control policies, then, shape individual access and communal representation. In this chapter, I interrogate President Obama’s record through the lens of what I term “concentrated punishment.” I begin by highlighting the behemoth growth of the criminal justice system that set the tone for the challenges President Obama attempted to address. From there, I analyze key policy reforms within these two domains to characterize President Obama’s legacy of criminal justice reform. Finally, I outline a reform path for future administrations.

The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform

2016 ◽  
Vol 664 (1) ◽  
pp. 238-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Beckett ◽  
Anna Reosti ◽  
Emily Knaphus
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
Sentencing Reform

Recent drops in the U.S. rate of incarceration have triggered much discussion regarding the fate of mass incarceration. Some observers suggest that the political consensus in favor of getting tough on crime has been shattered and replaced by a new consensus that the prison population must be downsized. In this article, we explore the possibility that neither legislation nor public discourse around crime and punishment has shifted so dramatically, and that the cultural dynamics surrounding reform efforts may undermine the prospects of comprehensive sentencing reform. To assess these hypotheses, we analyze trends in criminal justice policy reform from 2000 to 2013 and newspaper stories and editorials on criminal justice reform since 2008. While we do find important examples of changing rhetoric and policy, we suggest that these changes do not constitute a “paradigm shift.” Rather, they are indicative of a more subtle, complex, and contradictory modification of the way punishment is conceived, discussed, and ultimately enacted.

The Incorporation of Faith-Based Organizations into Criminal Justice Reform

2018 ◽  
pp. 27-42
Author(s):  
Jennifer Elena Cossyleon
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Probation Officers ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Public Private Partnerships ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Civic Organizations ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Faith Leaders ◽  
Probation And Parole

This chapter draws from a social movements perspective to examine how 1990s-era probation privatization contests reshaped the penal field in ways that led CBOs and FBOs to become more deeply incorporated in criminal justice reform efforts. As neoliberal think tanks aggressively promoted transferring probation activities to for-profit firms, the American Probation and Parole Association (APPA)—a CSG-related organization representing probation officers—fended off such threats by building public-private partnerships with CBOs and FBOs. The CSG and APPA still sought to preserve the influence of elite civic organizations in criminal justice reform. However, once seated at the table of criminal justice reform, faith leaders participated in both pastoral and insurgent displays of prophetic redemption. The efforts of CRS/FORCE and LA Voice/the Homeboys LOC trace their origins to these evolving contests over criminal justice reform.

Time to Rein in the Prosecutors?

2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (811) ◽  
pp. 325-327
Author(s):  
Lisa L. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Violent Crime ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Minority Communities ◽  
Criminal Justice Reform ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Crime Wave

An expert makes a detailed case for criminal justice reform, yet offers few answers for the kind of violent crime wave that led to the era of mass incarceration—and ravages minority communities.

Crack and Criminal Justice in Canton, Ohio, 1987–1999: “The Drug Problem has Created a Monster”

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-182
Author(s):  
WILL COOLEY
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Crack Cocaine ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Drug Problem ◽  
Industrial City ◽  
The City

AbstractThe rise of crack cocaine in the late 1980s propelled the war on drugs. The experience of Canton, Ohio, shows how the response to crack solidified mass incarceration. A declining industrial city of 84,000 people in northeast Ohio with deep-seated racial divides, it was overwhelmed by aggressive, enterprising crack dealers from outside the city. In response, politicians and residents united behind the strategy of incessant arrests and drastic prison sentences. The law-enforcement offensive worsened conditions while pursuing African Americans at blatantly disproportionate rates, but few people engaged in reframing the drug problem. Instead, a punitive citizenry positioned punishment as the principal remedy. The emergency foreclosed on more comprehensive assessments of the city’s tribulations, while the criminal justice system emerged as the paramount institution.

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