Criminology Commons^™

The Growth Of Incarceration In The United States: Exploring Causes And Consequences, Jeremy Travis, Bruce Western, F. Stevens Redburn

Publications and Research

After decades of stability from the 1920s to the early 1970s, the rate of incarceration in the United States more than quadrupled in the past four decades. The Committee on the Causes and Consequences of High Rates of Incarceration in the United States was established under the auspices of the National Research Council, supported by the National Institute of Justice and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, to review evidence on the causes and consequences of these high incarceration rates and the implications of this evidence for public policy.

Our work encompassed research on, and analyses of, the …

Impediments Of Labor Contracts On Prison Administrators’ Response To Staff–Inmate Sexual Misconduct, Gaylene Armstrong, Dennis Longmire, Doug J. Dretke, Kevin Steinmetz

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Sexual violence in adult correctional facilities led to the enactment of the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act as one approach to reducing this form of institutional violence. The current study examined collective bargaining agreements governing correctional agencies to identify impediments that may impact administrators’ responses to sexual violence, specifically in instances of allegations of staff–inmate sexual misconduct. In addition, structured interviews and focus groups with correctional administrators and labor representatives were used to develop policy recommendations. Contract language and interview participants demonstrated that a myriad of cultural and structural characteristics of prisons as well as pragmatic considerations may serve to …

Gender-Responsive Lessons Learned And Policy Implications For Women In Prison: A Review, Emily M. Wright, Patricia Van Voorhis, Emily J. Salisbury, Ashley Bauman

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The authors review evidence of gender-responsive factors for women in prisons. Some gender-responsive needs function as risk factors in prison settings and contribute to women’s maladjustment to prison; guided by these findings, the authors outline ways in which prison management, staff members, and programming can better serve female prisoners by being more gender informed. The authors suggest that prisons provide treatment and programming services aimed at reducing women’s criminogenic need factors, use gendered assessments to place women into appropriate interventions and to appropriately plan for women’s successful reentry into the community, and train staff members to be gender responsive.

Lessons Learned From Punishment Exchange Rates: Implications For Research, Theory, And Correctional Policy, David May, Peter Wood, Amy Eades

David May

A growing number of studies have used exchange rates to examine perceptions of the punitivieness of prison when compared to alternative sanctions among prisoners, probationers, parolees, correctional professionals, and judges. Without exception, the findings from these research efforts call into question the punishment continuum that anchors probation as the least punitive sanction and prison as the most punitive. In this paper, we combine findings from these research efforts with data collected from 1271 adults to propose a revised continuum of punishment. Additionally, we provide a theoretical framework to help explain how offenders experience correctional sanctions, and offer suggestions for policy …