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Mississippi Crime And Corrections: The Effects Of House Bill 585 On Crime And Incarceration Rates, Madisyn Flammia

Honors Theses

The state of Mississippi’s historically high incarceration rate peaked in the year 2013, when it was the second highest nationwide. To combat this problem, House Bill 585 was passed into law in 2014. The law consisted of multiple reforms, which were part of an effort to toughen sentencing for violent offenders and reduce severity of punishment for non-violent criminals, with the aim of reducing incarceration and refocusing prison space for violent crimes. I employed difference in differences and synthetic control methododologies to examine the effects of House Bill 585 on crime and imprisonment rates. My results revealed that House Bill …

Punishment Vs. Rehabilitation: A Discourse On American Prison Reform & Comparative Analysis To Swedish Incarceration, Lauren Hipplewitz

Honors Scholar Theses

The infrastructure of the United States prison system continues to evolve through a series of policy changes and reforms. Throughout these developments, however, the institution continues to remain rooted in the philosophy of harsh penalization. This thesis incorporates a comparative analysis between the concept of perpetrator punishment within the American federal prison system to the concept of rehabilitative justice found in the Swedish system. I conceptualize the underlying “goals” of imprisonment within the United States and Sweden and examine how they serve as an operational foundation for both institutions. I analyze American prison reform that took place during the “War …

The Effects Of News Framing On Policy Support For Incarcerated Black Women, Rebecca Pool

All Theses

Mass incarceration has disproportionately affected many people; however, Black women have been routinely dismissed from the majority of prison scholarship and are at a particular risk through harmful stereotypes that serve as justification for their imprisonment. By examining their unique stance in the prison-industrial complex, this thesis draws attention to mechanisms to generate support for these women. Under the framework of framing theory and critical media effects, this research determined whether individual attribution of responsibility frames or societal attribution of responsibility frames affect individuals’ support for anti-mass incarceration public policies. According to the results, there were no effects between Black …

How Prison Systems Can Better Aid People With Substance Use Disorders, Avery Faires

College Honors Program

A large percentage of prisoners in the United States are suffering from a Substance Use Disorder (SUD), but many prisons across the country lack the proper resources to rehabilitate those with drug addictions. Incarcerated people with SUD face many dangerous and sometimes deadly consequences after release. My thesis addresses key associated questions: What role do prisons play in helping prisoners with SUD? And, how can they aid this population more effectively? When considering the breadth of such issues, I examine the sociohistorical context of drug policy in the U.S. to inform my analysis of the criminalization of substances, the greater …

Evaluating A Relationship Education Program With Incarcerated Adults, Terra L. Jackson, Francesca Adler-Baeder, Leah Burke, Silvia Vilches

Journal of Human Sciences and Extension

Research indicates healthy family relationships can reduce recidivism. More effort has been placed towards providing family life programming in prisons to promote healthy individual and relational functioning, yet only a handful of studies have evaluated and provided insight on relationship education (RE) for incarcerated adults. This study contributes to this emerging effort and examines changes following participation in a RE program, using a sample of 461 incarcerated men and women. Findings indicate significant improvements in anxiety and depressive symptoms and conflict resolution skills. Additional tests of moderation of change by gender, relationship status, and child age revealed a greater change …

Is Misdemeanor Cash Bail An Unconstitutional Excessive Fine?, Barnett J. Harris

Pepperdine Law Review

The Excessive Fines Clause is one of the least developed clauses pertaining to criminal procedure in the Bill of Rights. In fact, the Supreme Court has only interpreted the Clause a few times in its entire history. Yet, on any given day, hundreds of thousands of people languish in jails without having been convicted of anything, because most of these people are unable to meet the bail amount a judge sets. This Essay examines the surprisingly under-explored relationship between misdemeanor cash bail & pretrial detention and the Excessive Fines and Excessive Bail Clauses of the Eighth Amendment, using the Supreme …

Improving The Mental Health Tale In The Criminal Justice System, Meredith Bernal

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

No abstract provided.

Statement Of The District Task Force On Jails And Justice Before The Committee On The Judiciary And Public Safety Of The Council Of The District Of Columbia. Budget Oversight Hearing For The Metropolitan Police Department, Katherine S. Broderick

D.C. Council Testimony

No abstract provided.

Racial Differences In Perceptions Of Sanction Severity, Sarah L. Franklin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Research has consistently found an association between race and relative perceptions of incarceration severity. Black people view incarceration as less severe than an equivalent period of probation. However, few studies have examined why this relationship exists. The present study surveys a large sample of young adults to examine whether the observed relationship between race and incarceration severity can be replicated. In doing so, the study then considers whether constructs related to socioeconomic status, criminal system experiences, perceptions of legitimacy, and sanction attitudes explain the racial divide. Results indicate a significant relationship between race and incarceration severity, such that Black people, …

Struggling To Make Good: The Dilemmas Of Fatherhood For Formerly Incarcerated African-American Men, Francis Prior, Steven Farough

Qualitative Criminology (QC)

While some have argued that absent low socioeconomic status black fathers are to blame for urban crime and poverty, others have highlighted how mass incarceration disproportionately separates low socioeconomic status black fathers from their children. Less frequently heard and acknowledged in the public conversations about low socioeconomic status black fatherhood and mass incarceration are the voices of those same fathers who have been impacted by the system. How do formerly incarcerated black fathers view their role as fathers? Based on 30 interviews of formerly incarcerated black men recruited from a prisoner reentry organization in a large northeastern city in the …

Can Covid-19 Teach Us How To End Mass Incarceration?, Amy Fettig

University of Miami Law Review

In this essay, the author argues that federal, state and local government response to the COVID-19 epidemic in prisons and jails was largely incompetent, inhumane, and contrary to sound public health policy, resulting in preventable death and suffering for both incarcerated people and corrections staff. However, the lessons learned from these failures provide a roadmap for policy priorities and legal reform in our ongoing need to decarcerate and end the era of mass incarceration, including: (1) rolling back extreme sentences, recalibrating sentences generally and providing for “second look” mechanisms to those currently serving sentences beyond 10 years; (2) ensuring that …

A Study On Formerly Incarcerated Women From Appalachia Pursuing Higher Education, Marcie Simms

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The pursuit of higher education is a goal that is embedded in secondary education and often correlated with the American dream. This study concentrated on the barriers that women with a felony conviction face when pursuing higher education after incarceration. Based on the identified barriers, current best practices for admission to higher education institutions and individual resources available for the ex-offender population were assessed. Using a questionnaire and interviews, a qualitative research approach helped identify the barriers that women with a felony conviction face when pursuing education and best practice solutions for institutions of higher education when working with the …

The War On Drugs And Its Legal Effects On Black Americans, Alexia L. Howard-Mullins

2022 Symposium

The differences in treatment between Black and white Americans in the past fifty years has been a topic of thought in the minds of political and sociological scholars since the inception of the War on Drugs in 1971. These differences in treatment may lead to discrimination legally, resulting in longer prison sentences and a higher proportion of Black Americans in prison. This study analyzes the results of the War on Drugs that led to disproportionate imprisonment of Black Americans, including mandatory sentencing laws, drug classifications, and discrimination within law enforcement and the legal system. This study will use primary sources …

The Lasting Impact Of Deinstitutionalization: Policing And The Mental Health Crisis, Ruqayyah Sorathia

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

Society is combating the detrimental effects of the deinstitutionalization policy, which transferred the treatment of mentally ill patients from state-run psychiatric hospitals to community-run psychiatric facilities. These patients frequently fall into relapses and are more likely to experience risky encounters with law enforcement officials who have no formal training in dealing with them. The paper analyzes the criminalization of mentally ill people, many with substance abuse and alcohol addictions, receiving treatment in jails and state prisons. Incarcerating people with mental illness, though reducing the homeless population from the street and disturbances faced by the public, still does not address the …

Reimagining Public Safety, Brandon Hasbrouck

Scholarly Articles

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, abolitionists were repeatedly asked to explain what they meant by “abolish the police”—the idea so seemingly foreign that its literal meaning evaded interviewers. The narrative rapidly turned to the abolitionists’ secondary proposals, as interviewers quickly jettisoned the idea of literally abolishing the police. What the incredulous journalists failed to see was that abolishing police and prisons is not aimed merely at eliminating the collateral consequences of other social ills. Abolitionists seek to build a society in which policing and incarceration are unnecessary. Rather than a society without a means of protecting public safety, …

A Call To Dismantle Systemic Racism In Criminal Legal Systems, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Margaret C. Stevenson

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Objectives: In October 2021, APA passed a resolution addressing ways psychologists could work to dismantle systemic racism in criminal legal systems. The present report, developed to inform APA’s policy resolution, details the scope of the problem and offers recommendations for policy and psychologists to address the issue by advancing related science and practice. Specifically, it acknowledges the roots of modern-day racial and ethnic disparities in rates of criminalization and punishment for people of color as compared to White people. Next, the report reviews existing theory and research that helps explain the underlying psychological mechanisms driving racial and ethnic disparities …

The Effects Of Incarceration On Depression And Anxiety In Juveniles, Melanie Alfonso

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Adolescents within the juvenile system suffer from a multitude of physical and mental health issues. Previous studies have linked incarceration to poor health in juveniles, but very few have been able to claim incarceration is the cause for the mental health issues found in incarcerated juveniles. Whether juveniles go into the system with pre-existing mental health disorders or not, still many factors are associated with the development of mental disorders while incarcerated. Based on what the field knows and does not know about the link between juvenile incarceration and mental health, the goal of this study was to determine if …

When Jail & Prison Sentences Become Death Sentences: How Willfully Exposing Incarcerated Persons To Covid-19 Amounts To Cruel & Unusual Punishment, Arielle Aboulafia

Human Rights Brief

Eric Warner called his older brother Hank from San Quentin State Prison almost every Sunday. Though the prison only allowed the brothers to speak for fifteen minutes each week, the two spoke about their lives. In June 2021, Eric stopped calling, and Hank became worried. Hank tried to get in touch with the prison. However, his calls were met with a dead-end voicemail each time. He recalls that he “knew, by not hearing anything, that something was not good.” The following month, prison personnel returned Hank’s calls and told him that his brother Eric had been hospitalized. Later that month, …

Black Males Incarcerated And The Effect Upon Children Left Behind, Cathy Marie Crutchfield

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Black men in the United States have been disproportionately removed from the lives of their families by means of incarceration for generations. Aggressive drug laws, racist policing strategies, and sentence disparities are contributing factors. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine how formerly incarcerated Black males perceived their incarceration affected the children they left behind while incarcerated. The research sample consisted of six former offenders. Each participant was at least eighteen years of age, Black, a parent at the time of incarceration, and a resident of Guilford County, NC, at the time of the offense. Each participant …

Applications Of The John Henryism Hypothesis: Mitigating Associations Between Incarceration, Drug Use, And Sex Partner Characteristics, Paris Wheeler

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Individual risk behaviors are not enough to explain STI disparities among African American women. Effects of structural, social, and individual level risk factors may be mitigated by cultural factors that help increase resilience. The current study aimed to examine whether John Henryism Active Coping (JHAC), a cultural correlate marked by physical and mental vigor and self-determination, mitigates relationships between criminal justice status, crack cocaine use, and sex partner risk characteristics. Data were derived from a sample of African American women living in Kentucky (n=643). Ordinal logistic regression and stepwise linear regression analyses were utilized to examine whether interactions between criminal …

Adverse Childhood Experiences And The Risk Of Drug Overdose In Adulthood, Samantha E. Wright

Graduate Research Posters

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) encompass a variety of traumatic events that occur during one’s youth. ACEs may be physical, mental, emotional, or sexual in nature, and they are often associated with long-term negative consequences such as alcoholism, substance abuse, and criminal justice involvement. The global rise of the opioid epidemic has intensified the need to better understand and address factors associated with illicit substance use. The current study will investigate the relationship between exposure to ACEs, onset of drug use, and history of drug overdose.

Methods: This study will utilize an observational design in which participants will be asked …

The Correlation Between Laura’S Law And The Incarceration Of The Mentally Ill In A Southwestern State, Aaron Alarcon-Bowen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Assisted outpatient treatment and involuntary outpatient treatment laws refer to the power of the court system to order community-based treatment without hospitalization to individuals with a mental illness diagnosis. Studies have linked these laws to a decrease in the use of incarceration among this population. The effectiveness of the assisted outpatient treatment law in a Southwestern state, known as Laura’s Law, has not been studied. With a theoretical foundation based on the social contract and multiple streams analysis theories, a quantitative, casual, comparative study using an independent t test was centered on determining whether the mean numbers of incarcerated individuals …

Transforming The Culture Of Youth Justice In The Wake Of Youth Prison Closures, Jessica K. Heldman

Lewis & Clark Law Review

In 2019, the Governor of California vowed to fundamentally transform the state’s youth justice system. The legislature endorsed this commitment by enacting SB 823, which began a phased closure of state-run youth prisons in 2021. California is not the first state—nor will it be the last—to close facilities in light of decreased youth crime and greater awareness of the harms associated with incarceration. Although a welcomed development, the closure of youth prisons should not be viewed as the culmination of reform; rather, it is only the beginning. To achieve far more impactful change, state and local jurisdictions must confront the …

The Morning After The Rockefeller Drug Laws: Carey And Cuomo Implement Mass Incarceration In New York, Lebwah-Taliah Sykes

Theses and Dissertations

After Rockefeller Drug Laws passed in New York in 1973, the proportion of drug-related incarcerations remained steady for the following decade, despite overall incarceration numbers doubling. Fiscal constraints prevented Governor Hugh Carey from fully implementing drug laws, but he reallocated resources, increased the pool of people who were subject to longer sentences, made policy changes and contributed to a climate that laid the groundwork for prison expansions under Mario Cuomo. When fiscal constraints in New York State changed, Mario Cuomo’s criminal justice policy focused on implementing Rockefeller Drug Laws, resulting in mass incarceration in New York.

An Examination Of Three Transitional Events In The Substance Misuse Trajectories Of Women With Criminal Legal System Involvement, Martha Tillson

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

Research has consistently demonstrated that criminal legal system (CLS)-involved women are distinct from men in initiation and course of drug use, with important differences on biological, environmental, and sociocultural levels. Thus, the unique pathways and transitions into and out of drug use for women with CLS involvement are critical to consider from a research perspective, but also from a need to develop and support evidence-based, women-centered services in correctional contexts. This dissertation project uses a three-paper format to investigate three aims: (1) to understand CLS-involved women’s initiations to injection drug use and their experiences providing injection initiation assistance (IIA) to …

Ending The Discriminatory Pretrial Incarceration Of People With Disabilities: Liability Under The Americans With Disabilities Act And The Rehabilitation Act, Margo Schlanger, Elizabeth Jordan, Roxana Moussavian

Articles

Our federal, state, and local governments lock up hundreds of thousands of people at a time—millions over the course of a year—to ensure their appearance at a pending criminal or immigration proceeding. This type of pretrial incarceration—a term we use to cover both pretrial criminal detention and immigration detention prior to finalization of a removal order—can be very harmful. It disrupts the work and family lives of those detained, harms their health, interferes with their defense, and imposes pressure on them to forego their trial rights and accede to the government’s charges in an effort to abbreviate time behind bars. …

The Need For Belonging For Previously Incarcerated Probationers, Alaina Elam

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Research on offender rehabilitation has primarily focused on providing those who are incarcerated with programs and resources to mitigate the circumstances that would lead to recidivism. There is an absence of research on how the need for belonging could reduce recidivism in probationers. Recidivism remains a social problem for many U.S. communities, as those being released are not properly equipped for their transition. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of probationers regarding their transition into their community, recidivism, and their need for belonging. As individual fulfillment and human motivation were examined, Maslow’s self-actualization …

Lived Experiences Of Black Male Ex-Offenders In Recovery, Sheila Khadijah Hameen

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractAlthough a body of literature aimed at documenting the positive effects of the rehabilitative qualities of Alcoholics Anonymous existed, much of the research examining the ways that Black members make use of AA focuses on ethnic and cultural differences that may affect the way that members engage in AA because they are Black as opposed to what qualities (i.e., social support) AA has that may appeal to Black members. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine the experience of Black male ex-offenders’ choice of AA as a self-help program for recovery. Social control theory was used as …

Remorse, Relational Legal Consciousness, And The Reproduction Of Carceral Logic, Kathryne M. Young, Hannah Chimowitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

One in seven people in prison in the US is serving a life sentence, and most of these “lifers” will someday be eligible for discretionary parole. But little is known about a key aspect of parole decision-making: remorse assessments. Because remorse is a complex emotion that arises from past wrongdoing and unfolds over time, assessing the sincerity of another person’s remorse is neither a simple task of lie detection, nor of determining emotional authenticity. Instead, remorse involves numerous elements, including the relationship between a person’s past and present motivations, beliefs, and affective states. To understand how parole board members make …

Race And The Criminal Law Curriculum, Cynthia Lee

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This chapter briefly sketches a few places in the substantive criminal law curriculum where law professors can include discussion of race to enrich students’ understanding of the law. These include racially based jury nullification, the void-for-vagueness doctrine, hate crimes and the actus reus requirement, voluntary manslaughter and the defense of provocation, involuntary manslaughter, rape, the doctrine of self-defense, the “Black rage” defense, and the “cultural defense.” The chapter also discusses the Guerilla Guides to Law Teaching project, which suggests that criminal law professors introduce the concept of abolition of the carceral state as a framework through which students can “question …