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Full-Text Articles in Law
Why Should States Pay For Prisons, When Local Officials Decide Who Goes There?, W. David Ball
Why Should States Pay For Prisons, When Local Officials Decide Who Goes There?, W. David Ball
Faculty Publications
In the United States, states typically pay for prisons, even though the decisions that lead to prison admissions — arresting, charging, and sentencing — are made by local officials. The practice of state subsidies is relatively recent: there were no state prisons in the early part of the country’s history, and even as state institutions began to be developed, they largely supported themselves financially, rendering the notion of subsidies moot. Given the political economy of local decision-making, local preferences are unlikely to result in optimally-sized state prison populations. This Article suggests that since state prison subsidies may not be desirable …
Let The Sunshine In: The Aba And Prison Oversight, Michael B. Mushlin
Let The Sunshine In: The Aba And Prison Oversight, Michael B. Mushlin
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
2010 may be remembered as the year in which prison oversight finally found a place on the national correction agenda, thanks in significant part to the attention that the American Bar Association has focused on this topic. In this article, we briefly describe the state of American prisons, trace the recent movement toward prison oversight, describe the rationale for oversight and the benefits it provides, and describe the contribution made to this effort by the ABA through the passage of its landmark resolution in 2008, through its Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners calling for prison oversight, and through the …
Reducing Mass Incarceration: Lessons From The Deinstitutionalization Of Mental Hospitals In The 1960s, Bernard Harcourt
Reducing Mass Incarceration: Lessons From The Deinstitutionalization Of Mental Hospitals In The 1960s, Bernard Harcourt
Faculty Scholarship
In a message to Congress in 1963, President John F. Kennedy outlined a federal program designed to reduce by half the number of persons in custody. The institutions at issue were state hospitals and asylums for the mentally ill, and the number of such persons in custody was staggeringly large, in fact comparable to contemporary levels of mass incarceration in prisons and jails. President Kennedy's message to Congress – the first and perhaps only presidential message to Congress that dealt exclusively with the issue of institutionalization in this country – proposed replacing state mental hospitals with community mental health centers, …
'The Mess We’Re In': Five Steps Towards The Transformation Of Prison Cultures, Lynn S. Branham
'The Mess We’Re In': Five Steps Towards The Transformation Of Prison Cultures, Lynn S. Branham
All Faculty Scholarship
Few dispute that conditions in prisons need to be improved – that, for example, prisoners with mental-health problems need to have those problems addressed, and addressed effectively, while they are confined. But the more fundamental question is whether prisons can be, not just improved, but transformed. Transformation in this context means deep and sustained changes in the ethos of those who work and live in prisons. That ethos would reflect at least four precepts: (1) hope as an imperative; (2) the viability of renewal; (3) the catharsis that attends personal responsibility and accountability; and (4) the duty and call, extending …