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Full-Text Articles in Law
Defunding State Prisons, W. David Ball
Defunding State Prisons, W. David Ball
Faculty Publications
Local agencies drive criminal justice policy, but states pick up the tab for policy choices that result in state imprisonment. This distorts local policies and may actually contribute to increased state prison populations, since prison is effectively “free” to the local decisionmakers who send inmates there. This Article looks directly at the source of the “correctional free lunch” problem and proposes to end state funding for prisons. States would, instead, reallocate money spent on prisons to localities to use as they see fit — on enforcement, treatment, or even per-capita prison usage. This would allow localities to retain their decision-making …
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 …
Jail Visitation: An Assessment Of Organizational Policy And Information Availability, Alicia H. Sitren, Hayden P. Smith, Brandon K. Applegate, Laurie A. Gould
Jail Visitation: An Assessment Of Organizational Policy And Information Availability, Alicia H. Sitren, Hayden P. Smith, Brandon K. Applegate, Laurie A. Gould
Faculty Publications
Jail inmates face substantial emotional, economic, legal, and other challenges when they are incarcerated. The extent to which they are able to maintain contacts with individuals on the outside can substantially determine how well they cope with these concerns, and visitation is the primary way that such links may be maintained. To date, no systematic assessment of jail visitation policies has been conducted. The current study examined the availability of visitation policy information and the content of policies for national samples of large and small jails. The results suggest that large jails provide more opportunities for visitation and that they …
State Sentencing Policy And New Prison Admissions, Ben L. Trachtenberg
State Sentencing Policy And New Prison Admissions, Ben L. Trachtenberg
Faculty Publications
As the academy's focus has turned to sentencing in the wake of Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, most commentators have continued their benign neglect of actual sentencing practices as they occur in state courts, not to mention whether and how such policies are effective in achieving the goals of criminal justice.This note examines trends in state sentencing policies and prison populations from the perspective of a would-be state reformer hoping to decrease her state's prison budget. Economic pressures, efficiency arguments, and social justice claims have combined to cause some states to desire lower prison populations, but few …
Public Opinion About Punishment And Corrections, Francis T. Cullen, Bonnie S. Fisher, Brandon K. Applegate
Public Opinion About Punishment And Corrections, Francis T. Cullen, Bonnie S. Fisher, Brandon K. Applegate
Faculty Publications
"Get tough" control policies in the United States are often portrayed as the reflection of the public's will: Americans are punitive and want offenders locked up. Research from the past decade both reinforces and challenges this assessment. The public clearly accepts, if not prefers, a range of punitive policies (e.g., capital punishment, three-strikes-and-you're-out laws, imprisonment). But support for get-tough policies is "mushy." Thus citizens may be willing to substitute a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for the death penalty. Especially when nonviolent offenders are involved, there is substantial support for intermediate sanctions and for restorative justice. Despite three decades …
Legal Services, Prisoners' Attitudes And "Rehabilitation.", Geoffrey P. Alpert, John M. Finney, James F. Short Jr
Legal Services, Prisoners' Attitudes And "Rehabilitation.", Geoffrey P. Alpert, John M. Finney, James F. Short Jr
Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.