Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

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, …

Adjustment To Correctional Confinement: Investigating The Correlates Of Violence And Disorder In A Jail Environment, Fred W. Meyer Iii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the individual- and institutional-level variables that are correlated with violence and disorder within a jail facility. Previous research indicates that deviant behavior is one of the main challenges that negatively impacts the safe and effective management of correctional facilities. While many studies have been conducted on prison populations, few studies have focused upon jail populations. Using official institutional data, this study explores the factors associated with general infractions and violent misconduct among a stratified random sample of inmates (n=447) incarcerated during a one year period in a large county jail facility. The logistic regression and conjunctive analyses …

Accrediting The Accreditors: A New Paradigm For Correctional Oversight, Lynn S. Branham

All Faculty Scholarship

Correctional accreditation processes can be revamped to bring more transparency and accountability into the operation of correctional facilities and to help ensure that they comport with sound correctional practices, legal requirements, and basic human-rights precepts. Becoming accredited is now largely optional, and correctional accreditation processes are fee-based. Consequently, correctional accrediting entities are vulnerable to pressures to water down accreditation standards and make accreditation procedures more lax. The federal government should therefore adopt two requirements. First, prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities should have to be accredited by a certified accrediting entity in order to be eligible to receive federal funds. …

Cruelty, Prison Conditions, And The Eighth Amendment, Sharon Dolovich

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, but its normative force derives chiefly from its use of the word cruel. For this prohibition to be meaningful in a society where incarceration is the primary mode of criminal punishment, it is necessary to determine when prison conditions are cruel. Yet the Supreme Court has thus far avoided this question, instead holding in Farmer v. Brennan that unless some prison official actually knew of and disregarded a substantial risk of serious harm to prisoners, prison conditions are not “punishment” within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Farmer’s reasoning, however, does not …

Incarceration American-Style, Sharon Dolovich

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the United States today, incarceration is more than just a mode of criminal punishment. It is a distinct cultural practice with its own aesthetic and technique, a practice that has emerged in recent decades as a catch-all mechanism for managing social ills. In this essay, I argue that this emergent carceral system has become self-generating—that American-style incarceration, through the conditions it inflicts, produces the very conduct society claims to abhor and thereby guarantees a steady supply of offenders whose incarceration the public will continue to demand. I argue, moreover, that this reproductive process works to create a class of …

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 …

It’S Doom Alone That Counts: Can International Human Rights Law Be An Effective Source Of Rights In Correctional Conditions Litigation?, Michael L. Perlin, Henry A. Dlugacz

Articles & Chapters

Over the past three decades, the US judiciary has grown increasingly less receptive to claims by convicted felons about the conditions of their confinement while in prison. Although courts have not articulated a return to the 'hands off' policy of the 1950s, it is clear that it has become significantly more difficult for prisoners to prevail in constitutional correctional litigation. The passage and aggressive implementation ofthe Prison Litigation Reform Act has been a powerful disincentive to such litigation in many areas ofprisoners' rights law.

From the perspective of the prisoner, the legal landscape is more hopeful in matters that relate …

Prosecuting Sexual Violence In Correctional Settings: Examining Prosecutors’ Perceptions, Brenda V. Smith, Jaime Yarussi

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA) is the first piece of federal legislation that expressly and exclusively addresses sexual abuse of persons in custody. Notwithstanding passage of the Act, there is a clear belief, echoed by correctional leaders, that prosecutors are reluctant at best, and unwilling at worst, to prosecute cases of sexual violence in correctional settings. In order to gather information on the prosecutor interest in and capacity to prosecute these cases, the National Institute of Corrections Project on Addressing Prison Rape at the Washington College of Law (the NIC/WCL Project) collected data from state and federal …

Reforming, Reclaiming Or Reframing Womanhood: Reflections On Advocacy For Women In Custody, Brenda V. Smith

Project on Addressing Prison Rape - Articles

Brenda V. Smith was asked to present one of the keynote addresses for the symposium, Behind Bars: The Impact of Incarceration on Women and Their Families, sponsored by the Women's Rights Law Reporter at Rutgers University School of Law in Newark. She then wrote the introductory essay for the publication which arose from that symposium. This essay addresses why it is imperative to reclaim the discourse about women in prison and discusses how the other papers that appear in this issue aid in that project.

Difficult Times In Kentucky Corrections—Aftershocks Of A "Tough On Crime" Philosophy, Robert G. Lawson

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The objective of this article is to cast some light on corrections system problems brought on by elevated (and possibly unnecessary) levels of incarceration, and especially on problems that trouble the Kentucky corrections system and threaten to undermine the effectiveness of the state's justice system. Part II describes how the country came to embrace sentencing policies and practices capable of producing "a penal system of a severity unmatched in the Western world.” Part III describes Kentucky's embrace of equally harsh sentencing policies and practices and the inmate population explosion that has occurred as a direct result of those policies and …

Rule Of Law And The Limits Of Sovereignty: The Private Prison In Jurisprudential Perspective, Ahmed A. White

Publications

No abstract provided.

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 …

Enforcing Corrections-Related Court Orders In The District Of Columbia, Jonathan M. Smith

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

In 1909, a presidential commission made the following comment about the conditions that prevailed in the District of Columbia's jail: That men and women should be sent to these narrow and confined cells, the lazy to be fostered in laziness, the industrious to be deprived of every form of employment, in one promiscuous assembly, to corrupt and be corrupted by each other, to be fed like beasts and maintained at the public charge, with no prospect for improvement in condition, with the moral certainty that they will come out far worse than they went in, is a fact that has …

Privatization Of Corrections: Is The State Out On A Limb When The Company Goes Bankrupt?, Cathy E. Holley

Vanderbilt Law Review

The incarceration of convicted criminals is an important matter to law enforcement officials and the public at large. Institutional correctional services consume significant governmental energy and resources. In 1983 corrections, including jails, prisons, probation, and parole, cost over 10.4 billion dollars. In 1985 approximately 503,000 people were imprisoned in federal and state correctional facilities.' The provision of prison services must occur on a continuous basis, and space must be available for every convicted criminal. As certain commentators have noted, "[o]ne cannot simply let offenders wait in line for an opening."'Historically, local, state, and federal government has overseen and operated our …

Privatization Of Corrections: Defining The Issues, Ira P. Robbins

Vanderbilt Law Review

Even as the public is demanding that more criminals be incarcerated and that their sentences be lengthened, the problems of America's prisons and jails continue to plague, if not overwhelm,us. More than two-thirds of the states are currently under court order to correct conditions that violate the United States Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. There are many important questions, but there are still no clear, satisfactory answers.

The last few years have thus witnessed diverse, controversial developments. Some, like the voluntary accreditation of correctional facilities by the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections, have begun to take root. Others, …

Corrections In Crisis : Report Of The Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission On Corrections, Maine Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission On Corrections

Maine Collection

Corrections In Crisis : Report of the Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Corrections.

Augusta, Me., The Commission, December 1985

"This Commission was funded through the 1984 Appropriations Act, P.L. 1983, Ch. 824, Pt. A."

Contents: Preamble / Summary of Recommendations / Community Corrections Recommendations / Sentencing Recommendations / Correctional Management Recommendations / Selected Legislative Issues / Conclusion

Constitutional Law - Parole Revocation Hearings - Due Process Does Not Require That Federal Parolee Subsequently Convicted And Incarcerated For State Offense Be Given Immediate Parole Revocation Hearing, Charles F. Weyl

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Project: A Description Of Prerelease In Pennsylvania, Peter L. Feldman, James T. Huber

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

New Hope For Corrections: The Creation Of A National Institute, Marlow W. Cook

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Legal Controversy As It Relates To Correctional Institutions - A Prison Administrator's View, Joseph R. Brierley

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Prisoners' Rights And The Correctional Scheme: The Legal Controversy And Problems Of Implementation, Joseph R. Brierley, Victor Rabinowitz, Edmund B. Spaeth Jr., James D. Crawford

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Prisoner's Rights And The Correctional Scheme: The Legal Controversy And Problems Of Implementation - A Symposium - Introduction, Donald W. Dowd

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Prison Reform In The Future - The Trend Toward Expansion Of Prisoners' Rights, Monrad G. Paulsen

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Courts' Responsibility For Prison Reform, Edmund B. Spaeth Jr.

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

Prisoners' Rights - A Prosecutor's View, James D. Crawford

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Expansion Of Prisoners' Rights, Victor Rabinowitz

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.

The Correctional Institution As A Rehabilitation Center - A Former Inmate's View, Victor Taylor

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

No abstract provided.