Criminal Justice Policy

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Criminal Justice Policy

• Wilson, Chapter 12
•  
•  CQ Researcher, Chapter 11
•  
•  Why are U.S. Incarceration Rates So High?
  Michael Tonry, Crime Delinquency, Vol. 45, No.
  4, 419-437 (1999).
• Beckett, K. 1994 Setting the Public Agenda
  Street Crime and Drug Use in American
  Politics, Social Problems 41(3) 42546.
•  
•  Ilyana Kuziemko and Steven D Levitt, An
  empirical analysis of imprisoning drug offenders,
  Journal of Public Economics, Volume 88, Issues
  9-10, , August 2004, Pages 2043-2066.
•  
•  Drug Policy and the Criminal Justice System
  (The Sentencing Project)
• Debates
• April 10 Should the death penalty be abolished?
• April 17 Should recreational drug use be
  legalized?
•  
•  

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Criminal Justice Policy Regimes (Wilson)

• Colonial Criminal Justice Regime (1610-1790)
• Pre-Industrial Criminal Justice Regime
  (1791-1870)
• Industrial Criminal Justice Regime (1870-1960)
• Rights Criminal Justice Regime (1960-1994)
• Incarceration Criminal Justice Regime
  (1994-present)

3
The Increasing Punitiveness of Criminal Justice
Policies (and Enforcement)

• Increased use of the death penalty for capital
  offenses
• Increased use of incarceration for violent and
  (especially) nonviolent offenses
• Why has this happened?
• What are the consequences?

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The Death Penalty

• Furman v. Georgia, 1972
• Marshall and Brennan inherently cruel and
  unusual
• Douglas, Stewart and White employed in
  arbitrary, random, unfair, and discriminatory
  pattern.
• Supreme Court struck down all capital punishment
  laws as currently written
• 700 persons given permanent reprieve

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The Death Penalty

• Gregg v. Georgia, 1976
• Georgia rewrites death penalty laws to ensure
  fairness and uniformity of application
• series of cases involving other states
  effectively reinstated the death penalty

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The Death Penalty
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The Death Penalty
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The Death Penalty
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The Death Penalty
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The Death Penalty
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The Death Penalty

• Racial disparity
• 42 of death row inmates are black
• 53 black or Latino

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of Homicides Committed by Black Offender
Source Bureau of Justice Statistics
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The Death Penalty

• Racial disparity
• 42 of death row inmates are black
• 53 black or Latino
• "race of victim effect (David Baldus, 1980s)
• 50 of all murder victims are white
• gt80 of all death row inmates executed were
  convicted of killing a white victim
• gt80 of statistical studies find a significant
  race of victim effect
• Supreme Court refuses to recognize this evidence
  (1987, McKlesky vs. Kemp)

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The Death Penalty

• Wrongly Convicted

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The Death Penalty

• Cruel punishment (8th Amendment)?
• Death Penalty Methods
• By state
• Botched executions
• Lethal injection
• States with executions on hold
• H-L Article on Kentucky execution methods

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The Death Penalty

• The role of politics?

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The Death Penalty

• A Deterrent Effect?

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Incarceration in America

• History
• a recent phenomenon
• Colonial era fines, shame (stocks/cages),
  whipping, banishment (NYC, 1733-43 whipped and
  banished nearly every nonresident guilty of
  theft), hanging (for the most serious of crimes
  and repeat offenders)
• Imprisonment as a democratic reform
• 1786 PA eliminates death penalty for robbery and
  burglary other states follow example
• What to do with offenders? Incarceration

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Walnut Street Jail (Philadelphia 1790)
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Incarceration Today

• 2006 Total 2,258,983
• Federal Prisons 190,844 (8.4)
• State Prisons 1,302,129 (57.6)
• Local Jails 766,010 (33.9)

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Incarceration in America

• Federal prisons
• Three Prisons Act 1891 3 federal prisons
• Bureau of Prisons Act 1930 orig. 11, now 114
• Characteristics of Federal Prisoners
• 93 male
• 57.5 white
• 31.4 Hispanic
• 10 High security
• 43 medium or low
• 29 non-citizen
• Large of drug offenders

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Incarceration in America

• State Prisons
• - 51 prison systems
• Characteristics of State Prisoners
• 94 male
• 47.7 white
• 14.7 Hispanic
• Larger of violent offenders

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Incarceration in America

• Local jails
• misdemeanors, awaiting trial, short sentences
• majority are unconvicted
• 13 under "jail supervision" are not living in
  jail facility
• 89 male
• 41 White(NH)
• 42 Black, 16 Hispanic

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Theories of Imprisonment(Stability of Punishment
Thesis)
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Challenging the Stability of Punishment Thesis
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Challenging the Stability of Punishment Thesis
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The Incarceration Explosion

• The Incarceration Explosion
• the U.S. imprisonment rate has more than tripled
  since 1980
• gt2 million people behind bars gt7 million under
  some form of control by criminal justice system
• The American inmate population has grown so large
  that it is difficult to comprehend imagine the
  combined populations of Atlanta, St. Louis,
  Pittsburgh, Boston, and Miami behind bars.
• The biggest prison system in the Western
  industrialized world is now.....

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The Incarceration Explosion

• The Incarceration Explosion
• CAs prison system (175,512 - 2006) is bigger
  than the federal prison system
• The CA prison/jail population is larger than that
  of France, Japan, Great Britain, Germany,
  Singapore, and the Netherlands....(more
  international comparisons)
• COMBINED
• The country with the largest percentage of
  citizens behind bars is........
• No other society in human history has ever
  imprisoned so many of its own citizens for the
  purposes of crime control (Marc Mauer, The Race
  to Incarcerate)

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The Incarceration Explosion

• The U.S. houses 22 of the worlds prison
  population (source)

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Why?

• Why has the U.S. prison population grown so much
  in recent decades?
• Why is this trend unique to the U.S.??

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Why?

• Crime?
• Demographics?
• Unemployment?

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Crime Rates and Incarceration Rates in the U.S.
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Crime Rates and Incarceration Rates in the U.S.
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Why?

• Crime?
• Demographics?
• Unemployment?
• Public Opinion? Media?
• Partisan Politics
• Public Policy
• Tough sentencing policies
• The drug war

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Why?

• Increases in incarceration rates are in large
  part a result of deliberate changes in criminal
  justice policy
• Increase in the power/discretion of law
  enforcement (Supreme Court rulings)
• Increase in law enforcement effort
• Increase in the severity of criminal sentences

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Why?

• Increasing the Severity of Criminal Sentences
• Sentencing reform
• The failure of the rehabilitative ideal
• Indeterminate vs. determinate sentencing
• Mandatory minimum sentences
• Three strikes laws
• Increasing use of the death penalty
• The War on Drugs

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The War on Drugs

• Late 1960s
• Recreational drug use rises in U.S.
• Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs is
  founded (1968)
• 1970s
• 1970 - Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and
  Control Act
• 1971 - Nixon declares war on drugs
• 71 - Special Action Office for Drug Abuse
  Prevention
• 72 - Office of Drug Abuse Law Enforcement
  (ODALE) - establish joint federal/local task
  forces to fight the drug trade at the street
  level
• 73 - The Drug Enforcement Administration is
  established

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The War on Drugs

• 1970s (contd)
• 78 - Asset forfeiture introduced (CDAPCA)
• 1980s
• 82 - Largest cocaine seizure ever raises U.S.
  awareness of Medellin cartel (3906 lbs.)
• 84 - just say no campaign
• 86 - The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 - 1.7
  billion
• mandatory minimum penalties for drug offenses
• Possession of at least one kilogram of heroin or
  five kilograms of cocaine is punishable by at
  least ten years in prison

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The War on Drugs

• 1980s (contd)
• 89 - Office of National Drug Control Policy
• Drug czar

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The War on Drugs Not Just a Federal Government
Campaign
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Explaining the Drug War

• Objectivist vs. Constructionist perspectives
• Katherine Beckett
• Making Crime Pay Law and Order in Contemporary Am
  erican Politics 1997
• Michael Tonry
• Malign Neglect 1994

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Explaining the Drug War

• Objectivist perspective - Drug use?

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Explaining the Drug War

• Objectivist perspective - Drug use?

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Explaining the Drug War

• Public opinion?

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Public Opinion Drugs as Most Important Problem
Source Beckett, Social Problems, Vol. 41, No. 3.
(Aug., 1994), pp. 425-447.
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Media Coverage of Drug Issue
Source Beckett, Social Problems, Vol. 41, No. 3.
(Aug., 1994), pp. 425-447.
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Government Drug War Initiative
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Explaining the Drug War

• Government-initiated electoral
  motivations/legitimacy
• Role of media has helped create public support

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The Mobilization Model
Government (formal agenda)
Mass Public
Public Agenda
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Explaining the Drug War

• Government-initiated electoral
  motivations/legitimacy
• Role of media has helped create public support
• Has been self-perpetuating due to federal/state
  bureaucracy
• Federal-state grants
• Asset forfeiture

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The Consequences of the Drug War

• Michael Tonry and Malign Neglect
• The War was unnecessary
• The War is/was a failure
• The cost was tremendous

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The Consequences of the Drug War

• Tonry The War was fought largely from partisan
  political motives to show that the Bush and
  Reagan (and Clinton) administrations were
  concerned about public safety, crime prevention,
  and the needs of victims.

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The Consequences of the Drug War

• Tonry The War on Drugs foreseeably and
  unnecessarily blighted the lives of hundreds of
  thousands of disadvantaged black Americans and
  undermined decades of effort to improve the life
  chances of members of the urban black underclass.

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The Consequences of the Drug War
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The Consequences of the Drug War
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Disparities in Drug Laws

• The emergence of crack
• differences between crack and powder cocaine
• intensity/duration of high
• crack as a cause of violence
• open-air markets (crack) vs. secure settings
  (cocaine)

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Disparities in Drug Laws

• Federal sentencing
• Powder cocaine possession with intent to
  distribute carries a five year sentence for
  quantities of 500 grams or more.
• Crack cocaine a conviction of possession with
  intent to distribute carries a five year sentence
  for only 5 grams.

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Disparities in Drug Laws
Source Sentencing Project
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Disparities in Drug Laws
Source Sentencing Project
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Disparities in Drug Laws
Source Sentencing Project
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Disparities in Drug Laws
Source Sentencing Project
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Disparities in Drug Use?

• The federal government tracks drug use through
  large national surveys (Dept. of Health and Human
  Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health
  Services Administration
• Statistics on illicit drug use by race

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Racial Disparity in Prison Admissions
Source Rand
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Racial Disparity in Imprisonment Rates