Criminal Justice and Public Policy Exam 1

What is Public Policy?

A system of laws, regulatory measures, course of action, and funding priorities enacted by a government entity or its representatives to address societal issues

What are Responses to Crime and Victimization?

Punishments, Resources

What are Operations of the Criminal Justice System

Law enforcement, Courts, and Corrections

Conceptualizations and Solutions

Depending upon what you think causes crime, what justice means, etc. you are going to have different ideas of what is a good and fair criminal justice policy

Consequentialism

punishment’s justification lies in its good consequences. This framework only care about the outcome and focuses on deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation.

Retributivism

punishment is justified only on moral grounds. Proportionate punishment restores moral balance and communicates condemnation of the act. It cannot be excessive, or it is no longer justified in this framework. This framework also does not care about the outcome.

Deterrence

seeks to deter crime by promoting the threat of punishment. Assumes people commit crime when the perceived rewards outweigh the perceived risks.

Challenges to Deterrence

Uncertain effectiveness, severity vs. certainty, and ethical concerns when it comes to using severe punishment to deter other people from committing crime.

Incapacitation

protecting society by physically restraining someone from committing crime.

Challenges to Incapacitation

Overcrowding, High costs, Potential for injustice because some people might perceive incapacitation as unjust if it doesn’t do anything to address the causes of crime, and removing people for a long period of time might also come with more costs to society.

Retribution

punishment based in the principle that wrongdoers deserve proportional punishment for their crimes.

Challenges to Retribution

Proportionality dilemma (who’s to say what is moral, or a proportionate punishment), Does not care about utility, Public perception (how legitimate we find the system and law to be).

Rehabilitation

Reduce crime by changing a person’s behavior through various means.

Challenges to Rehabilitation

Resource intensive since punishment would be tailored to individuals and their needs, Varying effectiveness because it’s not going to work in all cases, and Public and political resistance because someone must want to receive treatment. Ethical questions about imposing treatment.

Main Point Addressed in Mears Book

Politicization of Crime

policymakers focus on crime to advance their interests. They are motivated by the thought of political gain than by a sincere belief that crime will be affected.

False Dichotomies

when someone falsely frames an issue as having only two options even though more possibilities exist. This can cause ineffective and inefficient CJS policies.

Swings from one extreme to another

transitioning from one set of approaches to another and the adoption of many new strategies that have been unevaluated. In CJS, it is cycling back and forth between lenient policies and harsh, punitive policies.

Bad Cases make for Bad Policies

cases that are not representative of most others serve as the bases for new laws and policies.

Symbolic Gestures

responding to the latest crises with some type of new, and typically extreme, response rather than to deliberate assessment of the problem and what can and should be done about it.

Public Opinion and PolicyMakers Misunderstand of It

policymakers often misunderstand public opinion, frequently overestimating their views, underestimating what they really want, and implementing incorrect policies.

“Silver bullet” Causes and Solutions to Crime

Taking a largely single-minded focus toward reducing crime. Believing that there is one specific solution to a specific crime.

Limited production and use of policy research

policies get adopted with little to no attention to prior research and poorly conceived policies continue unabated and unevaluated.

Features of the Crime Control Era

Increased arrest and more likely incarceration, Tougher sentencing, Prison construction, The War on Drugs.

Social Conditions That Led to the Crime Control Era

More crime, complacency with crime (crime was something to be controlled, rather than prevented), Increases segregation and economic security.

Criminological Conditions That Led to the Crime Control Era

Increasing skepticism that rehabilitation works, The “other” vs. the “self”.

Political Conditions That Led to the Crime Control Era

Crime and justice as a central political issue (Rehabilitative and high-discretion policies allowed for discrimination, such policies resulted in too lenient of punishments). There was a preference for expressive policies.

Punishment Philosophy During “Penal Welfarism” Era

During this time, rehabilitation took a center stage, there was a more psychological treatment approach. Prison and their origin was seen to be a rehabilitation tool, and more humane compared to banishment and death.

What Year Did Incarceration Rates Peak?

2007

What are the Main Themes of 2018 First Step Act?

Focused on criminal justice reform by reducing recidivism, reforming sentencing laws, and improving prison conditions

What are the Main Arguments and Findings Across “The end of an era”?

What is the Main finding from the link: “Link between local news coverage…”  ?

Fear of victimization findings from link: “Crime in U.S. is seen as less serious…” 

Definition of Evaluation Research

The use of social research methods to systematically investigate the effectiveness of social intervention programs in ways that are adapted to their political and organizational environment and are designed to inform social action and to improve social conditions.

History of Evaluation Research

Social policy reliance on research grew in the 1930s onward. By the end of the 1950s, program evaluation was commonplace, it was a common practice for understanding the impacts of these different social policies

What is the Logic of Evaluation Hierarchy?

Each level builds upon a prior level, and it is fundamental to the entire logic of evaluation research.

What are the Steps of Evaluation Hierarchy ?

Needs Evaluation, Theory Evaluation, Implementation Evaluation, Outcome/Impact Evaluation, Cost-Efficiency Evaluations.

What is the Main Goal of the Needs Evaluation?

Asks what social problems exist, if there’s a problem, what that problem looks like, etc. The need for a policy had to be evaluated before it gets implemented. This step gets skipped a lot because people might assume they already understand a problem and its causes.

What is the Main Goal of the Theory Evaluation?

Used to see if the policy is logical, how a given policy is supposed to address the need. Determines if those theoretical arguments are supported by research.

What is the Main Goal of the Outcome/Impact Evaluation?

Both are concerned with what happens after a policy is implemented. An impact evaluation needs to establish causality, asks if we can be sure that the policy change is the cause of the outcome

What is the Main Goal of Cost-Efficiency Evaluation?

Cost-effectiveness and Cost-benefit

What is Cost-Effectiveness?

asks what is the cost per crime reduced for multiple strategies, its good when we have one goal in mind and we want to compare strategies.

What is Cost-Benefit?

useful when we need to prioritize a certain social problem, and we want to see where our money and resources will go farthest.

Dimensions of a Need Evaluation

o   Size: magnitudes of problem, can be measured in various ways depending on what it is that we are concerned with.

o   Trends: absolute and relative changes in magnitude over time

o   Locations: distribution of the problem

o   Causes: potential drivers of the above numbers

What are the Examples of Needs Evaluation in Mears Chapter 4

What is the Relationship between Incarceration and Crime?

The two are associated, but research suggests that they are not strongly associated. They are both constantly affecting each other, so it is hard to say what the effect is.

What is the Main Argument in “Informal Social Controls” Article?

Incarceration was really hitting some neighborhoods and communities the most compared to others which can disrupt some communities, it’s not spread equally. While we do see an incarceration benefit, high-rates of prevalent and clustered incarceration can reduce informal social control.

What is the Main Argument in “Incarceration Heterogeneity” Article?

Mears argues that the state of research on incarceration and recidivism is not good. It claims that we know less than we think we know about incarceration effects on recidivism because incarceration constitutes a heterogeneous type of sanction and these effects vary by population.

How does Needs Evaluation Apply to Mass Incarceration?

Shifts the focus from purely punitive, long-term imprisonment to evidence-based rehabilitation and reentry strategies. By identifying criminogenic needs corrections systems can tailor services to reduce recidivism

What are Criminal Justice Saturation Effects?

as incarceration becomes overly prevalent, the marginal (per-person) benefits of incapacitation diminish, while its cost and harms increase.

What is Formal Social Control?

Formal institutions that control your behavior like laws, police, rules, etc.

What is Informal Social Control?

People kind of monitor one another and control each other’s behavior like parents, neighborhood watch, friends, etc.

What is the “2/3” statistic?

Claims that every two out of three people will recidivate.

Why Would Incarceration Have Variable Effects ?

Incarceration constitutes a heterogeneous type of sanction, so the actual experiences an individual has while incarcerated has a widespread of effects.

What is Heterogeneity in prior sanction experiences?

What is Heterogeneity of in-prison experiences?

What is Heterogeneity of post-release experiences?