Criminal Justice Reform

Flashcards about criminal justice reform, focusing on key concepts, arguments, and trends discussed in the lecture notes.

Criminal Justice Reform

A subtle, complex, and contradictory modification of the way punishment is conceived, discussed, and ultimately enacted.

Dagan and Teles

The political momentum is turning against our over-reliance on cuffs and cages.

Petersilia and Cullen

The hegemony of the old way of thinking about crime and punishment has been shattered and that virtually everyone is trumpeting the need for downsizing, as though they had not previously fully embraced prison expansion.

Drug Policy Reform

More than half the states have adopted significant drug law reforms in recent years.

Parole Reforms

Enable eligible inmates to earn good time credits in order to accelerate their release dates and/or reduce the number of technical violators who are returned to prison

Institutional Adaptation

Reforms simply trigger adaptation by institutional actors.

Path Dependence

Developments such as mass incarceration create vested interests that seek to perpetuate favorable institutional arrangements.

Police Discretion

Police organizations and officers possess significant discretion that shapes not only criminal justice outcomes but urban landscapes as well.

Race-Making Institutions

Criminal justice institutions now serve, in part, as race-making institutions.

Expressive Dimension of Penal Practices

The expressive dimension of penal rituals and the judgment, condemnation, and punishment of criminal offenders means that public discussions of penal practices are emotionally and morally loaded.

Bifurcated Thinking

A new, bifurcated way of thinking and talking about punishment that draws a sharp line between nonviolent and violent offenders and depicts the former as worthy of reform but the latter as deserving of even greater punishment.

Targeted Beneficiaries of Reforms

Consistently identify nonviolent, nonserious, and nonrepeat offenders as the intended beneficiary of penal reform.

Anticrime Legislation

Many states continued to enact tough anticrime legislation prior to the onset of the recession.

Role of Republicans

Republican policymakers were quoted more frequently than Democrats.

Fiscal Costs Argument

The most common argument cited concerned the fiscal costs associated with mass incarceration.

Limited Reform Strategies

Discussions of more far-reaching reform strategies that would modify punishments for offenses that trigger long prison sentences are exceedingly rare.

Deserving Offenders

Nonviolent offenders, particularly juveniles, the mentally ill, and those convicted of drug offenses (especially drug possession) are depicted as deserving of progressive reform measures.