SOC322 Final Exam Notes - Spring 2025

Reliability and Classification

• Reliability: Consistency in classification regardless of who conducts the assessment.

• Objective Classification:

  • Uses an instrument to generate a value.

  • Aims for accurate, fair, and consistent results.

• DOC Mission:

  • Protect the public by operating safe, secure, and humane correctional facilities.

  • Achieved through effective supervision, appropriate treatment, proper classification, and services promoting successful reentry.

• Objective Classification Validity: The instrument yields accurate, fair, and consistent predictions.

• Subjective Classification: Relies on broadly defined criteria with discretion and latitude, not strict criteria.

Objective Classification Details

• Objective Classification Cut Points: Correctional staff use discretion for housing, security, and program placement instead of relying on objective data.

• Custody Level Overrides: Adjustments to custody levels based on individual circumstances. Those who are switched could be potentially those who were previously charged with sexual assault or caused any danger
  or harm to the victim, and are potentially inmates from or going to be in the halfway house
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• Custody Level Progression: Related to early reentry concepts.

• Male vs. Female Scales: Differences exist in custody levels based on gender, with variations in security levels.

• Victim Input: Victims can provide input on halfway house decisions.

• Ramos v. Lamm (1979): A legal case related to correctional standards(standard inmate treatment and custody levels)

• Waitlist vs. Participation (-2 points): Points deducted for being on a waitlist versus actively participating in programs.This can help then get free much sooner to an extent

Incapacitation

• Collective Incapacitation: Removing individuals based on criminal code and sentencing, irrespective of predicted future crimes.

• Treats high-rate and low-rate offenders the same way, without considering individual differences.

• Lambda (\lambda): The rate of criminal activity.

• Objective classification correlates to institutional adjustment, predicts inmate behavior, and is measurable, objective, valid, reliable, fair, and free from bias.

Crime Career

• Crime Career: Concept by Blumstein includes:

  • Entry point

  • Duration

  • Exit point

  • Rate per year of criminal activity (\lambda)

• Rehabilitation: Aims to shorten the duration of a crime career.

• Incapacitation: Can interrupt a crime career but may also enhance criminality or extend the career.

• Goal is to end the crime career, not just decrease it.

• Incapacitation – False Positives and False Negatives:

  • False positives: Predicting a high lambda when it is low.

  • False negatives: Predicting a low lambda when it is high.

• Incapacitation might delay, not end, a criminal career.

Incapacitation Effect and Elasticity

• Incapacitation Effect (IE):

  • Lambda (\lambda) represents the number of crimes saved per year.

• Elasticity:

  • Measures the percentage change in the crime rate associated with a 1% change in the prison population.

  • $$Elasticity =
    umber

• Moving individuals from society aims to reduce crime by removing criminogenic factors.

• A 1% increase in the prison population results in a 0.16% to 0.31% decrease in crime.

Wastage, Replacement Effect, and Opportunity Cost

• Wastage: Incapacitating individuals beyond the end of their crime career.

• Using correctional resources on individuals who no longer have criminogenic factors.

• Arnold Rule: Prioritizing education budgets over prison budgets.

• Potential public safety trade-off if corrections budgets are too low.

• Replacement Effect: Removing an offender may lead to someone else taking their place.

• Opportunity Cost:

  • The cost-effectiveness of objective classification.

  • Spending too much on one theory limits resources for other areas.

• Mis-Housing: Placing inmates in inappropriate custody levels, wasting resources.

Realignment and Selective Incapacitation

• Realignment: Correctional reform shifting responsibility for lower-level offenders to county jails and probation.

• Impacts budgets and creates vertical issues.

• Spending on incarceration limits funds for other areas like infrastructure.

• Incapacitation's true cost includes the lost opportunity for other investments.

• Selective Incapacitation:

  • Targets serious chronic offenders (career criminals) with high lambdas to save the most crime.

Discussions

• FRARA - Fair Release and Reentry Act of 2009: Provides smart books, bus passes, medication, ID, and information.

• A Certificate of Rehabilitation under FRARA may alleviate collateral sanctions.

• -Dying on Death Row: Issue of inmates dying before formal execution due to long sentences, old age, or suicide.

• MENORAH: Press releases related to mission, penological interests, and other religions.(ALlowing the right to celebrate religion with candles)

• NJAC 10A:35—Special Treatment Units: Civil commitment for inmates not yet suitable for full release. They are put into treatment after release.

• 1. The custody, care, control, and treatment of involuntarily civilly committed sexually violent predators who are housed in a secure facility operated by the Department of Corrections, with custodial care provided or arranged for by the DOC and sex offender treatment services provided by, or arranged for by the DBHS in the Department of Health;

  
  

• SVPs: Sexually Violent Predators

• Penological Interests and Mission: Inmates' constitutional rights should not be taken away unless there's a correctional penological interest reason.

• Retribution: Punishment equal to the crime committed.

Rehabilitation: Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR)

• Risk Principle: Match service level to reoffending risk (high-risk = more intervention; low-risk = less).

• Need Principle: Target criminogenic needs (dynamic factors like substance abuse, antisocial attitudes, poor education, or unemployment).

• Responsivity Principle: Deliver treatment matching learning style, motivation, culture, and abilities.

• Effectiveness increases with community-based interventions like halfway houses.

Meta-Analysis

• A statistical method was used to pool results from multiple studies to test statistical significance.

• Combines quantitative studies' results into one figure to analyze outcomes.

• Outcome Value:

  • Zero: No impact

  • Positive: Reduces recidivism

  • Negative: Increases recidivism

• Effect Size:

  • The relationship between treatment intervention and recidivism.

  • Expressed as a single number/value.

• Example:

• Assume 50% recidivism (no effect)

• Effect Size is calulated to be 0.2 = 20%

• Control Group = 50% + 20%/2 = 60% (recidivism)

• Treatment Group = 50% - 20%/2 = 40% (recidivism)

Medical Model and Reentry

• Medical Model: Synonymous with rehabilitation; addresses criminogenic factors to "fix" offenders.

• Criminogenic Factors:

  • Antisocial behavior

  • Antisocial personality pattern

  • Antisocial cognition

  • Antisocial associates:

• REENTRY Definition: The transition from life in jail or prison to life in the community.

• Scope: Relationship to mass incarceration and recidivism.

• Jail Reentry: Providing programs in prisons to help reintegrate into society (jobs, education, community service).

• Reentry issues are created through incarceration, including difficulties finding housing, employment, healthcare, and stigma.

General Concepts

• Dual Mission: 'Public safety now vs. public safety later'.'

• Models: Punishment vs. Social Welfare.

• Pre-DOC (Department of Correction) failures, expectations on corrections.