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Research papers on Criminal justice reform

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  1. Incarceration, Recidivism, and Employment

    Manudeep Bhuller, Gordon B. Dahl, Katrine Vellesen Løken, et al. · 2019 · Journal of Political Economy · 318 citations

    Using a random judge design and panel data from Norway, we estimate that imprisonment discourages further criminal behavior, with reoffense probabilities falling by 29 percentage points and criminal charges dropping by 11 over a 5-year period. Ordinary least squares mistakenly reaches the opposite conclusion. The decline is driven by individuals not working prior to incarceration; these individuals increase participation in employment programs and raise their future employment and earnings. Previously employed individuals experience lasting negative employment effects. These findings demonstrate that time spent in prison with a focus on rehabilitation can be preventive for a large segment of

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  2. Risk Assessment in Criminal Sentencing

    John Monahan, Jennifer L. Skeem · 2015 · Annual Review of Clinical Psychology · 258 citations

    The past several years have seen a surge of interest in using risk assessment in criminal sentencing, both to reduce recidivism by incapacitating or treating high-risk offenders and to reduce prison populations by diverting low-risk offenders from prison. We begin by sketching jurisprudential theories of sentencing, distinguishing those that rely on risk assessment from those that preclude it. We then characterize and illustrate the varying roles that risk assessment may play in the sentencing process. We clarify questions regarding the various meanings of "risk" in sentencing and the appropriate time to assess the risk of convicted offenders. We conclude by addressing four principal problem

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  3. Cumulative Disadvantage in the American Criminal Justice System

    Megan C. Kurlychek, Brian D. Johnson · 2019 · Annual Review of Criminology · 258 citations

    Research on inequality in punishment has a long and storied history, yet the overwhelming focus has been on episodic disparity in isolated stages of criminal case processing (e.g., arrest, prosecution, or sentencing). Although theories of cumulative disadvantage exist in criminology, they are seldom adapted to account for treatment in the criminal justice system. We provide an overview of the concept of cumulative disadvantage in the life course and review evidence on the development of cumulative disadvantages across stages of the criminal justice system. In doing so, we appraise the empirical research on policing, prosecution, and the courts and consider how these largely separate bodies o

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  4. New Findings, New Views: A Note of Caution Regarding Sentencing Reform

    Robert Martinson · 1979 · bepress Legal Repository · 245 citations

    The study that my associates and I are now completing, see note 6 infra, indicates phenomenal differences in the way juveniles and adults are reprocessed by the criminal justice system.See text accompanying notes 5-14 infra.For explanation of the term "reprocess," see note 5 infra; text accompanying notes 14 & 15 infra.

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  5. Criminal Recidivism after Prison and Electronic Monitoring

    Rafael Di Tella, Ernesto Schargrodsky · 2013 · Journal of Political Economy · 209 citations

    We study criminal recidivism in Argentina by focusing on the rearrest rates of two groups: individuals released from prison and individuals released from electronic monitoring. Detainees are randomly assigned to judges, and ideological differences across judges translate into large differences in the allocation of electronic monitoring to an otherwise similar population. Using these peculiarities of the Argentine setting, we argue that there is a large, negative causal effect on criminal recidivism of treating individuals with electronic monitoring relative to prison.

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  6. Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: The Benefits of Self-Regulation

    Tom R. Tyler · 2009 · bepress Legal Repository · 186 citations

    In this lecture I argue for the value of a self-regulatory approach to law and criminal justice.I do so by first describing and critiquing the dominant approach to regulation in use today: deterrence.I suggest that in practice this model is costly and minimally effective in securing compliance with the law and motivating the acceptance of decisions made by police officers and judges.I then outline a different, selfregulatory model which focuses on engaging people's values as a basis for motivating voluntary deference to the law.I review empirical research suggesting that this strategy is both viable and more desirable than current sanction-based approaches.My argument is that this approach i

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  7. Women Coming Home: Long‐Term Patterns of Recidivism

    Beth M. Huebner, Christina DeJong, Jennifer Cobbina · 2009 · Justice Quarterly · 184 citations

    Drawing on recent scholarship on prisoner reentry and gendered pathways to crime, this research explores how social relationships, incarceration experiences, and community context, and the intersection of these factors with race, influence the occurrence and timing of recidivism. Using a large, modern sample of women released from prison, we find that women who are drug dependent, have less education, or have more extensive criminal histories are more likely to fail on parole and to recidivate more quickly during the eight year follow‐up period. We also observe racial variation in the effect of education, drug use, and neighborhood concentrated disadvantage on recidivism. This study highligh

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  8. THE JUVENILE PENALTY: A COMPARISON OF JUVENILE AND YOUNG ADULT SENTENCING OUTCOMES IN CRIMINAL COURT*

    Megan C. Kurlychek, Brian D. Johnson · 2004 · Criminology · 159 citations

    This study uses criminal court data from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing (PCS) to investigate the sentencing of juvenile offenders processed in adult criminal court by comparing their sentencing outcomes to those of young adult offenders in similar situations. Because the expanded juvenile exclusion and transfer policies of the 1990s have led to an increase in the number of juveniles convicted in adult courts, we argue that it is critical to better understand the judicial decision making processes involved. We introduce competitive hypotheses on the relative leniency or severity of sentencing outcomes for transferred juveniles and interpret our results with the focal concerns theor

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  9. The Impact of Incarceration on Recidivism

    Charles Loeffler, Daniel S. Nagin · 2021 · Annual Review of Criminology · 147 citations

    The US prison population stands at 1.43 million persons, with an additional 740,000 persons in local jails. Nearly all will eventually return to society. This review examines the available evidence on how the experience of incarceration is likely to impact the probability that formerly incarcerated individuals will reoffend. Our focus is on two types of studies, those based on the random assignments of cases to judges, called judge instrumental-variable studies, and those based on discontinuities in sentence severity in sentencing grids, called regression discontinuity studies. Both types of studies are designed to account for selection bias in nonexperimental estimates of the impact of inca

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  10. Algorithms in the Criminal Justice System: Assessing the Use of Risk Assessments in Sentencing

    Danielle Leah Kehl, Samuel Ari Kessler · 2017 · Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) · 132 citations

    Risk assessment tools are increasingly being incorporated into all aspects of the criminal justice system. This paper focuses on the use of these tools in the sentencing process, a relatively recent development which raises fundamental legal and ethical questions about fairness, accountability, and transparency. The paper provides an overview of these issues and questions for further research that can help local policymakers who are currently implementing or considering implementing similar systems in their jurisdiction.

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  11. Intuitions of Justice: Implications for Criminal Law and Justice Policy

    Paul H. Robinson, John M. Darley · 2007 · 101 citations

    Recent social science research suggests that many if not most judgements about criminal liability and punishment for serious wrongdoing are intuitional rather than reasoned. Further, such intuitions of justice are nuanced and widely shared, even though they concern matters that seem quite complex and subjective. While people may debate the source of these intuitions, it seems clear that, whatever their source, it must be one that is insulated from the influence of much of human experience because, if it were not, one would see differences in intuitions reflecting the vast differences in human existence across demographics and societies.\nThis article explores the serious implications of this

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  12. Snapping Back: Food Stamp Bans and Criminal Recidivism

    Cody Tuttle · 2019 · American Economic Journal Economic Policy · 81 citations

    I estimate the effect of access to food stamps on criminal recidivism. In 1996, a federal welfare reform imposed a lifetime ban from food stamps on convicted drug felons. Florida modified this ban, restricting it to drug traffickers who commit their offense on or after August 23, 1996. I exploit this sharp cutoff in a regression discontinuity design and find that the ban increases recidivism among drug traffickers. The increase is driven by financially motivated crimes, suggesting that the cut in benefits causes ex-convicts to return to crime to make up for the lost transfer income. (JEL H75, I38, K42)

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  13. Savry Risk Assessment in Violent Dutch Adolescents

    Henny P.B. Lodewijks, Theo A.H. Doreleijers, Corine De Ruiter · 2008 · Criminal Justice and Behavior · 60 citations

    This study examines the predictive validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) by examining relationships between SAVRY scores and violent reoffending during a 3-year period after sentencing. Two types of sentences were studied: a mandatory treatment order ( N = 77) and a juvenile prison sentence ( N = 40). The predictive validity of the SAVRY was significant for the two types of sentences. The predictive validity of the unstructured clinical judgment proved to be not significant. Support was found for the hypothesis that the juvenile court's sentence (treatment versus detention) might have been influenced by the unstructured clinical risk assessment of the mental

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