Four different goals of corrections are commonly espoused: retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. Each of these goals has received varied levels of public and professional support over time. In an effort to assess the level of professional support for these goals, a survey was administered to staff in three prisons, two jails, and a jail academy in a rural mountain state. The results indicate that jail and prison staff are more likely than not to perceive the primary goal of corrections as incapacitation. Respondents generally ranked incapacitation first, followed by deterrence, rehabilitation, and retribution. Age, years of service, military background, and facility type (prison or jail) were significant predictors of staff orientation toward rehabilitation. For jail staff, only gender was related to a rehabilitation orientation. For prison staff, only age and years of service were related to a rehabilitation orientation. The authors conclude that role perceptions are colored by a variety of factors, including age, gender, years of service, facility type, and prior military service.

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Previous studies based on relatively weak analytical designs lacking contextualization and appropriate comparisons have reported that the legalization of marijuana has either increased or decreased crime. Recognizing the importance for public policy making of more robust research designs in this area during a period of continuing reform of state marijuana laws, this study uses a quasi-experimental, multi-group interrupted time-series design to determine if, and how, UCR crime rates in Colorado and Washington, the first two states to legalize marijuana, were influenced by it. Our results suggest that marijuana legalization and sales have had minimal to no effect on major crimes in Colorado or Washington. We observed no statistically significant long-term effects of recreational cannabis laws or the initiation of retail sales on violent or property crime rates in these states.

The primary purpose of judicial waiver is to impose more severe sanctions on offenders than are available in juvenile court. This article explores two dimensions of sanction severity, sentence length and actual time served, to determine if juveniles waived to adult court do receive more severe sanctions. Data were collected on all youth waived to adult court from 1981-1993 and sentenced to prison (n = 946). Juveniles in this population consistently received longer sentences than are available in juvenile court. When actual time served was taken into consideration, however, these youth rarely served more lengthy sentences than are available in juvenile court, serving an average of only 27% of their original sentence.

Correctional scholars once portrayed correctional offenders as hacks, little interested in the welfare of the inmates they supervised. Later researchers related how this conception of the officer as hack failed to take into account and explain the human service functions in which many officers are engaged. A role instrument was developed and administered to staff at a medium-security prison to measure the extent to which today’s officers identify with the old hack or the newer human service conception of their work. Analysis of the data indicates that the instrument appears useful in measuring correctional role orientation, as the alpha is .84. In addition, examination of responses to individual items indicates that selected sociodemographic characteristics are related to perceptions of the correctional role.

This article examines the history, law, and research on racial desegregation in American prisons. It focuses on the 2005 U.S. Supreme Court case of Johnson v. California, in which the Court held that prison administrators cannot racially segregate inmates unless under extraordinary circumstances to maintain the security of inmates, staff, and institutions. This article also examines evidence on attitudes and outcomes of racial desegregation in prisons. It ends with a discussion of racial desegregation mandates and policy change in prison organizations

Determining what the appropriate behavior is in any given circumstance is not always clear in corrections work, given the nature of the tasks, the composition of the clientele, and the structure of the organization. In an effort to determine what correctional staff regarded as ethical behavior, the authors developed and administered a questionnaire to correctional staff in several prisons and jails in a western state. In this article, the authors report their findings from the effort to quantify the degree to which staff agree and disagree in their perceptions of ethical choices. They found that jail and prison staffs are more likely than not to perceive their work from an ethical perspective. The findings also indicate that although both types of facilities were in the top range of possible responses on the ethics summary variable, the jail staff were more likely to score higher. Finally, age increased the likelihood that a respondent had a higher ethical rating in jails, and being female increased such a score in prisons.

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