A Reentry-Centered Vision of Criminal Justice

A Decoupled System: Federal Criminal Justice and the Structural Limits of Transformation

“…Structural decoupling, allowing criminal justice actors to externalize costs and ignore the downstream consequences of their actions, also undermines the promise of enduring change. Because of the size and complexity of the federal system, it may or may not be possible to realize a lasting reentry-centered vision of criminal justice (Pinard 2007 At a minimum, to establish a system founded on evidence-based practices and focused on risk and harm reductions, an honest reckoning is needed among stakeholders throughout the federal criminal justice system.…”

“…1), and that is ultimately unsustainable (Tolman 2012). Refocusing federal criminal justice away from a myopic obsession with parity (Feinberg 1993) toward an evidence-based vision of reentry (Pinard 2007) might-as in Ohio and Texas-improve public safety while reducing costs. The reality is that federal offenders bow down before Travis's (2005) iron law of corrections, just like offenders emerging from state and local facilities: they all come back.…”

“…If we view the boundaries of our organization as the limits of our role and responsibility, they can become blinders on our organizational vision, stifling rather than fostering networking and growth. (Burrell 2012, 40-42) There are, however, signs that a reentry-centered vision of criminal justice (Pinard 2007) could extend to the federal system. A recent draft Senate Bill, as yet unnumbered, seeks to "increase public safety, efficiency, and accountability by transforming federal corrections into a risk and program performance-based system that bases decisions on individualized offender data, risk and needs assessment, and program performance factors indicative of risk and recidivism reduction."…”

“…Even within the boundaries of the federal criminal justice system, the uncoordinated and decoupled structure of federal agencies, in which no one group of stakeholders claim responsibility for the whole, limits the potential of these innovations. In all likelihood, without restructuring and the adoption of a truly reentry-centered vision of criminal justice (Pinard 2007), the federal criminal justice system will continue to deliver what it has delivered for the past thirty years: a glut of imprisonment that is inefficient (La Vigne and Samuels, 2012), unsustainable (Pew Center on the States 2009), and, ultimately, criminogenic (Clear 2007;Vieraitis, Kovandzic, and Marvell 2007). This possibility of failure is particularly frustrating, given recent evidence from the states indicating that statutory, structural, and procedural changes indeed can build on evidence-based practice to maximize community safety in a manner that is rational, fair, just, and cost-effective.…”

The Second Chance Act and the Future of Reentry Reform

“…The movement's logic, as Michael Pinard suggests in his contribution to this issue, must inevitably direct attention to the actors who dominate the front end of the process, including the lawyers and judges who control sentencing decisions. 18 And, indeed, as Ryan King indicates in his contribution, one of the most provocative recent developments in state-level sentencing law has been the adoption of legislation in New York and Oregon that requires consideration of reentry needs at the time of sentencing. 19 The remainder of this Part discusses four ways that a reentry focus might affect sentencing.…”