A Theory of the Stability of Punishment

Blumstein, Alfred; Cohen, Jacqueline

doi:10.2307/1142990

Cited by 181 publications

(75 citation statements)

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“…Box and Hale, 1985;Jankovic, 1977) or the Durkheimian stability of punishment hypothesis (e.g. Blumstein and Cohen, 1973;Blumstein, et al, 1977). More recent research has focused on political explanations for variation in criminal punishment, emphasizing the role of partisan politics and arguing that Republican party dominance is associated with a law-andorder orientation (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partisan Politics, Electoral Competition and Imprisonment: An Analysis of States Over Time*

2005

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The now well‐documented explosion in prison populations over the last 30 years has spurred significant attention in the literature. Early research focused primarily on economic explanations. More recently it has focused on political explanations of prison growth. Here we extend research on political explanations of imprisonment by drawing on the literature on state politics and public policy. We argue that the effect of partisan politics on punishment is conditional on how much electoral competition legislators face. We test this hypothesis using annual state level data on imprisonment from 1978 to 1996. Our findings show that the effect of Republican state legislative strength on prison admissions depends on time and the level of competition in state legislative elections. We argue that these findings suggest the need for a more nuanced understanding of the link between partisan U.S. politics and imprisonment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partisan Politics, Electoral Competition and Imprisonment: An Analysis of States Over Time*

2005

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“…Before then, criminal justice policy was not highly politicised and imprisonment rates had been stable for a half century (Blumstein and Cohen 1973). After that, however, conservative Republicans for three decades pursued what became known as the "Republican Southern Strategy" of focusing their campaigns and strategies of governing on issues such as welfare fraud and "law and order" which everyone knew to be veiled appeals to racial resentments of white southern and working-class voters (Edsall and Edsall 1991;Tonry 1995;Gottschalk 2006).…”

Section: Determinants Of Penal Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Thinking about Punishment across Space and Time

TONRY¹

2014

CrimLithuan

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Abstract. This short essay shows why the customary two-categories of punishment theories (retributive theories and consequentialist theories) should be increased to three to include a-normative theory and how that would aid understanding of differences in punishment thinking and policy over time and across space. Section I lays out conventional typologies of punishment theories and explains why a-normative theory should be added. Section II introduces the general literature on determinants of punishment policies and practices. Section III briefly discusses Eastern and Central Europe. Section IV illustrates how the normative and explanatory theories when combined enrich explanations and improve understanding.

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“…This suggested clear evidence of a homeostatic process whereby the system could become tougher when crime rates went down (thereby punishing for pornography, blasphemy, and other marginal offenses) and ease up when crime rates went up (by means such as offering earlier release on parole or increasing the rate of probation or other community-based sanctions as an alternative to incarceration). These observations prompted a paper entitled "A Theory on the Stability of Punishment" (Blumstein and Cohen 1973) providing evidence in support of this homeostatic process (see Blumstein et al 1976).…”

Section: Incarcerationmentioning

confidence: 99%

An OR Missionary’s Visits to the Criminal Justice System

Blumstein

2007

Operations Research

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One of the historic roles of operations research (OR) people in the problem domains they enter is that of missionary, bringing their OR techniques of quantitative modeling, system perspective, and planning to the fields where those approaches have not yet taken hold. One of the most primitive of social systems in that regard is the criminal justice system responsible for society’s response to crime. Over the past 40 years, I and a number of colleagues have been involved in this missionary function. The issues addressed have involved modeling of criminal careers as a stochastic process, bringing those analyses to the assessment of incapacitation effects of incarceration, review of trends in incarceration and factors contributing to those trends, and an examination of the interaction of incarceration and drug markets, with an analysis of some of the unintended counterproductive effects of that incarceration response to the drug problem.

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A Theory of the Stability of Punishment

Cited by 181 publications

References 0 publications

Partisan Politics, Electoral Competition and Imprisonment: An Analysis of States Over Time*

Partisan Politics, Electoral Competition and Imprisonment: An Analysis of States Over Time*

Thinking about Punishment across Space and Time

An OR Missionary’s Visits to the Criminal Justice System

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