Abstract:This article examines the feelings of uncertainty experienced by 62 young people, aged 16-21, detained on remand in Ireland. It argues that this experience of uncertainty is an important phenomenon since it can lessen their ability both to cope while in custody and to progress after release. While it is acknowledged that the nature of remand custody will always involve some uncertainty, it is argued that greater compliance with international standards for treating young people deprived of their liberty would r… Show more
“…This is consistent with the idea that time in custody offers an opportunity for self‐reflection . Perhaps the length of one's detention has lasted longer than expected, or perhaps bail has been unexpectedly refused . In any case, the longer a detainee spends in custody prior to being interviewed the longer they have to contemplate the things they were meant to do, but can't, or the people who will suffer as a consequence of their incapacitation (e.g.…”
In these analyses, the item characteristics of UNCOPE appear consistent with results seen in the USA. Further, the modest differential item functioning identified for neglect (item N) has no practical impact on the overall functioning on UNCOPE. Criminal justice and drug policy researchers will be comforted by the absence of any substantial implementation or environmental bias.
“…This is consistent with the idea that time in custody offers an opportunity for self‐reflection . Perhaps the length of one's detention has lasted longer than expected, or perhaps bail has been unexpectedly refused . In any case, the longer a detainee spends in custody prior to being interviewed the longer they have to contemplate the things they were meant to do, but can't, or the people who will suffer as a consequence of their incapacitation (e.g.…”
In these analyses, the item characteristics of UNCOPE appear consistent with results seen in the USA. Further, the modest differential item functioning identified for neglect (item N) has no practical impact on the overall functioning on UNCOPE. Criminal justice and drug policy researchers will be comforted by the absence of any substantial implementation or environmental bias.
“…We find that black defendants experience greater temporal and monetary costs at the pretrial phase relative to white defendants. The temporal and event uncertainty of pretrial detention makes it difficult for many defendants to cope with the pains of detention, including psychological trauma, financial hardships, and family instability (Oleski ; Freeman and Seymour ; Rabinowitz ; Pelvin ), which are compounded by the relative lack of resources available in jails compared with prisons. The stratifying effects of pretrial detention are particularly important because, in contrast to imprisonment, pretrial detention effects occur independently of a conviction (Rabinowitz ; Myers ; Pelvin ).…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Moreover, some of these pains may be exaggerated in pretrial detention due to the increased uncertainty detainees experience with regard to their length of detention and court outcome (Pelvin ). This uncertainty has been linked to increased psychological trauma (Oleski ; Freeman and Seymour ; Pelvin ), health consequences (Csete ; Open Society Foundations ; Pelvin ), and economic hardship (Rabinowitz ; Open Society Foundations ; Pelvin ; Dobbie, Goldin, and Yang ), all of which are compounded by the lack of services available in jail as compared to prison (Csete ; Open Society Foundations ; Pelvin ). Job loss is the most common and severe economic hardship facing pretrial detainees, but other hardships include lost property, lost time in school, and being unable to parent or pay rent (Rabinowitz ; Van Cleve ; Pelvin ).…”
Although misdemeanors make up the bulk of criminal cases in the United States, the majority of research on court decision-making examines felony sentencing. In contrast to felony courts, lower-level courts are characterized by higher case volumes and increased reliance on informal sanctions, which may contribute to greater racial-ethnic disparities. To assess this possibility, we examine pretrial detention and case processing outcomes for misdemeanants in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Utilizing temporal (detention time) and monetary (bond amount) measures of pretrial detention, we assess whether and to what extent there are racial-ethnic disparities in formal and informal sanctions facing misdemeanants. Results indicate that black defendants, especially black Latinx defendants, face greater informal sanctions (longer detention and higher bond amounts), are more likely to be convicted, and experience more severe formal sanctions than do white non-Latinx defendants. These findings complicate Feeley's (1979) argument about lower-level cases, revealing that black defendants are punished by both the court process and formal sanctions. In this way, "the process is the punishment" for lower-level white and nonwhite defendants, while the punishment is also the punishment for black defendants.Racial and ethnic inequalities in US incarceration rates have dramatically risen over the past several decades, and as a result, black men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men (Sentencing Project 2017). Although much attention has been devoted to the causes and consequences of racialized mass incarceration in the US, relatively less attention has been given to the larger, and perhaps less visible, forms of criminal justice social control in lower-level courts (Murakawa and Beckett 2010;Kohler-Hausmann 2018). Due to the expansion of broken windows policing and other lower-level law enforcement strategies, the misdemeanor arrest rate has increased threefold in recent decades (Murakawa and Beckett 2010; Lum and Vovak 2018). 1 While a large proportion of misdemeanants are people of color (Kohler-Hausmann 2018), and racial-ethnic disparities in lower-level proactive policing strategies have been well documented (Fagan et al. 2016), few studies have examined racial-ethnic inequalities in lower-level court processing.This gap in the literature has important implications for our understandings of racialethnic disparities in case processing more broadly. Misdemeanors and other lower-level cases differ from felonies in several ways, being characterized by higher caseloads, We would like to thank the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and its Greater Miami Chapter. We would also like to thank our research assistants on the project:
“…Weight refers to the psychological burdens of imprisonment and to how heavily it bears down upon its subjects. Crewe explains “tightness” in the following way: The term “tightness” captures the feelings of tension and anxiety generated by uncertainty (Freeman & Seymour, ), and the sense of not knowing which way to move, for fear of getting things wrong. It conveys the way that power operates both closely and anonymously, working like an invisible harness on the self.…”
This paper aims to complement analyses of welfare conditionality by examining what can be learned from studies of conditional punishment in the criminal justice system. Drawing on a range of recent studies, I explore lived experiences of the conditionality attendant on penal forms of supervision; penal forms that have expanded rapidly in recent decades. I argue that, to paraphrase Stan Cohen, such supervision is as much about the dispersal of degradation as it is about the dispersal of discipline. Indeed, in contemporary western societies, both in punishment and in welfare systems, I suggest that conditionality functions less to discipline poor and marginalised people and more to disqualify them from the entitlements of ordinary citizenship. In so doing, conditionality constructs them as denizens, thus serving to limit the liabilities for the state that arise from social inequalities. Extending Delroy Fletcher and Sharon Wright's metaphor, the abusive slaps now meted out in concert by both hands of the penal state are as much about degrading and denying the entitlements of “needy” denizens as they are about influencing their conduct. But crucially, even within the increasingly restrictive context created by these developments, penal practitioners can and do provide care and assistance.
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