The Myths and Realities of Correctional Severity: Evidence from the National Corrections Reporting Program on Sentencing Practices

Pfaff, John F.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1121024

Cited by 8 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 14 publications

(27 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…First, the odds that a felony arrest would result in prison admission increased notably after the early 1980s (Blumstein & Beck 1999;Pfaff 2011aPfaff , 2017Raphael & Stoll 2009Travis et al 2014;Western 2006). Insofar as this shift likely stemmed at least in part from prosecutors' increased proclivity to file felony charges, 8 these findings are consistent with research that highlights prosecutors' vast and unregulated discretionary power, which includes the authority to decide whether to file charges, which charges to file, and which plea bargains to accept (Davis 2008, Stuntz 2011.…”

Section: Debating the Importance Of Sentencing Policy And The Need Fomentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given that changes in the composition of the prison population, such as the infusion of 8 Pfaff (2011a) analyzed the filing-to-arrest and admission-to-filing ratios separately and found that only the former increased, which he interprets as evidence of the role of prosecutorial discretion (as opposed to sentencing policy) in the prison buildup. However, the filing data on which this analysis relies have a number of important limitations (Kathryn Holt, pers.…”

Section: Debating the Importance Of Sentencing Policy And The Need Fomentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

Beckett

2018

Annu. Rev. Criminol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Mass incarceration is an unprecedented development, one with myriad adverse consequences. Although the expansion of US penal institutions is largely a function of changes in practice and policy rather than rising crime rates, reversing this trend will nonetheless be challenging. The need for comprehensive sentencing reform is clear, but political limits on legislative remedies and the failure of the courts to notably reduce the scale, or improve conditions, of confinement render these approaches highly uncertain. In the short term, unconventional methods that do not require legislative authorization, such as electing, pressuring, and incentivizing prosecutors to reduce penal severity, may be a promising way of addressing mass incarceration. The return and revitalization of parole or other systems of post-sentence review are also crucial and may be legitimated in terms of the need to incentivize rehabilitation and prevent the unnecessary and costly incarceration of the elderly. The recent mobilization of grass-roots movements for penal change that include those directly affected by both violence and mass incarceration is also auspicious, as their work may help to humanize the justice-involved and undermine the erroneous assumption that crime survivors are well-served by mass incarceration. 235

show abstract

Section: Debating the Importance Of Sentencing Policy And The Need Fomentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Debating the Importance Of Sentencing Policy And The Need Fomentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

Beckett

2018

Annu. Rev. Criminol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It therefore seems plausible that the growth and aging of the prison population is a result of the differential drug involvement of certain cohorts. Indeed, Pollack, Reuter, and Sevigny have also found that little evidence exists that the changes are driven by an increase in sentence length (Pfaff, 2011, 2012, 2013; Raphael and Stoll, 2009, 2013). …”

Section: Prison Agingmentioning

confidence: 99%

How the U.S. Prison Boom Has Changed the Age Distribution of the Prison Population

et al. 2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article provides a demographic exposition of the changes in the U.S prison population during the period of mass incarceration that began in the late twentieth century. By drawing on data from the Survey of Inmates in State Correctional Facilities (1974–2004) for inmates 17–72 years of age (N = 336), we show that the age distribution shifted upward dramatically: Only 16 percent of the state prison population was 40 years old or older in 1974; by 2004, this percentage had doubled to 33 percent with the median age of prisoners rising from 27 to 34 years old. By using an estimable function approach, we find that the change in the age distribution of the prison population is primarily a cohort effect that is driven by the “enhanced” penal careers of the cohorts who hit young adulthood—the prime age of both crime and incarceration—when substance use was at its peak. Period-specific factors (e.g., proclivity for punishment and incidence of offense) do matter, but they seem to play out more across the life cycles of persons most affected in young adulthood (cohort effects) than across all age groups at one point in time (period effects).

show abstract

“…Use of arrests data is driven by two considerations. First, consistent annual incarceration data at the state and cohort level simply do not exist in the United States (see Pfaff, 2011). Second, it is of interest to measure criminality in a broad way and check that the results are robust.…”

Section: Details Of Us Panel Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Crime Scars: Recessions and the Making of Career Criminals

Bell

Bindler

Machin

2018

The Review of Economics and Statistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Recessions lead to short-term job loss, lower levels of happiness and decreasing income levels. There is growing evidence that workers who first join the labour market during economic downturns suffer from poor job matches that have a sustained detrimental effect on their wages and career progression. This paper uses a range of US and UK data to document a more disturbing long-run effect of recessions: young people who leave school in the midst of recessions are significantly more likely to lead a life of crime than those graduating into a buoyant labour market. These effects are long lasting and substantial.

show abstract

The Myths and Realities of Correctional Severity: Evidence from the National Corrections Reporting Program on Sentencing Practices

Cited by 8 publications

References 14 publications

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

The Politics, Promise, and Peril of Criminal Justice Reform in the Context of Mass Incarceration

How the U.S. Prison Boom Has Changed the Age Distribution of the Prison Population

Crime Scars: Recessions and the Making of Career Criminals

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About