Cheryl Lero Jonson

Imprisonment and Reoffending

Imprisonment is the most severe punishment in democratic societies except for capital punishment, which is used only in the United States. Crime prevention is its primary rationale. Imprisonment may affect reoffending in various ways. It may be reduced by some combination of rehabilitation and what criminologists call specific deterrence. Sound arguments can be made, however, for a criminogenic effect (e.g., due to antisocial prison experiences or to stigma endured upon release). Remarkably little is known about the effects of imprisonment on reoffending. The existing research is limited in size, in quality, in its insights into why a prison term might be criminogenic or preventative, and in its capacity to explain why imprisonment might have differential effects depending on offenders’ personal and social characteristics. Compared with noncustodial sanctions, incarceration appears to have a null or mildly criminogenic effect on future criminal behavior. This conclusion is not sufficiently firm to guide policy generally, though it casts doubt on claims that imprisonment has strong specific deterrent effects. The evidence does provide a basis for outlining components of an agenda for substantive and policy relevant research.

Prisons Do Not Reduce Recidivism The High Cost of Ignoring Science

One of the major justifications for the rise of mass incarceration in the United States is that placing offenders behind bars reduces recidivism by teaching them that “crime does not pay.” This rationale is based on the view that custodial sanctions are uniquely painful and thus exact a higher cost than noncustodial sanctions. An alternative position, developed mainly by criminologists, is that imprisonment is not simply a “cost” but also a social experience that deepens illegal involvement. Using an evidence-based approach, we conclude that there is little evidence that prisons reduce recidivism and at least some evidence to suggest that they have a criminogenic effect. The policy implications of this finding are significant, for it means that beyond crime saved through incapacitation, the use of custodial sanctions may have the unanticipated consequence of making society less safe.

A General Strain Theory of Prison Violence and Misconduct: An Integrated Model of Inmate Behavior

Explanations of prison violence and other forms of misconduct have been dominated by three competing models: (a) the deprivation model, (b) the importation model, and (c) the coping model. We propose that these three seemingly competing models can be integrated within Agnew’s general strain theory (GST). GST enriches the deprivation model by revealing three distinctive categories of strain. GST encompasses the importation model in hypothesizing that criminal cultural values and affiliations will structure the response to the strains of imprisonment. And GST incorporates the coping model in its emphasis on how social support, social capital, and human capital can blunt the effects of potentially criminogenic strains. Finally, GST is sufficiently broad to include factors (e.g., emotions, self-control) in the explanation of prison maladjustment not covered by the three main models of prison inmate behavior. In short, GST offers a general integrated framework for reconceptualizing our understanding of prison violence and misconduct.

Race, Racism, and Support for Capital Punishment

There is a clear racial divide in support for the death penalty, with whites favoring and blacks opposing this sanction. This divide has persisted for decades and remains statistically and substantively significant even when controls are introduced for the known correlates of death penalty attitudes. A meaningful portion of this chasm is explained, however, by racism, with whites who manifest animus to blacks being more likely to embrace the lethal punishment of offenders. This relationship likely exists cross‐nationally. Data from Great Britain, France, Spain, and Japan show that animosity to racial or ethnic minorities predicts support for capital punishment in these nations. In the United States, the greater support for capital punishment among whites, particularly those who harbor racial or ethnic resentments, undermines the legitimacy of the state and its use of the ultimate penalty. Consistent with conflict theory, white support of the death penalty is likely based on the perceived “social threat” posed by racial, ethnic, and immigrant groups. African American opposition to the death penalty is perhaps best explained by a historically rooted fear of state power, which is captured by the concept of the “state threat” hypothesis.

Public Support for Early Intervention: Is Child Saving a “Habit of the Heart”?

Abstract Despite portrayals of Americans as exceptionally punitive and as favoring “get tough” solutions to offending, a wealth of survey research shows that the public also supports a social welfare, rehabilitative approach to crime control. Opinion polls reveal that citizens are particularly supportive of efforts to intervene with at-risk children and youths—so much so that belief in child saving can be considered an American “habit of the heart.” It is clear that public opinion is not a barrier to early intervention programs. In fact, such public support, combined with increasing evidence of the behavioral and cost effectiveness of treatment programs, might soon coalesce to create a “tipping point” in which early intervention becomes a viable policy agenda on the national level.

Prisoner Reentry Programs

Only in the past decade has prisoner reentry been “discovered” and become a central policy concern in the United States. This is due in part to the sheer number of released inmates (more than 600,000 annually) and in part to a movement that has defined the issue as “reentry.” A growing number of programs have been created in prisons and the community. Implementing them effectively, however, poses substantial challenges. A wide diversity of programs fall under the rubric and only a limited number of rigorous evaluations have been conducted. Research suggests that, overall, reentry services reduce recidivism, but program effects are heterogeneous and at times criminogenic. Effective programs tend to be consistent with the risk-need-responsivity model. A sustained effort to evaluate carefully designed programs rigorously is needed and may require development of a “criminology of reentry.” More needs to be understood about why recidivism rates are high in the first year after reentry, why some offenders have late-onset failure, whether who comes home matters, and how stigma and other collateral consequences of conviction can be managed.

Public Willingness to Downsize Prisons: Implications From Oregon

Abstract After decades of the steady growth of inmate populations, the mass imprisonment movement has stalled and serious attempts are being undertaken to downsize prisons. At issue, however, is whether the American public will endorse this policy agenda. This issue is explored with data from a 2010 survey of 1,569 Oregon adults. On a broad level, the respondents favored a preventative-rehabilitative approach to crime control and endorsed a range of reentry services for inmates. Most significant, the sample supported specific policies, including community sanctions and several forms of early release, to reduce prison populations. Notably, however, they did not embrace downsizing for the purpose of lowering spending—a finding that should be explored in other states. These results indicate that, at least in Oregon, the public is willing to consider efforts to downsize prisons. Capitalizing on this public support remains the challenge to be addressed.

The American prison : imagining a different future

Chapter 1. The Therapeutic Prison - Paula Smith and Myrinda Schweitzer Chapter 2. The Restorative Prison - Lois Presser Chapter 3. The Faith-Based Prison - Byron R. Johnson Chapter 4. The Virtuous Prison - Francis T. Cullen, Jody L. Sundt and John F. Wozniak Chapter 5. The Feminist Prison - Kristi Holsinger Chapter 6. The Racially Just Prison - Craig Hemmens and Mary K. Stohr Chapter 7. The Safe Prison - Benjamin Steiner and Benjamin Meade Chapter 8. The Healthy Prison - Roberto Hugh Potter and Jeffrey W. Rosky Chapter 9. The Private Prison - Kevin A. Wright Chapter 10. The Green Prison - Mary K. Stohr and John F. Wozniak Chapter 11. The Small Prison - Cheryl Lero Jonson, John E. Eck and Francis T. Cullen Chapter 12. The Accountable Prison - Francis T. Cullen, Cheryl Lero Jonson and John E. Eck Chapter 13. Lessons Learned - Mary K. Stohr, Cheryl Lero Jonson and Francis T. Cullen

The Accountable Prison

Despite being used on a massive scale and consuming huge amounts of the public treasury, prisons have largely failed to reduce offender recidivism. This failure persists both because of archaic beliefs that prisons cannot affect future behavior and because nobody is held accountable for inmate reoffending. Building on lessons from the field of policing, we propose a new era of accountability in corrections—an era in which prison wardens and other correctional officials are mandated to reduce inmate recidivism and are rewarded for doing so. Through a restructuring of incentives, the aim is to create in corrections a sustained interest in making offenders less likely to commit new crimes. More broadly, this approach is intended to transform correctional institutions into “accountable prisons” where concern over offenders’ future community conduct rivals concern over their daily institutional conduct.

Reinventing Community Corrections

Community corrections in the twenty-first century faces three challenges: how to be an alternative to imprisonment, how to be a conduit for reducing recidivism, and how to do less harm to offenders and their families and communities. Community corrections will reduce imprisonment only if its use is viewed as a legitimate form of punishment and is incentivized, which involves subsidizing the use of community sanctions and making communities pay to imprison offenders (e.g., a cap-and-trade system). To reduce recidivism, it will be necessary to hold officials accountable for this outcome, to ensure that evidence-based supervision is practiced, to use technology to deliver treatment services, and to create information systems that can guide the development, monitoring, and evaluation of interventions. Doing less harm—avoiding iatrogenic effects—will require nonintervention with low-risk offenders, reducing the imposition of needless constraints on offenders (i.e., collateral consequences), and creating opportunities for offenders to be redeemed.