Sara Steen

“Punishment on the Installment Plan” Individual-Level Predictors of Parole Revocation in Four States

As prison populations in the United States have soared over the last 30 years, offenders who are incarcerated for violating the conditions of their parole represent an increasingly large percentage of the overall population. Little is known, however, about who these offenders are, what they have done to be reincarcerated, or what factors make an offender more or less likely to succeed on parole. In this article, parole release data from the National Corrections Reporting Program are analyzed to identify individual-level predictors of parole success in four states and to assess the relative impact of demographic and legal factors on different offender groups (by race).

Prevention, Crime Control or Cash? Public Preferences Towards Criminal Justice Spending Priorities

We propose and test a new survey methodology to assess the publics criminal justice spending priorities. Respondents are explicitly forced to trade-off one type of crime prevention or control policy for another and to consider the fact that any money spent on crime prevention or control policies is money they could otherwise have in their pockets. Thus, respondents are asked to allocate a fixed budget into five categories - more prisons, police, youth prevention programs, drug treatment for nonviolent offenders, and a tax rebate to citizens. In a nationally representative sample, we found overwhelming public support for more money being devoted to youth prevention, drug treatment for nonviolent offenders, and more police. However, the median respondent would not allocate any new money to building more prisons and would not avail him or herself of a tax rebate if the money were spent on youth prevention, drug treatment and police. At the margin, we estimate the public would receive

Exercising Options: An Assessment of the Use of Alternative Sanctions for Drug Offenders

3.07 in perceived value by spending

Putting Parolees Back in Prison Discretion and the Parole Revocation Process

1.00 of their tax dollars on youth prevention;

Unsettling the discourse of punishment? Competing narratives of reentry and the possibilities for change

1.86 in value for every dollar spent on drug treatment; and

Assessing the public's demand for hate crime penalties

1.76 in value for a dollar spent on police. However, the public would clearly not spend more on prisons at the margin, deriving only 71 cents in value for every dollar spent.

CONTESTED PORTRAYALS: Medical and Legal Social Control of Juvenile Sex Offenders

In this paper, we explore a relatively unexamined area of sentencing—the use of alternative sanctions. While researchers have discussed the potential uses and misuses of alternative sanctions, few have focused on who receives them and why. We argue that, while alternative sanctions have the potential to be useful tools, they also open “windows of discretion” that may disadvantage certain groups. We use quantitative and qualitative data from Washington State to explore how alternative sanctions are applied in cases involving felony drug offenders. The results of quantitative analyses are largely consistent with current theories of sentencing in that court officials rely heavily on indicators of danger and blameworthiness in determining when to apply alternative sanctions. Qualitative analyses, however, suggest that decisions about alternative sanctions are complex, and that court officials’ beliefs about the fairness and efficacy of sentencing options influence the extent to which they will use available alternatives. Implications for criminal justice theory, public policy, and future research are discussed.

Conferring Sameness Institutional Management of Juvenile Sex Offenders

As the prison population in the United States has ballooned over the past 30 years, people entering prison for parole revocation have come to constitute an increasingly large percentage of all prison admissions (35% in 2006). As a result, researchers have begun to turn their attention toward this criminal justice decision-making point to examine the factors that relate to why an individual is returned to prison. Notably, this developing body of research focuses almost entirely on one decision maker: the parole board who ultimately determines whether or not an individual on parole stays in the community, receives alternative sanctions, or returns to prison. Notably, this ignores the fact that parole revocation is a process beginning with the parolee who commits a violation behavior, turning next to the parole officer who uses his or her discretionary power to determine whether or not to file a complaint, and ending with the decision of the parole board. In this article, we examine each stage of this revocation process using structured qualitative interviews with 35 parole officers as well as quantitative data on 300 individuals on parole in Colorado between 2006 and 2007, who we followed for an 18-month period. We find that parolees with mental health needs commit significantly more technical violations; that race, gender, age, and measures of parolee effort affect whether a parole officer files a complaint; and that the decision made by the parole board is either largely random or driven by variables unspecified in our models.

Racial disparities in official assessments of juvenile offenders : Attributional stereotypes as mediating mechanisms

In academic and policy circles, there is widespread optimism about the ability of reentry to change the terms of the punishment debate. In this article, we assess the impact of the reentry concept on discourse and reform in Colorado through analysis of the recent work of the Colorado Criminal and Juvenile Justice Commission. We identify two distinct reentry narratives, which we call the reintegration and recidivism reduction narratives. The reintegration narrative challenges dominant assumptions about punishment in ways consistent with the rehabilitation model, while the recidivism reduction narrative stays close to the retributive model. While the reintegration narrative was clearly present in the Colorado conversation about reform, most of the policy recommendations put forth were driven by the recidivism reduction narrative, in large part due to concerns about potential public perceptions of the Commission’s work. We conclude that reentry has not only failed to change the discourse in any significant way, it has also served to further entrench the retributive framework of punishment.

Willingness-to-Pay for Crime Control Programs

In this article, we analyze responses from a nationally representative sample of American adults to determine public attitudes toward punishment for hate crimes. While attitudinal polls find strong support for hate crime laws, criminological research provides reasons to believe that this support may be weaker than assumed. Our findings suggest that, while there is minimal public support for harsher penalties for offenders who commit hate crimes, attitudes toward punishment, treatment, and minority rights are predictive of preferences for differential treatment of hate crime offenders. We discuss possible implications of these results in our conclusion.