From Theory to Policy: Evidence-Based Corrections

Why are many people in correctional system?

-people have committed crimes and been convicted, and this some response
Theories of Corrections:
Also called philosophies of punishment
Each philosophy or goal logically suggests a corresponding theory about
which policies and practices should be pursued in the correctional system
-people have multiple goals: a practical way of viewing things but it does
mean that we often embrace goals that require incompatible correctional
policies and practices
-measure the effectiveness = key issue; whether something works whether
by its impact on recidivism such as crime rates
6 theories:
1) retribution or Just Deserts
2) deterrence
3) incapacitation
4) restorative justice
5) rehabilitation
6) early intervention
Retribution: Balancing the Scales of Justice
-mandate to pay an offender back for his or her wrongdoing; to get even =
retribution or just dessert
-Conservative favors the formal term and the liberal favor the just dessert
term= Conservatives want the offenders to feel the pain they have caused
while the liberals want to make sure the offenders are not being punished
more than they have caused = only want to see justice done only when it is
truly deserved; Conservatives: imposed longer prison sentences and liberals
is achieved more moderate punishments and shorter prison sentences
-getting even : balancing the scales of justices thru a figurative eye for an
eye approach= is unrelated to the goal of reducing crime and of making
communities safer
People believe that pain or punishment is warranted or deserve to show
that the person who chose to use their free will in deciding to break the law
Non-utilitarian: to help achieve justice; not to reduce crime; evidence is not
central evaluating retribution or just desserts
Utilitarian: to sanction offenders not simply to sanction but for some other
purposes (often to reduce crime)-> their approach to correction works best

reduces crime (based on values- on the principle that people who harm
others deserve to be harmed equally in response); evidence is essential
Retribution or just desserts bases its morality on the assertion that people
should break the law due to their free will- this is why that the theory
demands that punishments should be calibrated to the seriousness of the
crime; the more serious the crime, the harsher the punishment-> focusing
on the crime will assume that all people are the same yet the difference is
that people are separated by their free will

Deterrence: Scaring Offenders Straight

-proposed that offenders should be punished so that they will be taught that
crime does not pay, which influence them to not return to crime
- believe that offenders are rational
-increase the cost of crime- with severe penalties can cause offenders to
choose to go straight out of fear that future criminality will prove too
painful -> will prevent them from reoffending so to avoid the cost of the
criminal sanction ( specific deterrence or special deterrence) -> that the
assumption is that putting a offender in prison will make her less likely to
recidivate
general deterrence : the assumption is made that people might decide to
commit or not commit a crime depending on what they see happens to other
people who break the law: one reason to punish the offender is to make the
potential offender to think twice & not to commit a crime s/he might have
been contemplating; when other people in society refrain from crime
because they witness offenders punishment & fear suffering a similar fate
deterrence advocates oppose discretion- giving people like judges the
freedom to place a offender in prison while allowing parole officials to release
one offender earlier from prison from another
-believe that or willing to assume that offenders exercise rational choice
when breaking the law
offenders use the potential costs of committing of a crime while using their
free will in a rational way-> such as prison versus potential benefits such as
a computer
if people weight out the costs and benefits then 2 potential things: 1)
increase of criminal situations such as high rates of laptops being stolen in
stores, 2) whether little accountant things the crime such as stealing a
computer will lead to a arrest and knows whether what punishment will
actually bring

-crime control; punish the crime not the offender, utilitarian theory;
punishment should be fixed permanently so that the offenders will learn that
the state means business
Incapacitation
-the explicit utilitarian goal is to reduce crime by caging or incarcerating
offenders = the amount of crime saved- that does not occur- because an
offender is in prison and not in the community is called the incapacitation
effect
collective incapacitation: everyone in a community committed to a certain
crime ( i.e. drugs) are locked in prison
selective incapacitation: the effort is made to predict who will be high-rate
offenders and lock up only them
2 daunting difficulties of incarceration theories: 1) its main correctional
advice is to build more prison to house more and more offenders (however
the cost is more than what the public can provide since it is labor intensive),
2) however it cannot accommodate large quantity of people
This theory shows that simply caging people and doing nothing lese will
make them be unchanged or strengthen their criminal acts
Restorative Justice
-when a crime takes place, harm occurs the victim, the community and to
the offenders
-restorative justice: the state acts more as an arbitrator and less as an
adversary; the goal is for all harms to be rectified and the injured parties to
be restored.
-both non-utilitarian and utilitarian: non-utilitarian : there is an overriding
concern for achieving justice in and of itself = justice is not adversarial with
the goal of inflicting pure harm on the offender; utilitarian since it claims that
its approach to harm reduction to is help lower recidivism by taking offenders
out of the traditional justice system that using prison as a the last resort;
prefer parallel justice system: devoid of judges, prosecutors, defense
attorneys, probation officer; instead a facilitator would calla restorative
justice conference, ( a conference where the offender, offenders family ,

the victim, victims family would hear everyones story) -> difficult since the
nation has large quantity of offenders and impossible to go through
Rehabilitation
-the goal is to change those factors that are causing offenders to break the
law: this assumption is that crime is caused by factors, such as, antisocial
attitudes, bad companions or dysfunctional family life.
-by targeting these factors, it will help reduce recidivism while saving crime
-believe that they use correctional programs to cure what is wrong with
offenders = this means that the system should arrange to deliver effective
treatment
- do believe that if a offender is incarcerated/ incapacitated without any
treatment, it is hard lower crime rates while the offenders in prison will learn
new criminal activities behind bars
-do not believe that deterrence theory will not be effective in preventing
reoffending since they are limited if not incorrect, theory of crime (crime is
simply a rational choice)
-difficult to maintain since prison are hardly the therapeutic place while the
correctional workers are not professionally trained to help initiate the
rehabilitation programs
Early Intervention
-placing children at risk for a criminal future into programs early in life so as
to prevent hem from developing into a juvenile or adult criminal

The Changing Nature of Death Penalty Debates

Deterrence
-used general deterrence to favor death penalty since they wanted to punish
offenders to prevent/ discourage other s from committing similar offenses;
they must punish offenders to send a message to potential offenders; the
deterrent effect of punishment is thought to be a function of 3 main element:
certainty, celerity and severity.
1) certainty: people would not violate the laws if they are certain that
they will be caught and be punished
2) celerity refers to the elapsed time between the commission of an
offense and the administration of punishment-> the more quickly the
punishment is carried out, the great ether deterrent effect
3) severity: the deterrent effect of punishment
-deterrent effect has a greater effect on homicide rates than long-term
imprisonment= mostly the threat of its infliction to deter people from
committing capital offenses
Incapacitation
-the incapacitation theory which suggests that we need to execute the most
heinous killers in order to prevent them from killing again
Caprice and Bias
-the death penalty is more highly likely to occur if the victim is white rather
than black
-race-of-victim effects are regularly found in the research
-most currently the racial bias in the administration of the death penalty
- executive clemency: a possible remedy for the failures that occur in trials
but it removes bias and arbitrariness while it can also correct mistakes or to
reward rehabilitation= however rarely granted
-provision of effective counsel to the poor can help reduce biases since the
quality of the work that the attorney prepares being the dream team can
help them overcome the biases yet the defense attorneys are being paid at
minimum wages

Cost

The fiscal cost to have the death penalty is more than expensive than
imprisonment
Miscarriage of Justice
-Often cases of death penalty, the defendants who were or in the process
being executed were innocent
-people who are innocent of first degree murders yet they are executed for
second degree murders
Growing Focus on retribution
-those who commit heinous crimes should be executed simply on the
grounds that they deserve it and believe that life without parole is
insufficient

Sex offenders Community Notification Law: Are their effects

symbolic or instrumental in nature
Crime control = symbolic rather than instrumental policies since they are not
intended to change behaviors thru direct influence on peoples action
Symbolic policies were designed to appease the publics concern w/out
influencing the behaviors of citizens
=> widely supported by public yet
they are not enforce and fail to provide substantial changes to the behaviors
that are mean to be addressed
3 functions of symbolic policies: 1) serve to reassure the public by helping to
reduce angst and demonstrate that something is being done about a
problem 2) can solidify moral boundaries by codifying public consensus of
right and wrong 3) become a model for the diffusion of law to other states
and federal govt
public were designed to ease with public fear, demonstrate legislators desire
to act, and have direct appreciable effects on peoples behaviors
symbolic law can be rendered instrumental under certain organizational and
social conditions
Notifications has been cast as a symbolic policy, that serves to reassure the
public thru notification of sex offenders

Citizen opinion and action should measure against which and how symbolic
and instrumental functions of notification laws are assessed along with
offenders behaviors.
Background
Prohibition and temperance = symbolic; this effect of this movement came
from the significance the audience found in the action of prohibition itself
rather than its effect on citizens consumptive behaviors = govt action and
law are symbolic rather than to achieve instrumental goals
Policies and laws are often symbolic in nature when decision makers wanted
to to eb seen favorable by the public
Based on the finds that policies that were trying to achieve instrumental
goals could have only had symbolic goals or symbolic goals evolved to have
instrumental goals
Hate crime laws = largely symbolic in nature similar to sex offender laws/
policies
The development of sex offenders laws were based on the moral panic
about sex offending based on the victimization and homicide of children =
symbolic; designed to acknowledge the publics concern since decision
makers wanted to show that they understand their fear and willing to work to
fix the problem, in addition, they admitted that they believed these laws
have little to no appreciable effect sex offenders behaviors and make the
citizens feel safer