Between Prison And Probation

Across the country prisons are jammed to capacity and, in extreme cases, barges and mobile homes are used to stem the overflow. Probation officers in some cities have caseloads of 200 and more--hardly a manageable number of offenders to track and supervise. And with about one million people in prison and jail, and two and a half million on probation, it is clear we are experiencing a crisis in our penal system. In Between Prison and Probation, Norval Morris and Michael Tonry, two of the nation's leading criminologists, offer an important and timely strategy for alleviating these problems. They argue that our overwhelmed corrections system cannot cope with the flow of convicted offenders because the two extremes of punishment--imprisonment and probation--are both used excessively, with a near-vacuum of useful punishments in between. Morris and Tonry propose instead a comprehensive program that relies on a range of punishment including fines and other financial sanctions, community service, house arrest, intensive probation, closely supervised treatment programs for drugs, alcohol and mental illness, and electronic monitoring of movement. Used in rational combinations, these "intermediate" punishments would better serve the community than our present polarized choice. Serious consideration of these punishments has been hindered by the widespread perception that they are therapeutic rather than punitive. The reality, however, Morris and Tonry argue, "is that the American criminal justice system is both too severe and too lenient--almost randomly." Systematically implemented and rigorously enforced, intermediate punishments can "better and more economically serve the community, the victim, and the criminal than the prison terms and probation orders they supplant." Between Prison and Probation goes beyond mere advocacy of an increasing use of intermediate punishments; the book also addresses the difficult task of fitting these punishments into a comprehensive, fair and community-protective sentencing system.

The authors argue that America's overwhelmed corrections system cannot cope with the rising crime rate unless sentencing policy is fundamentally reformed. They conclude their study with recommendations for a range of intermediate punishments.

A former parole officer shines a bright light on a huge yet hidden part of our justice system through the intertwining stories of seven parolees striving to survive the chaos that awaits them after prison in this illuminating and dramatic book. Prompted by a dead-end retail job and a vague desire to increase the amount of justice in his hometown, Jason Hardy became a parole officer in New Orleans at the worst possible moment. Louisiana’s incarceration rates were the highest in the US and his department’s caseload had just been increased to 220 “offenders” per parole officer, whereas the national average is around 100. Almost immediately, he discovered that the biggest problem with our prison system is what we do—and don’t do—when people get out of prison. Deprived of social support and jobs, these former convicts are often worse off than when they first entered prison and Hardy dramatizes their dilemmas with empathy and grace. He’s given unique access to their lives and a growing recognition of their struggles and takes on his job with the hope that he can change people’s fates—but he quickly learns otherwise. The best Hardy and his colleagues can do is watch out for impending disaster and help clean up the mess left behind. But he finds that some of his charges can muster the miraculous power to save themselves. By following these heroes, he both stokes our hope and fuels our outrage by showing us how most offenders, even those with the best intentions, end up back in prison—or dead—because the system systematically fails them. Our focus should be, he argues, to give offenders the tools they need to re-enter society which is not only humane but also vastly cheaper for taxpayers. As immersive and dramatic as Evicted and as revelatory as The New Jim Crow, The Second Chance Club shows us how to solve the cruelest problems prisons create for offenders and society at large.

"[The report] finds that supervision -– probation and parole -– drives high numbers of people, disproportionately those who are Black and brown, right back to jail or prison, while in large part failing to help them get needed services and resources. In states examined in the report, people are often incarcerated for violating the rules of their supervision or for low-level crimes, and receive disproportionate punishment following proceedings that fail to adequately protect their fair trial rights."--Publisher website.

This text provides an in-depth look at policy issues related to policing, courts, and corrections. It gives students the opportunity to look at difficult issues related to important topics, through an interesting selection of readings. Flexible in its design, the book includes twenty-seven classic and contemporary articles that promote understanding of important issues in the field and encourage readers to think critically about the links between police, politics, law and the administration of justice. Students will explore everything from the crime policies that do or do not work to the latest hot topics.

Through a comprehensive analysis of legislative and organisational changes and interviews with all the key players, The Honest Politician's Guide to Prisons and Probation provides an authoritative account of the crisis which has gradually engulfed the prison and probation services since 1991. Setting out the nature and extent of the crisis, King and Willmott show how the Woolf agenda was overridden in a process of political churn, through explorations of the Conservative government until 1997, New Labour from 1997 to 2010 and the Coalition and Conservative governments since 2010. Uniquely, interviews with all surviving Home Secretaries and Justice Secretaries of the period include insightful and candid reflections upon their time in office, and how they saw the future. Views from both inside and outside the prisons and probation services are also explored, based on interviews with the Director Generals of the Prison Service and of the new National Probation Service, Chief Inspectors of Prisons and Probation and the four most recent Lord Chief Justices, including Lord Woolf himself. Concluding by drawing on this collective wisdom, King and Willmott set out what is needed for an effective and sustainable future. It is essential reading not just for those in Westminster, but also for practitioners in criminal justice, advocacy organisations, thinktanks and scholars and students in Criminology, Criminal Justice, British Politics and Public Policy.

This report, part of a RAND study of the use of prison and probation for felony offenders, examines offender behavior after imprisonment. Using a sample of comparable prisoners and probationers, the authors investigate the association between imprisonment and recidivism, estimate the amount of crime that was prevented when felons were imprisoned rather than placed on probation, and discuss the costs to the criminal justice system to achieve that reduction in crime. The findings suggest the following: (1) The prisoners had higher recidivism rates than the probationers, both across crime types and in the aggregate. However, the prisoners' crimes were no more serious than the probationers', nor was there a significant difference in the length of time before their first filed charge. (2) The prisoners committed 20 percent fewer crimes than the probationers during the three years following their convictions. (3) The criminal justice system spent about twice as much on supervising and reprocessing prisoners as it did on probationers over the three-year period.

In the past 30 years, the population of prisoners in the United States has expanded almost 5-fold, correctional facilities are increasingly overcrowded, and more of the country's disadvantaged populations—racial minorities, women, people with mental illness, and people with communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C, and tuberculosis—are under correctional supervision. Because prisoners face restrictions on liberty and autonomy, have limited privacy, and often receive inadequate health care, they require specific protections when involved in research, particularly in today's correctional settings. Given these issues, the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Human Research Protections commissioned the Institute of Medicine to review the ethical considerations regarding research involving prisoners. The resulting analysis contained in this book, Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners, emphasizes five broad actions to provide prisoners involved in research with critically important protections: • expand the definition of "prisoner"; • ensure universally and consistently applied standards of protection; • shift from a category-based to a risk-benefit approach to research review; • update the ethical framework to include collaborative responsibility; and • enhance systematic oversight of research involving prisoners.