Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal最新文献

{"title":"A Behavioral Justification for Escalating Punishment Schemes","authors":"Murat C. Mungan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2130847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2130847","url":null,"abstract":"The standard two-period law enforcement model is considered in a setting where individuals rarely lose self-control or commit crime without first comparing expected costs and benefits. Where escalating punishment schemes are present, there is an inherent value in keeping a clean criminal record; a person with a record may unintentionally become a repeat offender if he fails to exert self-control, and be punished more severely. If the punishment for repeat offenders is sufficiently high, one may rationally forgo the opportunity of committing a profitable crime today to avoid being sanctioned as a repeat offender in the future. Therefore, partial deterrence can be achieved at a very low cost through the use of escalating penalties, providing a behavioral justification for punishing repeat offenders more severely.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122385659","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Regulating Crimmigration","authors":"E. Lee","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2559485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2559485","url":null,"abstract":"In the last decade, federal prison populations and deportations have both soared to record numbers. The principal cause of these sharp increases has been the leveraging of prior criminal convictions – mostly state convictions – into federal sentencing enhancements and deportations. These increases are controversial on political and policy grounds. Indeed, the political controversy has overshadowed the fact that the Nation’s Article III and immigration courts have struggled with an exquisitely difficult set of technical problems in determining which state criminal convictions should qualify for federal sentencing enhancements and/or deportation. The crux of the problem is that the underlying crime can be viewed in a fact-sensitive manner – which usually benefits the government – or in an abstract, “categorical�? manner – which usually benefits the individual. In two recent decisions, Descamps v. United States and Moncrieffe v. Holder, the U.S. Supreme Court has squarely sided with a categorical approach. Yet the implementation of a categorical approach faces three huge challenges: first, it cuts against the widely shared intuition that just punishment should turn on the facts of the case in question; second, it presupposes that federal courts will always be able to ascertain the essential elements of state offenses; and third, a categorical approach resists application to a significant number of existing federal statutes. This Article sketches out a coherent framework for administering a categorical approach across both federal sentencing and immigration, in the process reconciling seemingly inconsistent Supreme Court decisions and suggesting how several circuit splits should be resolved.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133258321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Vacancy in Justice: Analyzing the Impact of Overburdened Judges on Sentencing Decisions","authors":"Jason Best, L. Tiede","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2417348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2417348","url":null,"abstract":"Policymakers and scholars repeatedly warn that frequent and persistent judicial vacancies pose one of the greatest threats to the federal judiciary by overburdening judges. Scholars, in turn, are divided as to whether pressure on judges results in more lenient punishment. Despite such concerns, the effect of vacancies is rarely tested directly and related studies generally fail to account for issues of endogeneity related to vacancies and caseloads. We address both concerns by using an innovative instrumental variables strategy and unique data, consisting of over 400,000 cases to test vacancies’ effects on federal district court judges’ sentencing decisions. We find that overburdened judges take shortcuts, such as using focal points and cues, resulting in harsher sentences. The analysis has significant implications for those concerned with civil liberties and taxpayers who must shoulder the financial costs of incarceration.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2015-01-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114091273","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Double Edged Sword of Prison Video Visitation: Claiming to Keep Families Together While Furthering the Aims of the Prison Industrial Complex","authors":"Patrice A. Fulcher","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2461815","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2461815","url":null,"abstract":"Each year, the United States (“U.S.”) spends billions to house the country’s massive prison population. The need to board over 2.3 million incarcerated human beings has U.S. correctional departments looking for ways to increase revenues and offset costs. According to these correctional agencies, one major expense is prison visitation. In order to reduce spending and alleviate safety concerns, U.S. federal, state, and private correctional facilities have turned to video visitation as an alternative to in-person visits.The use of prison video visitation systems started in 1995. Since then, many private telecommunications companies have professed to have the solution to correctional visitation problems. These companies promote video visitation as a cheap, safe, and easy alternative to in-person visits, as well as a profitable means of generating revenues. Government and private correctional institutions, buying into these endorsements, have reduced or completely eliminated face-to-face visits and installed video visitation systems within their walls. Under this structure, inmates use video stations in their cellblock to visit family and friends at corresponding video kiosks within the institution; or inmates visit loved-ones who are at home or elsewhere outside prison walls via computer Internet video visitation.In order to sell this method of visitation to the public, U.S. correctional agencies contend that video visitation helps to keep families together by allowing inmates greater contact opportunities with loved ones. In some regards, it may be argued that video visitation does assist in the preservation of family units. Inmates are often forced to serve time in prisons miles away from their homes, so outside visits are far and few between. Yet, through the use of in-home video visitation configurations, inmates are able to connect with relatives who reside hours away.At first glance, this visitation scheme may seem beneficial, but this Article argues that prison video visitation is a double edge sword. First, prison video visitation may help preserve family units while people are incarcerated, but the elimination of face-to-face visits robs inmates of much needed human contact with their children, spouses, and other family members. Second, almost all in-home prison video visitation systems exploit the relatives and friends of inmates because they charge excessive fees to visit. Third, the economic success of prison video visitation systems is contingent on the number of incarcerated humans. So, like other profiteering schemes of the Prison Industrial Complex (“PIC”), prison video visitation incentivizes incarceration: A decrease in the prison population has a corollary effect on million dollar revenues and corporate profits, hence compelling the need to detain more U.S. inhabitants.Consequently, this Article argues that face-to-face visitation should be the primary means of contact for families that visit at prison facilities. In order to accom","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125315775","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Regulation of Sentencing Decisions: Why Information Disclosure Is Not Sufficient, and What To Do About It","authors":"W. Bunting","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2402890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2402890","url":null,"abstract":"This Article identifies a number of problems, both in practice and in theory, in what is denoted here as the “information disclosure model of sentencing regulation.” While the disclosure model places a lack of information at the heart of the problem of inefficient sentencing policy, the present article explains how the problem is better understood, not as informational, but incentives-based. A statutory appropriation requirement is described that seeks to correct an explained incentive to engage in myopic legislative decision-making; specifically, a one-year appropriation is required from a general budget fund into a statutorily-created special reserve fund for any proposed change in sentencing policy projected to increase the correctional population. A survey of existing statutory appropriation requirements is provided and certain best practices are identified; in addition, a novel statutory provision is proposed: monies should be appropriated from the special reserve fund to the general fund if a bill is projected to decrease the correctional population. Such withdrawals from the special reserve fund made in the current fiscal period serve as concrete, immediate evidence of the fiscal benefits of less punitive criminal sentences, where such benefits are often realized only in the long-run, and supply a novel incentive for legislators to engage in forward-looking, fiscally-responsible sentencing policy. The present article further contends that proposed changes in sentencing policy should not be subjected to cost-benefit analysis (as opposed to fiscal impact analysis as required under the statutory appropriation requirement), because the retributive value of a criminal sentence is extremely difficult to measure given the current state of estimation technology.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-02-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116684830","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unlocking the Courthouse Door: Removing the Barrier of the PLRA's Physical Injury Requirement to Permit Meaningful Judicial Oversight of Abuses in Supermax Prisons and Isolation Units","authors":"M. B. Mushlin","doi":"10.1525/FSR.2012.24.4.268","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/FSR.2012.24.4.268","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years the number of inmates held in isolation in American prisons has increased dramatically. At the same serious abuses have occurred in these isolation units. These abuses, which include subjecting inmates to degrading, humiliating and unnecessary suffering, often do not cause physical injury. Even though constitutional rights are violated by these acts, federal courts have often failed to provide relief to victims of these abuses. The reason is that the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) deprives federal courts of the ability to provide relief from degrading and even torturous behavior if there is not physical injury. This article calls for the repeal or reform of the physical injury requirement of the PLRA so that the ability of federal courts to provide meaningful remedies for violations of the United States Constitution can be restored.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"5 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121764845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Justice in the Shadowlands: Pretrial Detention, Punishment, and the Sixth Amendment","authors":"Laura I. Appleman","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2031196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2031196","url":null,"abstract":"In a criminal system that tips heavily to the side of wealth and power, we routinely detain the accused in often horrifying conditions, confined in jails while still maintaining the presumption of innocence. Here, in the rotting jail cells of impoverished defendants, are the Shadowlands of Justice, where the lack of criminal procedure has produced a darkness unrelieved by much scrutiny or concern on the part of the law. This article contends that our current system of pretrial detention lies in shambles, routinely incarcerating the accused in horrifying conditions often far worse than those convicted offenders existing in prisons. Due to these punitive conditions of incarceration, pretrial detainees appear to have a cognizable claim for the denial of their Sixth Amendment jury trial right, which, at its broadest, forbids punishment for any crime unless a cross-section of the offender’s community adjudicates his crime and finds him guilty. This article argues that the spirit of the Sixth Amendment jury trial right might apply to many pretrial detainees, due to both the punishment-like conditions of their incarceration and the unfair procedures surrounding bail grants, denials and revocations. In so arguing, I expose some of the worst abuses of current procedures surrounding bail and jail in both federal and state systems. Additionally, I also propose some much needed reforms in the pretrial release world, including better oversight of the surety bond system, reducing prison overcrowding by increasing electronic bail surveillance and revising the bail hearing procedure to permit a community “bail jury” to help decide the defendant’s danger to the community.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"133 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-03-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127308795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Peer Punishment with Third-Party Approval in a Social Dilemma Game","authors":"Fangfang Tan, Erte Xiao","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1945211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1945211","url":null,"abstract":"In a prisoner’s dilemma experiment, compared with the case when the implicated parties are allowed to punish each other, both the cooperation rate and the earnings are lower when the enforcement of punishment requires approval from an independent third party.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"2 9","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113932853","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?","authors":"Craig S. Lerner","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1908953","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1908953","url":null,"abstract":"Can the young be held accountable for their crimes? At common law, juveniles were entitled to a presumption of incapacity, but were subject to criminal liability on an individualized basis: demonstrated malice supplied the want of years. In Graham v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court rejected this principle and held that juveniles categorically could not be sentenced to life without parole for crimes other than homicide. This Article argues that embedded in the Court’s holding is a simplifying assumption about the relative maturity of juveniles and adults and a moral claim about the culpability of homicides and nonhomicides - both this assumption and this claim are demonstrably false in a nontrivial number of cases.This Article focuses on the facts of some of these cases. One cannot assess the culpability of particular defendants unless one considers, without artful euphemisms or convenient elisions, what they did. And what certain crimes reveal is that there are violent juvenile offenders - fortunately rare - who are at least as mature and culpable as the typical adult violent offender. The Article also considers lower court applications of Graham and finds, in many instances, marked skepticism. The Supreme Court’s general theory of juvenile immaturity has failed to impress judges confronting particular cases. The Court’s central claim about the relative culpability of adult and juvenile offenders originates from a failure to confront inconvenient facts and a belief that human nature is sufficiently captured by the three standard deviations that surround one’s own experience in the world. Lower court judges have access to a wider data set in reaching contrary conclusions.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"127 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114748007","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mechanisms for Reducing Criminal Recidivism: Experimental Evidence","authors":"Gregory J. DeAngelo, G. Charness, Beth A. Freeborn","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1894086","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1894086","url":null,"abstract":"We conduct laboratory experiments to investigate the effect of deterrence mechanisms on recidivism under controlled conditions. Experimental analysis allows for easier identification of recidivism than the use of empirical or field data. Specifically, we focus on the effect of variation in expected cost of behavior on the rate of recidivism and the number of times an individual re-offends after apprehension. We use a roadway speeding framework and find that the rate of recidivism and number of times an individual re-commits a proscribed act are strongly influenced by the expected penalty.","PeriodicalId":372228,"journal":{"name":"Corrections & Sentencing Law & Policy eJournal","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126363405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}