{"title":"Rethinking Drug Policy","authors":"K. Beckett","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"The drug war has failed and must end. The question is: How—and what should replace it? Ideally, an improved response to injurious forms of drug use would reduce the harm caused by criminal legal system involvement, the suffering that stems from unmanaged addiction, the harm that flows from illicit and unregulated drug markets, and racial inequities in all of these sources of harm. This chapter identifies several shifts in drug policy that achieve these goals and are feasible in the near to medium term. These include the radical expansion of alternative responses to substance use disorder and low-level crime based on harm-reduction principles and dramatically increased investment in medication-assisted treatment programs and in low-income housing, including Housing First models. If brought to scale, these changes would reduce drug-related suffering, the harm associated with the illicit drug market, the misery caused by the involvement of the criminal legal system in the lives of people who use illicit substances, and racial inequities in these forms of suffering.","PeriodicalId":426166,"journal":{"name":"Ending Mass Incarceration","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127735043","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 Limits of Recent Drug Policy Reforms","authors":"K. Beckett","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Judging by historical standards, it appears that the drug war is alive and well. This chapter identifies several factors that explain why recent drug policy reforms have had such a modest impact on drug arrests and incarceration. First, state lawmakers have focused overwhelmingly on reducing penalties for drug possession, but people who were convicted of this specific offense comprise a very small share (3.5 percent) of the prison population. Second, while reducing the use of confinement in cases involving drug distribution could have a more meaningful impact on the scale of incarceration, policy is moving in the opposite direction. Third, the ongoing commitment to drug war practices in rural and suburban areas is sustaining high drug arrest rates and incarceration. Finally, one of the most pervasive kinds of drug policy reforms—reliance on drug courts—is likely increasing rather than reducing drug arrests and incarceration. There is also evidence that drug courts enhance racial disparities in drug case outcomes.","PeriodicalId":426166,"journal":{"name":"Ending Mass Incarceration","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124752448","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":"Violence and Restorative Justice","authors":"K. Beckett","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Existing criminal justice and sentencing policies do not serve survivors of violence well, particularly those who are of color and from disadvantaged communities. Policies that allow for the imposition of long and life sentences are often said to reflect victims’ preferences, but this is misleading. Long prison sentences also consume significant public dollars that could be reallocated to improve victim services and enhance crime prevention efforts. Increased investment in restorative justice alternatives would also provide a more effective, humane, and racially equitable way of responding to the problem of violence. While important questions about scalability remain unresolved, developing the institutional capacity to operate restorative justice-inspired interventions that target violence and survivors of color is an important component of the effort to ameliorate the harm associated with both violence and mass incarceration.","PeriodicalId":426166,"journal":{"name":"Ending Mass Incarceration","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122712005","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":"Reimagining Public Safety","authors":"K. Beckett","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"The ascendance of a narrow definition of public safety that recognizes just one threat to public safety, the risk of interpersonal violence, was the result of an eminently useful political strategy employed by conservative (and, increasingly, liberal) political actors in recent decades. Yet the institutional expression of this political strategy—mass incarceration—has been a colossal policy failure. Mass incarceration does not make us safer. In fact, by consuming scarce public resources, substituting for meaningful assistance for people who have experienced crime and violence, and reinforcing poverty and racial inequality, mass incarceration has failed us all. It has particularly failed communities of color and low-income families by ensnaring, traumatizing, and stigmatizing millions. In seeking to end mass incarceration, our efforts to reduce the state’s power to punish must be tethered to policies and practices that reduce and ameliorate all forms of harm and suffering. True public safety requires no less.","PeriodicalId":426166,"journal":{"name":"Ending Mass Incarceration","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129293466","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 Politics of Violence","authors":"K. Beckett","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter shows that the issue of violence poses political and cultural challenges that are a significant obstacle to criminal legal reform. These challenges are even more difficult to surmount than the opposition of vested interests that often work to block reform. Virtually all states have adopted at least some decarcerative reforms (often against the opposition of interest groups such as prison guard unions or prosecutor associations). However, most of the reforms that have been enacted pertain only to nonviolent crimes. The reluctance of lawmakers to end excessive sentences for more serious crimes reflects deeply rooted and widely shared images of people who have committed an act of violence at one point in their lives as monstrous and irredeemable others. The second section of this chapter critiques this myth of monstrosity, which is deeply rooted in racist tropes and stereotypes, and is in tension with a substantial body of social scientific evidence.","PeriodicalId":426166,"journal":{"name":"Ending Mass Incarceration","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130962110","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 Place of Punishment","authors":"K. Beckett","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"The continued use of prisons and jails at historically high levels in rural and suburban areas is sustaining mass incarceration. Although urban counties have far higher crime rates, criminal legal authorities in suburban and rural counties send a much greater share of the people who are arrested on felony charges to prison. Counties with higher levels of social disadvantage, more conservative electorates, and larger Black populations have higher prison admission rates after controlling for crime-related problems. Even after taking all of these factors into account, however, rural and suburban counties have comparatively high prison admission rates. If rural and suburban counties matched urban counties in terms of their use of prison, prison admissions would be reduced by roughly one-third. While geographic variation in the propensity to punish increasingly falls along urban/nonurban lines, it is made possible by the existence of tough sentencing laws that enable zealous prosecutors and judges to impose severe penalties.","PeriodicalId":426166,"journal":{"name":"Ending Mass Incarceration","volume":"76 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113990546","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":"End Excessive Sentencing","authors":"K. Beckett","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197536575.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores why comprehensive sentencing reform and a twenty-year maximum sentence are essential to efforts to reverse mass incarceration. The widespread imposition of long and life sentences has contributed significantly to mass incarceration and is an ineffective and inefficient means of protecting public safety. Moreover, the proliferation of harsh sentencing laws has led to a dramatic decline in the share of cases that are adjudicated at trial and a notable increase in the penalty defendants pay for exercising their right to trial. Reliance on excessive sentences is also a costly approach to the problem of violence, one that consumes significant tax dollars that might otherwise be spent on evidence-based crime prevention programs, victim services, and restorative justice alternatives. While a twenty-year maximum sentence would mean a significant change in the United States, such a policy would bring the country into line with human rights norms and the practices of other democratic countries.","PeriodicalId":426166,"journal":{"name":"Ending Mass Incarceration","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133351229","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}
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