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DB # 1 FROM THEORY TO POLICY: EVIDENCE-BASED CORRECTIONS

Topic: From Theory to Policy: Evidence-Based Corrections

In this assignment you will apply the readings and presentations in the Reading & Study folder of Week 1 in a meaningful way to clarify your understanding of the correctional system. Choose a theory from the week’s readings and discuss how it has influenced policy in corrections. What do you think the long-term effects of these events will be on the system?

Submit your thread by 11:59 a.m. on Thursday 5/20/2021 of this week.  

Submit your replies by 11:59 a.m. on Saturday 5/23/2021 of the same week. 

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PRESENTATION: FROM THEORY TO POLICY: EVIDENCE-BASED CORRECTIONS

Official Statistics

· Official Statistics show that more than 1.5 million offenders are imprisoned in state and federal institutions.

The Future of Incarceration

· The Future of Incarceration: The United States clearly has grown remarkably fond of a massive correctional system that is “addicted to incarceration” (Pratt, 2009).

· What does the Bible say about incarceration? There are places in the Bible that talks about imprisoning people.

Why Are So Many Incarcerated

· Why Are So Many Incarcerated? The simple answer is that they have committed crimes and been convicted and thus some response by the government is required.

The Role of Theory

· The Role of Theory: Theories matter because they affect correctional policy.

· Rival theories of corrections have three components:

1. There is a statement of purpose or goal of corrections.

2. Each theory has an implicit or explicit blueprint for how the correctional system should be arranged, including policies, practices, and organizational structure.

3. They each make a claim of effectiveness.

The Role of Theory in Evidence-Based Corrections

· Evidence-based corrections

· Theories are not autonomous entities that exist in come virtual reality above the world they seek to guide

· Social context matters

· CONTEXT drives THEORY and theory drives POLICY

The Role of Evidence-Based Corrections

· Correctional quackery is when one uses interventions not based on the scientific evidence. It is widespread and its eradication is a key challenge for those hoping to make American corrections better for offenders and better for public safety.

Seven Theories of Corrections

1. Retribution or Just Deserts

2. Deterrence

3. Incapacitation

4. Restorative Justice

5. Rehabilitation

6. Reentry

7. Early Intervention

Retribution or Just Deserts

· At the core of this theory is to mandate to pay an offender back for his or her wrongdoing.

Deterrence

· Proposes that offenders should be punished so that they will be taught that “crime does not pay” and thus will not return to crime.

Incapacitation

· No assumptions is made about offenders and why they commit their crimes.

· Criminals are likened to wild, predatory animals, whose essential natures are given are not going to change.

· We do not really care why they got that way, and we should have no illusions that they can be reformed.

Restorative Justice

· The goal is for all harms to be rectified and the injured parties to be restored.

· Offenders must restore the victims and the community they harmed.

Rehabilitation

· The goal is to intervene so as to change those factors that are causing offenders to break the law.

Reentry

· Definition:

· Reentry is defined as the transition of offenders from an institution into the community, typically under some form of correctional supervision.

· Reentry is a planned correctional intervention designed to facilitate an inmate’s return to society so as to prevent further recidivism.

Early Intervention

· Early intervention involves placing children at risk for a criminal future into programs early in life so as to prevent them from developing into juvenile or adult criminals.

Conclusion

· Corrections is serious business

· People’s lives are at stake-both offenders and potential victims

· Corrections also is a political institution- an arm of the state.

· It is vulnerable to being caught up in larger socio-political movements that change the social context and thus usher in new ways of thinking and new ways of doing things.

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CHAPTER 1

1 From Theory to Policy Evidence-Based Corrections

This is the APA citation for the book: Cullen, F. T., & Jonson, C. L. (2016). Correctional theory: Context and consequences. Sage Publications.

Doris Layton MacKenzie

Pennsylvania State University

Author of What Works in Corrections

On any given day in the United States, more than 1.5 million offenders are imprisoned in state and federal institutions. When inmates in jails and other custodial facilities (e.g., juvenile institutions) are included in the count, the nation’s incarcerated population surpasses 2.2 million (Carson, 2014). There are also approximately 3.9 million offenders on probation and more than 850,000 people on parole (Herberman & Bonczar, 2014). Taken together, nearly 7 million Americans are under the supervision of the correctional system (Glaze & Kaeble, 2014). To put this number in more understandable terms, 1 in every 110 American adults is behind bars, and 1 in 35 is under some form of correctional control. For African Americans, this latter figure is 1 in 12 (Glaze & Kaeble, 2014; Pew Charitable Trusts, 2008, 2009; Wolfers, Leonhardt, & Quealy, 2015).

It can be misleading to cite statistics and imply that some crisis is at hand. For example, on any given day in America, about 600,000 people are in hospitals and 19.5 million are enrolled in college degree programs (United States Census Bureau, 2014). Are these numbers cause for concern? But in this case, the United States clearly has grown remarkably fond of a massive correctional system that is, in Travis Pratt’s (2009) words, “addicted to incarceration.” Signs exist the United States is trying to kick the imprisonment habit—an issue that will we will consider. But the stubborn fact remains that other Western industrialized nations exercise more restraint in locking up their citizens, both in terms of how many and for how long (Tonry, 2007). It is hard to imagine that in the early 1970s, the number of inmates in state and federal prisons dipped below 200,000. If we turn to today’s count—the 1.5 million cited above—we see that the United States has experienced more than a seven-fold increase in its prison population. Might this just be a product of the growth of the nation’s citizenry? Yes, America’s population has jumped from just over 200 million to just under 320 million. But this increase explains only a fraction of the expansion of the incarcerated population.

So, why do we place so many people in the correctional system? The simple answer, of course, is that they have committed crimes and been convicted, and thus some response by the government is required. But this explanation has two problems. First, it suggests that the amount of crime and the amount of corrections in a nation are tightly connected. But this is not the case. Within the United States, correctional populations do not rise and fall as crime rates rise and fall. Further, cross-nationally, nations with similar crime rates have incarceration rates that are dissimilar. To a degree, then, how many people are in prison or under community supervision is a policy choice. And this choice itself has a lot to do with what we hope to accomplish through a correctional intervention (Tonry, 2004, 2007).

This discussion thus leads us to the second problem with the simple notion that people are in the correctional system because they are offenders. This explanation begs the larger question of what purpose is served by intervening in the lives of offenders. What do we hope to accomplish? Our book is designed to address this very question. It is also intended to demonstrate that theories matter because they affect correctional policy.

Now, as just implied, across time in the United States competing visions have been set forth of what corrections should be about. We call these rival perspectives theories of corrections. They are comprised of three components. First, there is a statement of the purpose or goal of corrections. These tend to emphasize either restraining and inflicting pain on offenders or helping and reforming offenders. Another way to phrase this is that the purpose involves a punishment response or a social welfare response. Second, each theory has an implicit or explicit blueprint for how the correctional system should be arranged, including policies, practices, and organizational structure. Ideas thus matter; they influence what we do in corrections. Theories also breed conflict because each one demands that the correctional system be organized in a different way. Third, theories make a claim of effectiveness. Advocates assert not only that a theory’s core goal is moral but also that their theory can be implemented effectively—in short, that it “works.” For example, proponents of deterrence theory claim that we should place offenders in prison because it yields lower reoffending rates than a community sanction. Is this really the case? This is where evidence-based corrections comes in and proves critical in discerning what works and what does not work. Data, not mere opinions, should play the central role in guiding allegiance to any given correctional theory and the correctional system it proposes.

Importantly, correctional theories are not autonomous entities that exist in some virtual reality above the world they seek to guide. Rather, they are produced by and believed by humans who live in particular socio-historical times. If you were living in the first part of the 1900s rather than today, your view of the world and of offenders might be quite different. If you now reside in a Red State or a Blue State, or perhaps in an urban neighborhood wracked by crime or in a gated community in a ritzy suburb, your policy preferences might not be the same. One author of this book (Cullen) grew up in Massachusetts in an Irish family in which John Kennedy was admired and nary a Republican was in sight. He was schooled by the Sisters of Notre Dame who expertly inculcated not only a deep capacity for guilt but also a deep commitment to social justice. As a grade-school child, he learned the value of charity, donating coinage—and even the occasional dollar bill—to aid the poor and to help missionaries save “pagan babies” (yes, this is what the good Sisters called non-Catholic children in foreign lands!). Perhaps it is not surprising that his first book was called Reaffirming Rehabilitation (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982). Be forewarned: Cullen remains a supporter of rehabilitation—as is the case for coauthor Jonson, whose Catholic upbringing is a story for another time. We claim to be so now not because of nuns, priests, or the Pope, but because we are scientists who can read the empirical evidence. We will leave it to the readers to determine if this is indeed the case.

Thus, the chapters in this book are arranged—from front to back—in a rough timeline to show how the fate of correctional theories largely has hinged on the prevailing social context. For example, in politically liberal times, theories embracing offender reformation have flourished, whereas in more conservative times American corrections has been directed by theories advocating punishing offenders harshly and through incarceration.

In  Chapter 2 , we begin this story by showing how the theory of rehabilitation emerged in the Progressive Era of the early 1900s and dominated American corrections into the 1960s. The social turmoil of the sixties led to the attack on this therapeutic vision and resulted in theories emphasizing punishment. The conservative times of the 1980s, dominated by President Ronald Reagan, constituted a receptive context for seeing offenders as wicked super-predators beyond redemption and in need of caging. More recently, the limits, if not at times the bankruptcy, of political conservatism have created space for more reformist approaches to offenders. In fact, there is a growing consensus across political parties that mass imprisonment is no longer sustainable. The United States is now at a crucial policy turning point in trying to decide what the correctional system should seek to accomplish. Correctional theory promises to be at the center of the policy conversation that is ongoing across the nation.

The key intent of this analysis is to sensitize readers to the reality that social context matters. What people experience shapes how they see the world, which in turn makes them more receptive to certain correctional theories than to others. This is true of readers, of criminologists, and of us. Large shifts in the social context thus tend to produce shifts in the extent to which a given theory continues to “make sense” to the American public. It can also affect whether politicians believe that they can use specific crime control policies—such as favoring “law and order”—to advance their careers (Garland, 2001; Simon, 2007).

If context has a defining influence on correctional theory and policy, this may mean that, by contrast, something else plays only a limited role in guiding system practices. What might this “something else” be—something that is not paid attention to sufficiently? Some readers might anticipate the answer to this question: It is the evidence on whether a theory has merit. Does what the perspective proposes actually work? A huge problem in corrections is that many policies and practices have been based more on common sense rooted in individuals’ experiences than on hard empirical evidence. This failure to consult the evidence has led to correctional interventions that either are ineffective or iatrogenic—a fancy medical term meaning that the “cure” actually makes the patient, in this case the offender, worse off. In medicine, we call using interventions not based on the scientific evidence quackery. As we note below, correctional quackery is widespread and its eradication is a key challenge for those hoping to make American corrections better for offenders and better for public safety (Latessa, Cullen, & Gendreau, 2002).

Thus far, then, we have identified the core themes that inform the chapters that follow. Let us summarize them clearly here:

· Correctional theories identify what the purpose of the correctional system should be and what policies should be implemented.

· Historically, the popularity of competing correctional theories has been shaped by the prevailing social context. People’s experiences affect what ideas about crime and its control make sense to them.

· Theories should be judged in large part on whether the policies they suggest achieve what they promise. Is a theory guilty of false advertisement—of making claims it cannot produce?

· The key to knowing what does and does not work—to knowing which theories should be embraced—is to look at the data. Corrections should be evidence-based.

In the remainder of this chapter, we address two topics in some detail. First, we have already mentioned that there are different theories of corrections. Thus, we start out by explaining what these are and then discuss issues related to them. In particular, we show why knowing whether these theories work—whether they have utility—is essential to knowing whether we should endorse them. Second, this analysis leads us directly into an examination of evidence-based corrections, a movement that argues for the use of data to inform correctional policy and practice. A large part of this book is about using evidence to evaluate the relative merits of the competing correctional theories. We alert readers—as we have done above—that corrections is a domain in which those in charge do many things to those under their control without ever consulting the research evidence on what the best practices might be. Readers might think that we are joking or, in the least, exaggerating. We are not.

In a way, we are mystified by this reluctance to consult the evidence before intervening in the lives of others. We consider it unprofessional, especially when people’s lives are at stake—including both offenders themselves and those they might victimize in the future (Latessa et al., 2002). Still, we realize that the evidence on what does and does not work in corrections is not always clear. Studies can reach conflicting conclusions, and those who must daily face real-life inmates and community-based offenders are often undertrained and overworked. Finding out what is a best practice—separating quackery from effective policy and practice—is often a daunting challenge.

In this context, this book attempts to present the evidence on rival correctional theories in what we hope is an accessible way. Make no mistake: Some issues are technical and some conclusions are, at best, provisional. But we trust that after taking an excursion through this volume’s pages, readers will be more equipped to know the merits of the main correctional theories and will be more prepared to practice evidence-based corrections.

Theories of Corrections

What we call theories of corrections are often referred to as philosophies of punishment. This terminology is employed because each approach—for example, rehabilitation or deterrence—is seen as providing a philosophical justification for why it is legitimate for the state to punish someone through the criminal justice system. In the case of rehabilitation, the justification would be that the state sanctions in order to reform the wayward offender. We prefer the construct of theories of corrections, however, because it is broader in scope. It includes not only the goal or justification for sanctioning an offender but also the accompanying blueprint for how the correctional system should be designed in order to achieve a given goal. Thus, if rehabilitation is seen as corrections’ main goal, then this will dictate a certain kind of sentencing, whether to have a separate juvenile court, the nature of community supervision, and the use of therapeutic programs in prison.

Thus, each philosophy or goal logically suggests a corresponding theory about which policies and practices should be pursued in the correctional system. This link between goals and what is done in corrections is often missed. In part, this is because most of us have multiple ideas of what the correctional system should accomplish—that is, we have multiple goals we want corrections to pursue. This is probably a practical way of viewing things, but it does mean that we often embrace goals that require incompatible correctional policies and practices. Take, for example, parole. The goal of “rehabilitation” would justify this policy (i.e., release inmates when they have been “cured”), whereas the goal of “deterrence” would not (i.e., parole would just teach inmates that they will not be fully punished for their crimes). Now, if we wanted the correctional system to deter and to rehabilitate, that might be a reasonable thing to desire. However, organizing the system to accomplish both goals fully is impossible. In this case, it is not feasible to both have and not have parole!

Again, in judging correctional theories, a key issue is that of effectiveness. Most often in corrections, we measure effectiveness—whether something works—by its impact on recidivism (although sometimes the focus is on crime rates). That is, if you follow a certain theory of corrections, does it make it less likely that offenders will return to crime? We could use other outcome measures, such as whether the theory saves money or makes offenders more employable and better citizens. But let’s be serious here: The “biggie” criterion for measuring effectiveness in corrections is whether something reduces crime.

As noted above, it is a daunting challenge to determine whether a policy—say, placing youths in a boot camp or in a prison cell—works to diminish reoffending. This is why, as criminologists, we are driven to distraction when scholars, policy makers, media commentators, or people at the donut shop just glibly say that a certain policy “works.” How do they know? Well, it’s their “opinion.” That is not good enough! Remember, we favor science over attitude. We want all readers to jump on the bandwagon of evidence-based corrections!

Seven Theories in Brief

The intent at this point is to give a brief introduction to the major theories of corrections. These will be reviewed in greater detail in chapters devoted to each one. There are seven main theories of corrections:

· Retribution or Just Deserts

· Deterrence

· Incapacitation

· Restorative Justice

· Rehabilitation

· Reentry

· Early Intervention

Retribution: Balancing the Scales of Justice

At the core of this theory is the mandate to pay an offender back for his or her wrongdoing. This attempt to “get even” is sometimes called “retribution” and sometimes called “just deserts.” Conservatives tend to favor the former term, liberals the latter. Why? Because conservatives wish to ensure that offenders feel the pain they have caused, they thus seek retribution. By contrast, liberals wish to make sure that offenders suffer no more than the pain they have caused; they want to see justice done but only that which is truly deserved. This distinction between retribution and just deserts is more than semantics—more than a war of words. Conservatives typically believe that retribution is achieved only when harsh punishments—especially lengthy prison terms—have been imposed, whereas liberals typically believe that just deserts is achieved through more moderate punishments and shorter prison sentences. Despite these differences, those in both political camps embrace the idea that the core purpose of the correctional system is to balance the scales of justice.

Note, however, that “getting even”—this balancing the scales of justice through a figurative eye-for-an-eye approach—is unrelated to the goal of reducing crime and of making communities safer. Offenders are punished as an end in and of itself—to achieve justice. Such pain or punishment is seen as warranted or “deserved” because the offender is assumed to have used his or her “free will” in deciding to break the law.

Because retribution or just deserts seeks to be an end in and of itself, this theory is called non-utilitarian. Theories that are utilitarian seek to sanction offenders not simply to sanction them, but for some other purpose. This purpose is most often to reduce crime. For example, I might put you in prison in hopes that someone else will learn of your fate and be too afraid to break the law. This is the so-called notion of punishing Peter to make Paul conform. To someone who believes in retribution, this action would be immoral. Peter should be punished only for what Peter personally has done. What Paul might or might not do should not be a consideration. In any event, hard as it is to keep straight, let us repeat the point: Principled advocates of retribution or just deserts could care less about how criminal sanctions affect crime. They are in the business of doing justice, not controlling crime.

As we will note shortly, utilitarian theories make the claim that their approach to corrections works best to reduce crime. This is an empirical issue. We can test these assertions by examining the data. This is where evidenced-based corrections becomes important. For the most part, evidence is not central to evaluating retribution or just deserts. This theory is based mainly on values—on the principle that people who harm others deserve to be harmed equally in response. We will not delve deeply into the issue here, but suffice it to say that this theory does make claims that can be evaluated with evidence—not about reducing crime but about other things.

For example, retribution or just deserts bases its morality on the assertion that people break the law due to their free will. This is why this theory demands that punishments should be calibrated to the seriousness of the crime; the more serious the crime, the harsher the punishment. Focusing exclusively on the crime presumes that all people are the same and thus face the same choice when it comes to crime. The only thing that separates them is how they decide to exercise their free will—to break the law or not. But what if criminological research shows—as indeed it does—that the propensity for crime begins in the first years of life and that offenders are, through no conscious choice of their own, quite different from non-offenders? What does this do to the free will assumption? In short, criminological evidence has implications for the claims of retribution theory whenever they are based on some view of how people and the world actually operate.

Deterrence: Scaring Offenders Straight

Deterrence theory proposes that offenders should be punished so that they will be taught that “crime does not pay” and thus will not to return to crime. Note that deterrence theory assumes that offenders are rational. Accordingly, efforts to increase the cost of crime—usually through more certain and severe penalties—will cause offenders to choose to “go straight” out of fear that future criminality will prove too painful. They will refrain from reoffending so as to avoid the cost of the criminal sanction. This is called specific deterrence; sometimes, the term special deterrence is used. In any event, the key point is the assumption that punishing Mary—such as putting her in jail for a while—will make her less like to recidivate.

There is also the concept of general deterrence. Here, 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 Mary, then, is to make Paula think twice and not commit the crime she might have been contemplating. So, just to sum up: When other people in society refrain from crime because they witness offenders’ punishments and fear suffering a similar fate, this is called general deterrence.

What kinds of correctional policies do you think deterrence theory favors? To start with, deterrence advocates oppose discretion—that is, giving people like judges the freedom to place, for example, one robber in prison but not another or allowing parole officials to release one robber earlier from prison than another. You and I might disagree with deterrence theory on this point; we might want to give judges and parole board members such discretionary powers because no two robbers are the same. The two robbers just mentioned might have offended for different reasons—one to get money to buy drugs and party all night, the other in response to a mental disturbance. Similarly, when sent to prison, one robber might have worked harder than the other to be rehabilitated. Does it make sense to keep them both behind bars the same length of time? Because people, including any two criminals, differ, treating them the same in corrections ignores this important reality. It can result in interventions that do not work. Your authors, Cullen and Jonson, do, in fact, believe this.

Such thinking by Cullen, Jonson, and most other criminologists, according to deterrence theory, is mistaken. (Cullen and Jonson will return to this issue later in this book.) Deterrence advocates believe—or at least are willing to assume—that offenders exercise rational choice when breaking the law. This view is akin to the idea of free will, only a bit more specific. Offenders are seen to use their free will but in a rational way: They assess the potential costs of committing a crime, such as going to prison, versus the potential benefits, such as stealing money or, say, a computer.

If people do in fact consciously weigh costs and benefits, then two things follow. First, in many criminal situations, the benefits of crime are staring offenders in the face: They can see the laptop computer that is there for the taking or a pusher’s hand is displaying drugs to get high on if only they exchange some cash. Put another way, the gratifications tend to be immediate and often easily attained (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990). So why not succumb to temptation and grab these crime benefits? According to deterrence theorists, people will exercise self-control only when a little accountant in their heads pops up and says: “Hmm. Let’s do the calculation. Not a good idea. If you steal that computer and get caught, you will go to jail. It’s not worth it. Walk on by that computer, my foolish friend!”

Second, the critical issue thus becomes whether this little accountant thinks the crime—stealing the computer—will lead to an arrest and, if so, knows what punishment a subsequent conviction will actually bring. According to deterrence theorists, we cannot be ambiguous here. We cannot say, “Well, if you are caught, you might or might not go to prison. And if you go to prison, you might stay five years but you might get out in one year.” Every time judges and parole boards exercise discretion, they claim, the cost of punishment is made either less certain or less severe. No wonder, then, that the little accountant often concludes: “Hmm. How the hell do I know what’s going to happen to you? Take the damn computer, sell it for some hard cash, and then let’s get high and party down, dude!”

Deterrence theory thus provides a basis for a particular kind of correctional system. Punish the crime, not the criminal. This is done not to achieve retribution or just deserts but to reduce crime. Deterrence is a utilitarian theory; it is all about crime control. Punishments are to be fixed tightly to specific crimes