Chapter Eighteen Incarceration Trends

1. Chapter EighteenIncarceration Trends

2. Learning Objectives • Discuss the explanations for the dramatic increase in the incarceration rate. • Explain what can be done to deal with the prison population crisis. • Be familiar with the impact of prison crowding. • Discuss whether incarceration pays.

3. Learning Objective 1 • Learning objective 1: Discuss the explanations for the dramatic increase in the incarceration rate.

4. Prison Population Trends • 1930-1980, incarceration rate fairly stable: • 93-139 per 100,000 • 1980: • 200 per 100,000 • 1990: • 389 per 100,000 • 2000-2007: • 486 per 100,000

5. Prison Population Trends • 5 states with highest incarceration rate: • Louisiana • Mississippi • Oklahoma • Alabama • 19 states and federal government operated at or above capacity in 2007

6. Prison Population Trends • 5 reasons for increase: • Increased arrests and more likely incarceration • Tougher sentencing • Prison construction • 1990-2005 – over 500 prisons built • War on drugs • State and local politics

7. State and Local Politics • Study, 1971 – 1991: • States with high violent crime have higher levels of imprisonment. • States with higher revenues have higher prison populations. • States with higher unemployment and higher percentage of African Americans have higher prison populations. • States with more-generous welfare benefits have lower prison populations.

8. State and Local Politics • Study, 1971 – 1991: • States with more conservatives have not only higher incarceration rates, but their rates grew more rapidly than did the rates of states with fewer conservatives. • Political incentives for an expansive prison policy transcended Democratic and Republican affiliations.

9. Learning Objective 2 • Learning objective 2: Explain what can be done to deal with the prison population crisis.

10. Overcrowded Prisons • The null strategy: • Doing nothing to relieve crowding in prisons, under the assumption that the problem is temporary and will disappear in time. • The constructions strategy: • Building new facilities to meet the demand for prison space.

11. Overcrowded Prisons • Intermediate sanctions: • Community service • Restitution • Fines • Boot camp • Home confinement • Intensive probation supervision • Prison population reduction

12. Learning Objective 3 • Learning objective 3: Be familiar with the impact of prison crowding.

13. Impact of Prison Crowding • Affects ability of correctional officials to do their work, because it decreases the proportion of offenders in programs. • Increases the potential for violence • Greatly strains staff morale • Courts have cited states for maintaining prisons so crowded that they violate 8th Amendment’s cruel and unusual prohibition.

14. Impact of Prison Crowding • Prisoner health • Higher assault rates

15. Learning Objective 4 • Learning objective 4: Discuss whether incarceration pays.

16. Incarceration Pays • No definitive answer • Need more accurate estimate of the number of crimes felons commit • Need better method of calculating costs: • Correctional capital • Operating costs • Indirect costs • Political and moral issues

17. Chapter TwentyThe Death Penalty

18. Learning Objective • Contrast the issues in the debate over capital punishment. • Understand the history of the death penalty in America. • Discuss the legal issues that surround the death penalty. • Characterize the inmates on death row. • Speculate about the future of capital punishment.

19. Learning Objective 1 • Learning objective 1: Contrast the issues in the debate over capital punishment.

20. Debate • Support: • Murder must forfeit the murder’s life, if there is to be justice (moral) • Executions of wrongdoers deter others from committing the crime (utilitarian) • Death penalty serves justice by paying killers back for their horrible crimes • Victims’ families can be reassured that the murder received a just punishment • Prevents murders from doing further harm • Death penalty less expensive than life in prison

21. Debate • Opposition: • Mistakes can and have been made • Discriminates against poor people and racial minorities • No deterrent effect of the penalty • Wrong for government to participate in intentional killing

22. Learning Objective 2 • Learning objective 2: Understand the history of the death penalty in America.

23. Death Penalty in America • Executions carried out in public until 1830s • Last public execution – August 14, 1936, 20,000 spectators • Between 1930-1967: 3,859 executions • Average: 128 per year in 1940s • 72 in the 50s • 19 in the 60s • June 1977-June 2009: 1,125 executions

24. Death Penalty in America • Support for capital punishment falls when other options are present • 111 death sentences pronounced in 2009 • Almost 3,300 wait on death row • Since 1976 executions have never exceeded 98 in any one year

25. Learning Objective 3 • Learning objective 3: Discuss the legal issues that surround the death penalty.

26. Legal Issues • Furman v. Georgia (1972): • Death penalty was itself not unconstitutional, but the way it was administered constituted cruel and unusual punishment. • Gregg v. Georgia (1976): • Upheld laws that required the sentencing judge or jury to take into account specific aggravating and mitigating factors in deciding which convicted murders should be sentenced to death.

27. Legal Issues • McCleskey v. Kemp (1987): • Court rejected a challenge, on the grounds of racial discrimination, to Georgia’s death penalty law. • Atkins v. Virginia (2002): • Execution of the mentally retarded was unconstitutional. • Ring v. Arizona (2002): • Juries, rather than judges, must make the crucial factual decisions as to whether a convicted murderer should receive the death penalty.

28. Legal Issues • Roper v. Simmons (2002): • Offenders cannot be sentenced to death for crimes they committed before they reached the age of 18. • Strickland v. Washington (1984): • Defendants in capital cases have the right to representation that meets an “objective standard of reasonableness.”

29. Legal Issues • Witherspoon v. Illinois (1968): • Potential jurors who have general objections to the death penalty or whose religious convictions oppose its use cannot be automatically excluded from jury service in capital cases. • Uttecht v. Brown (2007): • Enhanced state’s ability to remove potential jurors with doubts about the death penalty

30. Legal Issues • Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008): • Capital sentence where the crime did not involve murder was in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth amendments. • Coker v. Georgia (1977): • Use of death penalty for rape of an adult was unconstitutional. • Medellin v. Texas (2008) • President did not have the power to order that states to follow the Vienna Convention.

31. Learning Objective 4 • Learning objective 4: Characterize the inmates on death row.

32. Death Row Inmates • Poorly educated men from low-income backgrounds • 65% have prior felony convictions • 8.4% have prior homicide convictions • 27% were on probation, parole, or in prison • Only 58 women, only 11 have been executed since 1976

33. Death Row Inmates • Where: • 54% in south • 2.5% in West • 14% in Midwest • 7% from northeastern states • 65% of executions carried out in 5 states 1977-2009): • Texas (439) • Virginia (103) • Oklahoma (90) • Missouri (67) • Florida (67)

34. Learning Objective 5 • Learning objective 5: Speculate about the future of capital punishment.

35. The Future • Innocent death row inmates • Decrease in number of death sentences • States abolishing death penalty

36. Chapter Twenty-OneSurveillance and Control in the Community

37. Learning Objectives • Understand the goals of surveillance. • Know the techniques of surveillance and control now in use. • Describe how control is a double-edged sword. • Recognize the limits of control. • Explore how to develop an acceptable system of community control.

38. Learning Objective 1 • Learning objective 1: Understand the goals of surveillance.

39. Goals • Generally main goal is thought to be community protection: • Most offenders are not dangerous for 2 reasons: • Once caught many offenders do not return to crime • When offenders continue, most crime are petty acts that do not really endanger their victims. • More motivation for surveillance is to reduce prison overcrowding. • Without surveillance, treatment providers cannot know for sure if a given treatment is working.

40. Goals • Some argue that tough surveillance deters crime in 2 ways: • It makes offenders less willing to decide to commit a crime because they are being watched so closely. • It catches active criminals earlier in their recidivism.

41. Learning Objective 2 • Learning objective 2: Know the techniques of surveillance and control now in use.

42. Techniques • Drug controls: • Antabuse • Depo-Provera: • A “chemical castration” drug that eliminates sexual response in men. • Thorazine: • A drug used to control violent or aggressive behavior caused by psychiatric problems. • Prozac: • A drug used to decrease the negative emotions associated with depression.

43. Techniques • Electronic controls: • Global positioning system (GPS): • A type of tracking system used in corrections. The offender must carry a “bag” that transmits a signal to a satellite, allowing correctional officials to identify the person’s location at all times. • Human surveillance: • Sex offender registries

44. Techniques • Programmatic controls: • Drug testing

45. Learning Objective 3 • Learning objective 3: Describe how control is a double-edged sword.

46. Double-Edged Sword • Social control and personal liberty: • Main cost of increase in surveillance is civil liberty • Politics of surveillance and community protection: • Traditionally, conservatives have opposed government intrusion into personal affairs. • Traditional liberal view calls for the use of government power to promote equal access of all citizens to the benefits of society.

47. Learning Objective 4 • Learning objective 4: Recognize the limits of control.

48. Limits of Control • Technology: • All technologies have the capacity to fail • Limited in terms of capacity • Human responses: • Intrusions of technical surveillance • Shift in goals from helping to controlling

49. Limits of Control • Moral and ethical limits: • Techocorrections: • The use of technological mechanisms, by corrections systems, to control offenders. • Trade off between safety and freedom

50. Learning Objective 5 • Learning objective 5: Explore how to develop an acceptable system of community control.