Criminal Justice Policy Review

Saying that the probability (P) of punishment is more important in reducing crime (C) than severity (S) of punishment is largely meaningless unless one takes into consideration at least eight factors that relate to (1) diminishing returns between S and C, (2) diminishing returns between P and C, (3) the lowness of S in conjunction with P, (4) the lowness of P in conjunction with S, (5) the highness of crime benefits (B) in conjunction with P and S, (6) the dollar cost per unit of P versus S, (7) the non-monetary costs of P versus S, and (8) the liberal versus the conservative interpretation of P and S. One must also consider such relevant matters as (1) the interaction between probability and severity, (2) the feedback effect of crime on both severity and probability, and (3) the role of criminal benefits, which is a key variable in crime-committing decisions, along with punishment and its probability. The analysis lends itself to three equilibrium models regarding the reciprocal causation between severity/crime, probability/crime, and benefits/crime. Variations on the ideas from the two figures also lend themselves to two optimizing models regarding optimum crime levels for criminals and society. The main value of such causal and optimizing theory is its potential for pointing to the need for various types of data and how the data might be processed and the results used.

Bail ostensibly increases the likelihood that a defendant released from jail will appear in court. Because of the constitutional guarantees of freedom and pragmatic concerns for the increasing cost of housing defendants awaiting trial, federal, state, and local governments have experimented with a wide range of pre-trial release methods. This paper compares the rates of nonappearance of persons participating in a Pre-Trial Release Program with others who were disqualified from the program but released prior to trial. The findings indicate that while, overall, PTR participants have a statistically significant lower rate of nonappearance than non-participants, these differences are effectively limited to persons accused of traffic offenses and persons released on unsecured appearance bond. Policy recommendations include extension of pre-release supervision and application of simplified selectivity criteria.

Since his confirmation in 1969, Chief Justice Burger viewed the exclusionary rule as an unnecessary and unreasonable intrusion on law enforcement. For the greater part of his tenure he was unable to muster a majority that would entirely support his views but was only able to "chip away" at the edges of the exclusionary rule. Recently the inroads on the rule have become more substantial, or at least so it seems to the casual court watcher. In this paper the evolution of the Supreme Court's treatment of the exclusionary rule since 1969 is examined. Where empirical evidence exists on its consequences and efficacy, that is taken into account as well.

From the late 1960s to 1984, the New York State juvenile corrections system has undergone significant change. Following a period of reductions in institutional populations and increases in community-based programs, the state experienced significant growth in the number of secure facilities, the number of youths housed in secure settings, and the total residential population. The purpose of this paper is to describe and document the changing nature of the juvenile system and to focus on the dynamic forces behind the change process. This paper, based on the observations of policymakers active in the juvenile corrections area, points to the importance of several key policy decisions which have fundamentally altered the shape of the residential services component of the juvenile corrections system. Also emphasized is the importance of a wide range of less obvious factors that policymakers have found influential both through their impact on policy decisions and through their direct effect on the system. Consideration of these findings points to the need for a broad conceptualization of a human services system such as a juvenile corrections system. Only with such a conceptualization can one begin to understand and influence the process of change in an area such as juvenile corrections.

One of the most persistent policy issues for the courts has been the reduction of delay in case processing. Since the advent of state court administration in the 1930's, most major reform efforts have stressed making the courts more manageable and, in the process, expediting the flow of cases through the judiciary. Although the maxim "justice delayed is justice denied" has often been repeated in the literature on court reform, most of the focus has been on judges and attorneys as causes or cures of delay. This article examines delay as a mangement problem and focuses on the administrative role of court managers in improving case processing time. In this regard, the study reports the views and attitudes of court managers on the issue of delay as reported in a recent national survey.

Although many states have altered their juvenile justice systems during the past decade, none has undertaken a reform as far-reaching or complex as that implemented by the state of Washington in 1978. The intent of the Washington system is to hold juveniles accountable for their crimes and, simultaneously, to hold the system accountable for what it does to juveniles. Rehabilitation has been replaced as the fundamental philosophy of the court by a "justice" or "just deserts" model which emphasizes fairness, uniformity and proportionality in the court's response to juvenile offenses.

This article summarizes the results of a federally-funded assessment of the reform.

The legislation, which included intake and sentencing guidelines based on seriousness of offense, prior offenses and age of the youth, produced many changes in decision-making. The practice of informally adjusting cases at intake, for example, was completely eliminated, and sentences were considerably more uniform and more proportionate in the post-reform era. The overall level of sentence severity, however, was actually reduced at least during the first two years after the law went into effect. Status offenses were removed from court jurisdiction without any noticeable net-widening effect but with considerable relabeling. The effect of these changes on recidivism of offenders or status offenders was almost impossible to determine because of the confounding between changes in system processing and changes in actual behavior of the youths.