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There is a growing U.S. national consensus that with proper attention to the policies that drive the size of prison populations, these populations can be reduced. As several states have reduced prison populations, there is an accumulating record of strategies that reduce prison populations—but little in the way of proven cause and effect based on research or evidence of the degree to which these gains can be sustained and replicated. Concurrently, the current fiscal crisis has created enormous pressure to reduce prison populations, with a first-in-decades showing of political support. This article provides information about the various prison-reduction strategies, with examples of successful initiatives and an eye toward implementing rigorous evaluations.

Prison populations in the United States have increased in every year since 1973 -- during depressions and in times of economic growth, with rising and falling crime rates, and in times of war and peace. Accomplishing this historically unprecedented penal pattern has required a serious policy agenda that has remained focused on punishment as a goal for more than a generation. This paper seeks to understand that policy orientation from the framework of a social experiment. It explores the following questions: how does the penal experiment -- which we have called the Punishment Imperative -- compare to other 'grand' social experiments? What were its assumptions? What forms did the experiment take? What lessons can be learned from it? What is the future of the grand social experiment in mass incarceration? [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

This paper examines how experience with the criminal justice system contextualizes the relationship between people's attitudes toward informal and formal social controls. In a survey of residents of Leon County, Florida, we asked respondents whether or not they knew someone who had been incarcerated. We also asked about their assessment of informal controls in their neighborhoods and about public control with questions about police, judges, and the criminal justice system as a whole. We find that knowing someone who has been incarcerated makes people with a low assessment of formal control also have a low opinion of informal control. Blacks are more likely than nonblacks to have a low opinion of informal social control only if they have not been exposed to incarceration. Knowing someone who has been incarcerated makes blacks and nonblacks just as likely to hold a negative assessment of informal social control.

This study is a theoretical exploration of the impact of public social control on the functioning of local social controls. Set within the framework of social disorganization and systemic theory, the study argues that an overreliance on incarceration as a formal control may hinder the ability of some communities to foster other forms of control because they weaken family and community structures. At the ecological level, the side effects of policies intended to fight crime by controlling individual behavior may exacerbate the problems they are intended to address. Thus, these communities may experience more, not less, social disorganization.

Offender screeningfor classification has become increasngly popular in correctionalfield services. The most common approach uses objective risk and need scales to classify offenders, a strategy designated as "model" by the National Institute of Corrections. However, adoption of this system raises managerial problems, especially concerning selection of scale cutoffs and adoption of supervision standards. The significance of these problems is illustrated in this article by data from several organizations currently engaged in offender screening.

Past methods of probation and parole supervision have largely relied on caseworkers who monitor their "clients" as well as they can. But, as numbers of "clients" increase, studies indicate that this model is ineffectual. The time has come to significantly rethink the approaches to community supervision. This book addresses the specific ways of achieving these goals by presenting six case studies of probation programs that represent a practical side of the community justice ideal. What emerges is a provocative and enlightening new approach to the problems of probation and parole.  

Given the severe overcrowding suffered by nearly all state and federal correctional systems, the antidrug movement in the United States faces extreme resource constraints. This article argues that patterns in the relationship between drug use and criminal behavior call for different correctional strategies. The utility of various nontraditional correctional alternatives for drug offenders is described based on the drug-crime relationship. Recent research on correctional strategies is applied to the special problems involved in the management of drug offenders.

AbstractA probation risk‐assessment instrument developed by the State of Wisconsin is receiving wide use throughout the nation and has been recognized by the National Institute of Corrections as part of a "model system." However, this has been done without extensive validation on populations other than Wisconsin probationers and parolees. The validity of the instrument for a population of City of New York probationers is assessed in this study. It was found that many of the variables contained in the instrument did not predict risk for the sample. On this basis. the validation of risk instruments before they are fully adopted is recommended. In addition, based on an analysis of split halves of our sample, the general weakness of statistically derived models is noted.