Criminal Justice Policy Review

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) increases opportunities for scholars to conduct research in carceral settings to determine the prevalence and contours of sexual assault. However, researchers face many challenges, including working cooperatively with state agencies while maintaining independence; gaining access to prisons and prisoners; securing necessary institutional approvals; and collecting generalizable data on a highly sensitive topic, sexual assault in prisons. This article reports our responses to these challenges in a study of inmate-on-inmate sexual assault in California. We describe our research procedures and provide an assessment of interviewer effects and threats to the generalizability of our sample. Our experience should be instructive to other researchers undertaking similar efforts at a moment in time in which others have rightfully decried the decline of in-prison research.

With the enactment of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA), states are required to standardize their registration and community notification practices by categorizing sex offenders into three-tier levels in the interest of increasing public safety. No empirical research, however, has investigated whether implementation of the AWA is likely to increase public safety. Using a sample of registered sex offenders in New York State, the current study examined the effectiveness of the Adam Walsh-tier system to classify offenders by likelihood of recidivism. Results indicated that the AWA falls short of increasing public safety. In fact, registered sex offenders classified by AWA as Tier 1 (lowest risk) were rearrested for both nonsexual and sexual offenses more than sex offenders in Tier 2 (moderate risk) or Tier 3 (highest risk).

The current study is an exploratory application of a technique for modeling developmental trajectories as an illustration of how researchers might use trajectory analysis and county-level data to analyze the effects of imprisonment patterns on crime. Using data from 61 New York counties, the authors model the patterns of imprisonment, defined as the percentage of felons sentenced to state prison in a given year, displayed by the counties from 1990 to 1999, and then demonstrate how knowledge of these patterns can be used to estimate the relationship between imprisonment patterns during the 1990s and crime in 2000. Six distinct patterns of imprisonment are identified, and bivariate and multivariate analyses reveal that high or consistently increasing levels of imprisonment were not associated with lower property or violent crime rates in 2000. Even after controlling for crime in the 1990s and other relevant factors, counties with high or consistently increasing imprisonment had significantly higher violent crime in 2000. Implications for future research are discussed.

Few criminological studies have investigated what factors influence the public’s fiscal support for correctional policies. This study addresses this gap by exploring public support for increasing taxes to fund five diverse correctional measures—inmate education, drug treatment for inmates, psychiatric care for mentally ill prisoners, child counseling for inmates’ children, and the building of new prisons. Findings suggest that citizen dissatisfaction and criminal justice system employment are significant predictors of decreased support for taxes that would fund correctional policies. Experience with the criminal justice system is a significant predictor of increased support for correctional programming. Social and demographic variables are also predictors of fiscal support. Because large segments of the public support taxes for correctional measures, policymakers should consider such views when adopting or modifying correctional policies. Additionally, correctional systems should consider tracking public support on an annual basis to establish and monitor levels of support for criminal justice policies.

More than 20 years ago, state legislation began moving toward a mandatory arrest approach for police officers who handle domestic violence. It is expected that officers have shifted from an “underenforcement” orientation toward proenforcement. To examine this hypothesis, this study integrated elements of New York State domestic violence legislation into vignettes. Officers from one large department in New York State completed surveys with multiple vignettes. More than 80% of the officers were likely or very likely to arrest in all vignettes. Arrest was more likely when there was a visible injury, when there was an order of protection, and when the suspect was disrespectful. The victim’s preference for no arrest is not significant in officers’ decision making. Policy implications and directions for additional research are discussed.

Presentence investigation reports (PSIRs) are still used as an important component in some sentencing recommendations. Perspectives on the utility of the PSIR have typically focused on probation officers and less so on attorneys who use the document in plea negotiations and in sentencing recommendations. This study examines the importance of the PSIR for 57 prosecutors and 16 defense attorneys. Findings indicate that adult record, history of probation/parole, victim-impact statements, official version of offense, gang affiliation, and pending cases were viewed as important for prosecutors than for defense attorneys when preparing sentencing recommendations using the PSIR. Implications of these findings will be discussed.