Criminal Justice

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Adult Offenders

The U.S. prison population has undergone significant changes in size and composition in recent years. More women, juveniles, and older people find themselves behind bars. Each type of offender presents unique challenges for prison management. The overrepresentation of racial minorities represents a persistent trend within the prison population. Criminologists continue to study whether this trend reflects a racial disparity in crime or discriminatory correctional policies.

Effective management requires that correctional personnel understand the changing demographics of the prison population. What categories of clients do the correctional agencies serve? What are the characteristics and backgrounds of different types of correctional clients?

Price: $19.00
Correctional Challenges

The American corrections system has undergone many changes, some of which reflect shifts in managerial and rehabilitation tactics. Other changes reflect responses to public and political pressures. For example, the “tough on crime” mentality of the 1980s resulted in a dramatic increase in the size of the prison population.

As prisons' populations have grown, so too have their operating budgets. Now public officials demand that the corrections system explore alternatives to reduce the taxpayers' burden. Private prisons represent one cost-effective alternative to public prisons, but they also present ethical concerns. In the absence of valid alternatives, public officials insist that the corrections system demonstrate the value of its existing programs. Public officials are asking: do prison rehabilitation programs actually reduce recidivism? Despite claims to the contrary, recent research suggests that rehabilitation programs work. Therefore, rehabilitation will remain a goal of the corrections system.

Price: $19.00
Correctional Options

Initiated well before prisons, probation, parole, or halfway houses, jails were the first component of the U.S. correctional system. U.S. jails hold more than 600,000 inmates at any given time—and they admit many more than that every year. Jails and prisons hold various types of offenders.

Established in England, the earliest jails housed much of the vagrant population, often in deplorable conditions. While inmates no longer live in squalor, America's jails face modern challenges. In particular, overcrowding presents a significant challenge to corrections personnel, a problem that may be addressed through alternatives such as probation and house arrest. The increase in mentally ill offenders and the prevalence of suicide in jails present two new challenges to the corrections system. Despite these challenges, jails continue to play a critical role within the corrections system.

Price: $19.00
Crime & Corrections

If you watch television, you have probably noticed that many successful shows focus on crime and the courts. The American correctional system is vital, not only because it punishes criminal offenders, but also because it employs thousands of citizens. Crime and corrections have undergone a significant transformation since the 1700s. Drawing on a long history of criminological research, current correctional policies attempt to balance punishment, retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, and restitution.

Price: $19.00
Legal Issues In Corrections

During the 1800s, U.S. prison inmates had no rights. Today, even though they are imprisoned, inmates have many of the same rights as other American citizens. Inmates' rights derive from the same source as all American rights: the U.S. Constitution; however, determining the legal rights of inmates remains a complex task. The corrections system seeks to balance the punishment of prisoners as criminals with their right to fair and ethical treatment as humans. That balance extends even to those inmates who have been sentenced to the ultimate punishment: death row.

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Parole and Rehabilitation

Parole, the supervised release of a prisoner before the completion of a sentence, has been used by the U.S. corrections system since the late nineteenth century. In the 1970s, however, Robert Martinson and colleagues challenged the effectiveness of parole and other prison rehabilitation programs. Their influential study argued that no programs effectively reduced recidivism. Consequently, many states and the federal government ended the use of indeterminate sentencing and discretionary parole. The result was prison overcrowding and escalating operating budgets.

More recently, other social scientists have found that rehabilitation programs can effectively reduce recidivism. For example, one study found that supervised parolees are less likely to commit crimes than those inmates released after completing their sentences. Successfully transitioning from prison life to community life remains a difficult challenge for many criminal offenders. By guiding and closely monitoring parolee activities, parole provides one way to help these offenders make a successful transition from prison to the community.

Price: $19.00
Prison Employees

Imagine the continuous stress of working in a prison. You will feel the threat of assault and injury and understand the need to remain vigilant. A prison staff includes administrators, correctional officers, counselors, and many other employees. Each employee helps the prison to provide a safe and secure environment that prepares inmates to reenter society, but these jobs aren't easy.

Prison personnel face challenges such as fostering positive relationships with inmates and selecting organizational and managerial tactics that would work best in a prison setting. Running a prison is unlike running any other organization. Prison personnel must work together to effectively manage and rehabilitate the inmates in their facility.

Price: $19.00
Prison Life

In the 1970s, Stanford University Psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to try to understand how the relationship between inmates and guards shapes prison culture. Zimbardo found his experimental subjects (his students) played their parts disturbingly well. “Guards” quickly became sadistic. “Prisoners” initially rebelled and then fell into despair.

Many social scientists have studied inmate culture to help develop effective tactics for dealing with the violence, gang activity, drug use, and other problems endemic to prisons. Among other findings, these studies demonstrate that male and female inmates cultivate distinct inmate cultures and present unique problems to prison management. How would understanding inmate culture help you manage a prison population?

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Prison Management

Broadly speaking, corrections personnel, professional staff, and service staff work to secure and rehabilitate prison inmates. Well-trained professional staff offer vocational, educational, counseling, and other treatment services. Many other individuals perform the service functions necessary for day-to-day prison operations, including preparing food, cleaning laundry, and maintaining the facility.

Corrections personnel, the largest staff component, control prisoner movement and monitor the facility in order to avoid threats to prison security that may precipitate prisoner riots. By ensuring prison security and safety, corrections personnel create an environment conducive to inmate rehabilitation. Although the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs was questioned in the 1970s, recent criminological research indicates that these programs do reduce recidivism; therefore, rehabilitation remains a central component of the corrections system.

Price: $19.00
Prisons

Prisons have been part of America's correctional system for more than 200 years. Today, corrections officials favor punishment over rehabilitation, and more than two-thirds of the inmates currently housed in federal prisons are serving mandatory sentences for drug-related crimes.

Inmates are assigned to prisons of varying security levels, depending on their personal and criminal backgrounds. Certain types of offenders may be assigned to administrative facilities. In addition, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains large numbers of illegal aliens, and military personnel convicted of violating the military justice code are held in brigs or military prisons. Finally, an increasing number of criminal offenders are housed in private prisons. The criminal justice system continues to diversify its correctional facilities in order to manage an increasingly diverse prison population effectively.

Price: $19.00
Special Offenders

Juveniles present several unique challenges to the corrections system in America, such as whether violent juvenile offenders should be incarcerated as adults or rehabilitated, how they should be handled by the court system and what types of punishments they should receive. During the 1700s, the American corrections system treated children as adults.

Today, juvenile offenders may be tried as adults depending on the severity of their crimes, but doing so leads to questions about whether juveniles tried and sentenced as adults should be housed with the adult prison population. Today, many juvenile offenders find themselves in adult prisons. Even so, the corrections system continues to emphasize rehabilitation of juvenile offenders to prepare them to reenter the community. To rehabilitate juvenile offenders effectively, several corrections programs target drug rehabilitation and gang activity. By identifying “special offenders,” the corrections system can develop management and rehabilitation strategies that address the unique challenges presented by these offenders.

Price: $19.00
The Future of Corrections

The war on drugs, coupled with a “get tough on crime” mentality, has filled U.S. prisons. These measures have also drained American taxpayers' bank accounts. Today, public officials demand that the corrections system demonstrate the value of its strategies. Corrections officers must answer two deceptively simple questions: Do their programs work? And are they cost-effective?

The corrections system of the future will likely include many elements of the traditional corrections system. Even so, criminological research and public opinion support an expanded role for rehabilitation programs, community supervision, and restorative justice. Public officials will continue to look for cost-effective alternatives to the traditional corrections system.  

Price: $19.00