Based on what you’ve read and heard now, what do you think Walker has to say about (proposition-wise) about the following?

Lock ‘Em Up
LAW & ORDER (not the tv show)
Law & Order goes back to antiquity
Modern law & order derived largely from classical criminology
Beccaria Deterrence Doctrine
• Vigorous punishment, but proportionality a must
• Worried about tyranny
“Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the
severity of punishment” -Beccaria On Crimes & Punishments, 1794
“We are a nation of laws, not of men” -John Adams
Goldwater
US has vacillated throughout history between retribution on one
extreme and rehabilitation on the other
• Deterrence & Incapacitation throughout
• Last 4 decades definitely toward retribution
Goldwater campaign 1964
• Although law & order always part of American society, first modern
presidential candidate to run on it as a key pillar of his platform
• 1960s-rising crime rates, counter-culture, anti-war protests
• Goldwater lost, but a decade later, law & order took hold
Getting criminals off the street
Conservatives: Incarceration an effective crime reduction policy
• Subtext: Rehabilitation doesn’t work
• Just deserts, do the crime do the time etc…
Liberals: Incarceration results in various negative consequences
• Sky rocketing costs, funds diversion, racial disparities, overcrowding
• Prison rehabilitation considered liberal policy prescription
Imprisonment has in a sense always been about both
Philosophy of incapacitation
Incapacitation seeks to reduce crime by keeping offenders off the
street, without effort to rehabilitate them
• Selective incapacitation designed to lock up only the few high-rate
offenders or career criminals
• Gross incapacitation involves locking up large numbers of offenders
regardless of criminal histories
Philosophy of incapacitation
Selective Incapacitation: The RAND Formula
• Selective incapacitation was hot in the 1970s and 1980s
• 1982 study by Peter Greenwood and Rand estimated selective
incapacitation could reduce crime while reducing the prison population
• RAND sentencing proposal was based on the Rand Inmate Survey (RIS)
which estimated controversial annual offending rates
Rand formula continued

4. RAND system suffered from the prediction problem
   • Problem of estimating annual offending rates because averages are inflated
   by extremely high rates for the worst offenders
5. RAND prediction scale used employment history as a criterion for
   sentencing with as much weight as a prior conviction
6. Political obstacle: not imprisoning low and medium-risk offenders
   was what corrections experts were advocating as far back as the 60s
   Gross Incapacitation
   Zedlewski (NIJ)
7. Selective incapacitation ignored but gross incapacitation has been adopted and
   is the main reason the prison population soared from the 1980s onward
8. Zedlewski: For every dollar spent on prison $17 saved in social costs,
   Methodology seriously flawed
   Used one of the highest estimates of 187 crimes per year, thus according to some
   criminologists, he deliberately misrepresented facts
9. Did not account for the problem of diminishing returns
   Imprisonment skims off high rate offenders, leads to incarceration of less serious ones
   …thus Lower returns in crime reduction and dollar savings
   The Sentencing Project 2016

Zimring and Hawkins
A “sober” estimate of imprisonment
Concluded that each incarceration prevented 3.5 crimes per year in CA
Locking up 115,000 people would reduce the crime rate by 15%
Not clear that incapacitation was the primary cause of the drop in crime, due to
some unexpected data trends
Cross-state comparison of changes in incarceration rates and crime rates showed no
clear patterned relationship
Gross incapacitation
As discussed earlier, crime declined in the 1990s through the aughts
But we’ve been on an imprisonment binge for 25 years.
Kind of tough to claim success for a policy prescription that failed for 19 years
and then suddenly appeared to work in the twentieth year.
Mandatory sentencing
All states had some form of mandatory sentence by 1994 that typically apply
to certain offenses
Leading conservative crime control strategy
Operationalized in two ways:
• Mandatory imprisonment for certain crimes
• Mandatory minimums prison sentences
Its popularity can be explained by the celebrated case syndrome
“The nation’s toughest drug law”
Rockefeller Drug Law (1973 New York law named after former governor)
Designed to incapacitate and deter future use through mandatory and long
prison terms, restrictions on plea bargaining and mandatory prison terms
Three categories of offenders were major, middle-level and minor dealers
Attempted to prevent the abuse of plea bargaining
• Enormous slippage between arrest and conviction resulting in decreased indictment
and conviction rates
• Law did not completely fail in its objectives; for those convicted, the rate of
incarceration increased, however almost half evaded mandatory sentencing provisions
Slippage explained by CJ “thermodynamics”
CJ Thermodynamics holds that an increase in the severity of the
potential punishment results in pressure to avoid its actual application
Much slippage involved CJ officials adapting to the harsh terms of the law
Slippage can also occur after sentencing as more offenders sentenced for
longer terms results in overcrowding and the response is to release
prisoners early
Finally, the law had no significant effect on crime or drug use
Long term impact
Dramatic increase in the number imprisoned
• 1978: Imprisoned 306k/Released 154k
• 2008: 1.6m/Released 740k
Particularly on drug charges
• Second leading cause of imprisonment (behind violent offending)
• Primarily impacted lower-level drug offenders and minorities
Prison overcrowding
The 2009 reform reduced the penalties
• Eliminating mandatory sentences for lower level drug offenses
• Expanding treatment and alternative options to incarceration
• Allowed for resentencing of some currently imprisoned offenders

Federal Sentencing Guidelines (1987)
Included several mandatory sentencing provisions that have contributed
to the increase in the federal prison population
There is mixed evidence on the compliance of prosecutors and judges
Less than half of offenders eligible for man-mins are receiving them and
defendants are allowed to avoid them through plea bargaining
Through prosecutorial discretion mandatory sentences are not
necessarily mandatory in practice which makes them more arbitrary
Growth of life sentences
By 2008, 1 in 11 inmates were serving a life term
The harsher sentences encourage prosecutorial discretion to avoid them
Public pressure for getting tough has affected pardons and commutations for those
with life sentences
Life terms are disproportionate to the risk of reoffending; recidivism decreases with
age
Life terms aggravate the costs of dealing with elderly inmates
***1996 report found no correlation between incarceration rates and crime rates,
however some studies have purported to find varying effects
Three Strikes and you’re out!
Most popular idea in mandatory sentencing;
Mandatory life sentence for anyone convicted of a third felony
State laws vary considerable in terms of strikable offenses and second strikes
Almost universally condemned by criminologists and other experts
Criticized for not focusing on serious repeat offenders
Not new; most states had repeat offender laws for decades, but rarely used
Besides CA and GA states have not used their three-strikes laws, so they have
become plea bargaining tools
Three Strikes in CA
CA law was more punitive and far-reaching as it applied for any felony
Also, well known absurd third strike cases
Sent a lot of people to prison for long terms, but did not send as many as had
been expected because it was not implemented in most counties
Weighed most heavily on less serious non-violent offenses and compounded
racial disparities as more African Americans received it
Did not produce a reduction in crime and would have only had a modest
impact if it was fully implemented
In sum…
Classic example of overreaction to celebrated case
Crude policy that sweeps nondangerous criminals rather than a precise instrument
that locks up dangerous repeat offenders
Laws are not consistently implemented so they are arbitrary
They upset the going rate and impose new costs on the CJS
There is no clear evidence that these laws will reduce serious crime
Old repeat offender laws failed to distinguish among seriousness (gravity),
repetitiveness (prior record or criminal career), intensity (rate of annual offending),
and dangerousness (assessment of harm the offender might do in the community)
Collateral damage
Prison overcrowding
• Directly contributes to the resource crisis
• Inability to Provide Treatment Alternatives
• Diverts funds from drug courts and other treatment initiatives that are more effective
High Prison Medical Expenses
• Longer terms, overcrowding and risky behaviors result in various medical expenses
associated with elderly inmates, communicable diseases, HIV and Hepatitis C
Crowding Out Other Social Needs
• Mass imprisonment has diverted funds from education
• Between 1987-2007, states increased spending on prison 127%, while spending on
education increased only 21%
Collateral damage
Racial and Ethnic Discrimination
• People of color represent two-thirds of the prisoners serving life sentences, and 90% of
the NY inmates convicted under the Rockefeller Drug laws
Destructive Social Effects
• Gross incapacitation impacts families (e.g., child support)
• Communities and democracy itself (e.g., the right to vote)
• Ex inmates face what Mauer & Chesney Lind (2002) termed invisible punishment
Question…
Based on what you’ve read and heard now, what do you think Walker has
to say about (proposition-wise) about the following?
-Selective and Gross Incapacitation
-Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
-Three Strikes laws