Why and How We Need to Fill Criminal Justice Data Gaps

New Models of Collaboration Between Criminal Justice and Mental Health Systems

Prevalence and correlates of diabetes among criminal justice–involved individuals in the United States

The likelihood of arrest appeared substantial among persons with severe mental illness, but the bulk of offending appeared concentrated in a small group of persons and among persons with sociodemographic features similar to those of offenders in the general population. Data such as these could provide a platform for designing jail diversion and other services to reduce both initial and repeat offending among persons with serious mental illness.

Data Needs for Economic Evaluations of Screening in Pediatric Primary Care: A Research Framework.

Black and brown men are negatively impacted by the criminal justice system and have been incarcerated at higher rates than any other group in the United States (Knafo, 2013). The United States criminal justice system is built on punishment and exploitation rather than rehabilitation, resulting in higher rates of incarceration and recidivism compared to other developed nations (Gilligan, 2012). Countries such as Norway and the United Kingdom take a more humane approach to their criminal justice system, resulting in low recidivism rates (Sterbenz, 2014). Implementing policies that aim to keep families connected with individuals who are incarcerated is a major way to reduce recidivism rates (Clarke, 2013). Using New York State as a case study, this paper will propose extending conjugal visits beyond medium and low-security prisons and implementing Skype technology in prisons and jails as policy solutions to promote the well-being of people who are incarcerated and keep them from returning to prison once they are released. Social workers can play a vital role in efforts made to shift the United States’ criminal justice system from a culture of punishment towards a restorative model.

America began the dramatic growth of its criminal justice system in the 1970s that led to the United States becoming the world’s largest jailer by the 21st century—a time period commonly referred to as mass incarceration. On any given day, approximately two million people are locked behind prisons and jail bars across the country, and over eleven million people cycle in and out of jails and prisons each year. As of the 2020s, there is widespread recognition that racial and social inequities fuel the constant churn of people in and out of the criminal justice and legal systems, leading to the burgeoning of advocacy groups and researchers calling to not only reform but transform the American way of conducting legal and correctional processing of crime. Promote Smart Decarceration was adopted by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (now powered by the Grand Challenges for Social Work) in 2015 as an organizing framework for data-driven and evaluative reforms. Smart decarceration is a framework with four guiding concepts: 1) Changing the narrative on incarceration and the incarcerated, 2) Generating criminal justice system-wide innovations, 3) implementing transdisciplinary policy and practice interventions, and 4) employing evidence-driven strategies. Smart decarceration adheres to the principle that in order for transformation to be achieved, both new evidence and existing evidence will guide decision-making and the diffusion of innovations. The achievement of smart decarceration will be evidenced when these three outcomes are simultaneously met: (1) the incarcerated population in US jails and prisons is substantially decreased, (2) racial and economic disparities in the criminal justice system are redressed, and (3) community safety and public well-being are maximized. Efforts to transform the criminal justice system are wide-ranging and include strategies such as legislative policy reform, prevention programming, public-messaging campaigns, empirical documentation of problems and solutions, employer hiring initiatives, diversion and deflection efforts, specialty courts, correctional programs, and behavioral interventions. The evidence base is growing for a reimagined criminal justice system, and the state of data-driven approaches to criminal behavior, legal processes, and punishment will likely look very different in 2030 than approaches do in the first two decades of the 2000s. This entry provides a state-of-the-evidence review of scholarship responsive to and informing the tenetsof smart decarceration.

In the last 50 years, a wide body of research on domestic and family violence (DFV) has emerged, much of which focuses on the victim-survivor experience with the criminal justice system. DFV is an area of rapid law reform, most notably in Western nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, as legislative bodies attempt to align policies with emerging knowledge and best-practice principles. Policy and law reform, however, have seen a tension between limiting and enhancing victim autonomy in the criminal justice system process. For the most part, policies have focused on the former, reflecting the understanding that DFV is a crime against the state, thus rendering a victim’s ability to choose how they wish to seek protection a secondary priority. For some women, a mandatory criminal justice system intervention may be a useful tool in seeking protection and addresses past limitations of legal responses to DFV, wherein the violence committed by men against women was largely ignored. However, for many other women, engagement in the criminal or civil justice systems may both enhance risks to safety as well as further engrain disadvantage. While DFV policies have been well intended and reflective of the growing shift toward recognizing DFV as a significant public health issue, the same policies have largely ignored the voices of marginalized women and the ways in which “choice” may manifest differently for different women. There are often unintended consequences of DFV reforms relating to justice responses, which disproportionately affect some victims. Thus, a more nuanced approach in police and court responses to DFV is important to minimize adverse effects on victim-survivor voice and help-seeking.

Housing insecurity and adolescent well-being: Relationships with child welfare and criminal justice involvement

The American criminal justice system fails to achieve justice, reduce crime, and provide equal protection to Americans regardless of their social class, race, and gender. But, criminal justice as an academic area of study has become a popular and fast growing liberal arts major in the United States, churning out tens of thousands to work in the criminal justice system. Given the demonstrable harms caused by criminal justice, which are suffered disproportionately by the least powerful people, academic criminologists and criminal justicians have the obligation to promote a reformed discipline. This article briefly summarizes the evidence of bias in the criminal justice system and then turns to how these biases relate to criminal justice as an academic discipline. Using the war on drugs as an example, I argue that the practice of criminal justice as an academic endeavor runs counter to the goal of promoting social justice in America. One of the ironic conclusions of this article is that criminal justice as an academic discipline must get smaller if we are to achieve larger goals of social justice outlined here.

Persons with Mental Illness (PMIs) require unique consideration and individualized attention in the criminal justice system. Research has demonstrated the prevalence with which police come into contact with these individuals, the unique considerations made by courtrooms serving PMIs, the overrepresentation of PMIs in correctional settings, and the problems PMIs experience when reentering the community from incarceration. Given the growth of attention to this area, and the increased reality of challenges that criminal justice professionals encounter when working with PMIs, this paper explores the prevalence of courses on mental illness in criminal justice undergraduate programs in the United States. The current review of over 640 curricula in the United States illustrates that courses devoted solely to the topic of mental illness in the criminal justice system are particularly rare. The importance of offering more courses in the interface between mental illness and criminal justice for future professionals in the field is discussed.

The use of suspensions and expulsions by American public school administrators has increased dramatically over the past 40 years. Meanwhile, a growing number of childhood misbehaviors have been diagnosed by doctors as medical conditions and are being treated with therapy or medication. As these trends develop at different rates for boys of different racial and ethnic groups, the connection between childhood and adult social control remains untested empirically. By using a prospective panel of 3,274 White, Black, and Hispanic males (15,675 person‐years) and multilevel logistic models, I examine whether and how school punishment and/or the use of therapy or medication during childhood contributes to involvement in the criminal justice or mental health systems during young adulthood. The findings suggest that school punishment is associated with greater odds of involvement in the criminal justice system but not the mental health system. The use of therapy and/or medication during childhood is associated with higher odds of involvement in the mental health system but not the criminal justice system. Finally, although the relationship between school punishment and involvement with the criminal justice system is similar for White, Black, and Hispanic men, the relationship between medicalized social control during childhood and young adulthood is stronger for Whites than for non‐Whites.

This study aimed to ascertain the impact of parent’s criminal justice involvement on offspring’s contact with the criminal justice system in Singapore. It further analyzed how various aspects of parent’s criminal justice involvement influence the extent of the intergenerational transmission. Linked administrative data of five full birth cohorts (1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985; N = 93,829) and their children were analyzed (Nchildren = 183,015). Restricted mean survival time (RMST) analyses were conducted, and results suggested that children whose parent had contact with the criminal justice system had fewer crime-free years compared to children whose parent did not have any criminal justice contact. In addition, the impact of paternal and maternal involvement with the criminal justice system was greater on daughters than sons; the impact of custodial sentences was greater than that of noncustodial sentences; and it was also found that a higher frequency of parent’s criminal justice involvement increased the likelihood of children’s contact with the criminal justice system. Intergenerational transmission of criminal justice involvement was observed in Singapore, and so the findings highlighted the importance of supporting families of offenders to disrupt the negative cycle of offending behavior.

Mental Health Services Use and Symptom Prevalence in a Cohort of Adults on Probation

This chapter focuses on the growing trend towards using the criminal justice system as a venue for the expression of emotion by crime victims and their families. In the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, crime victims and their families are being given the opportunity to address the court, to confront the defendant and to weigh in on how the case is being conducted. These innovations pose difficult questions for adversary systems, in which the trial has long been viewed as a two-way battle between the government and the accused. In order to define and regulate the increasingly powerful role of the victim, it is first necessary to determine what goals the victim's participation is meant to achieve.

BackgroundThe overlap between criminal justice system involvement and drug use is well‐documented, and criminal justice agencies have been particularly overwhelmed by the recent opioid epidemic. Treating opioid (and other substance) addiction as a means to reduce risk for future criminality and improve public safety is inherently a responsibility for the criminal justice system. In turn, the criminal justice system has a responsibility to manage and treat addiction among the individuals under its purview. Policy recommendations place emphasis on the use of medication‐assisted treatments (MAT) as a front‐line defense among correctional populations, because its efficacy and effectiveness has been well‐established in other contexts. Despite this, criminal justice agencies have been reluctant or slow to do so.ObjectivesThe current review will provide criminal justice and substance use treatment decision‐makers with information regarding the efficacy and effectiveness of opioid‐specific MAT on offending and overdose outcomes. Specifically, the authors will address the following research questions: Do opioid‐specific MATs reduce the frequency or likelihood of criminal justice outcomes, as defined by official or self‐reported indices of criminal reconviction or rearrest, revocation of community supervision, mandated treatment failure, and specialized court docket failure? Do opioid‐specific MATs reduce the frequency of opioid overdose among individuals with current or prior self‐reported or official record of criminal justice system involvement?Inclusion CriteriaStudies were required to use strong quasi‐experimental or randomized experimental designs. All studies used individual level unit of analysis and examined adults and adolescents who are male, female, or nonbinary and racially/ethnically diverse, with current opioid use and who have current or prior criminal justice involvement. Studies had to prospectively test the effects of heroin and methadone maintenance, buprenorphine, or naltrexone on criminal conviction, arrest, revocation of community supervision, technical probation or parole violation, mandated treatment failure, and specialized court docket failure. Overdose outcomes were also examined for samples in criminal justice settings such as jails, prisons, probation, and parole.Search Strategy and Data CollectionThis review builds upon a prior review conducted by Egli et al. (2009) and examined studies meeting the inclusion criteria above published between 1960 and October 31, 2020. The following platforms and databases (in parentheticals) were used: EBSCOhost (Criminal Justice s, SocINDEX with Full Text, Legal Collection, Wilson Omnifile, PsycINFO, Social Work s, and Women's Studies International [includes grey literature]); ProQuest (Criminal Justice Database, PAIS [includes grey literature], Dissertations and Theses Global [includes grey literature]); Gale (Expanded Academic ASAP, Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center); FirstSearch (GPO Monthly Catalog, PapersFirst [includes grey literature]); ISI Web of Knowledge (Web of Science Core Collection); Office of Justice Programs (National Criminal Justice Reference Service); Summon; and Nexis Uni. The following open access platforms and databases will also be consulted: Elsevier (Scopus [includes grey literature]); Science.gov; ClinicalTrials.gov; WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) portal; and Google Scholar. Search terms were harvested according to their demonstrated success in drawing out relevant and complete results for studies regarding the effectiveness of opioid‐specific medication‐assisted therapies (MATs). From this process 5 core search strings were created, each one with the same general base terms, but unique outcome measure(s).AnalysisFor binary offending outcomes (e.g., arrest, conviction, incarceration, specialty court failure, mandated treatment failure, or community supervision failure) and overdose outcomes, odds ratios were computed, and for continuous or quasi‐continuous outcomes (e.g., total number of arrests), a standardized mean difference type effect size was computed and then transformed into an odds ratio. We used the χ2 test that goes with the forest plot and computed the I2 statistic to assess heterogeneity. Risk of bias was assessed with (1) the revised Cochrane risk‐of‐bias tool for randomized trials; and (2) the risk of bias in non‐randomized studies of interventions assessment tool.