The steep rise in U.S. criminal punishment in recent decades has spurred scholarship on the collateral consequences of imprisonment for individuals, families, and communities. Several excellent ...studies have estimated the number of people who have been incarcerated and the collateral consequences they face, but far less is known about the size and scope of the total U.S. population with felony convictions beyond prison walls, including those who serve their sentences on probation or in jail. This article develops state-level estimates based on demographic life tables and extends previous national estimates of the number of people with felony convictions to 2010. We estimate that 3 % of the total U.S. adult population and 15 % of the African American adult male population has ever been to prison; people with felony convictions account for 8 % of all adults and 33 % of the African American adult male population. We discuss the far-reaching consequences of the spatial concentration and immense growth of these groups since 1980.
Content analysis is a widely used qualitative research technique. Rather than being a single method, current applications of content analysis show three distinct approaches: conventional, directed, ...or summative. All three approaches are used to interpret meaning from the content of text data and, hence, adhere to the naturalistic paradigm. The major differences among the approaches are coding schemes, origins of codes, and threats to trustworthiness. In conventional content analysis, coding categories are derived directly from the text data. With a directed approach, analysis starts with a theory or relevant research findings as guidance for initial codes. A summative content analysis involves counting and comparisons, usually of keywords or content, followed by the interpretation of the underlying context. The authors delineate analytic procedures specific to each approach and techniques addressing trustworthiness with hypothetical examples drawn from the area of end-of-life care.
Communication with family of critically ill patients is often poor and associated with family distress.
To determine if an intensive care unit (ICU) communication facilitator reduces family distress ...and intensity of end-of-life care.
We conducted a randomized trial at two hospitals. Eligible patients had a predicted mortality greater than or equal to 30% and a surrogate decision maker. Facilitators supported communication between clinicians and families, adapted communication to family needs, and mediated conflict.
Outcomes included depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among family 3 and 6 months after ICU and resource use. We identified 488 eligible patients and randomized 168. Of 352 eligible family members, 268 participated (76%). Family follow-up at 3 and 6 months ranged from 42 to 47%. The intervention was associated with decreased depressive symptoms at 6 months (P = 0.017), but there were no significant differences in psychological symptoms at 3 months or anxiety or PTSD at 6 months. The intervention was not associated with ICU mortality (25% control vs. 21% intervention; P = 0.615) but decreased ICU costs among all patients (per patient: $75,850 control, $51,060 intervention; P = 0.042) and particularly among decedents ($98,220 control, $22,690 intervention; P = 0.028). Among decedents, the intervention reduced ICU and hospital length of stay (28.5 vs. 7.7 d and 31.8 vs. 8.0 d, respectively; P < 0.001).
Communication facilitators may be associated with decreased family depressive symptoms at 6 months, but we found no significant difference at 3 months or in anxiety or PTSD. The intervention reduced costs and length of stay, especially among decedents. This is the first study to find a reduction in intensity of end-of-life care with similar or improved family distress. Clinical trial registered with www.clinicaltrials.gov (NCT 00720200).
Although women have made dramatic gains toward equality with men over the past century, this progress has occurred alongside tremendous growth in U.S. incarceration rates. Extending prior research on ...sex differences in offending, we turn our attention to punishment by exploring how gender equality in education, work, and politics is associated with disparities in annual prison admissions. Using pooled cross‐sectional data for U.S. states from 1983 to 2010, we conduct a series of fixed‐effects regressions to estimate the ratio of female‐to‐male annual prison admission rates, as well as sex‐specific rates, disaggregated by violent, property, and drug crimes. We find partial support for the ameliorative hypothesis, which predicts that increasing gender equality will decrease female incarceration rates relative to male rates. For one of our three measures of gender equality—the sex gap in educational attainment—we find that greater equality is associated with a widening of the sex gap in incarceration rates, particularly for property offenses. We explore the implications of these findings in relation to existing theories of gender, crime, and punishment.
Context: This study examines the spillover effects of growth in state-level incarceration rates on the functioning and quality of the US health care system. Methods: Our multilevel approach first ...explored cross-sectional individual-level data on health care behavior merged to aggregate state-level data regarding incarceration. We then conducted an entirely aggregate-level analysis to address between-state heterogeneity and trends over time in health care access and utilization. Findings: We found that individuals residing in states with a larger number of former prison inmates have diminished access to care, less access to specialists, less trust in physicians, and less satisfaction with the care they receive. These spillover effects are deep in that they affect even those least likely to be personally affected by incarceration, including the insured, those over 50, women, non-Hispanic whites, and those with incomes far exceeding the federal poverty threshold. These patterns likely reflect the burden of uncompensated care among former inmates, who have both a greater than average need for care and higher than average levels of uninsurance. State-level analyses solidify these claims. Increases in the number of former inmates are associated simultaneously with increases in the percentage of uninsured within a state and increases in emergency room use per capita, both net of controls for between-state heterogeneity. Conclusions: Our analyses establish an intersection between systems of care and corrections, linked by inadequate financial and administrative mechanisms for delivering services to former inmates.
The drug felony lifetime ban on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) affects thousands of individuals with felony drug convictions in the United States. Federal law allows states to choose ...to opt out or modify the full ban. Prior research has treated the ban as a binary outcome, characterizing anything but a full ban as a sign of state reform of this harsh collateral consequence. We argue that modified versions of the ban, which simultaneously allow greater access to public aid while also monitoring and sanctioning recipient behavior, have been overlooked but pose important theoretical and empirical challenges to this narrative. To address this gap, we analyze state discretion in the implementation of the drug felony lifetime ban on TANF receipt between 1997 and 2010 utilizing a multilevel multinomial modeling strategy. Results reveal that distinct patterns of state-level factors are associated with each form of the ban, highlighting the need to treat modified bans as unique policy choices in their own right. Our study informs the understanding of state implementation of collateral consequences that straddle both the penal and welfare systems in the United States.
Monetary Sanctions and Symbiotic Harms BOCHES, DANIEL J.; MARTIN, BRITTANY T.; GIUFFRE, ANDREA ...
RSF : Russell Sage Foundation journal of the social sciences,
01/2022, Letnik:
8, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
People convicted of crime are often treated as atomistic individuals by the criminal justice system, ignoring the fact that they are largely embedded in social networks. Research shows that family ...members are often negatively impacted by their relatives’punishment despite not breaking any laws themselves. These detrimental effects of punishment on family are known as symbiotic harms. Most research on symbiotic harms, however, has focused on incarceration. We extend this research by describing how monetary sanctions harm the families of adults with legal debt. Our data come from semi-structured interviews with 140 people with legal debt and ninety-six court actors in Georgia and Missouri. We find evidence that family members are often coerced into paying their relatives’ fines and fees and that monetary sanctions increase the financial strain, emotional distress, and interpersonal conflict that relatives experience.
Monetary sanctions are an integral and increasingly debated feature of the American criminal legal system. Emerging research, including that featured in this volume, offers important insight into the ...law governing monetary sanctions, how they are levied, and how their imposition affects inequality. Monetary sanctions are assessed for a wide range of contacts with the criminal legal system ranging from felony convictions to alleged traffic violations with important variability in law and practice across states. These differences allow for the identification of features of law, policy, and practice that differentially shape access to justice and equality before the law. Common practices undermine individuals’rights and fuel inequality in the effects of unpaid monetary sanctions. These observations lead us to offer a number of specific recommendations to improve the administration of justice, mitigate some of the most harmful effects of monetary sanctions, and advance future research.
Probation is the most commonly imposed correctional sanction, is often accompanied by supplementary costs, and can be operated by the state or private companies. Private probation is a unique ...sanction used in lower courts, most often for misdemeanor offenses, and is managed by third-party actors. We focus on documenting the process and unique costs of private probation, including the rituals of compliance and proportionality of punishment. We use data from interviews with individuals on private probation and local criminal justice officials as well as evidence from court ethnographies in Georgia and Missouri. For individuals on private probation, payment of monetary sanctions is a crucial way of demonstrating compliance. Yet the financial burden of added costs for supervision and monitoring creates substantial challenges.
The prevalence and increased frequency of high-magnitude Glacial Lake Outburst Floods (GLOFs) in the Chilean and Argentinean Andes suggests this region will be prone to similar events in the future ...as glaciers continue to retreat and thin under a warming climate. Despite this situation, monitoring of glacial lake development in this region has been limited, with past investigations only covering relatively small regions of Patagonia. This study presents new glacial lake inventories for 1986, 2000 and 2016, covering the Central Andes, Northern Patagonia and Southern Patagonia. Our aim was to characterise the physical attributes, spatial distribution and temporal development of glacial lakes in these three sub-regions using Landsat satellite imagery and image datasets available in Google Earth and Bing Maps. Glacial lake water volume was also estimated using an empirical area-volume scaling approach. Results reveal that glacial lakes across the study area have increased in number (43%) and areal extent (7%) between 1986 and 2016. Such changes equate to a glacial lake water volume increase of 65 km3 during the 30-year observation period. However, glacial lake growth and emergence was shown to vary sub-regionally according to localised topography, meteorology, climate change, rate of glacier change and the availability of low gradient ice areas. These and other factors are likely to influence the occurrence of GLOFs in the future. This analysis represents the first large-scale census of glacial lakes in Chile and Argentina and will allow for a better understanding of lake development in this region, as well as, providing a basis for future GLOF risk assessments.
•New glacial lake inventories covering the Central and Patagonian Andes presented for 1986, 2000 and 2016.•Glacial lake water volume was estimated using an empirical area-volume scaling approach.•Glacial lakes across the study area have increased in number (43%) and areal extent (7%) between 1986 and 2016.•Glacial lake growth and emergence was shown to vary sub-regionally according to localised factors.•21 previously unreported GLOF events were identified through the analysis of Landsat imagery.
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