NCJ Number
145591
Date Published
1993
Length
152 pages
Annotation
The effects of prison crowding on the justice system are investigated.
Abstract
The authors focus on dramatic changes in the administration of criminal justice in Texas during the 1980s and the influence of those changes on the 3-year survival rates among parolees released between 1984 and 1987. Setting out to identify differences in recidivism and the crime rate as a result of the changes instituted in Texas, the authors report the findings of their comparative survival analysis of four successive cohorts of parolees, plus a comparative analysis of an emergency release cohort. The final chapter compares prison construction policies and crime rate trends in Texas and California to highlight the major policy implications of the findings. The book is divided into eight chapters: (1) National Trends and the Assessment of Prison Crowding (including a sea-change in prisoner rights and assessing the impact of litigated prison reform); (2) Population, Political, and Judicial Pressures on the Texas Criminal Justice System (including pressure from the media and the legislature restructures the criminal justice system); (3) Intra-Cohort Variation in Reincarceration; (4) Inter-Cohort Comparisons of Reincarceration Rates; (5) Multivariate Prediction of Reincarceration; (6) An Evaluation of the Legislative Response: The Prison Management Act; (7) Incarceration and Crime: Is There a Link? (including national and two-State comparisons and alternative explanations for varying trends in California and Texas); and (8) Conclusions and Policy Implications (including parole release and intermediate sanctions as solutions, and increasing prison capacity). There are two appendixes: Salient Factor Score and Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles Regions. There are approximately 100 references, an index, and a list of other volumes in the Research in Criminology series.