Mismeasure of Punishment: Alternative Measures of Punitiveness and Their (Substantial) Consequences

• NCJ Number: 224454
• Journal: Punishment & Society Volume: 10 Issue: 3 Dated: July 2008 Pages: 277-300
• Author(s): Natasha A. Frost
• Date Published: July 2008
• Length: 24 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Alternative measures of punitiveness are explored in State-level variations in imprisonment rates and in the determinants of those rates, admissions and length of stay.

Abstract

The key finding is that the States’ punitiveness rankings vary quite dramatically depending upon the measure of punitiveness employed. The determinants, such as the risk of imprisonment or the duration of imprisonment add a level of complexity and in some way complicate the understanding of punitiveness. It is suggested that social scientists studying punitiveness should theoretically or empirically distinguish the propensity to imprison from penal intensity (duration). If the understanding of punitiveness as a construct is further refined, there may be the potential development of more nuanced theories of the conditions under which punitiveness grows or declines and might be better equipped to empirically explain variations in punitiveness across places. Over the past decades, scholars of punishment and social control have increasingly grieved the punitive turn in criminal justice policy. The continuously growing size of prison populations has typically been portrayed as the end result of an increasingly punitive criminal justice response. The vast majority of empirical work has relied on imprisonment rates to growth and size of prison populations. This study applies the types of measures employed in previous research and accesses the impact that using the alternate measures of punitiveness has on State-level punitiveness rankings. Specifically, it is hypothesized that national trends in imprisonment risk and time served will mask substantial State-level variation across those measures, as well as State punitiveness rankings will differ significantly when punitiveness is measured by reference to imprisonment rates and when those rates are deconstructed into the dual determinants: admissions and length of stay. Tables, notes and references