Justice reinvestment was introduced as a response to mass incarceration and racial disparity in the United States in 2003. This book examines justice reinvestment from its origins, its potential as a mechanism for winding back imprisonment rates, and its portability to Australia, the United Kingdom and beyond. The authors analyze the principles and processes of justice reinvestment, including the early neighborhood focus on 'million dollar blocks'. They further scrutinize the claims of evidence-based and data-driven policy, which have been used in the practical implementation strategies featured in bipartisan legislative criminal justice system reforms. This book takes a comparative approach to justice reinvestment by examining the differences in political, legal and cultural contexts between the United States and Australia in particular. It argues for a community-driven approach, originating in vulnerable Indigenous communities with high imprisonment rates, as part of a more general movement for Indigenous democracy. While supporting a social justice approach, the book confronts significantly the problematic features of the politics of locality and community, the process of criminal justice policy transfer, and rationalist conceptions of policy. It will be essential reading for scholars, students and practitioners of criminal justice and criminal law.

Justice reinvestment has often been hailed as a solution to mass incarceration in the United States for nearly 20 years. It suggests that inefficiencies in the criminal justice system can be eliminated to reinvest money in high-incarceration communities to reduce the correlates of crime. During the last two decades the federal government has promoted the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI), a technical assistance program to help states implement reinvestment programs. However, much of the literature does not substantially detail what kinds of reforms have been passed in these programs. Additionally, these programs have been touted in technical reports as having been successful, yet little evidence has been reported in peer reviewed formats. Further, substantial doubt has been cast on the methodologies of some reports that claim justice reinvestment is successful at reducing prison populations. This study seeks to answer two questions: do the JRI states have differing legislative focuses; and has reinvestment legislation produced significant changes in criminal justice populations within individual states? One state from each U.S. Census region were selected based on their year of Justice Reinvestment Initiative program implementation and completeness of the range of monthly data (Jan 2004 to Dec 2020). Results of thematic analyses indicate that great variation exists in the 35 legislative bills that implemented justice reinvestment principles between the four states. Furthermore, no state legally earmarked reinvestment funds for the original purpose of justice reinvestment, community development. Quantitative analyses using Multiple Event Time Series Regression design indicate that after controlling for external strain variables and economic events, justice reinvestment implementations have varying degrees of success in achieving reductions in prison populations. The regression results also indicate that economic strain events (such as the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic) and variables (such as poverty, inflation, and unemployment) significantly predict future prison populations.

A brilliant overview of America’s defining human rights crisis and a “much-needed introduction to the racial, political, and economic dimensions of mass incarceration” (Michelle Alexander) Understanding Mass Incarceration offers the first comprehensive overview of the incarceration apparatus put in place by the world’s largest jailer: the United States. Drawing on a growing body of academic and professional work, Understanding Mass Incarceration describes in plain English the many competing theories of criminal justice—from rehabilitation to retribution, from restorative justice to justice reinvestment. In a lively and accessible style, author James Kilgore illuminates the difference between prisons and jails, probation and parole, laying out key concepts and policies such as the War on Drugs, broken windows policing, three-strikes sentencing, the school-to-prison pipeline, recidivism, and prison privatization. Informed by the crucial lenses of race and gender, he addresses issues typically omitted from the discussion: the rapidly increasing incarceration of women, Latinos, and transgender people; the growing imprisonment of immigrants; and the devastating impact of mass incarceration on communities. Both field guide and primer, Understanding Mass Incarceration is an essential resource for those engaged in criminal justice activism as well as those new to the subject.

Introduction : world-making and "criminal justice reform" -- Correctional control and the challenge of reform -- Follow the money -- Criminalization, policing, and profiling -- The slippery slope of pretrial reform -- Courts, sentencing, and "diversion" -- Imprisonment and release -- Threshold.

American conservatism rose hand-in-hand with the growth of mass incarceration. For decades, conservatives deployed "tough on crime" rhetoric to attack liberals as out-of-touch elitists who coddled criminals while the nation spiraled toward disorder. As a result, conservatives have been the motive force in building our vast prison system. Indeed, expanding the number of Americans under lock and key was long a point of pride for politicians on the right - even as the U.S. prison population eclipsed international records. Over the last few years, conservatives in Washington, D.C. and in bright-red states like Georgia and Texas, have reversed course, and are now leading the charge to curb prison growth. In Prison Break, David Dagan and Steve Teles explain how this striking turn of events occurred, how it will affect mass incarceration, and what it teaches us about achieving policy breakthroughs in our polarized age. Combining insights from law, sociology, and political science, Teles and Dagan will offer the first comprehensive account of this major political shift. In a challenge to the conventional wisdom, they argue that the fiscal pressures brought on by recession are only a small part of the explanation for the conservatives' shift, over-shadowed by Republicans' increasing anti-statism, the waning efficacy of "tough on crime" politics and the increasing engagement of evangelicals. These forces set the stage for a small cadre of conservative leaders to reframe criminal justice in terms of redeeming wayward souls and rolling back government. These developments have created the potential to significantly reduce mass incarceration, but only if reformers on both the right and the left play their cards right. As Dagan and Teles stress, there is also a broader lesson in this story about the conditions for cross-party cooperation in our polarized age. Partisan identity, they argue, generally precedes position-taking, and policy breakthroughs are unlikely to come by "reaching across the aisle," promoting "compromise," or appealing to "expert opinion." Instead, change happens when political movements redefine their own orthodoxies for their own reasons. As Dagan and Teles show, outsiders can assist in this process - and they played a crucial role in the case of criminal justice - but they cannot manufacture it. This book will not only reshape our understanding of conservatism and American penal policy, but also force us to reconsider the drivers of policy innovation in the context of American politics.

Ending Mass Incarceration explores why mass incarceration is a failed public safety strategy and what should be done to bring about truly transformative change. Although policymakers on both the left and right now recognize mass incarceration as a problem rather than a solution, and many states have taken steps to reduce prison populations, the criminal legal response to crime is harsher than ever. This book identifies three key dynamics that are bolsteringmass incarceration. It also identifies three broad changes that would limit the power and reach of the criminal legal system while also addressing the social problems to which it is a misguided response.