Smart Decarceration: Achieving Criminal Justice Transformation in the 21st Century

ISBN-13: 9780190653095 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 304 str.

Matthew Epperson; Carrie Pettus-Davis

Opis

Smart Decarceration is a forward-thinking, practical volume that provides innovative concepts and concrete strategies for ushering in an era of decarceration -- a proactive and effective undoing of the era of mass incarceration. The text grapples with tough questions and takes up the challenge of transforming America's approach to criminal justice in the 21st century. This timely work consists of chapters written from multiple perspectives and disciplines including advocates, researchers, academics, practitioners, and persons with incarceration histories who are now leaders in the movement.

The primary purpose of this book is to inform both academic and public understanding -- to place the challenge of smart decarceration at the center of the current national discourse, taking into account the realities of the current sociopolitical context -- and to propose beginning action steps. This is achieved by first outlining and addressing questions such as: What if incarceration were not an option for most?; Whose voices are essential in this era of decarceration?; What is the state of evidence for solutions?; How do we generate and adopt empirically driven reforms?; How do we redefine and rethink justice in the United States? Smart Decarceration offers a way forward in building a field for decarceration through provocative but reasoned challenges to existing approaches to criminal justice reforms, lively focus on potential solutions, and action steps for reform.

Recenzje

Smart Decarceration offers a welcome reality check regarding prisons and the failure of the "encarceral state" to reform those convicted of serious crimes. This anthology presents a brief history of prisons in the United States, with many forgotten facts (e.g., prisons were a tourist destination in the 18th century) and catalogs the efforts of a growing number of criminal justice reformers to reduce the likelihood that the accused serves prison time or to reduce the time actually spent behind bars. Voices of the formerly incarcerated inform this anthology and amplify the findings of researchers.

O autorze

Matthew Epperson, PhD, MSW, is an associate professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration and founding co-director of the Smart Decarceration Initiative. His research centers on developing, implementing, and evaluating interventions to reduce disparities in the criminal justice system. Carrie Pettus-Davis, PhD, MSW, is founding director of the Institute for Advancing Justice Research and Innovation and founding co-director of the Smart Decarceration Initiative. Professor Pettus-Davis oversees research to better understand factors and disseminate practices that will dramatically reduce incarceration rates.