Handbook on Moving Corrections and Sentencing Forward
Building on the Record
The ASC Division on Corrections & Sentencing Handbook Series

This volume addresses major issues and research in corrections and sentencing with the goal of using previous research and findings as a platform for recommendations about future research, evaluation, and policy.

The last several decades witnessed major policy changes in sentencing and corrections in the United States, as well as considerable research to identify the most effective strategies for addressing criminal behavior. These efforts included changes in sentencing that eliminated parole and imposed draconian sentences for violent and drug crimes. The federal government, followed by most states, implemented sentencing guidelines that greatly reduced the discretion of the courts to impose sentences. The results were a multifold increase in the numbers of individuals in jails and prisons and on community supervision?increases that have only recently crested. There were also efforts to engage prosecutors and the courts in diversion and oversight, including the development of prosecutorial diversion programs, as well as a variety of specialty courts. Penal reform has included efforts to understand the transitions from prison to the community, including federal-led efforts focused on reentry programming. Community corrections reforms have ranged from increased surveillance through drug testing, electronic monitoring, and in some cases, judicial oversight, to rehabilitative efforts driven by risk and needs assessment. More recently, the focus has included pretrial reform to reduce the number of people held in jail pending trial, efforts that have brought attention to the use of bail and its disproportionate impact on people of color and the poor.

This collection of chapters from leading researchers addresses a wide array of the latest research in the field. A unique approach featuring responses to the original essays by active researchers spurs discussion and provides a foundation for developing directions for future research and policymaking.

Introduction; PART I. Courts and Sentencing; 1. Reflections on the Multi-Site Drug Court Evaluations: What Did We Learn and What does it Mean?; 2. At the Crossroads: Large-Scale Studies of Behavioral Health Treatment Interventions for People in the Criminal Justice System; 3. What Comes Next? On the Evolution of Community Courts; PART II. Community Corrections; 4. From Mean to Meaningful Probation: Legacy from ISP; 5. Research Considerations for Using Electronic Technologies with Community Supervision; 6. Fines, Fees, and Debt in Community Corrections: Past, Present, and Future; 7. Thoughts from the Multi-Site Evaluation of the Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement Demonstration Field Experiment; 8. A Supervision Policy with Scope: Revisiting Washington State’s Swift-and-Certain Initiative; 9. Parole Decision-Making: Moving Towards Evidence-Based Practice; 10. Back-End Sentencing and Opting Out of the Parole Process: Two Areas for Further Study in Corrections and Reentry Research; 11. Family Work in Corrections: Trends from Efforts in Youth Justice; 12. Understanding Rapport in Supervision Settings; PART III. Prisons and Jails; 13. Lessons from the Multi-Site Family Study of Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering; 14. Putting a Square Into a Circle: The Story of Boot Camps—A Tribute to Doris MacKenzie’s Work; 15. Supermax Incarceration: Current Evidence and Next Steps in Improving Research and Policy; 16. Advances in Corrections Research: Understanding How Prisons Continue to Influence Maladjustment; 17. Criminal Justice Reform in California: A Lesson for the Nation?; PART IV. Reentry; 18. Examining the Field’s First Multisite Reentry Experiment: Lessons Learned From the Evaluation of the Opportunity to Succeed (OPTS) Aftercare Program; 19. Returning Home: A Pathbreaking Study of Prisoner Reentry and Its Challenges; 20. Considerations on the Multi-Site Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative; 21. Key Findings and Implications of the Cross-Site Evaluation of the Bureau of Justice Assistance FY 2011 Second Chance Act Adult Offender Reentry Demonstration Projects; 22. A Time for Mercy; 23. Building on Reentry Research: A New Conceptual Framework and Approach to Reentry Services and Research; Afterword: Intensive Non-Intervention

Pamela K. Lattimore, Ph.D., is Senior Director for Research Development for RTI’s Division for Applied Justice Research with responsibility for leading multidisciplinary research focused on improving understanding of crime and the criminal justice system. She has more than 30 years of experience evaluating interventions, investigating the causes and correlates of criminal behavior, and developing approaches to improve criminal justice operations. Dr. Lattimore has led multiple multisite, multimodal evaluations, including the NIJ-funded evaluations of the Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement Demonstration Field Experiment, a multisite randomized controlled trial to study the effectiveness of swift and certain sanctions to improve probationer outcomes, and the Multisite Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, a quasi-experimental evaluation of 16 adult and juvenile prisoner reentry programs. Dr. Lattimore is principal investigator for the research for the Arnold Ventures’ funded Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research, which focuses on improving pretrial risk assessment and outcomes, and is leading an NIJ-funded project to develop, test, and implement the Integrated Dynamic Risk Assessment for Community Supervision (IDRACS), an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that will incorporate dynamic risk factors and indicators of supervision practice to more effectively model the risk posed by people under community supervision. She is a past Chair of the American Society of Criminology Division on Corrections and Sentencing, a Fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, and a recipient of the American Correctional Association Peter P. Lejins Researcher Award, the American Society of Criminology Division on Corrections and Sentencing Distinguished Scholar Award, and the Academy of Experimental Criminology Joan McCord Award for distinguished experimental contributions to criminology and criminal justice.

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