Week 11 Flashcards
(37 cards)
1
Q
Custodial corrections
A
Sentenced to a stay in a secure setting In Australia: - 88 government-operated prisons - 10 privately operated prisons - 4 transitional centres - 12 court cell complexes “Era of imprisonment”, “addicted to incarceration”
2
Q
Custodial corrections statistics
A
- Around 40,000 per day
- Rate of around 210 (per 100,000 adults) per day
- $391 per prisoner per day
Staggering growth: - More than double the prisoners from 20 years ago
- More than 3.5 times 30 years ago
- Nearly 5 times 40 years ago
3
Q
Custodial corrections and Indigenous Aus
A
- Indigenous overrepresentation
US imprisonment rate: 716
Indigenous Australian rate: 2,440 - Multiple causes, including institutional bias
- Multiple effects, including community disadvantage
4
Q
Custodial corrections crimes
A
Most prisoners are in prison for serious offences
- 22.7%: acts intended to cause injury
- 11.6%: sexual assault and related offences
- 7.5%: robbery and related offences
- 7.5%: homicide and related offences
5
Q
Custodial corrections sentencing variances
A
- Average prison sentence is 3.7 years
- Median is 1.8 years
Varies by offence - 14.7 years for homicide
- .7 years for traffic
- Around half of offenders serve less than two years
6
Q
How individuals cope with the pains of imprisonment
A
Importation hypothesis
Deprivation hypothesis
Loss of liberty, desirable goods and services, heterosexual relationships, autonomy, and security.
7
Q
Prisonisation
A
When an individual internalises the informal inmate code, embodying criminal values
- Why imprisonment is associated with reoffending
- Why longer sentences and harsher conditions are linked with reoffending
8
Q
Re-entry
A
‘Collateral consequences’ of criminal label
9
Q
Recidivism
A
Measurement quirks
Around 2/3 of prisoners have been in prison before
10
Q
Community corrections
A
- Non-custodial orders
- Conditions are highly variable
Vary by intent, intensity, and timing
- Front-end orders: given in lieu of incarceration
- > Probation
- Back-end orders: given following a custodial placement
- > Parole (court-ordered & board-ordered)
11
Q
Community corrections statistics
A
- Around 70,000 per day
- > 40,000: probation
- > 16,000: parole
- > 11,000: community service
- Rate of around 360
- Around $18 per day
- Indigenous Australians occupy ~20% of orders
12
Q
Community corrections terms
A
Intermediate sanctions
Decarceration
Net-widening
13
Q
Role demands of correctional staff
A
- Constriction
- Conflict
- Ambiguity
- Underload
- Overload
14
Q
Job stressors of correctional staff
A
- ‘Us versus them’
- Dangerousness
- Involuntary clients
- Limited resources
- Public / media pressure
- Discretion
15
Q
‘Typical’ corrections client
A
- Male, Young, Australian
- Physical and mental illness
- > Although 40% of prisoners report an improvement while in custody
Disadvantaged
- 25% homeless before imprisonment; 33% expect to be homeless after release
- Half unemployed
- 2/3 have not studied past Year 10
- Half have dependent children
16
Q
‘Nothing works’ rehabilitative history
A
- Following centuries of retributive sentences, rehabilitation gained favour as the guiding philosophy in the early 1900s
Then came under attack
- Conservatives believed the system was too soft
- Progressives believed that indeterminate sentences were unjust and discriminatory
17
Q
‘Nothing works’ Robert Martinson report
A
(1974 / 1975) concluded that “nothing works” to reduce recidivism
- Ushered in a ‘tough on crime’ era
- Yet, “for offenders who are already in the correctional system, there is just not much evidence that trying to punish them makes them less criminogenic”
18
Q
Rehabilitation principles - risk
A
- Intensity of intervention and provision of services should be commensurate with level of risk
- Risk must be measured actuarially; clinical judgment is unreliable and invalid
19
Q
Rehabilitation principles - need
A
- Must ‘target for change’ those factors that cause crime in the first place
- Must focus on dynamic (rather than static) criminogenic needs
- The “big four” criminogenic needs are:
History of antisocial behaviour
Antisocial associates
Antisocial attitudes
Antisocial personality pattern
20
Q
Rehabilitation principles - responsivity
A
- Must use methods that clients will be responsive to
- Specific responsivity: unique to the individual (intellect, learning styles, culture, transport, children)
- General responsivity: cognitive-behavioural interventions are the gold standard
21
Q
Core correctional practices in effective interventions
A
- Effective use of authority
- Prosocial modelling and reinforcement
- Rapport building
- Collaborative decision-making
- Teaching problem-solving skills
22
Q
Increasing imprisonment rates
A
- Between 1984 and 2013 Australia’s imprisonment rate more than doubled.
- Between 2003 and 2013 Australia’s imprisonment rate increased by 9.3% (ABS, 2013)
- Imprisonment rates vary between Australian States and Territories.
- Argued that increasing imprisonment rates are a function of increased punitiveness rather than increasing crime (Rutherford, 1986; Mathiesen, 1985).
23
Q
Imprisonment and gender
A
“Prison is a young man’s game”
- Sex: men are far more likely to be incarcerated than women.
- Currently approx 92% of the prison population is male (ABS, 2013).
- Imprisonment rate for men is approx 12 times that of females
- However, the imprisonment rate for women has been increasing and at a rate far greater than that of men.
24
Q
Imprisonment and age
A
- Age: younger people are more likely to be incarcerated
- 77% of prisoners aged 20 – 44 years (ABS, 2013)
- However, prison population is ‘greying’. Number of prisoners aged over 50 has been increasing
- > Entering prison later in life
- > Serving longer sentences.
25
Imprisonment and ethnicity
- Indigenous Peoples: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are over-represented in prison
- Represent 2.5% of general population, but 28% of prisoner population
- Imprisonment rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is 14 times higher than non-Indigenous people.
26
Imprisonment characteristics
- From social and economically marginalised backgrounds (many unemployed prior to incarceration)
- Low levels of education & history of under-achievement
- Limited employable skills and work experience
- Have a history or mental health problems and drug use
- Many female prisoners have histories of physical, emotional and sexual abuse
27
Pre-sentencing and imprisonment
- Almost a quarter of prisoners are unsentenced
- In 2013, 23% of Australia’s prisoner population were on either on remand, or had been convicted but awaiting sentence (ABS, 2013)
- Proportion of remand prisoners has increased significantly over the past 20 years.
28
Sentencing and imprisonment
- Sentenced prisoners are most likely to be serving a sentence of 1 – 5 years
- In December 2013 only 3% of prisoners were serving a life or indeterminate sentence (ABS, 2013)
29
Prisoner crime trends
- Male prisoners have been increasingly more likely to be imprisoned for violence, sexual assault, unlawful entry, robbery and drugs
- Increasing trend for female prisoners to have been incarcerated for violent offences
- But drugs are the offence category with the highest proportion of female prisoners (17%) (ABS, 2013).
30
Penal effectiveness
- Approx two-thirds of prisoners have had a previous prison sentence
- Approx one-quarter of prisoners receive a further conviction within 3 months of release
- Within 2 years of release 35 – 41% of prisoners will be reincarcerated
- Reasonably high recidivism rates tend to be consistent over time.
31
Therapeutic programs
- Over the past 20 years Australian prisons have introduced therapeutic programs
- CBT programs to address ‘criminogenic’ needs such as drug use, anger management, etc
- Often offered in conjunction with programs to increase education and employability / job skills
32
Therapeutic program outcomes
- Evidence for these programs is mixed
- Work for some prisoners in some situations (but don’t know at the level of individual prisoners whether a program will work)
- More research required
- Being in prison may dilute the positive effects of therapeutic programs
- May explain why recidivism is high despite therapeutic programs
33
Private prisons
- Construction and management & provision of services
- PPP model – company tenders to build and operate the prison, government then pays for service
- Prison privatisation driven by increasing prisoner numbers and a desire for efficiency
-> Private prisons are commercial businesses
-> Private prisons cheaper to operate
Australia has highest proportion of prisoners in private prisons (approx 19%) (Mason, 2013)
34
Arguments against private prisons
- Accountability and prison conditions are placed in the hands of company shareholders
- Private operators have a vested interest in maintaining and increasing prisoner numbers (Flynn, 1999)
35
Worrall & Hoy’s (2005) three types of non-custodial penalties
- Self-regulatory – ‘admonished and discharged’, ‘good behaviour bonds’
- > Trend away from these type of penalties
- Financial – ‘fines’, ‘compensation’, ‘restitution’
- Supervisory – ‘probation’, ‘community service’, ‘home detention’
36
Decarceration thesis
an increase in the use of community-based corrections will result in a decreased use of custodial sentences
- Past 20 years an increase in types of non-custodial penalties available and the frequency of their use.
- > Resulting from a desire for ‘tough’ penalties which are less costly than prison.
- > In all Australian jurisdictions, except WA, community-based corrections are used more frequently than prison (ABS, 2014)
- But prison population has continued to increase
- Community-based sanctions being used in addition to prison sentences, not as an alterative to them
37
Worrall (2009) argument of dangers when increasing the range and ‘toughness’ of community-based corrections
- People who would have previously received a fine, may now receive a community-based sanction;
- Community-based sanctions with tough penalties increase the likelihood of breaches;
- Increase the likelihood that people will eventually receive a prison sentence.
- “setting the person up to fail”
