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"The Myths and Realities of Correctional Severity"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the partial title of this fascinating new article by John Pfaff appearing at SSRN.  The full title is "The Myths and Realities of Correctional Severity: Evidence from the National Corrections Reporting Program on Sentencing Practices," and here is the abstract: Though the growth in US prison populations over the past three decades-from 300,000 inmates in the 1970s to 1.6 million today-is well known, its causes are not.  This paper examines one potential source of growth that has received surprisingly little rigorous attention: changes in time actually served in prison.  Using offender-level data from the National Corrections Reporting Program, this paper demonstrates that median and 75th percentile times to release have not risen dramatically, and have even declined in some jurisdictions-although some of the decline appears to be caused by states increasingly incarcerating minor offenders who may not have been admitted in earlier years...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on February 07, 2009 (boomark / email).