Institutions and Criminal Justice Reform in the US: Promise and Peril in a "New" Era

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract

This panel examines how institutions have shaped criminal justice reform efforts, especially those in the Twenty First Century. Our focus primarily draws on trends emerging in what might be called a new era of reform or late mass incarceration. We explore how institutions have shaped reform efforts and examine how this might inform previous lessons of penal and policy change. Our panel deploys a critical lens to explore the potential problems and promises likely to emerge from a new era of legal and policy change. We hope to illuminate how institutions that were instrumental in mass incarceration’s rise and persistence will likely shape the realities of penal change, and to consider how shifting orientations across institutional planes might present new opportunities that could threaten the carceral ethos that dominated much of the late twentieth century.

Sub Unit

• Area VII. The Criminal Justice System / 45. Challenging Criminal Justice Policies

Individual Presentations

• Mapping State Penal Fields - Michael C. Campbell, University of Missouri - St. Louis

• Late Mass Incarceration in Low-Population States: How Institutions Shape the Balance of Lifetime Punishments and Penal Reform - Christopher Seeds, University of California, Irvine

• Devolution, Privatization, and Individual Blame: Charitable Foundations and Juvenile Justice Reforms - Sarah Cate, Saint Louis University

• A Generative-Justice Ideal for the Moral Reorientation of American Penal Culture - David A. Green, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Chair

• Michael C. Campbell, University of Missouri - St. Louis