1. A brief summary of the reading;
2. Apply the topic of the reading to your own personal knowledge and experiences.

2- Demonstrate critical thinking of the reading(s) assigned. Provide a thorough, but concise, summary of the central themes from each reading. Identify specific quotes or examples from the readings that interested you and explain why you found these points interesting. Apply the concepts covered to your own personal experience, thinking critically about why you are connected to the issue or why you may not feel so connected. Remember, we are all connected but power structures work to create the illusion of division.

Reading 1. The causes and
consequences of prison
growth in the United
States
MARC MAUER
The Sentencing Project, USA
Abstract
The unprecedented growth in the prison and jail population in the United States can be traced to a complex set of political developments and changes in sentencing prac- tice. The rise in crime in the 1960s came at a time of increasing social divisions and the politicization of crime at the national level. This influenced and coincided with a debate on sentencing practice, which led to a dramatic shift away from the indeterminate sen- tencing model that had prevailed for much of the 20th century. As a result sentencing practice today is characterized by severe constraints on judges and parole officials in many jurisdictions and decreased emphasis on examining the unique circumstances of offender and offense. These changes in sentencing and the impact of the ‘war on drugs’ have been the most substantial features contributing to the rise in the use of incarcera- tion since 1980. Any movement for reduced incarceration will need to develop a clear analysis of the role of politics, race, media and coalition building in order to succeed.
Key Words
crime and incarceration • prison growth • reform strategies • sentencing policy
Imagine that we are back in 1972 and Richard Nixon is President. In recent years rising rates of crime and urban unrest have become significant sources of concern for the nation. The President makes a televised address to the nation to announce an initiative to respond to the crime problem. He declares a bold program – he will lead the nation in building enough prison cells to house an additional 1 million inmates over the current population of 200,000. Further, since street crime is disproportionately concentrated in black and His- panic communities, two-thirds of the new prison cells will be reserved for minorities. And, with the death penalty having just been declared unconstitutional, he will spearhead a drive to enact new laws and fill the nation’s Death Rows with more than 3000 inmates. What would have been the reaction to such a proposal? One can certainly imagine massive protests led by civil rights organizations and their allies. Editorial boards at leading newspapers – many of which already viewed Nixon with distrust – would have written scathing editorials decrying the abandonment of more positive solutions to inner-city problems. And, leading criminologists would have bemoaned the failure to address the underlying societal factors leading to crime.
Nixon never proposed such an audacious plan, of course, yet these are precisely the outcomes that national policy has produced in the ensuing quarter century. Seemingly oblivious to fluctuations in crime rates, the scale of incarceration has risen inexorably to the point where an inmate population of 2 million Americans seems likely by year-end 2001.
Political analysts in 1972 would have had to be particularly prescient to have antici- pated such developments. Indeed, one could have argued at the time that a reduction in the use of incarceration was a more likely development. In 1971, the Attica prison rebel- lion had led to the tragic loss of lives of 43 inmates and guards, while symbolizing for the nation a politically conscious prisoner population raising a fundamental critique of the penal system. That same year, David Rothman published his highly acclaimed, The discovery of the asylum, closing with these words: ‘. . . we have been gradually escaping from institutional responses and one can foresee the period when incarceration will be used still more rarely than it is today’ (Rothman, 1971: 295, emphasis added). By 1973, the final report of the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommended that ‘no new institutions for adults should be built and exist- ing institutions for juveniles should be closed’ and concluded that ‘the prison, the refor- matory, and the jail have achieved only a shocking record of failure’ (National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, 1973: 358, 597).
What is most striking about these calls for a reduction in the use of incarceration is that they were voiced at a time when the inmate population in prisons and jails totaled just over 300,000, a rate of incarceration about one-fifth of that today. Not only is that level of incarceration unimaginable in the current political climate, but even a mora- torium on the construction of new institutions hardly seems possible.
This article will explore the criminal justice policy changes that have substantially con- tributed to this unprecedented prison-building frenzy, as well as the political climate underlying these developments. It will also assess the efforts of reformers and suggest that many of their cherished arguments in support of reduced incarceration may be unpersuasive.
POLICY CHANGES AND INCARCERATION
In tracing the landscape of change in criminal justice policy that has contributed to the growing use of imprisonment the most significant area of examination is sentencing policy. Beginning in the 1970s we see a shift toward the use of determinate sentencing in a variety of forms and its attendant consequences on power relationships within the court system and, perhaps more significantly, on public perceptions of issues of crime and punishment.
Prior to this, American sentencing policy had been characterized by indeterminate sentencing, accompanied by an emphasis on rehabilitation as a major objective (whether reasonably implemented or not). That model came under attack in the 1960s from both the political left and right. Liberals came to view the broad range of discretion available to sentencing judges and parole boards as too fraught with potential for discrimination based on race, gender, and other factors, while conservatives felt that criminals were not being treated harshly enough. Both camps came to embrace sentencing structures that were far more fixed, or determinate, than the prevailing models.
Early proposals designed to implement these changes are illustrative of the sometimes competing goals offered by proponents. New York’s ‘Rockefeller Drug Laws,’ adopted in 1973 and still among the nation’s harshest drug policies, called for a 15-year prison term for anyone convicted of selling 2 ounces or possessing 4 ounces of narcotics, regard- less of the offender’s criminal history. Sentencing guidelines systems, advocated promi- nently by Marvin Frankel in his 1972 book, Criminal sentences: law without order, envisioned a more rational sentencing structure in which judicial discretion was con- strained to varying degrees and sentences were largely determined by a grid system emphasizing the severity of the offense and the offender’s prior record (Frankel, 1972). Of the structured sentencing systems in place today in the federal courts and one-third of the states, the federal guidelines stand at one extreme in placing severe constraints on the consideration of individual offender characteristics, while systems such as those in Minnesota and North Carolina grant judges greater latitude in considering relevant vari- ables (see generally Tonry, 1996).
The movement toward determinate sentencing quickened in the 1980s and continues through the present, with much of it intimately intertwined with the ‘war on drugs.’ Political leaders and law enforcement officials at the state and local level quickly embraced the launching of this new ‘war’ by the Reagan Administration in the early 1980s. In Washington, both budget allocations and political attention gave prominence to drug issues throughout the decade. Federal funding for the drug war soared from $1.5 billion in 1981 to $6.6 billion by 1989 (The White House, 1992) (and continued to rise to $17 billion by 1999). As a public policy concern, political attention heightened regarding the drug ‘scourge’ by the Bush Administration and its drug ‘czar’ William Bennett. As Katherine Beckett has documented, public concern about the drug problem followed, rather than instigated, policymaker initiatives in this area (Beckett, 1997).
Law enforcement attention to drug offenses increased dramatically, with a doubling of drug arrests in the 1980s and a record 1.6 million arrests by 1998. Those offenders convicted on drug charges often were faced with the new generation of mandatory sen- tencing penalties enacted throughout the country. The federal drug penalties enacted in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 impose five- year mandatory prison terms for possession of as little as 5 grams of crack cocaine. Harsh penalties, most often imposed for drug offenses, were adopted at the state level as well. In Michigan, for example, a 1978 law (‘Public Act 368 of 1978’ – sometimes referred to as the ‘650 Lifer Law’) required that the sale of 650 grams of heroin or cocaine, even for a first offender, be punished by a mandatory sentence of life without parole, the same penalty as for first degree murder. (The legislation was eventually scaled back in 1998.) A 1996 survey published by the Bureau of Justice Assistance indicated that every state had adopted some form of mandatory sentencing (Bureau of Justice Assistance, 1996).
The impact of these sentencing changes on prison populations has been dramatic, and far outweighs any change in crime rates as a contributing factor. Criminologists Alfred Blumstein and Allen Beck have documented that 88 percent of the tripling of the national prison population from 1980 to 1996 is explained by changes in the imposi- tion of punishment (51 percent a greater likelihood of incarceration upon conviction and 37 percent longer prison terms), while changes in crime rates explain only 12 percent of the rise (Blumstein and Beck, 1999).
By the year 2000, not only are mandatory prison terms employed across the nation, but ‘three strikes and you’re out’ policies exist in half the states (Clark et al., 1997) (although only used extensively in California and Georgia), as do ‘truth in sentencing’ statutes, which generally lengthen time served in prison by offenders. Despite the fact that crime rates have declined for much of the 1990s, prison populations have continued their seemingly inexorable climb. While harsh sentencing policies are clearly a key factor in this regard, in recent years higher rates of probation and parole revocation have played an increasing role in prison admissions (Caplow and Simon, 1999). This trend is most likely a result of a combination of factors: high caseloads that result in limited services to offenders; untreated substance abuse leading to new crimes or violations; and the failure to develop a broader range of non-incarcerative options for responding to viola- tions.
INCARCERATION AND CRIME
Public policy discourse has all too often assumed an overly simplistic relationship between incarceration and crime, ignoring the complex set of factors that influence indi- vidual behavior. While it is not inappropriate to examine the impact of incarceration on crime, in doing so one would also want to explore two additional key questions: (1) to the extent that incarceration has an impact on crime, how does this compare with other potential investments in crime control? And (2) what are the social costs of the invest- ment in incarceration and how are they borne in society? The advent of mass imprison- ment is now creating some discussion of these questions. This section will focus only on providing an overview of what we know about incarceration and crime control. From the vantage point of the late 1990s one might (and many politicians have) become rather smug about the results achieved by the rising levels of imprisonment. While the number of inmates rose by 58 percent from 1991 to 1998, crime rates declined by 22 percent and rates of violent crime by 25 percent. Murder rates in 1998 were at a 30-year low. For some observers, this confirmed the ‘prison works’ theory of crime control. But examining complex relationships such as these over a short time span is not ter- ribly helpful. In fact, the prison–crime correlation for the 1990s is precisely the oppo- site of that which prevailed in the late 1980s. From 1984 to 1991, the number of inmates nationally rose by 79 percent, while crime rates also increased, by 17 percent, and violent crime by 41percent. Further, the low homicide rate of the late 1990s, while quite welcome, is all the result of substantial declines in just the past several years. Over a 20-year period of steadily rising incarceration, homicide rates fluctuated within the range of 8–10 per 100,000, not falling below this level until 1996. Yet homicide is down, and quite substantially. Why is this so? Several factors seem most relevant here. First, the national declines are influenced disproportionately by the dramatic changes in New York City, accounting for 32 percent of the total decline for 1993–4 and 22 percent for 1994–5 (Blumstein and Rosenfeld, 1998). Whether one believes that homicide is down in New York because of aggressive policing or other factors, the one certainty is that the decline is not a result of more offenders being incar- cerated than in other cities. In fact, the 47 percent drop in homicide in New York from 1990 to 1995 occurred during a time when the state prison population (a majority of whose inmates are from New York City) rose at a significantly lower rate than the national average and the city’s jail population actually declined.
Second, changes in homicide (both the rise of the late 1980s and the decline of the 1990s) have disproportionately occurred among juveniles, who are generally not subject to adult incarceration (although this is changing in recent years as states permit more juveniles to be tried as adults). To the extent that general deterrence is a factor in crime control, juveniles have historically been viewed as being less influenced by this than adults.
A more compelling assessment of the decline in homicides (and violence overall) is provided by the mix of factors addressed by Blumstein and Beck (1999), who point to the youth-drugs-guns nexus of causation. As crack cocaine entered urban areas in the mid-1980s new drug markets emerged. These markets primarily employed young men who increasingly resorted to protecting their ‘turf’ with illegal guns. A surge of violence then ensued, often engulfing neighborhood residents who were not themselves involved in the drug trade.
By the 1990s this picture had changed substantially. Law enforcement strategies in cities such as Boston aimed to stem the supply of guns into communities. As young people witnessed the devastation caused by crack, fewer of them began using the drug themselves. Research by Richard Curtis (1998) also indicates that individuals and com- munities changed their behavior in ways that provided more protection. Teenagers stopped ‘hanging out’ in dangerous neighborhoods and drug dealers moved their oper- ations off the streets.
A key issue in the change in crime rates is that the bulk of the recent decline has been in property offenses, and burglary in particular, with a 27 percent decline from 1980 to 1990. But two factors should give us pause in regard to the efficacy of prison in this regard. First, it is quite possible that much of the burglary decline of the 1980s may have been displaced to drug offenses. As a means of making money drug selling is hardly without its risks, but these may be viewed as preferable compared to the risk involved in breaking into a home or business and the often cumbersome process of ‘fencing’ stolen goods. Second, to the extent that incarceration may have had an impact on burglary rates, imprisoning convicted burglars at a cost of $20,000 a year is a substantial invest- ment that might be more effectively used to address the problems of substance abuse and low-wage jobs that lead to many of these offenses.
To question the value of incarceration in achieving crime control is not to suggest that prison has no impact on these matters. But in the year 2000 we are not discussing whether or not the United States should maintain a prison system at all. Rather, the public policy question is whether, with an already world record-sized prison population, we should continue to expand prison capacity indefinitely. From a crime control per- spective, continued expansion is likely to lead to diminishing returns, as successively less serious offenders are incarcerated on average. From a societal standpoint, mass imprison- ment results in fundamental concerns of human rights and racial polarization becom- ing more prominent each day (see Wacquant, this issue). UNDERSTANDING THE ‘TOUGH ON CRIME’ MOVEMENT
While the contours of change in criminal justice policy are not difficult to discern, the more intriguing issue regards how and why this particular policy direction was selected. In the early 1970s the nation was confronted with a rising rate of crime. To what extent crime was actually increasing is a matter of some dispute since rates of reporting became more inclusive in the 1970s as a result of funding through the Law Enforcement Assist- ance Administration and the upgrading of police technology. But the coming of age of the ‘baby boom’ generation, increasing urbanization and other factors clearly con- tributed to a certain rise, and clearly a strong perception, that crime was increasing.
Given this situation, it was hardly preordained that mass incarceration was the only, or the most effective, approach possible to respond to the problem. Certainly a national commitment to address the ‘root causes’ of crime would have been an alternative policy approach. Indeed, efforts in this direction were already underway, albeit modestly funded. The ‘War on Poverty’ of the 1960s, the development of the Head Start program, and the orientation toward drug treatment encouraged by the Nixon administration all contained elements of an approach with a greater social welfare orientation. Further, other industrialized nations were experiencing similar demographic trends, yet chose not to pursue the ‘get tough’ policies of the USA (although aspects of these trends as well as rising rates of incarceration can be seen in a number of these nations in the 1990s).
Several factors contributed to the ‘get tough’ climate that began in the 1970s and then was exacerbated in the following decades. These include the following:
* Politicization of crime. Prior to the 1960s crime had primarily been addressed as a local issue, rarely surfacing in national political discussions. In 1964, though, Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign clearly proclaimed the problem of ‘crime in the streets,’ followed by Richard Nixon’s 1968 appeal for ‘law and order.’ These messages resonated with a substantial portion of the population concerned with crime and the social unrest of the period. 

* American culture of individualism. In comparison to other industrialized nations, the much greater American emphasis on individual as opposed to collective approaches to social welfare created a receptive climate for harsh prison policies. As exemplified by being the only industrialized nation without universal health care, the promotion of more collective approaches to social problems is far less ingrained in the Ameri- can political culture. This makes it simpler to conceptualize ‘solutions’ that punish individual behavior rather than addressing underlying contributors to crime. On a broad scale, the consequences of such approaches can be seen in the much-vaunted low unemployment rates of the USA in comparison with western Europe. As the work of Bruce Western and Katherine Beckett (1999) has demonstrated, though, the US rates are substantially tempered by the massive American prison system. If one factors in the prison population as part of the unemployed group, the labor force par- ticipation rate in the US declines substantially (Western and Beckett, 1999). 

* Growing conservative political climate. Changes in criminal justice policy can hardly be divorced from the growing conservative tide that was particularly evidenced with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. ‘Getting tough’ on criminals is consistent with increasingly harsh attitudes and policies toward welfare recipients, immigrants, and other politically unpopular and marginalized groups. In recent years the ‘get tough’ approach is increasingly being expanded to school expulsion policies, home-
less ‘removal,’ and other areas as well.
Once the tough on crime movement was underway, social and economic develop- ments contributed to its strengthened hold on political and popular discourse. As the manufacturing economies of the Rust Belt cities in the Midwest began to be eclipsed in the 1970s by the emerging high-tech economies, the disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor created an increasingly polarized society, often overlapping with racial divisions (see Wilson, 1997). As the work of Leslie Wilkins (quoted in Young and Brown, 1993) demonstrates, a correlation can be found between national income dis- parity and rates of incarceration. Wilkins theorizes this relationship as a type of ‘nega- tive reward’ for those who are not successful in a competitive social structure. But one can also discern the practical aspects of how these developments would emerge under such conditions. The key variable in this area is the ease with which a society imposes punishment. As Nils Christie (1981) views the relationship, it is easier to impose pain (or punishment) on those with whom we have little in common or do not know in any personal sense (Cayley, 1998). Thus, the more stratified a society, the easier it becomes for the well-off to advocate greater pain for those less fortunate. Two extreme divisions within the USA exacerbate this dynamic. First, due to patterns of racial segregation in housing and employment, low-income African-American communities, which are disproportionately the recipients of criminal punishments, are in many ways spatially and otherwise iso- lated from the larger society. Second, over the past two decades, American society has become more stratified, and not only by income levels. The rise of gated housing com- munities, the increasing flight of the middle class from the public school system, and the technological divide in regard to computers and high technology all serve to heighten class and race differences and to reduce interaction. The cumulative impact of these trends can be seen in the mix of social and criminal justice policies that have resulted in a situation whereby 29 percent of black males born today can expect to serve time in prison in their lifetimes (Bonczar and Beck, 1997). These are the very same policies described by political leaders as ‘successes’ in the war against crime.
Problems with the reform strategy
Criminal justice reform efforts of the past 20 years have achieved greater success than is often acknowledged. In the realm of sentencing alternatives and community cor- rections, concepts that were once viewed as intriguing but untested are now standard practice in most jurisdictions. Community service and restitution as sanctions are common throughout the country, as are the more complex programmatic responses such as day reporting centers, drug courts, and the use of graduated sanctions for pro- bation and parole violators. And, while political rhetoric on crime policy remains woe- fully constrained, political leaders ranging from President Clinton to local officials have joined in the growing chorus that recognizes that ‘we can’t jail our way out of the problem.’
Despite these successes, the prison system continues its relentless rise, seemingly unre- lated to crime rates or any rational calculation of its benefits to society. It would be uncharitable to blame this situation on the failings of the relative handful of reformers,
* 
but an assessment of reform tactics and strategies over this period may shed some light
on the prospects for change in the new century.
Misplaced emphasis on rational analysis and fiscal arguments
Much of the work that has been done to advance the reform agenda has focused on the development of factual analyses that argue that the cost-benefits of mass imprisonment are quite modest, particularly in comparison with other policy options. Without be- littling these efforts (I have authored many such analyses myself ) their limitations in the policy arena stem from the fact that instrumental considerations such as cost-benefit are but one component in the development of criminal justice policy.
We can see this most clearly on the issue of the death penalty. Where once the ques- tion of deterrence was hotly debated, the vast literature demonstrating the absence of any deterrent effect has effectively eliminated this argument from the proponents of capital punishment. Vengeance and retribution – the misunderstanding of the Biblical limitation of ‘an eye for an eye’ – have since emerged as the primary rationale for con- tinuation of this barbaric policy. Any type of rationality-based cost-effectiveness argu- ment is therefore of little consequence.
Outside the criminal justice arena, one can see parallels with military spending. Arms control analysts spent many frustrating years during the Cold War churning out well- researched arguments decrying the wasteful and unnecessary spending on a bloated mili- tary system. These arguments were of little consequence, though, when competing with the popular resonance and emotional force of policies directed at the ‘Soviet menace’ and the ‘threat’ of communism.
Misunderstanding of public opinion dynamics
Reformers have also placed their faith in a series of public opinion studies of the past decade showing substantial public support for alternatives to incarceration. Typically, these studies (Doble and Klein, 1989) engage in a two-step polling process. First, respon- dents are asked to choose a sentence of either prison or probation for a series of hypo- thetical offenders. Respondents are then offered an additional non-incarcerative sentencing option that incorporates some elements of community service, restitution, and/or treatment. Support for imprisonment generally declines substantially when a broader range of sentencing options are considered. Reformers have taken great comfort in these results and have interpreted them as demonstrating that the public is receptive to reasonable sentencing alternatives when a more robust discussion takes place.
The limitation of this approach, though, is that there is little room in the political arena for such a wide-ranging presentation of alternatives. While alternative options may be significant in a local courtroom looking at real offenders and real sentencing options, they are generally too complex to fit into the political ‘sound bite’ debate, which rarely allows for more than competing ‘get tough’ proposals.
Misunderstanding media dynamics
A third, and related, problem regards the media. In this area as well, the problem is more complex than is often presented in the more simplistic versions of blaming ‘the media’ for all our problems. Despite the failings one can find with all media, there is, after all, a significant difference between the New York Times and America’s Most Wanted. The former, like many other print media, has published many useful analyses of crime trends and the impact of mandatory sentencing policies, as well as editorializing against the death penalty and in favor of expanded treatment as an alternative to current drug poli- cies. Yet while these pronouncements have helped to broaden discussion of criminal justice policy, they have had relatively little impact on actual legislative action.
The primary cause of this failure relates to the powerful imagery of television. With local news broadcasts throughout the nation still composed substantially of crime stories with little context, the nation continues to be flooded with a relentless assault of nightly crime stories, regardless of whether crime is rising or falling. The visual and emotional impact of television is on a different order than the more contained messages of the print media (although many of the print tabloids have clearly emulated TV’s style). Further, many of television’s drama shows contribute to the portrayal of violence that reinforces these images. Consider the much-acclaimed NYPDBlue, winner of many awards for its high-quality scripts and acting. Of the several crimes portrayed in each episode, one or more almost invariably feature a murder or armed robbery. These clearly make for more drama than would a stolen car vignette, but since car theft accounts for 70 times more crime than homicide, their inclusion also distorts our perception of the relative mix of offenses in real life. These images, rather than the more sober editorial one might read in the morning paper, are what linger in the mind as policymakers enact legislation and citizens consider which candidate will have the most impact on crime.
While each of these factors have been critical in thwarting the reform agenda, the more overriding problem is that our societal framework for considering issues of crime and justice has been changed in very profound ways. It will be exceedingly difficult to reverse course unless this paradigm is addressed.
The most significant change within the criminal justice system is the loss of the indi- vidual in the sentencing process, as determinate sentencing and other ‘reforms’ have taken us from an offender-based to an offense-based system. Without overlooking the abuses that arose in the past within the indeterminate sentencing structure, the primary virtue of that system was its ability to incorporate the individual characteristics and circumstances of the offender into the sentencing process. The movement toward deter- minate sentencing, particularly in its most extreme forms of mandatory sentencing, ‘three strikes’ laws, and the federal sentencing guidelines, has largely eliminated any con- sideration of these unique factors from the court process.
This dehumanization contributes to a vicious cycle in which power is increasingly concentrated in legislative hands at the expense of judges and corrections officials who once had greater input into individual decisionmaking. This is also an area to which reformers have often unwittingly contributed. For example, many advocates (correctly) argue that incarceration at $20,000 per inmate is not terribly cost-effective for non- violent offenders. But the practical corollary of this in the policy arena has been that vir- tually no amount of imprisonment for violent offenders is considered to be too long. ‘Three strikes’ laws and ‘truth in sentencing’ statutes exemplify this practice. Public policy has now all but obliterated the distinction between a violent offender and a violent offense, with Charles Manson emblematic of the former and a battered wife who attacks her abuser the latter. For purposes of incarceration policy, many persons who commit a violent offense do not in fact need to be incarcerated for long periods of time for public safety reasons, but the terms of political debate increasingly make this an irrelevant issue. It is difficult to quantify to what extent this process of dehumanization is tied in with perceptions of race and ethnicity, but the data on prison populations and the political imagery of recent years strongly suggest that these issues are intimately connected. The notion of offenders as ‘predators,’ not to mention the ‘superpredator’ mythology with its pernicious political impact, is hard to imagine were we not speaking of a prison system comprised of two-thirds racial and ethnic minorities. The same is true when policy- makers talk of the need to remove ‘weeds’ from our neighborhoods through federally funded Weed and Seed programs. These images certainly do not portray the life history of anyone that we might know or care about, at least enough to investigate whether a prison cell is the most effective response to their offending behavior.
Implications for policy change
The foregoing assessment may be a bit harsh in that, despite being woefully under- funded, reformers have in fact made considerable progress in recent years. This is evi- denced both in the proliferation of new programmatic approaches within the criminal justice system as well as increasing recognition of the need for drug treatment and other services. Clearly, these research and advocacy efforts need to continue and be expanded. But if we are to see more overarching change in the landscape, two types of strategic approaches need to be considered. First, reform efforts need to include broader con- stituencies. These might include education leaders concerned about the diversion of funding to prisons, religious leaders raising moral concerns, and family members in com- munities heavily impacted by incarceration.
Second, it will be necessary to convey an overarching vision of how to move from a punitive response to crime to a problem-solving orientation. In this regard, consider the strategy of the early civil rights movement. African-Americans were demanding a practi- cal reform – a seat at the front of the bus – but also presented a broad call for freedom in all its manifestations. Some observers would argue that in a time of political con- servatism such an approach is foolhardy. But unless such a vision is created, reformers run the risk of continuing to be identified as not tough enough on crime. How, then, can a more effective public policy picture be presented? The first step involves expanding the discussion of crime policy beyond the day-to-day debates on the relationship between prison and crime to more fundamental concerns about the type of society we wish to create. Is it one where three of every 10 African-American males born today can expect to spend time in prison in their lifetime, most of whom will lose the right to vote for at least part of their adult lives? One in which one-quarter million men- tally ill persons are behind bars? Or one in which 11-year-olds can be sentenced to terms of life without parole? These questions are not just idle speculation, but rather the con- crete outcomes of the ‘get tough’ policies that have been promoted over the past quarter century.
The second component of a strategy involves the articulation of a more positive vision of public safety. Contrary to popular wisdom, this is one that is actually intuitively understood by most people. A ‘safe’ neighborhood is not one with the most police or most frequent use of the death penalty, but rather one with adequate resources to build strong families and communities. Policies of the past 25 years that have invested in prisons at the expense of low-income communities have in effect created less safe neighbourhoods within the field of criminal justice, the concept of restorative justice has made sub- stantial headway in recent years. Once the province of religious-based reformers the idea is now the subject of conferences and publications produced by the Department of Justice and other official bodies. It is too early to assess the actual impact of restorative justice on common perceptions of crime and justice, but much of its potential rests on the non-adversarial approach to conflict that it promotes. One does not need to ‘favor’ victims or offenders to endorse its precepts, and therefore it holds the possibility of moving us away from a zero-sum game that pits the supposed interests of one against the interests of the other.
We should not underestimate the difficulty of enacting such a dual-pronged strategy. But unless we are able to do so it is unlikely that we will see any significant change in our national commitment to mass incarceration.

READING.2—–Policing and Resistance in the U.S.
An incomplete timeline compiled by the Chicago Prison-Industrial Complex Teaching Collective and Chain Reaction: Alternatives to Calling Police, initiatives of Project NIA
Author’s note: This timeline is designed as a tool for popular education about the history of policing and resistance to policing in the U.S. It is very incomplete and ideally its use will integrate the knowledge of workshop or training participants. We have loosely divided it into trends and themes in order to make it more useable in a brief interactive activity; there is not usually time to touch on all the specific points we have even in this limited timeline. There is also a bit of a focus on Chicago; every city could probably have its own timeline of policing. We hope you will add to it and correct it as you feel fit, drawing on the wisdoms of the people you are working with.
1. Colonization and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Resistance: Armed resistance, including revolutions like that in Haiti, cultural survival
Ca. 1100s: Origins of the “Shire Reeve” or Sheriff in England. Sheriffs were representatives of the crown who sat in on local affairs to make sure laws were actually being enforced (previously, localities had relied on collective enforcement efforts of citizens; the Sheriff’s role thus extended the power of the crown). These unpopular figures were also tax collectors, at least initially; later forms included coroner, justice of the peace, and constable.
1100s-1800s: Use of “night watches” in Europe and its colonies: civilian groups of men required by law to patrol the streets at night. They were unpaid, often unwilling, and apparently “frequently drunk.”
1492: Colonization of the Americas by Europeans begins; brutal militia force is a routine part of land-grabbing, along with later forcing Indigenous peoples into working for colonizers in mines and agriculture.
1600s-1700s: Establishment of trans-Atlantic slave trade; use of force and control of bodies institutionalized into economic systems of the Americas.
1500s-1800s: Colonial forces import European justice systems to what is now the U.S., including sheriffs, constables, and night watches. They were unpopular entities whose jobs included taxing and elections alongside law enforcement.
Militias, Patrols, and White Supremacist Consolidation of Power Resistance: Armed resistance, escape and subversion, cultural survival
1680s: South Carolina passes a law that allows any white person to capture and punish a runaway slave. In 1690 a law was passed that required whites to act in this role. Slavery and white supremacy were so fully institutionalized in the American South that, as one author put it, “White supremacy served in lieu of a police force.”
1700s-1800s: Reform of London Watch to resemble a modern police department: pay, round-the- clock hours, and hierarchical command were established. As in the U.S., establishment of actual “police departments” was based on growth in property crimes. 1703: Boston passes a curfew law for all Blacks and Indigenous people, establishing race as a defining criteria in law enforcement in the new colonies (even non-slavery ones). 1776: Formation of a nation-state in U.S. colonies; national militia unifies in effort to remove the, British and a national constitution provides for maintenance of military and National Guard.
1700s onwards: Southern cities such as Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, and Mobile form paramilitary groups tasked with the control of enslaved people, with the goal of preventing and repressing rebellion. Slave patrols and militias often work together. In the U.S., these organized patrols are the first proper antecedents to “modern” police forces.
Early 1800s: Pass laws were passed in several Southern states requiring all Black people to carry passes and allowing for arrest of any Black person without a pass, regardless of their status.
Mid-1800s: Police in the U.S. coalesce into one relatively uniform type. Previous law enforcement models such as guards, watchmen, militias and slave patrols begin to coalesce into city-run, 24-hour police.
2. Emancipation and Reconstruction
Resistance: Building Black political power, suffrage, legal reforms and increased accountability, armed resistance
1865: Emancipation of enslaved people. Emancipation is followed immediately by passage of laws controlling Black people’s public movement and work; emancipation also stipulates that slave labor may continue for those convicted of a crime, creating an incentive for whites in power to arrest Black people in order to exploit their labor and prevent their entry into wage labor and political power (13th Amendment).
1860s-70s: Reconstruction and a rapid gain of political power by Blacks in the south is met with extreme legal and extralegal backlash, including violent vigilante and militia action against Black people attempting to vote or run for office. Southern “law enforcement” is often indistinguishable from white supremacist vigilante groups.
1872: First Black police officer in Chicago
1885: In New Orleans following a levee workers’ strike, the mayor suggests to police to arrest any Black man who “did not want to work.”
Late 1800s: Increased urbanization leads to decreases in serious crimes, but increase in elite fears of working-class rebellion. “The crisis of the time was not one of law,” writes Kristian Williams, “but of order—specifically the order required by the new industrial economy and the Protestant moralism that supplied, in large part, its ideological expression.”
1886: Haymarket Riot. After an Anarchist throws a bomb at police at a workers rally in Haymarket square in Chicago, police riot against demonstrators, killing at least a dozen. Seven police are also killed. Raids on activist community ensue, and ultimately 8 men are convicted as examples. Four of them are murdered by execution.
3. Progressive Era: Reform and Bureaucratization to Protect Elite Interests
Resistance: Armed resistance, growth of urban social movements, immigrant and labor union organizing, reforms 1890-1930: Progressive Era reforms lead to “kinder, gentler” system and reforms of local corruption in city governments. Police departments become more disciplined and hierarchical as a result. Progressive reforms also lead to innovations like the probation and parole systems, legalizing bureaucratic state intrusion into poor people’s homes. Urban professional social services and public housing are also invented, often working in tandem with these new reformed government systems such as child welfare and the juvenile courts.
1900-1940: Formation of state police forces begins as a response to union actions. Large corporations had employed their own private forces, and reformists saw this as unsavory while corporations saw it as expensive. State Troopers are the solution.
1912: Lawrence Textile Strike (Bread and Roses). This notorious strike over the work week and pay for textile workers in Massachusetts leads to heavy police repression and the murder of strikers, many of whom are immigrants and most of whom are women.
1919: Chicago Race Riot. The riot began after a white man throwing rocks at Black people on a segregated Southside beach. Black WWI veterans were active in protesting police violence.
1920s-1930s: IWW and other unions particularly active. Police are routinely employed as a shield between unions and corporations, breaking up strikes and threatening labor organizers with violence.
4. Birth of Civil Rights Movements
Resistance: Armed resistance, non-violent tactics inspired by anti-colonial revolutions abroad, solidarity with anti-colonial movements, legal reforms, rioting
1943: Detroit Riots. Arrests of several Black people after a skirmish and a rape accusation leads to days of white rioting against Black people met with Black rioting against whites. According to Thurgood Marshall, the police “used ‘persuasion’ rather than firm action with white rioters, while against Negroes they used the ultimate in force: night sticks, revolvers, riot guns, sub-machine guns, and deer guns.”
1940s-1950s: McCarthyism and the Red Scare. Anti-Soviet sentiment and a government-produced fear of nuclear war and Communism are rallied as a justification for blacklisting and surveillance of anyone who is a suspected Communist—a pre-cursor to “anti-terrorism” policy today.
1950s: Emergence of the Civil Rights Movement as we know it, which uses civil disobedience strategically in national campaigns. Non-violent protestors, most of them Black, are routinely met with violence.
1950s onwards: COINTELPRO, a secret FBI program, active in monitoring and disrupting Civil Rights and Black Power activities for two decades. COINTELPRO is ultimately a key player in dismantling the radical movements for justice that emerged in this era.
5. Height of Struggle for Racial Equality and Self-Determination
Resistance: Armed resistance, Black Nationalism, LGBT and women’s liberation organizing, peaceful demonstration, rioting, legal reforms
1960s-1970s: After decades of quashed attempts, police themselves are finally able to form unions. State concessions to police create further unity up and down the police hierarchy.
1961: Southern Freedom Riders met with police violence, notably in Birmingham, AL, where the riders were arrested and removed. When they returned on Mothers Day of that year, they were beaten by Klansmen while police looked away.
1965: Watts Riots. Riots began after a standard “driving while black” traffic stop in the Watts neighborhood of L.A.; police assaulted some bystanders and arrested some people. The crowd’s response led to a 6-day riot in which 34 people were killed and over 1000 injured.
1966: Formation of the Black Panther Party. The Party platform includes a demand for “an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people.”
1968: Police repression of the protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Although many are injured and killed, this moment is an important watershed in that police mob violence was captured on camera and distributed internationally. Even Chicago police officials are forced to admit things “got out of control.”
1969: Murder of Fred Hampton in Chicago. FBI works with Chicago police to commit premeditated murder of BPP leader Fred Hampton in his house on the South side.
1969: Stonewall Riots in New York City. After a routine raid on the Stonewall Inn by police, gay men, lesbians, and drag queens fight back against police. Rioting goes on for several nights and is said to be the spark for the modern LGBT movement in the U.S.
6. Backlash Against Activist Movements, Control of Urban Spaces
Resistance: Armed resistance, continued non-violent resistance, rioting, struggle for political power including more Black voices within police forces and mainstream politics
1970: Kent State and Jackson State murders. Four college students at Kent State in Ohio and two college students at Jackson State in Mississippi are murdered by police during anti-war protests. The four white students’ killings are national news, while the murder of the two black protestors is downplayed by the media and historians. Both events, though tragic, helped to strengthen anti-war sentiment throughout the country.
1970s: Radical Black Power movement and other groups such as the Young Lords and the Gay Liberation Front are routinely infiltrated and criminalized by police and FBI. These movements are eventually torn apart in the process, forcing activists into either more mainstream politics and tactics, or permanent incarceration and marginalization.
1971: Attica Rebellion. Men locked up in Attica prison in New York State stage a massive rebellion in response to deplorable conditions and violent treatment by guards. The Black Panthers support the Attica prisoners in advancing a list of demands, but the immediate protest ends in a massacre of prisoners by state police called in to quell the rebellion.
1972: Chicago Police Torture begins. Under the leadership of Police Commander Jon Burge, at least 135 African-American men and women are tortured by Chicago Police between 1972 and 1991. By the time the issue is brought to the surface, the statute of limitations is up for a torture trial.
1979/1980: Miami Riots. The police murdered a Black salesman named Arthur McDuffie after a chase. When three officers were acquitted by an all-white jury in Tampa (the case was moved by a judge), crowds rioted in Miami. Seventeen were killed and nearly 500 injured. 7New Conservatism and the Drug War
Resistance: Media and legal campaigns to expose corruption and racism, rioting, peaceful demonstration
1980s: “Drug War” begins at Reagan’s urging, setting up urban communities of color as both victims and perpetrators in an ongoing process of criminalization. Crack-cocaine shows up in these communities while the feds look away.
Late 1980s: ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) begins to use civil disobedience to draw attention to the growing AIDS crisis and demand government support for research and aid to victims. Police suppress protests, but ACT-UP is successful in getting AIDS on the map as a social justice issue.
8. Reforms and Expansion of the PIC
Resistance: Organizing against zero tolerance and racial profiling; rioting
1990: Police and FBI set up “Earth First” activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney to make them look like terrorists. The pair are acquitted, and in 2002 a jury awards they $4.4 million in damages for violation of their civil rights.
1990s: Passage of “Zero Tolerance” policy, racial profiling laws like Prop 21, “Three Strikes Law” and increasingly extreme enforcement of drug laws support massive growth of PIC. Further criminalization of poverty and of young people of color works to move many of the most economically marginalized into the prison system.
1990s: Passage of hate crimes laws brings LGBT movements into the business of advocating for heavier policing and stricter sentencing, creating a widening divide in the movement between those who are routinely victims of policing and incarceration and those who are not.
1990s: Racial profiling on the map. Years of research and activism leads to the popularization of the term “racial profiling” to describe police practices targeting people of color. Police departments are forced to see racial profiling as an issue, and in some cases address the issue through policy changes (though not always in practice).
1996: Formation of the Oct 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. A broad coalition against police repression establishes a yearly day of protest on October 22 which continues to this day.
1990s-2000s: “Community Policing” model emerges around the country, encouraging homeowners, business owners, and local police to unify efforts to police the streets. This process is closely tied with urban gentrification, and “in practice certain populations generally get counted among the problems to be solved rather than the community to be involved” (Williams).
1991: Rodney King beaten by L.A.P.D. King’s brutal beating by police after being pulled over for reckless driving was caught on video.
1992: Rodney King verdict and L.A. Riots. Rioting began in the streets of LA after the police implicated in the Rodney King beating were acquitted despite the existence of a video shown many times on national TV. 1999: Murder of Amadou Diallo by New York City Police. Diallo was shot 19 times after reaching for his wallet to show police his ID.
1999: WTO Protests in Seattle. Over 40,000 protestors take to the streets to criticize the World Trade Organization and global imperialism; the ensuing police riot leads to several days of violence against protestors that is publicized around the world.
9. Backlash Against Immigrants, Birth of New Movements
Resistance: This is where you come in. Share your stories!
2001: Patriot Act. Following the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, a federal law is hastily passed that drastically increases the powers of surveillance and profiling for the state.
2009: Murder of Oscar Grant by Bay Area Rapid Transit police. Oscar Grant, a young black man, is shot in the back several times by police on a train platform on New Year’s Day. The murder is caught on cell phone video and incites massive protests, followed by accusations and fear- mongering by police claiming violent rioting by Black activists and their allies (in fact, while some present at the protests destroyed property, the majority of the violence was by police).
2010: Passage of Arizona’s SB-1070 is the first in a rash of draconian anti-immigrant laws that task local police with immigration enforcement and formalize racial profiling by police and, in Alabama, even by school officials. The events lead to the strengthening of black/brown coalitions against policing and racial profiling.
2010: Jon Burge convicted in Chicago for lying under oath about police torture cases.
2011: New Orleans police convicted in Danziger bridge trial. Five current and former New Orleans Police Officers are convicted of civil rights violations for the brutal murders of civilians attempting to escape New Orleans via the Danziger bridge during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The U.S. Justice Department also targets New Orleans for widespread brutality, corruption, and discrimination.
Selected sources used for this timeline:
Kristian Williams. Our Enemies In Blue: Police and Power in America. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2007.
Christian Parenti. The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
http://www.october22.org/HistoryBackground.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_Coalition_to_Unleash_Power#Actions http://humanrights.uchicago.edu/chicagotorture/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/katrina-danziger-bridge-katrina-shooting- verdict_n_919502.html http://www.may41970.com/Jackson%20State/jackson_state_may_1970.htm

Reading. 3
Is It a Prosecutor’s World?
Determinants of Count
Bargaining Decisions
Jeremy D. Ball
Boise State University, ID
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice Volume 22 Number 3 August 2006 241-260 © 2006 Sage Publications 10.1177/1043986206292369 http://ccj.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

Prosecutors have virtually unfettered discretion in their plea negotiations with defen- dants. Where discretion is unrestricted, unwarranted disparity is likely to follow. The current study examines the relationship between offender characteristics and count bar- gaining. From an integrated theory approach (integrating concession and consensus models, liberation hypothesis, and focal concerns theory), the current study hypothesizes that race and ethnicity, sex, age, and employment status of the offender has an effect on count bargaining decisions in only the borderline serious cases. Data were collected on 2,578 guilty pleas in Chicago, Illinois, in 1993 and analyzed using a backwards selec- tion logistic regression analysis partitioning cases by severity of the most serious charge. The results from these analyses indicate that offender characteristics do not have a sta- tistically significant effect on count bargaining. However, there may be important dif- ferences masked by straight pleas, symbolic bargaining, and overcharging practices.
Keywords: plea bargaining; prosecutorial discretion; liberation hypothesis; consen- sus and conflict; focal concerns theory
The prosecutorial stage is in many respects the linchpin of the criminal justice system.
Thomas and Fitch (1976, p. 509)
Introduction
Scholars agree that the American prosecutor possesses a great amount of dis- cretion (see Albonetti, 1987; Kersetter, 1990; Thomas & Fitch, 1976). Scholars also agree that such discretion has the potential to result in discrimination in the form of unwarranted disparity1 (Walker, Spohn, & DeLone, 2000). American prosecutors use
Author’s Note: This manuscript is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant SBR-93321852. Points of view are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the posi- tion of the National Science Foundation. Please address any comments and questions to Jeremy D. Ball at the following address: Department of Criminal Justice Administration, Boise State University, 1910 University Drive, Boise, ID 83725-1955, phone: (208) 426-3769, fax: (208) 426-4371, e-mail: jeremy- [email protected]. I would also like to thank Dr. Cassia Spohn for her guidance throughout this pro- ject. I would also like to thank my wife, Marcy, for her patience. SHMILY

Downloaded from ccj.sagepub.com at GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY on January 11, 2016
241

their discretion to make initial charging decisions, to seek the death penalty, and to negotiate plea agreements.
One of the most profound and frequently studied issues in the American criminal justice system is racial discrimination. Research indicates that Black offenders are disproportionately represented in prison populations (Blumstein, Cohen, Martin, & Tonry, 1983; Walker et al., 2000). Although Black citizens only represent 13% of the U.S. population, they represent 45% of the incarcerated population in state and fed- eral prisons (Harrison & Beck, 2003). On its face, Blumstein and his associates (1983) suggested that the overrepresentation of certain groups in prison populations may be a direct result of disparate treatment at sentencing. One argument Blumstein and his colleagues proffered, though, was that some of the racial disparity in prison populations might be attributed to a cumulative effect, whereby discretionary deci- sions at each stage contributed to the overall overrepresentation of racial minorities in prison (Blumstein et al., 1983). Wilmot and Spohn (2004) argued that plea bar- gaining decisions can play an important role in court processing. The current research project attempts to examine potential disparate treatment in one of these prior stages—the plea bargaining stage.
Research conducted on the decision points between arrest and sentencing is scarce. Albonetti (1990) noted that previous research failed to focus on racial or ethnic dif- ferences in the processing of defendants. Much research focused on outcome deci- sions such as bail and sentencing but not on processing decisions such as whether the case went to trial or pled guilty. There is a need for research to examine earlier deci- sion points such as initial charging and subsequent reduction of the number of charges. Few studies have examined unwarranted disparity in plea bargaining deci- sions, and most of the existing studies on plea bargaining are qualitative in nature, explaining how plea negotiations are processed rather than the determinants of these decisions. Even more remotely studied plea bargaining practices are the decisions to reduce the number of charges; research on plea bargaining often examines the reduc- tion of the severity of charges. The current research provides a quantitative approach to the examination of the effect of offender characteristics on the prosecutor’s deci- sion to reduce the number of charges—a phenomenon understudied.
Effect of Offender Characteristics on Court Processing
Court research on disparate treatment of particular defendants typically focused on charging or sentencing decisions (see Spohn & Beichner, 2000; Spohn & Cederblom, 1991; Spohn & Holleran, 2000; Steffensmeier & Demuth, 2000; Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998). Research on prosecutors’ plea bargaining decisions has not experienced the same vigor and attention. Decisions by prosecutors can affect later decisions (e.g., bail and sentencing) (see Johnson, 2003; Kellough & Wortley, 2002; Wilmot & Spohn, 2004). Wooldredge and Thistlethwaite (2004) found that earlier decisions by the prosecutor (i.e., charging decisions) result in more favorable
dispositions in domestic violence cases for suspects who face greater social and financial disadvantage yet less favorable at the conviction and sentencing stage for these same defendants. It is important, therefore, to address potential unwarranted disparities in these earlier decisions such as plea bargaining.
Defendants’ Decisions to Plead Guilty
Research on plea bargaining has centered around two important decisions: the deci- sion to plead guilty and the decision to reduce charges. Most research has indicated that those defendants who took their cases to trial—that is, they did not plead guilty— received harsher penalties (see Brereton & Casper, 1981-1982; Britt, 2000). The most important influences on the likelihood of pleading guilty have been the severity of the current offense and the length and severity of the prior record (Meyer & Gray, 1997). Studies also found, however, that Black defendants and male defendants were the least likely to plead guilty (Albonetti, 1990; Kellough & Wortley, 2002; LaFree, 1985). A higher proportion of Black defendants and Hispanic defendants took their cases to trial than the proportion of White defendants, although the majority of the cases concluded with a negotiated guilty plea (Johnson, 2003). Albonetti (1990) argued that Black defendants, who were more likely to distrust the system, would have expressed this distrust by not pleading guilty and taking their case to a jury trial.
Race and ethnicity is not the only offender characteristic that affects guilty plea decisions. A few studies have acknowledged a relationship between sex of the offender and the likelihood of pleading guilty (Figuiera-McDonough, 1985; Johnson, 2003). Age of the offender, however, has produced mixed results (Kellough & Wortley, 2002; LaFree, 1985).
Prosecutors’ Decisions to Reduce Charges
Inexorably linked to defendants’ decisions to plead guilty have been the decisions to reduce the severity of charges to secure guilty pleas.2 With the advent of formal- ized sentencing procedures came greater discretion displaced to the prosecutor. Although there was an increase in the amount of charge reductions given, Wooldredge and Griffin (2005) found that not one particular racial and gender group benefited from the greater discretionary power given to the prosecutors.
Research indicated strong influence of seriousness of the current offense and prior record on the decision to reduce the severity of charges (see McDonald, 1985; Meyer & Gray, 1997). Although the seriousness of the current offense and prior record were the most important influences in determining charge reductions, a sub- stantial amount of research found that offender characteristics also influenced charge reductions (see Albonetti, 1992; Bernstein, Kick, Leung, & Schulz, 1977; Farnworth & Teske, 1995; Figueira-McDonough, 1985; LaFree, 1980; McDonald, 1985; Miethe & Moore, 1986; Voit, 1987). The research on the effect of offender characteristics on the charge reduction decision has been mixed. Bernstein and her associates (1977) found that White defendants were more likely to receive favorable charge reductions compared to Black defendants. Albonetti (1992) found that younger defendants and male defen- dants were less likely to receive reduced charges than older defendants and female defendants, respectively. Farnworth and Teske (1995) found that young, Black male defendants were less likely than other defendants to have their initial charges reduced (Farnworth & Teske, 1995). With these mixed results, it is important to clearly identify any potential unwarranted disparities in plea bargaining decisions based on legally irrelevant offender characteristics.
An Integrated Theoretical Perspective
The courtroom behaves as its own separate community with shared workloads, interdependent relationships, and organizational cultures where particular goals— formal and informal—may be realized (Eisenstein, Flemming, & Nardulli, 1998; Ulmer, 1997). The term plea bargaining evokes images of backroom deals and protracted haggling between the prosecutor and the defense attorney, with each side attempting to get the best possible deal