Targeted Release in the COVID-19 Correctional Crisis: Using the RNR Model to Save Lives

While the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the lives of people around the world, select populations (e.g., elderly, immune-compromised, and incarcerated individuals) are among the most likely to contract the virus and among the least likely to overcome the illness and regain full health. This paper focuses on the incarcerated individuals and how the coronavirus has added a new and unprecedented threat to correctional facilities that are already overcrowded and ill-equipped to identify and address the medical needs of the inmate population. The risk-need-responsivity model (RNR) should be used to make empirically-informed decisions about the targeted release. The identification and release of inmates who pose the least threat to society will help alleviate some of the burdens associated with prison crowding. Specifically, with fewer inmates, correctional facilities can comply with social distancing guidelines, introduce enhanced cleaning measures, and make necessary institutional adjustments. In so doing they will limit the transmission of COVI-19 within correctional institutions, ensure the safety of staff and their charges, and enable prisons and jails to better accommodate the needs of the inmate population

Crime in the 2016 Presidential Election: A New Era?

Issues pertaining to crime and criminal justice have long been part of presidential campaigns. Voters want to know how candidates plan to solve the problem of crime and keep them safe. In turn, candidates respond to voters’ concerns and describe their crime control ideas in hopes of increasing voter support. In doing so, they often rely on symbolic statements that provide little detail but make people “feel good”. This study analyzes the criminal justice rhetoric used by the three major presidential candidates in the 2016 election cycle to determine what issues they discussed and how often. The analysis also examines if candidates relied on symbolic statements, and how the issues were debated between the candidates. The findings show that the issues discussed were somewhat different than in previous years, and that the candidates relied on symbolic statements about crime – a change from the previous election cycle. Additionally, the candidates used crime control as a way to reach out to voters in their own political party, suggesting an interesting shift in how issues of criminal justice are being approached within elections