Prison Exit Samples as a Source for Indicators of Pretrial Detention

Many governments, civil society organizations, and international development agencies today seek to limit the use of pretrial detention in criminal justice. Motivations vary. Some believe that pretrial detention is ordered indiscriminately and employed for unreasonably long periods; others are concerned with the conditions of confinement and the burdens detention places on families; still others worry about the criminogenic effects of pretrial incarceration. But whatever the motive to limit the use of pretrial detention, it is difficult to imagine the effort succeeding without a good indicator of the extent of its use. Such an indicator has proven surprisingly elusive in countries at every income level. Indeed, it is possible that the effort to reduce pretrial detention in developing countries may actually be hindered by the indicator most commonly used there: the proportion of prison inmates on any given day that is not sentenced. This paper describes some of the flaws with this and other indicators, and shows how domestic governments and their development partners can use a basic and better indicator—the median duration of detention—as a catalyst for change. This paper demonstrates a simple and inexpensive way of developing this indicator – by obtaining administrative data already collected in most prisons and jails about the people who leave detention each month. Everywhere in the world, some number of detainees "exit" each month: some released to continue awaiting trial at liberty, others released at the end of their cases without a prison sentence, and still others whose pretrial detention has been changed to a sentence of incarceration following a criminal conviction. Virtually every prison and jail in the world records the dates of these "exits" whether they are actual releases or merely the reclassification of a pretrial detainee as a sentenced prisoner. Only these administrative data can generate an accurate measure of the duration of detention

How to research policing? talk to people who have been arrested. 4 insights from 150 arrested individuals on the role and reform of the police.

Over past months, the Black Lives Matter movement’s denunciation of police violence has been spotlighted in the wake of high-profile police killings of Black men in the United States. Over the past five years, the cities of Cleveland and Baltimore entered “consent decrees” to undertake civil rights improvements in their police forces after Federal Government investigations found evidence of overly aggressive policing. One of the conditions of the decrees in Baltimore and Cleveland was to ask arrested individuals whether any of these changes were noticeable in practice. In 2019, Todd Foglesong and Ron Levi, along with research teams, went to the jails in both Baltimore and Cleveland to speak with arrested individuals

The politics of judicial independence and the administration of criminal justice in Soviet Russia, 1982-1992

grantor: University of TorontoThis thesis investigates the origins and consequences of attempts to reform the judiciary and improve the administration of justice in the USSR between 1982 and 1992. It analyzes the roots of judicial dependence and the sources of bias in criminal justice; it traces the development of proposals to reform the courts; and it assesses the impact on the dependence of the judiciary and the character of justice of legislation intended to insulate courts from political interference and facilitate the emergence of a rule of law state. The study argues that judicial dependence in the Soviet Union was multifaceted and more complex than previously appreciated. Judges were subordinated to and supervised by several agencies (the CPSU, Ministry of Justice, regional soviets, and superior courts), of which the latter's influence was greatest. The professional autonomy of Soviet judges was constrained more by the hierarchy within the judiciary than by outside interference. Miscarriages of justice, a predisposition toward certain outcomes at trial, and other forms of bias in the administration of criminal justice had roots in the structure of criminal procedure and were exacerbated by the attitudes of judges. Reform initiatives emerged first from within the judicial bureaucracies; they were embraced by central Party officials later, in diluted form, in order to overcome a political crisis in the courts. Reforms yielded considerable improvements in the quality of justice, but aggravated the various dependencies of judges. The thesis also examines the conceptualization of judicial independence and the study of judicial behavior in political science. My definition of judicial independence distinguishes its structural and behavioral dimensions, and thereby facilitates scrutiny of a popular but untested proposition about courts: that judicial independence is indispensable to the impartial administration of justice. The thesis maintains that there are different kinds of judicial independence, the most necessary or desirable forms of which will vary according to a country's institutional structure and legal tradition. I argue that the particular procedural rules and behavioral requirements of impartiality also depend on these factors. The relationship between judicial independence and the impartial administration of justice, accordingly, is not fixed.Ph.D

Measuring the Contribution of Criminal Justice Systems to the Control of Crime and Violence: Lessons from Jamaica and the Dominican Republic

Governments facing high levels of crime and violence must act through their criminal justice systems to increase safety while delivering justice. To do this rigorously, governments need to improve their measurement tools. This paper examines the measurement tools employed today in two developing countries—Jamaica and the Dominican Republic—showing how existing data might be analyzed and presented more effectively. We describe the many tactics used by police, prosecutors, and other institutions within the criminal justice system as falling under two broad strategies: (1) removing criminals from society, and (2) reducing the proximate causes of crime. All countries depend on some combination of these two strategies, but while governments tend to favor the first, the second usually produces greater crime reduction. We show how improving five specific performance indicators can help governments reduce the proximate causes of crime, maximizing the contribution of criminal justice systems to public safety.