A systematic analysis of the principle institutions use in allocating scarce goods and necessary burdens. It examines the criteria by which students are admitted to college, looking at the empirical, conceptual, explanatory and evaluative aspects of such issues.

Local Justice: How Institutions Allocate Scarce Goods and Necessary Burdens

It has been widely assumed that prison is destructive to the psychological and emotional well-being of those it detains. However, this assumption has rarely been critically examined. The present report evaluated the evidence pertaining to the effects of imprisonment. Studies on the effects of prison crowding, long-term imprisonment and short-term detention, solitary confinement, death row, and the health risks associated with imprisonment provide inconclusive evidence regarding the “pains of imprisonment.” Rather, the evidence points to the importance of individual differences in adapting to incarceration. As the use of incarceration is unlikely to decrease in the near future, research on its effects is urgently needed and a situation-by-person approach may be the most fruitful research strategy.

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Reexamining the cruel and unusual punishment of prison life

This article examines public attitudes toward policies to reduce prison crowding. Public attitudes were assessed through telephone surveys of adult residents of two major midwestern cities: Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio. Substantial public support for community-based corrections and incentive good time was found. Prison construction received only moderate support while high levels of public disapproval were found for shortening sentences and increasing parole board authority. Probit regression analysis of the relationship between respondent characteristics and support for policies to reduce prison crowding revealed that attitudinal variables were more consistently related to public opinion than were demographic variables. The broader issue of the relationship between public attitudes and prison policy is also raised and discussed within the context of this research.

Prison Crowding: Public Attitudes Toward Strategies of Population Control

Since the United States began using incarceration as its cornerstone of punishment for those who transgress the law, this method of discipline has been fraught with problems. One of the most ubiquitous problems found within correctional institutions are the conditions inmates are forced to live in particularly, when penal facilities are overcrowded. These conditions have led to extensive litigation, compelling the judicial system to change. Although overall conditions have improved, a perpetually increasing inmate population continues to plague correctional systems as costs continue to rise. As state budgets have become strained during the economic downturns, many states’ officials view less punitive measures as possible solutions to the excessive costs of administering punishment and overcrowded inmate populations. Due to facility overcrowding, several states have actually been placed under federal court order to reduce their inmate population in order to protect inmates’ constitutional rights. Although ...

Contemporary prison overcrowding: short-term fixes to a perpetual problem

BACKGROUND: Recent research shows that by age 5, children form rigid social hierarchies, with some children consistently subordinated, and then later, bullied. Further, several studies suggest that enduring mental and physical harm follow. It is time to analyze the health burdens posed by early social dominance and to consider the ethical implications of ongoing socially caused harms. METHODS: First, we reviewed research demonstrating the health impact of early childhood subordination. Second, we used philosophical conceptions of children's rights and social justice to consider whether children have a right to protection and who has an obligation to protect them from social harms. RESULTS: Collectively, recent studies show that early subordination is instantiated biologically, increasing lifetime physical and mental health problems. The pervasive, and enduring nature of these harms leads us to argue that children have a right to be protected. Further, society has a role responsibility to protect children because society conscripts children into schools. Society's promise to parents that schools will be fiduciaries entails an obligation to safeguard each child's right to a reasonably open future. Importantly, this role responsibility holds independently of bearing any causal responsibility for the harm. This new argument based on protecting from harm is much stronger than previous equality of opportunity arguments, and applies broadly to other social determinants of health. CONCLUSIONS: Social institutions have a role responsibility to protect children that is not dependent on playing a causal role in the harm. Children's rights to protection from social harms can be as strong as their rights to protection from direct bodily harms. Language: en

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Social dominance, school bullying, and child health: what are our ethical obligations to the very young?

This article traces and analyzes the history of prison- and jail-crowding litigation in the federal courts since the 1960s. While prisoners and pretrial detainees have won many victories, the doctrinal basis for a constitutional right to uncrowded incarceration facilities remains unclear and is still evolving. Despite several recent Supreme Court decisions unfavorable to inmates, there has been no rejection of the principles (1) that the totality of conditions in prison—including crowding—must not amount to cruel and unusual punishment and (2) that jail crowding cannot be permitted to impose genuine privations over an extended period of time. In order to enforce the decrees outlawing overcrowding, judges have had to search for creative enforcement techniques. Many of these techniques are controversial and their effectiveness is disputed. The courts have forced the other branches of government to face up to crowded prisons and jails, and they have helped to ameliorate the suffering and deprivations that th...

James B. Jacobs

Papers

Prison Overcrowding and the Law