what is critical thinking in criminal justice

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To help a criminal go straight, help him change how he thinks.

Hard-core criminals are trapped in a vicious circle of their own thinking. Cognitive treatment of offenders can show them a way out of that trap. With effort and practice, even the most serious offenders can learn to change their thinking about other people and themselves. They can learn to be good citizens, and feel good about it. But in most cases the criminal justice system doesn't present them that opportunity — not in a form that offenders recognize as genuine.

Since 1973, I've been working to develop and deliver cognitive treatment to medium- to high-risk offenders in juvenile and adult detention centers, jails and prisons. The treatment is rooted in cognitive-behavioral therapy, which has proved effective in treating a wide range of mental disorders.

In the 1950s and 1960s, psychiatrist Aaron Beck discovered that his depressed patients had habits of thinking that kept them depressed. ("I'm no good.") At about the same time, Albert Ellis found that patients with a wide range of neuroses held what he called "irrational beliefs." ("Everyone must like me all the time.") Both based their psychotherapy on leading their patients to change that thinking.

The Personality Myth

We like to think of our own personalities, and those of our family and friends, as predictable, constant over time. But what if they aren't? What if nothing stays constant over a lifetime? Explore that enigma in the latest episode of the NPR podcast Invisibilia .

In correctional treatment, cognitive therapy has evolved to include cognitive skills training, like how to solve problems, how to deal with social situations, and how to control your anger.

The idea is to change the thinking that lands offenders in trouble, like "I'll never snitch," "I'll never back down," "I'm going to take what I want," and "If anyone disrespects me, I'm going to attack." Forms of cognitive treatment have become the predominant treatment for offenders in the U.S. and Europe. Underlying it is the realization that criminal behavior is the result of criminal ways of thinking, and that for offenders to change their behavior they must change the way they think.

In the 1990s, Canadian researchers discovered that treatment of offenders is effective, but only if it addresses what they called "criminogenic needs." Chief among these is criminal thinking. More recently, researchers have established that cognitive treatment programs delivered with professional standards can reduce recidivism by 25 to 35 percent. That means saving taxpayer money on incarceration, which costs $31,286 per inmate per year on average. It also means safer communities, more intact families, more people back in the workplace.

This doesn't mean we should replace incarceration with treatment, or let people out of prison early just because they have taken treatment. But adding treatment to incarceration provides hope to offenders now, and benefits to society in the future. Incarceration is a basic tool of criminal justice, but when the sole purpose is punishment and confinement, offenders respond, in the privacy of their own minds, with resentment and defiance. The thinking that led them to offend is not extinguished by punishment; it is reinforced.

Criminal justice need not be solely punitive. We can enforce the law without compromise and without triggering offenders' resistance. We can offer genuine opportunities to change. And we can acknowledge offenders' innate freedom to choose the attitudes they live by. My colleagues and I call this strategy "supportive authority." It consists of conveying three messages at the same time, spoken with one voice.

• We are determined to enforce the laws.
• We offer you a genuine opportunity to change and take part in society.
• We respect your capacity to make your own choices.

Enforcement of rules and laws is the core, but we don't stop there. Punishment is tempered with the opportunity to join with us in our common society. That invitation must be real, and each offender must be able to recognize it as such. It includes the opportunity to escape the trap of their habits of thinking.

And finally, we acknowledge that each offender will decide whether to take the opportunity to change or to continue to break the law. Offenders know they always retain the power to freely think, the human freedom to choose their own path in life, whether the rest of us like it or not. By acknowledging this freedom, we are giving them nothing they don't already have. We are simply conveying respect for them as human beings. As Viktor Frankl said in Man's Search For Meaning : "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Providing offenders an opportunity to change their thinking, their lives and their place in society is in everyone's interest. It does not compromise our enforcement of the law. But it demands changes in our thinking: to see criminals as fellow human beings and to provide genuine opportunities for ex-offenders to take part in society.

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Time and again I've seen real change happen. Ken had been a criminal all his life. "I wanted to be the baddest criminal anybody had ever seen," he said. In prison he was a convict leader and a strong upholder of the convict code. In spite of his reputation, the administration of Oregon State Penitentiary recognized his potential to change. Ken came to understand the pain he had brought to others and that his hurtful actions came not from what others had done to him but from his own ways of thinking. He developed a new goal: "I want to be an honorable man."

Once he was out of prison, Ken learned and practiced ways to think that allowed him to marry, to hold jobs in drug treatment programs or gas stations or anything he could find to earn an honest living. The 20-plus years since his release from prison have been hard, but he's a taxpaying citizen — and an honorable man.

I've also seen failures. Like many medical treatments, sometimes behavioral treatment works and sometimes it doesn't. People who take statins to lower cholesterol sometimes still have heart attacks, and convicts who have been in treatment programs sometimes re-offend. The question is, how can we maximize the positive results and minimize the failures?

I recently visited Red Onion State Prison in Wise County, Va., a "supermax" facility for "the worst of the worst" that had come under Department of Justice scrutiny for excessive use of solitary confinement. This prison is in the process of changing from what had been a culture of control and punishment into a culture of control and hope. Prison officers and counselors are trained to treat prisoners with respect. They are also trained to support and deliver an array of cognitive treatment programs. Offenders are presented with pathways leading from solitary confinement to lower levels of control and eventually, for most of them, to re-entry and life in the community.

Since 2011, there has been a 68 percent reduction in the number of prisoners at Red Onion confined to solitary; a 78 percent reduction in incident reports; and a 91 percent decrease in inmate grievances, efforts praised in a January report from the Department of Justice.

At Red Onion, cognitive treatment is a key piece of the system, but only a piece. The whole prison is the intervention.

Jack Bush is co-developer of the treatment program Thinking For A Change , published by The National Institute of Corrections, and co-author with Daryl Harris and Richard Parker of Cognitive Self Change: How Offenders Experience the World and What We Can Do About It (Wiley Blackwell, 2016).

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What is critical thinking, and why is it essential to the criminal justice system?

When we discuss the word critical, its meaning changes depending on the context, as it can refer to how important something is, or it might mean describing the negative side of a book, a film, or an experience. In criminal justice, we are using critical thinking to express the idea of having a questioning mind and not taking things at face value.

Critical thinking is a skill that is crucial in all areas of criminal justice, from officers on the street to Federal magistrate judges and Supreme Court justices. They need to ask the right questions when weighing up a situation, consider the perspectives of everyone involved and use factual evidence to form an opinion. In essence, critical thinking involves questioning with an open mind and learning as a result.

How can critical thinking aid learning?

Even before criminal justice professionals qualify, using critical thinking can be an enormous benefit at university. When practiced regularly, this form of analysis can help students interpret the data or evidence they are presented with and understand the reasoning behind different points of view. In terms of their decision-making, it will enable them to fully develop their arguments and be ready to explain these clearly to others. Furthermore, they will have the ability to cite evidence when it comes to justifying their opinion.

People thinking about  criminology study in Canada  can take a look at the combined honors BA in Criminology and Policing at Wilfrid Laurier University. This online program readies students for many different careers in justice or criminology, and no previous experience in law enforcement is needed. During the course, critical thinking will allow students to combine their thoughts and theories with those of their classmates and those of more established researchers and criminal law professionals.

Questioning in a meaningful way

Critical thinking is central to how many law officials practice, as it involves asking meaningful questions that allow them to recognize a situation more clearly. They will use the answers they receive to understand what has happened or is happening, to analyze the situation in more depth, and then to evaluate it. For instance, when approaching a piece of physical evidence, they will begin with the questions: ‘what, why, where, and who?’ This is to help them gain some background knowledge and put the evidence into context.

Alternatively, if they are considering a situation instead, the process of thinking it through will be slightly different. They might ask questions that allow them to establish what the problem is really about, who is being affected by it, who it involves, and where and when it is taking place. Asking witnesses these questions means they are unlikely to provide yes or no answers. Rather, they will have to be descriptive in their responses enabling an investigator to move on to the next stage of critical thinking – analysis.

Analyzing the findings

At this stage, the questions asked will take on a new form. They will be characterized by words and phrases such as: ‘what if, why did, and how?’ In this way, an investigator can get closer to the heart of the matter. They can unearth the causes behind a problem, the reasons it happened, and the processes which took place beforehand. They might consider the contributing factors, how they related to each other, and what the outcome might be if one factor was changed or removed. In this way, this incident is broken down into smaller parts, and each element is considered in relation to the others. The answers become more complex and allow for the next stage – evaluation.

Evaluating the situation

Evaluation can be considered the final stage in the critical thinking process. It leads to a resolution or a conclusion, depending on the situation. Questions are still important, but again they are different in structure. They could take the form of: ‘what next? or ‘so what?’ Then the investigator decides what the implications of the evidence are and what is significant in a situation before sharing their findings.

This is a basis for the process of critical thinking rather than a list of instructions. Many people in criminal justice will frequently shift between the different stages, getting the facts straight in their minds before feeling confident enough to move on. Occasionally, after establishing what the evidence is showing, it may seem irrelevant, so different questions will need to be asked. There are many ways to approach critical questioning in law enforcement, but in general, people who apply this skill share some characteristics.

What traits do all critical thinkers share?

Whether they are trying to solve a problem, understand a situation, or interpret evidence, critical thinkers study, evaluate and take apart its key elements. Before a person has gained experience in this process, it can be extremely challenging because much of the initial work is done alone. It involves being self-motivated but also disciplined and receptive to new ideas. Like most skills, this can be learned, but people with the following character traits may take to it more intuitively.

Deep thinkers

People who regularly check the information they are given and are aware of their own biases are thinking deeply about themselves and those around them. As a result, they can put themselves in another person’s position and consider the perspectives of others. Along with empathy, they can make independent decisions rather than relying on what they are told by others.

A curious approach

When people are naturally curious and questioning, they may be better at anticipating a problem and taking action in advance. Moreover, they strive to look for the truth in a situation, even if that means admitting they were at fault. This often leads to regularly evaluating their performance and identifying areas of strength, and weaknesses that need improvement.

Organized team players

Critical thinkers are usually good collaborators and understand that working towards a shared goal can be beneficial for all. They are logical in their approach and sift through a problem carefully to gain insights that will drive the team forward.

How does critical thinking relate to different areas of criminal justice?

The criminal  justice  system at the federal, state, and local level is made up of many processes which ensure the right decisions are made and social order is maintained. These systems tend to have three central divisions. This starts with law enforcement, while more serious cases move to adjudication, and finally, in some instances, corrections programs are required. Here is a closer look at how critical thinking is used by the professionals who oversee these structures.

Corrections programs in the justice system

The administering of correctional programs is done by parole officers and correctional officers. People employed in both professions must use critical thinking to carry out their daily tasks. There is no such thing as a typical day when it comes to working in a local jail or federal prison.

To tackle short-term issues and immediate problems that could become worse, such as disturbances amongst prisoners, they have to employ critical thinking techniques. This allows them to act swiftly and appropriately to protect the safety of other inmates and themselves. Their reaction is informed by observations, an assessment of the facts, and any information they can gather. Although some officers are compelled to make choices within seconds, this gives their colleagues more time to take a step back and consider what else needs to be done.

Preventing problems before they occur

To prevent future occurrences or lessen the frequency of this type of incident, critical thinking can be used to resolve conflicts that develop among the prison population. One of the key skills is observation; officers must gauge the emotion of a situation quickly and also spot when trouble may be brewing. This means paying attention to small details that might appear unimportant but take on a deeper significance for the inmates involved.

In the longer term, officers can improve the lives of people in their facility and their conditions through a critical approach. This could involve evaluating the progress of individuals hoping for a reduction in their sentence or finding more effective ways to maintain an orderly environment within the facility.

Overseeing the court system

People who work in the court system and those who oversee legal proceedings frequently depend on their critical thinking abilities. Even when the  situation is stressful , because a case is highly charged, lawyers and judges must remain capable of critical thought.

This enables professional adjudicators to manage a trial fairly and make the best decisions on individual cases. Attorneys working in either a defense or a prosecuting position also need great critical thinking skills as they work to prepare a case before presenting it to the court. In each instance, the adjudication professional will use what is often referred to as judicious evaluation. In other words, they question and investigate what they have been presented with, how it makes them feel, and what they think. They know that first impressions can be deceiving and often change under analysis.

Another component of critical thinking for legal professionals is deductive reasoning. This involves understanding the rules in each situation and then scrutinizing the facts concerning these before reaching a specific conclusion. This approach calls for the application of logic and allows a person to use general ideas or rules to make a judgment on an individual case. At the other end of the spectrum, lawyers, in particular, will look for distinctions in rules or laws that would benefit their clients.

Finally, in their daily practice, lawyers must be deft when it comes to analyzing the facts of a case. They are frequently presented with a series of instances and a few documents, then asked by a prospective client to establish a case. After checking through the evidence and researching how this relates to the law, they can present the client with a conclusion. From the start to the end of adjudication, critical thinking is constantly needed.

Policing our streets

Enforcing the law is mainly carried out by police officers who use critical thinking to inform their actions. They must decide whether a law has been broken, determine the best way to respond, and choose when it is right to make an arrest. In more hazardous situations, such as civil unrest or riots, they need to react in a way that calms the problem and allows them to protect their safety, as well as that of the general public. At the detective level, officers use the same skills to gather as much evidence as possible, identify potential suspects and solve crimes.

As they are actively involved with fluid situations on the ground, experience, and knowledge often improve an officer’s critical thinking skills. The police are enforcers of the law, but they are also guardians, and their decision-making in the field needs to reflect this. With experience, officers are more able to interpret a situation or information they are given correctly. They hold back on making assumptions until they have gathered all the facts and pay attention to detail. Instead of thinking they understand the cause of a problem as soon as they arrive, the best officers check their assumptions to ensure they have not inadvertently missed something. In this way, critical thinking keeps officers safe during street operations and nurtures a better relationship between the police and their community.

Bringing critical thinking into the mainstream

When it comes to applying the law, critical thinking is not just about reaching a satisfactory conclusion. It entails a professional understanding of why they reached that conclusion, how their personal biases affected them and how they could manage these more effectively in the future. Critical thinking is best considered an integral part of the criminal justice system, a concept that can be applied to every area rather than a topic to be studied separately.

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3 strategies for engaging criminal justice students in critical thinking.

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This webinar, led by Professor Aaron Fichtelberg, focuses on developing a classroom where students are open to critical approaches to criminal justice.    Many students begin their studies of criminal justice with commonly held “good guy/bad guy” narratives regarding the criminal justice system and are often resistant to a critical perspective on the issue.  A lecturer who is too strident in how they approach the material can easily lead students to resist critical insights or simply to refuse to engage with the material.

In recent years, however, many young people, particularly those from marginalized groups, have begun to become far more skeptical about the benevolence of the criminal justice system as groups like the Black Lives Matter movement have begun to force discussions of systemic inequalities into the public sphere.  Therefore, it has only become more important the professors of criminal justice help students understand the validity of these critical views regardless of whether their students agree with them. This webinar will focus on how professors can maintain a classroom that helps otherwise skeptical students to open to a critical perspective on the criminal justice system.  It will emphasize classroom strategies and teaching tips that will help students see criminal justice in a critical light without alienating or offending students who may disagree with such an approach.

Finally, the webinar will discuss bigger questions about what it means to be critical in the classroom.

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The New Criminal Justice Thinking (Sharon Dolovich & Alexandra Natapoff eds., 2017).

Abstract: After five decades of punitive expansion, the entire U.S. criminal justice system— mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, police practices, the treatment of juveniles and the mentally ill, glaring racial disparity, the death penalty and more — faces challenging questions. What exactly is criminal justice? How much of it is a system of law and how much is a collection of situational social practices? What roles do the Constitution and the Supreme Court play? How do race and gender shape outcomes? How does change happen, and what changes or adaptations should be pursued? The New Criminal Justice Thinking addresses the challenges of this historic moment by asking essential theoretical and practical questions about how the criminal system operates. In this thorough and thoughtful volume, scholars from across the disciplines of legal theory, sociology, criminology, Critical Race Theory, and organizational theory offer crucial insights into how the criminal system works in both theory and practice. By engaging both classic issues and new understandings, this volume offers a comprehensive framework for thinking about the modern justice system. For those interested in criminal law and justice, The New Criminal Justice Thinking offers a profound discussion of the complexities of our deeply flawed criminal justice system, complexities that neither legal theory nor social science can answer alone.

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How to Think about Criminal Justice Reform: Conceptual and Practical Considerations

• Published: 20 December 2022
• Volume 47 , pages 1050–1070, ( 2022 )

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• Charis E. Kubrin 1 &
• Rebecca Tublitz 1  

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How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. But consensus is hard to come by, and there has long been a distinction between “policy talk” or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, and “policy action” or the design and adoption of certain policies. In this essay, we seek to promote productive thinking and talking about, as well as designing of, effective and sustainable criminal justice reforms. To this end, we offer reflections on underlying conceptual and practical considerations relevant for both criminal justice policy talk and action.

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Across the political spectrum in the United States, there is agreement that incarceration and punitive sanctions cannot be the sole solution to crime. After decades of criminal justice expansion, incarceration rates peaked between 2006 and 2008 and have dropped modestly, but consistently, ever since then (Gramlich, 2021 ). Calls to ratchet up criminal penalties to control crime, with some exceptions, are increasingly rare. Rather, where bitter partisanship divides conservatives and progressives on virtually every other issue, bipartisan support for criminal justice reform is commonplace. This support has yielded many changes in recent years: scaling back of mandatory sentencing laws, limiting sentencing enhancements, expanding access to non-prison alternatives for low-level drug and property crimes, reducing revocations of community supervision, and increasing early release options (Subramanian & Delaney, 2014 ). New laws passed to reduce incarceration have outpaced punitive legislation three-to-one (Beckett et al., 2016 , 2018 ). Rather than the rigid “law and order” narrative that characterized the dominant approach to crime and punishment since the Nixon administration, policymakers and advocates have found common ground in reform conversations focused on cost savings, evidence-based practice, and being “smart on crime.” A “new sensibility” prevails (Phelps, 2016 ).

Transforming extensive support for criminal justice reform into substantial reductions in justice-involved populations has proven more difficult, and irregular. While the number of individuals incarcerated across the nation has declined, the U.S. continues to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, with nearly 1.9 million people held in state and federal prisons, local jails, and detention centers (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022 ; Widra & Herring, 2021 ). Another 3.9 million people remain on probation or parole (Kaeble, 2021 ). And, not all jurisdictions have bought into this new sensibility: rural and suburban reliance on prisons has increased during this new era of justice reform (Kang-Brown & Subramanian, 2017 ). Despite extensive talk of reform, achieving actual results “is about as easy as bending granite” (Petersilia, 2016 :9).

How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform? At its core, a reform is an effort to ameliorate an undesirable condition, eliminate an identified problem, achieve a goal, or strengthen an existing (successful) policy. Scholarship yields real insights into effective programming and practice in response to a range of issues in criminal justice. Equally apparent, however, is the lack of criminological knowledge incorporated into the policymaking process. Thoughtful are proposals to improve the policy-relevance of criminological knowledge and increase communication between research and policy communities (e.g., Blomberg et al., 2016 ; Mears, 2022 ). But identifying what drives effective criminal justice reform is not so straightforward. For one, the goals of reform vary across stakeholders: Should reform reduce crime and victimization? Focus on recidivism? Increase community health and wellbeing? Ensure fairness in criminal justice procedure? Depending upon who is asked, the answer differs. Consensus on effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. Scholars of the policy process often distinguish “policy talk,” or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, from “policy action,” or the design and adoption of policy solutions, to better understand the drivers of reform and its consequences. This distinction is relevant to criminal justice reform (Bartos & Kubrin, 2018 :2; Tyack & Cuban, 1995 ).

We argue that an effective approach to criminal justice reform—one that results in policy action that matches policy talk—requires clarity regarding normative views about the purpose of punishment, appreciation of practical realities involved in policymaking, and insight into how the two intersect. To this end, in this essay we offer critical reflections on underlying conceptual and practical considerations that bear on criminal justice policy talk and action.

Part I. Conceptual Considerations: Narratives of Crime and Criminal Justice

According to social constructionist theory, the creation of knowledge is rooted in interactions between individuals through common language and shared meanings in social contexts (Berger & Luckmann, 1966 ). Common language and shared meanings create ways of thinking, or narratives, that socially construct our reality and profoundly influence public definitions of groups, events, and social phenomena, including crime and criminal justice. As such, any productive conversation about reform must engage with society’s foundational narratives about crime and criminal justice, including views about the rationales for punishment.

I. Rationales of Punishment

What is criminal justice? What purpose does our criminal justice system serve? Answers to these questions are found in the theories, organization, and practices of criminal justice. A starting point for discovery is the fact that criminal justice is a system for the implementation of punishment (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982 ). This has not always been the case but today, punishment is largely meted out in our correctional system, or prisons and jails, which embody rationales for punishment including retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration. These rationales offer competing purposes and goals, and provide varying blueprints for how our criminal justice system should operate.

Where do these rationales come from? They derive, in part, from diverse understandings and explanations about the causes of crime. While many theories exist, a useful approach for thinking about crime and its causes is found in the two schools of criminological thought, the Classical and Positivist Schools of Criminology. These Schools reflect distinct ideological assumptions, identify competing rationales for punishment, and suggest unique social policies to address crime—all central to any discussion of criminal justice reform.

At its core, the Classical School sought to bring about reform of the criminal justice systems of eighteenth century Europe, which were characterized by such abuses as torture, presumption of guilt before trial, and arbitrary court procedures. Reformers of the Classical School, most notably Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, were influenced by social contract theorists of the Enlightenment, a cultural movement of intellectuals in late seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe that emphasized reason and individualism rather than tradition, along with equality. Central assumptions of the Classical School include that people are rational and possessed of free will, and thus can be held responsible for their actions; that humans are governed by the principle of utility and, as such, seek pleasure or happiness and avoid pain; and that, to prevent crime, punishments should be just severe enough such that the pain or unhappiness created by the punishment outweighs any pleasure or happiness derived from crime, thereby deterring would-be-offenders who will see that “crime does not pay.”

The guiding concept of the Positivist School was the application of the scientific method to study crime and criminals. In contrast to the Classical School’s focus on rational decision-making, the Positivist School adopted a deterministic viewpoint, which suggests that crime is determined by factors largely outside the control of individuals, be they biological (such as genetics), psychological (such as personality disorder), or sociological (such as poverty). Positivists also promote the idea of multiple-factor causation, or that crime is caused by a constellation of complex forces.

When it comes to how we might productively think about reform, a solid understanding of these schools is necessary because “…the unique sets of assumptions of two predominant schools of criminological thought give rise to vastly different explanations of and prescriptions for the problem of crime” (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982 :36). In other words, the two schools of thought translate into different strategies for policy. They generate rationales for punishment that offer competing narratives regarding how society should handle those who violate the law. These rationales for punishment motivate reformers, whether the aim is to “rehabilitate offenders” or “get tough on crime,” influencing policy and practice.

The earliest rationale for punishment is retribution. Consistent with an individual’s desire for revenge, the aim is that offenders experience an unpleasant consequence for violating the law. Essentially, criminals should get what they deserve. While other rationales focus on changing future behavior, retribution focuses on an individual’s past actions and implies they have rightfully “earned” their punishment. Punishment, then, expresses moral disapproval for the criminal act committed. Advocates of retribution are not concerned with controlling crime; rather, they are in the business of “doing justice.” The death penalty and sentencing guidelines, a system of recommended sentences based upon offense (e.g., level of seriousness) and offender (e.g., number and type of prior offenses) characteristics, reflect basic principles of retribution.

Among the most popular rationales for punishment is deterrence, which refers to the idea that those considering crime will refrain from doing so out of a fear of punishment, consistent with the Classical School. Deterrence emphasizes that punishing a person also sends a message to others about what they can expect if they, too, violate the law. Deterrence theory provides the basis for a particular kind of correctional system that punishes the crime, not the criminal. Punishments are to be fixed tightly to specific crimes so that offenders will soon learn that the state means business. The death penalty is an example of a policy based on deterrence (as is obvious, these rationales are not mutually exclusive) as are three-strikes laws, which significantly increase prison sentences of those convicted of a felony who have been previously convicted of two or more violent crimes or serious felonies.

Another rationale for punishment, incapacitation, has the goal of reducing crime by incarcerating offenders or otherwise restricting their liberty (e.g., community supervision reflected in probation, parole, electronic monitoring). Uninterested in why individuals commit crime in the first place, and with no illusion they can be reformed, the goal is to remove individuals from society during a period in which they are expected to reoffend. Habitual offender laws, which target repeat offenders or career criminals and provide for enhanced or exemplary punishments or other sanctions, reflect this rationale.

Embodied in the term “corrections” is the notion that those who commit crime can be reformed, that their behavior can be “corrected.” Rehabilitation refers to when individuals refrain from crime—not out of a fear of punishment—but because they are committed to law-abiding behavior. The goal, from this perspective, is to change the factors that lead individuals to commit crime in the first place, consistent with Positivist School arguments. Unless criminogenic risks are targeted for change, crime will continue. The correctional system should thus be arranged to deliver effective treatment; in other words, prisons must be therapeutic. Reflective of this rationale is the risk-need-responsibility (RNR) model, used to assess and rehabilitate offenders. Based on three principles, the risk principle asserts that criminal behavior can be reliably predicted and that treatment should focus on higher risk offenders, the need principle emphasizes the importance of criminogenic needs in the design and delivery of treatment and, the responsivity principle describes how the treatment should be provided.

When a crime takes place, harm occurs—to the victim, to the community, and even to the offender. Traditional rationales of punishment do not make rectifying this harm in a systematic way an important goal. Restoration, or restorative justice, a relatively newer rationale, aims to rectify harms and restore injured parties, perhaps by apologizing and providing restitution to the victim or by doing service for the community. In exchange, the person who violated the law is (ideally) forgiven and accepted back into the community as a full-fledged member. Programs associated with restorative justice are mediation and conflict-resolution programs, family group conferences, victim-impact panels, victim–offender mediation, circle sentencing, and community reparative boards.

II. Narratives of Criminal Justice

Rationales for punishment, thus, are many. But from where do they arise? They reflect and reinforce narratives of crime and criminal justice (Garland, 1991 ). Penological and philosophical narratives constitute two traditional ways of thinking about criminal justice. In the former, punishment is viewed essentially as a technique of crime control. This narrative views the criminal justice system in instrumental terms, as an institution whose overriding purpose is the management and control of crime. The focal question of interest is a technical one: What works to control crime? The latter, and second, narrative considers the philosophy of punishment. It examines the normative foundations on which the corrections system rests. Here, punishment is set up as a distinctively moral problem, asking how penal sanctions can be justified, what their proper objectives should be, and under what circumstances they can be reasonably imposed. The central question here is “What is just?”.

A third narrative, “the sociology of punishment,” conceptualizes punishment as a social institution—one that is distinctively focused on punishment’s social forms, functions, and significance in society (Garland, 1991 ). In this narrative, punishment, and the criminal justice system more broadly, is understood as a cultural and historical artifact that is concerned with the control of crime, but that is shaped by an ensemble of social forces and has significance and impacts that reach well beyond the population of criminals (pg. 119). A sociology of punishment narrative raises important questions: How do specific penal measures come into existence?; What social functions does punishment perform?; How do correctional institutions relate to other institutions?; How do they contribute to social order or to state power or to class domination or to cultural reproduction of society?; What are punishment’s unintended social effects, its functional failures, and its wider social costs? (pg. 119). Answers to these questions are found in the sociological perspectives on punishment, most notably those by Durkheim (punishment is a moral process, functioning to preserve shared values and normative conventions on which social life is based), Marx (punishment is a repressive instrument of class domination), Foucault (punishment is one part of an extensive network of “normalizing” practices in society that also includes school, family, and work), and Elias (punishment reflects a civilizing process that brings with it a move toward the privatization of disturbing events), among others.

Consistent with the sociology of punishment, Kraska and Brent ( 2011 ) offer additional narratives, which they call theoretical orientations, for organizing thoughts on the criminal justice system generally, and the control of crime specifically. They argue a useful way to think about theorizing is through the use of metaphors. Adopting this approach, they identify eight ways of thinking based on different metaphors: criminal justice as rational/legalism, as a system, as crime control vs. due process, as politics, as the social construction of reality, as a growth complex, as oppression, and as modernity. Several overlap with concepts and frameworks discussed earlier, while others, such as oppression, are increasingly applicable in current conversations about racial justice—something we take up in greater detail below. Consistent with Garland ( 1991 ), Kraska and Brent ( 2011 ) emphasize that each narrative tells a unique story about the history, growth, behaviors, motivations, functioning, and possible future of the criminal justice system. What unites these approaches is their shared interest in understanding punishment’s broader role in society.

There are still other narratives of crime and criminal justice, with implications for thinking about and conceptualizing reform. Packer ( 1964 ) identifies two theoretical models, each offering a different narrative, which reflect value systems competing for priority in the operation of the criminal process: the Crime Control Model and the Due Process Model. The Crime Control Model is based on the view that the most important function of the criminal process is the repression of criminal conduct. The failure of law enforcement to bring criminal conduct under tight control is seen as leading to a breakdown of public order and hence, to the disappearance of freedom. If laws go unenforced and offenders perceive there is a low chance of being apprehended and convicted, a disregard for legal controls will develop and law-abiding citizens are likely to experience increased victimization. In this way, the criminal justice process is a guarantor of social freedom.

To achieve this high purpose, the Crime Control Model requires attention be paid to the efficiency with which the system operates to screen suspects, determine guilt, and secure dispositions of individuals convicted of crime. There is thus a premium on speed and finality. Speed, in turn, depends on informality, while finality depends on minimizing occasions for challenge. As such, the process cannot be “cluttered up” with ceremonious rituals. In this way, informal operations are preferred to formal ones, and routine, stereotyped procedures are essential to handle large caseloads. Packer likens the Crime Control Model to an “assembly line or a conveyor belt down which moves an endless stream of cases, never stopping, carrying the cases to workers who stand at fixed stations and who perform on each case as it comes by the same small but essential operation that brings it one step closer to being a finished product, or, to exchange the metaphor for the reality, a closed file” (pg. 11). Evidence of this model today is witnessed in the extremely high rate of criminal cases disposed of via plea bargaining.

In contrast, the Due Process model calls for strict adherence to the Constitution and a focus on the accused and their Constitutional rights. Stressing the possibility of error, this model emphasizes the need to protect procedural rights even if this prevents the system from operating with maximum efficiency. There is thus a rejection of informal fact-finding processes and insistence on formal, adjudicative, adversary fact-finding processes. Packer likens the Due Process model to an obstacle course: “Each of its successive stages is designed to present formidable impediments to carrying the accused any further along in the process” (pg. 13). That all death penalty cases are subject to appeal, even when not desired by the offender, is evidence of the Due Process model in action.

Like the frameworks described earlier, the Crime Control and Due Process models offer a useful framework for discussing and debating the operation of a system whose day-to-day functioning involves a constant tension between competing demands of different sets of values. In the context of reform, these models encourage us to consider critical questions: On a spectrum between the extremes represented by the two models, where do our present practices fall? What appears to be the direction of foreseeable trends along this spectrum? Where on the spectrum should we aim to be? In essence, which value system is reflected most in criminal justice practices today, in which direction is the system headed, and where should it aim go in the future? Of course this framework, as all others reviewed here, assumes a tight fit between structure and function in the criminal courts yet some challenge this assumption arguing, instead, that criminal justice is best conceived of as a “loosely coupled system” (Hagan et al., 1979 :508; see also Bernard et al., 2005 ).

III. The Relevance of Crime and Criminal Justice Narratives for Thinking about Reform

When it comes to guiding researchers and policymakers to think productively about criminal justice reform, at first glance the discussion above may appear too academic and intellectual. But these narratives are more than simply fodder for discussion or topics of debate in the classroom or among academics. They govern how we think and talk about criminal justice and, by extension, how the system should be structured—and reformed.

An illustrative example of this is offered in Haney’s ( 1982 ) essay on psychological individualism. Adopting the premise that legal rules, doctrines, and procedures, including those of the criminal justice system, reflect basic assumptions about human nature, Haney’s thesis is that in nineteenth century America, an overarching narrative dominated legal and social conceptions of human behavior—that of psychological individualism. Psychological individualism incorporates three basic “facts” about human behavior: 1) individuals are the causal locus of behavior; 2) socially problematic and illegal behavior therefore arises from some defect in the individual persons who perform it; and, 3) such behavior can be changed or eliminated only by effecting changes in the nature or characteristics of those persons. Here, crime is rooted in the nature of criminals themselves be the source genetic, biological, or instinctual, ideas consistent with the Classical School of Criminology.

Haney reviews the rise and supremacy of psychological individualism in American society, discusses its entrenchment in legal responses to crime, and describes the implications of adopting such a viewpoint. Psychological individualism, he claims, diverted attention away from the structural and situational causes of crime (e.g., poverty, inequality, capitalism) and suggested the futility of social reforms that sought solutions to human problems through changes in larger social conditions: “The legal system, in harmony with widely held psychological theories about the causal primacy of individuals, acted to transform all structural problems into matters of moral depravity and personal shortcoming” (pg. 226–27). This process of transformation is nowhere clearer than in our historical commitment to prisons as the solution to the problem of crime, a commitment that continues today. Psychological individualism continues to underpin contemporary reform efforts. For example, approaches to reducing racial disparities in policing by eliminating officers’ unconscious racial bias through implicit-bias trainings shifts the focus away from organizational and institutional sources of disparate treatment.

In sum, the various narratives of crime and criminal justice constitute an essential starting point for any discussion of reform. They reflect vastly differing assumptions and, in many instances, value orientations or ideologies. The diversity of ways of thinking arguably contribute to conflict in society over contemporary criminal justice policy and proposed reforms. Appreciating that point is critical for identifying ways to create effective and sustainable reforms.

At the same time, these different ways of thinking do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they collide with practical realities and constraints, which can and do shape how the criminal justice system functions, as well as determine the ability to reform it moving forward. For that reason, we turn to a discussion of how narratives about crime and criminal justice intersect with practical realities in the policy sphere, and suggest considerations that policymakers, researchers, and larger audiences should attend to when thinking about the future of reform.

Part II. Practical Considerations: Criminal Justice Reform through a Policy Lens

Criminal justice reform is no simple matter. Unsurprisingly, crime has long been considered an example of a “wicked” problem in public policy: ill-defined; with uncertainty about its causes and incomplete knowledge of effective solutions; complex arrangements of institutions responsible for addressing the problem; and, disagreement on foundational values (Head & Alford, 2015 ; Rittel & Webber, 1973 )—the latter apparent from the discussion above. Many note a large gap between criminological knowledge and policy (Mears, 2010 , 2022 ; Currie, 2007 ). While a movement to incorporate research evidence into the policy-making process has made some in-roads, we know less about how policymakers use this information to adopt and enact reforms. Put differently, more attention is paid to understanding the outcomes of crime-related policy while less is known about the contexts of, and inputs into, the process itself (Ismaili, 2006 ).

We identify practical considerations for policy-oriented researchers and policymakers in thinking through how to make criminal justice reform more effective. Specifically, we discuss practical considerations that reformers are likely to encounter related to problem formulation and framing (policy talk) and policy adoption (policy action), including issues of 1) variation and complexity in the criminal justice policy environment, 2) problem framing and policy content, 3) policy aims and outcomes, 4) equity considerations in policy design and evaluation; and, 5) policy process and policy change. These considerations are by no means exhaustive nor are they mutually exclusive. We offer these thoughts as starting points for discussion.

I. The Criminal Justice Policy Environment: Many Systems, Many Players

The criminal justice “system” in the United States is something of a misnomer. There is no single, centralized system. Instead, there are at least 51 separate systems—one for each of the 50 states, and the federal criminal justice system—each with different laws, policies, and administrative arrangements. Multiple agencies are responsible for various aspects of enforcing the law and administering justice. These agencies operate across multiple, overlapping jurisdictions. Some are at the municipal level (police), others are governed by counties (courts, prosecution, jails), and still others by state and federal agencies (prisons, probation, parole). Across these systems is an enormous amount of discretion regarding what crimes to prioritize for enforcement, whether and what charges to file, which sentences to mete out, what types of conditions, treatment, and programming to impose, and how to manage those under correctional authority. Scholars note the intrinsic problem with this wide-ranging independence: “criminal justice policy is made and put into action at the municipal, county, state, and national levels, and the thousands of organizations that comprise this criminal justice network are, for the most part, relatively autonomous both horizontally and vertically” (Lynch, 2011 :682; see also Bernard et al., 2005 ; Mears, 2017 ).

Criminal justice officials are not the only players. The “policy community” is made up of other governmental actors, including elected and appointed officials in the executive branches (governors and mayors) and legislative actors (council members, state, and federal representatives), responsible for formulating and executing legislation. Non-governmental actors play a role in the policy community as well, including private institutions and non-profit organizations, the media, interest and advocacy groups, academics and research institutions, impacted communities, along with the public at large (Ismaili, 2006 ).

Any consideration of criminal justice reform must attend to the structural features of the policy environment, including its institutional fragmentation. This feature creates both obstacles and opportunities for reform. Policy environments vary tremendously across states and local communities. Policies championed in Washington State are likely different than those championed in Georgia. But the policy community in Atlanta may be decidedly different than that of Macon, and policy changes can happen at hyper-local levels (Ouss & Stevenson, 2022 ). Differences between local jurisdictions can have national impacts: while urban jurisdictions have reduced their reliance on jails and prisons, rural and suburban incarceration rates continue to increase (Kang-Brown & Subramanian, 2017 ). Understanding key stakeholders, their political and policy interests, and their administrative authority to act is critical for determining how effective policy reforms can be pursued (Miller, 2008 ; Page, 2011 ). Prospects for, and possible targets of, reform thus necessitate a wide view of what constitutes “policy,” Footnote 1 looking not only to federal and state law but also to state and local administrative policies and practices (Reiter & Chesnut, 2018 ).

II. Policy Talk: Framing Problems, Shaping Possible Solutions

While agreement exists around the need for reform in the criminal justice system, this apparent unanimity belies disagreements over the proposed causes of the problem and feasible solutions (Gottschalk, 2015 ; Levin, 2018 ). This is evident in how reform is talked about in political and policy spheres, the types of reforms pursued, and which groups are its beneficiaries. Since the Great Recession of 2008, bipartisan reforms have often been couched in the language of fiscal conservatism, “right-sizing” the system, and being “smart on crime” (Beckett et al., 2016 ). These economic frames, focused on cost-efficiency, are effectively used to defend non-punitive policies including changes to the death penalty, marijuana legalization, and prison down-sizing (Aviram, 2015 ). However, cost-saving rationales are also used to advance punitive policies that shift the costs of punishment onto those who are being sanctioned, such as “pay-to-stay” jails and the multitude of fines and fees levied on justice-involved people for the cost of criminal justice administration. Economic justifications are not the only arguments that support the very same policy changes; fairness and proportionality, reducing prison overcrowding, enhancing public safety, and increasing rehabilitation are all deployed to defend various reforms (Beckett et al., 2016 ). Similarity in rhetorical justifications—cost-efficiency and fiscal responsibility, for example—can obscure deep divisions over how, and whom, to punish, divisions which stem from different narratives on the causes and consequences of crime.

The content of enacted policies also reveals underlying disagreements within justice reform. Clear distinctions are seen in how cases and people are categorized, and in who benefits from, or is burdened by, reform. For example, many states have lowered penalties and expanded rehabilitation alternatives for non-violent drug and other low-level offenses and technical violations on parole. Substantially fewer reforms target violent offenses. Decarceration efforts for non-violent offenders are often coupled with increasing penalties for others, including expansions of life imprisonment without parole for violent offenses (Beckett, 2018 ; Seeds, 2017 ). Reforms aimed only at individuals characterized as “non-violent, non-serious, and non-sexual” can reinforce social distinctions between people (and offenses) seen as deserving of lenient treatment from those who aren’t (Beckett et al., 2016 ).

The framing of social problems can shape the nature of solutions, although the impact of “framing” deserves greater attention in the criminal justice policy process (Rein & Schön, 1977 ; Schneider & Ingram,  1993 ). Policies can be understood in rational terms—for their application of technical solutions to resolve pre-defined problems—but also through “value-laden components, such as social constructions, rationales, and underlying assumptions” (Schneider & Sidney, 2006 :105). Specific frames (e.g., “crime doesn’t pay” or “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”) derive from underlying narratives (e.g., classical school, rational-actor models of behavior, and deterrence) that shape how crime and criminal justice are understood, as discussed in Part I. Framing involves how issues are portrayed and categorized, and even small changes to language or images used to frame an issue can impact policy preferences (Chong & Druckman, 2007 ). Public sentiments play an important role in the policy process, as policymakers and elected officials are responsive to public opinion about punishments (Pickett, 2019 ). Actors in the policy community—criminal justice bureaucrats, elected officials, interest groups, activists—compete to influence how a problem is framed, and thus addressed, by policymakers (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009 ; Benford & Snow, 2000 ). Policymakers, particularly elected officials, commonly work to frame issues in ways that support their political goals and resonate with their constituents (Gamson, 1992 ).

As noted at the outset, public support for harsh punishments has declined since the 1990’s and the salience of punitive “law and order” and “tough-on-crime” politics has fallen as well, as public support for rehabilitative approaches has increased (Thielo et al., 2016 ). How can researchers and policymakers capitalize on this shift in public sentiments? Research suggests that different issue frames, such as fairness, cost to taxpayers, ineffectiveness, and racial disparities, can increase (or reduce) public support for policies for nonviolent offenders (e.g., Dunbar, 2022 ; Gottlieb, 2017 ) and even for policies that target violent offenders (Pickett et al., 2022 ). Public sentiment and framing clearly matter for what problems gain attention, the types of policies that exist, and who ultimately benefits. These themes raise orienting questions: In a specific locale, what are the dominant understandings of the policy problem? How do these understandings map to sets of foundational assumptions about the purpose of intervention (e.g., deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, restoration) and understandings of why people commit crime (e.g., Classical and Positivist approaches)? What types of issue frames are effective in garnering support for reforms? How does this support vary by policy context (urban, suburban, rural; federal, statewide, and local) and audience (elected officials, agency leadership, frontline workers, political constituents)?

III. Proposed Solutions and Expected Outcomes: Instrumental or Symbolic?

There are a variety of motivations in pursuing various policy solutions, along with different kinds of goals. Some reflect a desire to create tangible change for a specific problem while others are meant to mollify a growing concern. As such, one practical consideration related to policymaking and reform that bears discussion is the symbolic and instrumental nature of criminal justice policies.

Policies are considered to have an instrumental nature when they propose or result in changes to behaviors related to a public problem such as crime—that is, when they change behavior through direct influence on individuals’ actions (Sample et al., 2011 :29; see also Grattet & Jenness, 2008 ; Gusfield, 1963 ; Oliver & Marion, 2008 ). Symbolic policies, by contrast, are those that policymakers pass in order to be seen in a favorable light by the public (Jenness, 2004 ), particularly in the context of a “moral panic” (Barak, 1994 ; Ben-Yehuda, 1990 ). As Sample et al., ( 2011 :28) explain, symbolic policies provide three basic functions to society: 1) reassuring the public by helping reduce angst and demonstrate that something is being done about a problem; 2) solidifying moral boundaries by codifying public consensus of right and wrong; and 3) becoming a model for the diffusion of law to other states and the federal government. Symbolic policies are thus meant to demonstrate that policymakers understand, and are willing to address, a perceived problem, even when there is little expectation such policies will make a difference. In this way, symbolic policies are “values statements” and function largely ceremonially.

This distinction has a long history in criminological work, dating back to Gusfield’s ( 1963 ) analysis of the temperance movement. Suggesting that policymaking is often dramatic in nature and intended to shift ways of thinking, Gusfield ( 1963 ) argues that Prohibition and temperance were intended as symbolic, rather than instrumental, goals in that their impacts were felt in the action of prohibition itself rather than in its effect on citizens’ consumptive behaviors.

A modern-day example of symbolic policy is found in the sanctuary status movement as it relates to the policing of immigrants. Historically, immigration enforcement was left to the federal government however state and local law enforcement have faced increasing demands to become more involved in enforcing immigration laws in their communities. Policies enacted to create closer ties between local police departments and federal immigration officials reflect this new pattern of “devolution of immigration enforcement” (Provine et al., 2016 ). The Secure Communities Program, the Criminal Alien Program, and 287g agreements, in different but complementary ways, provide resources and training to help local officials enforce immigration statutes.

The devolution of immigration enforcement has faced widespread scrutiny (Kubrin, 2014 ). Many local jurisdictions have rejected devolution efforts by passing sanctuary policies, which expressly limit local officials’ involvement in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Among the most comprehensive is California’s SB54, passed in 2017, which made California a sanctuary state. The law prohibits local authorities from cooperating with federal immigration detainer requests, limits immigration agents’ access to local jails, and ends the use of jails to hold immigration detainees. At first glance, SB54 appears instrumental—its aim is to change the behavior of criminal justice officials in policing immigration. In practice, however, it appears that little behavioral change has taken place. Local police in California had already minimized their cooperation with Federal officials, well before SB54 was passed. In a broader sense then, “…the ‘sanctuary city’ name is largely a symbolic message of political support for immigrants without legal residency” and with SB54 specifically, “California [helped build] a wall of justice against President Trump’s xenophobic, racist and ignorant immigration policies,” (Ulloa, 2017 ).

Instrumental and symbolic goals are not an either-or proposition. Policies can be both, simultaneously easing public fears, demonstrating legislators’ desire to act, and having direct appreciable effects on people’s behaviors (Sample et al., 2011 ). This may occur even when not intended. At the same time, a policy’s effects or outcomes can turn out to be different from the original aim, creating a gap between “policy talk” and “policy action.” In their analysis of law enforcement action in response to the passage of hate crime legislation, Grattet and Jenness ( 2008 ) find that legislation thought to be largely symbolic in nature, in fact, ended up having instrumental effects through changes in enforcement practices, even as these effects were conditioned by the organizational context of enforcement agencies. Symbolic law can be rendered instrumental (under certain organizational and social conditions) and symbolic policies may evolve to have instrumental effects.

As another example, consider aims and outcomes of sex offender registration laws, which provide information about people convicted of sex offenses to local and federal authorities and the public, including the person’s name, current location, and past offenses. As Sample et al. ( 2011 ) suggest, these laws, often passed immediately following a highly publicized sex crime or in the midst of a moral panic, are largely cast as symbolic policy, serving to reassure the public through notification of sex offenders’ whereabouts so their behaviors can be monitored (Jenkins, 1998 ; Sample & Kadleck, 2008 ). While notification laws do not yield a discernable instrumental effect on offenders’ behavior (Tewksbury, 2002 ), this is not the sole goal of such policies. Rather, they are intended to encourage behavioral change among citizens (Sample et al., 2011 ), encouraging the public’s participation in their own safety by providing access to information. Do sex offender notification laws, in fact, alter citizen behavior, thereby boosting public safety?

To answer this question, Sample and her colleagues ( 2011 ) surveyed a random sample of Nebraska residents to determine whether they access sex offender information and to explore the reasons behind their desire, or reluctance, to do so. They find largely symbolic effects of registry legislation, with a majority of residents (over 69%) indicating they had never accessed the registry. These findings raise important questions about the symbolic vs. instrumental nature of criminal justice policies more broadly: “Should American citizens be content with largely symbolic crime policies and laws that demonstrate policy makers’ willingness to address problems, ease public fear, solidify public consensus of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, and provide a model of policies and laws for other states, or should they want more from crime control efforts? Is there a tipping point at which time the resources expended to adhere to symbolic laws and a point where the financial and human costs of the law become too high to continue to support legislation that is largely symbolic in nature? Who should make this judgment?” (pg. 46). These two examples, immigration-focused laws and sex offender laws, illustrate the dynamics involved in policymaking, particularly the relationship between proposed solutions and their expected outcomes. They reveal that instrumental and symbolic goals often compete for priority in the policy-making arena.

IV. Equity-Consciousness in Policy Formulation

As the criminal justice system exploded in size in the latter half of the twentieth century, its impacts have not spread equally across the population. Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by policing, mass incarceration, and surveillance practices. At a moment of political momentum seeking to curb the excesses of the criminal justice system, careful attention must be paid not only to its overreach, but also to its racialized nature and inequitable impacts. Many evaluative criteria are used to weigh policies including efficiency, effectiveness, cost, political acceptability, and administrative feasibility, among others. One critical dimension is the extent to which a policy incorporates equity considerations into its design, or is ignorant about potential inequitable outcomes. While reducing racial disparities characterizes reform efforts of the past, these efforts often fail to yield meaningful impacts, and sometimes unintentionally exacerbate disparities. Equity analyses should be more formally centered in criminal justice policymaking.

Racial and ethnic disparities are a central feature of the U.S. criminal justice system. Decades of research reveals Black people, and to a lesser degree Latinos and Native Americans, are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system at all stages (Bales & Piquero, 2012 ; Hinton et al., 2018 ; Kutateladze et al., 2014 ; Menefee, 2018 ; Mitchell, 2005 ; Warren et al., 2012 ). These disparities have many sources: associations between blackness and criminality, and stereotypes of dangerousness (Muhammad, 2010 ); implicit racial bias (Spencer et al., 2016 ); residential and economic segregation that expose communities of color to environments that encourage criminal offending and greater police presence (Peterson & Krivo, 2010 ; Sharkey, 2013 ); and, punitive criminal justice policies that increase the certainty and severity of punishments, such as mandatory minimum sentences, life imprisonment, and habitual offender laws, for which people of color are disproportionately arrested and convicted (Raphael & Stoll, 2013 ; Schlesinger, 2011 ). Disparities in initial stages of criminal justice contact, at arrest or prosecution, can compound to generate disparate outcomes at later stages, such as conviction and sentencing, even where legal actors are committed to racial equality (Kutateladze et al., 2014 ). Disparities compound over time, too; having prior contact with the justice system may increase surveillance and the likelihood of being arrested, charged, detained pretrial, and sentenced to incarceration (Ahrens, 2020 ; Kurlychek & Johnson, 2019 ).

Perspectives on how to reduce disparities vary widely, and understanding how the benefits or burdens of a given policy change will be distributed across racial and ethnic groups is not always clear. Even well-intentioned reforms intended to increase fairness and alleviate disparities can fail to achieve intended impacts or unintentionally encourage inequity. For example, sentencing guidelines adopted in the 1970s to increase consistency and reduce inequitable outcomes across groups at sentencing alleviated, but did not eliminate, racial disparities (Johnson & Lee, 2013 ); popular “Ban the Box” legislation, aimed at reducing the stigma of a criminal record, may increase racial disparities in callbacks for job seekers of color (Agan & Starr, 2018 ; Raphael, 2021 ); and “risk assessments,” used widely in criminal justice decision-making, may unintentionally reproduce existing disparities by relying on information that is itself a product of racialized policing, prosecution, and sentencing (Eckhouse et al., 2019 ). Conversely, policies enacted without explicit consideration of equity effects may result in reductions of disparities: California’s Proposition 47, which reclassifies certain felony offenses to misdemeanors, reduced Black and Latino disparities in drug arrests, likelihood of conviction, and rates of jail incarceration relative to Whites (Mooney et al., 2018 ; Lofstrom et al., 2019 ; MacDonald & Raphael, 2020 ).

Understanding the potential equity implications of criminal justice reforms should be a key consideration for policymakers and applied researchers alike. However, an explicit focus on reducing racial disparities is often excluded from the policymaking process, seen as a secondary concern to other policy goals, or framed in ways that focus on race-neutral processes rather than race-equitable outcomes (Chouhy et al., 2021 ; Donnelly, 2017 ). But this need not be the case; examinations of how elements of a given policy (e.g., goals, target population, eligibility criteria) and proposed changes to procedure or practice might impact different groups can be incorporated into policy design and evaluation. As one example, racial equity impact statements (REIS), a policy tool that incorporates an empirical analysis of the projected impacts of a change in law, policy, or practice on racial and ethnic groups (Porter, 2021 ), are used in some states. Modeled after the now-routine environmental impact and fiscal impact statements, racial impact statements may be conducted in advance of a hearing or vote on any proposed change to policy, or can even be incorporated in the policy formulation stages (Chouhy et al., 2021 ; Mauer, 2007 ). Researchers, analysts, and policymakers should also examine potential differential effects of existing policies and pay special attention to how structural inequalities intersect with policy features to contribute to—and potentially mitigate—disparate impacts of justice reforms (Anderson et al., 2022 ; Mooney et al., 2022 ).

V. Putting It Together: Modeling the Policy Change Process

Approaches to crime and punishment do not change overnight. Policy change can be incremental or haphazard, and new innovations adopted by criminal justice systems often bear markers of earlier approaches. There exist multiple frameworks for understanding change and continuity in approaches to crime and punishment. The metaphor of a pendulum is often used to characterize changes to criminal justice policy, where policy regimes swing back and forth between punishment and leniency (Goodman et al., 2017 ). These changes are ushered along by macro-level shifts of economic, political, demographics, and cultural sensibilities (Garland, 2001 ).

Policy change is rarely predictable or mechanical (Smith & Larimer, 2017 ). Actors struggle over whom to punish and how, and changes in the relative resources, political position, and power among actors drive changes to policy and practice (Goodman et al., 2017 ). This conflict, which plays out at the level of politics and policymaking and is sometimes subsumed within agencies and day-to-day practices in the justice system, creates a landscape of contradictory policies, logics, and discourses. New policies and practices are “tinted” by (Dabney et al., 2017 ) or “braided” with older logics (Hutchinson, 2006 ), or “layered” onto existing practices (Rubin, 2016 ).

Public policy theory offers different, but complementary, insights into how policies come to be, particularly under complex conditions. One widely used framework in policy studies is the “multiple streams” framework (Kingdon, 1995 ). This model of the policymaking process focuses on policy choice and agenda setting, or the question of what leads policymakers to pay attention to one issue over others, and pursue one policy in lieu of others.

The policy process is heuristically outlined as a sequential set of steps or stages: problem identification, agenda setting, policy formulation, adoption or decision-making, implementation, and evaluation. However, real-world policymaking rarely conforms to this process (Smith & Larimer, 2017 ). In the multiple streams lens, the process is neither rational nor linear but is seen as “organized anarchy,” described by several features: 1) ambiguity over the definition of the problem, creating many possible solutions for the same circumstances and conditions; 2) limited time to make decisions and multiple issues vying for policymakers’ attention, leading to uncertain policy preferences; 3) a crowded policy community with shifting participation; and, 4) multiple agencies and organizations in the policy environment working on similar problems with little coordination or transparency (Herweg et al., 2018 ).

In this context, opportunity for change emerges when three, largely separate, “streams” of interactions intersect: problems , politics , and policies . First, in the “problem stream,” problems are defined as conditions that deviate from expectations and are seen by the public as requiring government intervention. Many such “problems” exist, but not all rise to the level of attention from policymakers. Conditions must be re-framed into problems requiring government attention. Several factors can usher this transformation. Changes in the scale of problem, such as increases or decreases in crime, can raise the attention of government actors. So-called “focusing events” (Birkland, 1997 ), or rare and unexpected events, such as shocking violent crime or a natural disaster (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic), can also serve this purpose. The murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, for instance, was a focusing event for changing the national conversation around police use of force into a problem requiring government intervention. Finally, feedback from existing programs or policies, particularly those that fail to achieve their goals or have unwanted effects, can reframe existing conditions as problems worthy of attention.

The “policy stream” is where solutions, or policy alternatives, are developed to address emerging problems. Solutions are generated both by “visible” participants in the stream, such as prominent elected officials, or by “hidden” actors, such as criminal justice bureaucrats, interest groups, academics, or consultants. Policy ideas float around in this stream until they are “coupled,” or linked, with specific problems. At any given time, policy ideas based in deterrence or incapacitation rationales, including increasing the harshness of penalties or the certainty of sanctions, and solutions based in rehabilitative rationales, such as providing treatment-oriented diversion or restorative justice programs, all co-exist in the policy stream. Not all policy alternatives are seen as viable and likely to reach the agenda; viable solutions are marked by concerns of feasibility, value acceptability, public support or tolerance, and financial viability.

Lastly, the “political stream” is governed by several elements, including changes to the national mood and changing composition of governments and legislatures as new politicians are elected and new government administrators appointed. This stream helps determine whether a problem will find a receptive venue (Smith & Larimer, 2017 ). For example, the election of a progressive prosecutor intent on changing status quo processing of cases through the justice system creates a viable political environment for new policies to be linked with problems. When the three streams converge, that is, when conditions become problems, a viable solution is identified, and a receptive political venue exists, a “policy window” opens and change is most likely. For Kingdon ( 2011 ), this is a moment of “opportunity for advocates of proposals to push their pet solutions, or to push attention to their special problems” (pg. 165).

Models of the policy change process, of which the multiple streams framework is just one, may be effectively applied to crime and justice policy spheres. Prior discussions on the ways of thinking about crime and criminal justice can be usefully integrated with models of the policy change process; narratives shape how various conditions are constructed as problems worthy of collective action and influence policy ideas and proposals available among policy communities. We encourage policymakers and policy-oriented researchers to examine criminal justice reform through policy process frameworks in order to better understand why some reforms succeed, and why others fail.

When it comes to the criminal justice system, one of the most commonly asked questions today is: How can we improve the effectiveness of reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is as well as shared visions of what success looks like. Yet consensus is hard to come by, and scholars have long differentiated between “policy talk” and “policy action.” The aim of this essay has been to identify conceptual and practical considerations related to both policy talk and policy action in the context of criminal justice reform today.

On the conceptual side, we reviewed narratives that create society’s fundamental ways of thinking about or conceptualizing crime and criminal justice. These narratives reflect value orientations that underlie our criminal justice system and determine how it functions. On the practical side, we identified considerations for both policy-oriented researchers and policymakers in thinking through how to make criminal justice reform more effective. These practical considerations included variation and complexity in the criminal justice policy environment, problem framing and policy content, policy aims and outcomes, equity considerations in policy design and evaluation, and models of the policy change process.

These conceptual and practical considerations are by no means exhaustive, nor are they mutually-exclusive. Rather, they serve as starting points for productively thinking and talking about, as well as designing, effective and sustainable criminal justice reform. At the same time, they point to the need for continuous policy evaluation and monitoring—at all levels—as a way to increase accountability and effectiveness. Indeed, policy talk and policy action do not stop at the problem formation, agenda setting, or adoption stages of policymaking. Critical to understanding effective policy is implementation and evaluation, which create feedback into policy processes, and is something that should be addressed in future work on criminal justice reform.

No single definition of public policy exists. Here we follow Smith and Larimer ( 2017 ) and define policy as any action by the government in response to a problem, including laws, rules, agency policies, programs, and day-to-day practices.

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Kubrin, C.E., Tublitz, R. How to Think about Criminal Justice Reform: Conceptual and Practical Considerations. Am J Crim Just 47 , 1050–1070 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-022-09712-6

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What does it mean to be critical?

Thinking is skilled work. It is not true that we are naturally endowed with the ability to think clearly and logically … People with untrained minds should no more expect to think clearly and logically than people who have never learned and never practiced can expect to find themselves good carpenters, golfers, bridge-players, or pianists

As the above quotation suggests, critical thinking is a learned skill. In this free course, we will provide you with ways of thinking about crime from an alternative perspective. This perspective requires stepping outside and challenging taken-for-granted assumptions about crime and the operation of criminal justice systems.

According to René Van Swaaningen, the ‘adjective “critical” has gradually become the demarcating line for scholars who oppose the utilitarian ethos that subordinates criminology to law and order interests’ (Van Swaaningen, 1999, pp. 24–25). But what does this mean? It means that being critical includes being curious, sceptical, and prepared to challenge the underlying assumptions and accepted rationales of the criminal justice system and their taken-for-granted nature. It means being prepared to ask such questions as:

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Being critical is about representing the side of the economically and socially marginalised (Becker, 1963). It is a position that seeks to promote social inclusion, equality and human rights. Critical criminology often finds its explanations for criminal activity in the unequal distribution of power and wealth in society and the resultant class, ethnic and gender discrimination. The official discourses about crime, like other areas of social life, are viewed by critical criminologists as constructed through contexts of racism, sexism, classism and heterosexism.

Being critical is much more than suggesting cosmetic changes to existing crime-control regimes. To be a ‘critical criminologist’ is to seek out and highlight injustice, and to question the processes and practices upon which laws are constructed, enforced and implemented. It is not merely tinkering with the existing system of justice and offering administrative changes to practice. It includes serious questioning of the ideological and political foundations upon which crime is defined, enforced, processed and responded to.

Critical criminological perspectives or criminologies represent a dynamic, interconnected yet diverse range of theories, perspectives and methods that share a commitment to providing an alternative approach to the ways crime, justice and the ‘discipline’ of criminology are examined. Critical criminological approaches have continually pushed the boundaries and scope of criminology, creating new areas of focus and innovation in relation to its subject matter, methods and theory. Although there is much diversity and difference between critical criminological strands, they are united in their emphasis on economic and social conditions, the flows and uses of power, the interplay between crime, ‘race’, gender, and/or class, and their concern to seek out marginalised perspectives and investigate multiple truths.

Critical criminologists often prefer to be called social theorists, historians, sociologists, feminists and activists in rejection of the arguably conservative and state-compliant label ‘criminologist’. They have sought out and examined new areas that are often excluded from governmental and mainstream criminological agendas. For example, the critique of activities involving state and corporate harm that produce human suffering or environmental degradation and economic bias in the name of profit and power has long been the mission of critical criminologists. As such, laws and activities of the powerful that permit or engender racial and economic inequality, discrimination and gender prejudice have been subjected to critical examination in pursuit of social justice. Contemporary critical criminological perspectives maintain this emphasis through examining, for example, global issues of human trafficking, terrorism, environmental exploitation, and highlighting national injustices and human rights abuses – often entailing a critique of the unlawful actions of governments and large transnational corporations.

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The Department of Academic Literacy and Linguistics (ALL) offers an Associate in Arts (AA) degree in Critical Thinking and Justice. This program fosters critical literacy and critical thinking as applied to studies in justice, history, and philosophy, among others. This field will help you gain an understanding of the relationship between the humanities and justice; engage and develop the skills of careful reading, critical thinking, and clear writing about the justice system and community justice.

This program will prepare students for careers in humanities and justice, and related fields in behavioral and social sciences, communication and media, education, the legal profession and the non-profit sector.

Students completing this program can transfer seamlessly into the B.A. degree in Humanities and Justice at the CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice without the loss of credits.

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10. Critical Criminology

Kelly Gorkoff, PhD. University of Winnipeg

Positionality Statement 

I am a cis-white female who grew up in a working-class home that was strongly leftist politically. I was raised, and completed my undergrad work, in Winnipeg, Treaty One Territory and homeland of the Metis people. As an MA student and for 6 years after, I worked with a national feminist research group established after the Montreal Massacre where I examined gender-based, colonial violence. I studied political economy and sociology in Ontario, on unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory, and I landed back on Treaty One Territory where I continue to teach, research, and work to understand the dynamics of marginalisation and inequality, power and politics, ideology and subjectivity.

Kevin Walby, PhD. University of Winnipeg

I am a cis-white male who grew up in Saskatchewan, including in small towns and rural areas. I was raised, and completed my undergrad work, in Saskatoon, Treaty Six Territory and part of the homeland of the Metis people. I studied sociology in Ontario, on unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory, and I landed on Treaty One Territory where I continue to teach, research, and work to understand the dynamics of policing, surveillance, and security using qualitative and investigative research methods.

Introduction

Critical criminology encompasses a set of concepts and ideas examining how crime and criminal justice agencies are used as a form of social power that benefits some groups over others. It investigates (in)equality by examining the oppressive nature of criminal justice agencies, law, and the social practices of criminalisation and marginalisation. That said, defining critical criminology is a difficult task and we agree with Ratner (2006) that it is “difficult to pin down.” This is because almost any form of criminology that attempts to interrogate power and investigate dominant social institutions could be construed as critical criminology. By no means can we settle any debates about exactly what critical criminology includes and excludes in this short chapter. All we can do is provide an outline of some of the key works in this area, as we see it. This account includes the rendering or production of criminological knowledge (Lynch, 2000; Quinney, 1979) and certainly has gaps. Also, we will not be able to go into some critical criminological contributions deserving of attention, such as anarchist criminology (Walach et al., 2021; Walby, 2011), constitutive criminology (Henry & Milovanovic, 1991), or newer developments such as quantum criminology (Milovanovic, 2013). Nonetheless, we provide a critical explanation of some key texts, while pointing to current trends and future directions for critical criminology to consider and further develop.

The chapter begins with an understanding of what the critical turn in criminological scholarship means. Then it examines the foundations of critical thinking by examining the basics of the work of Marx and related approaches to studying criminology including the difference between instrumental and structural Marxism. It then examines the work of Foucault and his contemporaries. Here we explain the difference between Marxist power and Foucault’s conception of disciplinary power . The chapter then examines the contemporary abolitionist thought as central to critical criminology moving forward. The chapter ends with a description of the use of freedom of information requests and computational methods as it relates to critical criminology research.

how individuals shape their conduct to line up with expert knowledge and rules of discourse.

Introduction to Criminology Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Shereen Hassan and Dan Lett, MA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Tactical decision making: An equation for critical thinking in moments of crisis

By Police1 Columnist Ron Avery

How often is legal liability the overwhelming factor in decision making, to the exclusion of situational needs or overall mission?

How often are decisions based on what was done in your most recent training -- or something you read about or did the last time you were in a similar situation, rather than really looking at the situation and figuring out the best way to handle it?

How many decisions are made based on a “tactical recipe” like the 21 foot “rule”?

Every day, officers face myriad situations on the street where they have to make decisions on how to proceed. Subjective terms like “use good judgment” or “common sense” are often used to describe the process of arriving at a successful decision. But what we need is an objective tool to measure success instead of basing actions on subjective standards.

What I am going to share with you is a tactical decision making equation in regards to critical thinking and decision making. Using this equation, you can explain the process of how you arrived at your decision, in lay terms, in any given situation.

Further, this equation can be used at any level of command, from a single individual on the street to a supervisor commanding a whole sector. It can be used for either law enforcement, military or civilian applications.

This equation can be used in a court of law and can be easily understood by a jury. You can break down the different components and lay out the circumstances in an organized fashion.

Good officers with “street smarts” use this equation subconsciously. In times when there is a difference of opinion about how to proceed in a given situation, putting things in a format such as this allows for clarification of key points that make the difference.

The equation is written as follows:

Risk vs. Need ÷ Time + Resources Available = Decision *

This equation is simple to look at. Its effects are profound in application. As you start to use it, you will find that it fits every situation you will come across and will give you a more concise way of evaluating situations in the field. As you gain experience in using it, your critical thinking and decision making skills will become more refined.

You won’t find yourself at a loss for words when you have to explain your actions in the aftermath of a situation. This is important as you recall the incident and have to write a report. You can go by the variables, step by step, and explain what you did and why.

Supervisors and trainers can use this equation to review actions by officers and look at the reasoning behind the decisions in an organized way.

Best of all, you don’t have to rely on a subjective standard (e.g., “common sense”) or a one-size-fits-all “tactical recipe” to defend your actions.

Let’s review the variables:

What are the risks associated with the various options available to you? Given the nature of the mission, are the risks acceptable and manageable? In general, the default is the lowest risk option that meets the needs of the mission. Liability risks are also part of this area.

What are the needs of the mission/situation that you are in? Why are you there? Is it an arrest, public safety issue, warrant service, military exercise, prisoner snatch, drug raid, etc.? What needs to be accomplished?

Is time on your side or working against you? In general, the shorter the time available to you to accomplish the mission, the higher the risk factors on the available options left.

Resources Available

What resources can you access during the mission/situation with the time available to you?

Needs of the mission, available options, associated risks, resources available in the time constraints and is time working for you or against you?

Using the equation:

Situation: Building search. Possibly armed subject in structure.

You have been tasked with performing a building search in response to an alarm. As you pull up to the scene, let’s pause for a moment and look at the needs of this mission.

Search, detain and arrest unlawful intruders.

Possibly armed subject(s), They have the advantage of cover/concealment and darkness.

With a perimeter secured, time is on your side.

You have a partner, a light, a handgun and a long gun in your car. The police K-9 is not available tonight as the handler is out of town doing training.

You conduct the search, with your partner, slicing the pie, taking advantage of your light, etc. As you come to a back room, you hear a noise that you suspect is a person.

You and your partner move forward. As you come to the doorway, you see a person standing in the room. You challenge him and he suddenly brings a gun around and fires a shot. You stand your ground and return fire as he fires at you. Neither of you hit the other. He ducks back to a corner of the room. You move back a few feet so he can’t shoot through the wall at you.

Now what do you do?

Let’s look at the equation and go from there.

Risk vs. Need ÷ Time + Resources Available = Decision

Needs/Mission

Detain and arrest armed felon

Option 1: Leave the building and let someone else deal with it. Risk: None to the officer. Mission not fulfilled.

Option 2: Retreat to a secure corner with the entry to the room in view. Hold the corner with your partner. Call for SWAT, etc. Offender is contained and isolated in the room. No external window to the outside. If offender comes out of room, you have the advantage of holding the corner with two guns against his one. Risks: Higher than option one, but meet the needs of the situation.

Option 3: Move to the doorway with your partner. Attempt to take the fight to the subject from the doorway. Risks: Gunfight at close range. One or both of you may be killed or wounded in the exchange. Risk - Higher than Option 1 or 2.

Option 4: Do a dynamic entry with your partner and take the offender out. Risks: Very high when you close the distance.

Is on your side at the moment. He is in the room with no exits but the doorway.

Whatever knowledge, skills, training and abilities you and your partner can bring to bear that is relevant to the situation and will help you both manage the risk and accomplish the mission at hand. You have your weapons, ammo, flashlight, radio. Within a few minutes (or possibly up to an hour or more in rural locations) you can have more backup with more equipment.

Time is on your side. If you are a patrol officer doing a search it is helpful to think of yourself as a “scout.” You are there to ascertain presence of a subject and activity, not necessarily engage in a pitched battle. If you find someone, you don’t necessarily have to fight them. Just contain, isolate and use your best option that still accomplishes or furthers the completion of the intended mission. Option 2 offers the lowest risks at this point and will further the mission of containment and ultimate apprehension of the armed felon.

Situation: School shooting. Active shooter.

First and foremost: Stop the killing. Additional tasks: Stabilize and evacuate the critically injured, protect, evacuate or control the student population. Control the perimeters. Here we can use the equation from both a command and a control standpoint and from an individual officer point of view.

Option 1: Contain the perimeter. Wait out the subjects. Risks: Lowest to officers but not to students. Does not meet the needs of the situation.

Option 2: Wait for 4 or more officers or SWAT team to deploy and then assault. Risks: Higher than Option 1 to officers. Students still at high risk. Time is ticking. Seconds count. People are dying. How long will you wait?

Option 3: Immediate assault with first available officers. Take the bad guys under fire and put them under duress. Take away their ability to think clearly. Isolate their mobility and rapidly neutralize them. Risks: Higher chance for officers to be wounded or killed. Higher chance of a “blue on blue” if other units are injected into the situation without good command and control. Best chance for survival to students that are not locked down in a protected area or haven’t managed to escape.

Here we have a situation where time is working against the officer. Students are being killed. Seconds count.

The knowledge and skill level of officers on scene at that time. Handgun and ammunition on belt, other items on belt such as pepper spray, baton, Taser, etc. Possibly long gun if not too far away. Protective vest. One other officer available immediately. Others responding. ETA 15 minutes. (ETA’s of more than an hour are common in rural parts of the US.)

A complex situation. Mission priorities have to be established immediately. First priority: Stop the killing, takes precedence over other mission needs. Other priorities are fulfilled as more personnel become available. Much room for discussion here. Reporting using the equations would lay out the variables in the aftermath and allow for clear, concise debriefing and testimony.

What will you decide?

Situation: Arrest-and-Control gone bad.

While on a domestic disturbance call you have contacted a large, belligerent subject in the parking lot. As you attempt to calm the situation, he suddenly assaults you. He gets you on the ground and gets on top of you, smashing blows down to your head and face. You now have a larger, stronger opponent on top of you. You are in a very vulnerable position.

Your mission has changed from defusing the situation or arresting the subject to a close quarter survival situation.

Option 1: Attempt to control the subject using whatever knowledge and skills you have at that time. Risk: One good blow to your face from a mounted opponent and it’s lights out for you. From there, your life is in the hands of the attacker. Are you really skilled? Remember, he’s got you down on the ground already and is in a position of advantage.

Option 2: Deploy a less lethal option from your belt. OC or Taser or baton. Risks: While you are reaching for your belt, you leave yourself open to a smashing attack from above. Taser at close range may not be effective. OC may be ineffective as well. Baton strikes from below may be very marginal in effectiveness. Time is working against you. Your life is at stake here.

Option 3: Protect your head and neck by re-positioning to the side. Trap his arm on that side and access lethal force tools available to aid you in your survival. Gun, backup gun, knife etc. Risks: You must be able to access your available tools without taking a debilitating blow or having the tool taken away and used against you.

Is working against you. One good blow to your head/face and your ability to protect yourself either goes away or is severely diminished.

Now, let’s throw in a wrinkle…

Your ground skills are not all that great. You did your last ground fighting skills training a year ago and haven’t done anything since. You successfully managed to get to a side position but your opponent is lying across your body and your Taser, OC and baton are covered by his body. Your only external weapon resource available in those few precious seconds of respite before he repositions is your firearm. No other officer is available at your location, though there are two in the parking lot 200 feet away contacting other parties to the incident.

You start your initial defense as you are taken to the ground with option one. The fight is on! He has gotten on top of you and is smashing you in the head repeatedly as you desperately try to defend yourself. You are using a lot of energy to keep him at bay. You are rapidly approaching physical exhaustion. You stop thinking of it as an arrest-and-control situation and are in fear for your life. You proceed with Option 3. You reposition your body and trap his arm nearest your gun .You bring the gun to bear and shoot him through the arm and body; ending the conflict.

In this situation, you can clearly articulate why you used the firearm even when you had other resources on your belt.

Let’s review the equation in the aftermath of the encounter to explain your actions.

Your mission changed from arrest-and-control to the need to protect your life. You were stuck in an extremely vulnerable position with a physically superior opponent in terms of size and strength and you were being attacked with deadly force. You were not able to control the subject using your current physical skills and training.

In each of the various options the risk was very high for serious bodily injury or death to you.

Working against you. You were physically exhausted and moments away from helplessness. In split seconds an incapacitating blow would likely have come down and taken you out of the fight.

Physical ability, skills and training, tools on belt.

Your physical resources were waning. As you rapidly tired, fighting to survive, you could feel the situation becoming more desperate. Your opponent was clearly winning this fight on a physical level. The only tool you could access, from your position and your opponent’s position, in the few seconds allowed, was your firearm. This might also be your backup firearm if he was lying across your primary weapon. Option 3 sounds best to me, given this situation.

Training to use this equation under duress is the real key to good decision making. People tend to default to whatever first comes to mind when they are put under pressure. A lot of the time, you will find yourself scratching your head trying to figure out why people do the things they do.

Immediate action drills are great when you are surprised and need to survive the first moments of a crisis. But nothing beats critical thinking skills in the moment for superior performance. This formula, and the critical thinking skills it develops, can help ahead of time in training scenarios, at the moment of truth when lives hang in the balance, and afterward when you have to articulate and justify your actions.

I would like to thank my advisory council members (Rocky Mountain Tactical Institute) for their timely input and advice in putting together this piece. Thanks to all!

* (From The Rocky Mountain Tactical Institute - Non-Profit 501(c) (3) Standards and Guidelines for Training (2007), Tactical Decision Making Equation. Copyright: Ronald E. Avery)

Ron is a former police officer with many years of street experience, which he brings into the training environment. He is internationally recognized as a researcher, firearms trainer and world class shooter. His training methodology is currently being used by hundreds of agencies and thousands of individuals across the US and internationally.

He has worked as a consultant and trainer for top level federal agencies, special operations military from all branches of the armed forces and law enforcement agencies across the US.

He is a weapons and tactics trainer for, handgun, carbine, select fire, precision rifle and shotgun, as well as advanced instructor schools, defensive tactics, team skills and tactics, low light tactics, arrest and control and officer survival. He is also a consultant for firearms training programs, use of force and firearms research, range development, instructor development and other firearm related topics.

For over 25 years he has consistently ranked among the best shooters in the world in national, international and world championship competitions, winning many different titles including two-time National Law Enforcement Champion. In 2002, he represented his country as a member of the first place, United States Practical Shooting Association’s “Gold Team” in the Standard Division in the World Championships in South Africa.

As a published writer, his articles have been featured in SWAT Magazine, Petersen’s Handguns, American Handgunner, U.S.P.S.A.'s Front Sight , Colorado State Shooting Association and other law enforcement publications and journals.

A Crash Course in Critical Thinking

What you need to know—and read—about one of the essential skills needed today..

Posted April 8, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• In research for "A More Beautiful Question," I did a deep dive into the current crisis in critical thinking.
• Many people may think of themselves as critical thinkers, but they actually are not.
• Here is a series of questions you can ask yourself to try to ensure that you are thinking critically.

Conspiracy theories. Inability to distinguish facts from falsehoods. Widespread confusion about who and what to believe.

These are some of the hallmarks of the current crisis in critical thinking—which just might be the issue of our times. Because if people aren’t willing or able to think critically as they choose potential leaders, they’re apt to choose bad ones. And if they can’t judge whether the information they’re receiving is sound, they may follow faulty advice while ignoring recommendations that are science-based and solid (and perhaps life-saving).

Moreover, as a society, if we can’t think critically about the many serious challenges we face, it becomes more difficult to agree on what those challenges are—much less solve them.

On a personal level, critical thinking can enable you to make better everyday decisions. It can help you make sense of an increasingly complex and confusing world.

In the new expanded edition of my book A More Beautiful Question ( AMBQ ), I took a deep dive into critical thinking. Here are a few key things I learned.

First off, before you can get better at critical thinking, you should understand what it is. It’s not just about being a skeptic. When thinking critically, we are thoughtfully reasoning, evaluating, and making decisions based on evidence and logic. And—perhaps most important—while doing this, a critical thinker always strives to be open-minded and fair-minded . That’s not easy: It demands that you constantly question your assumptions and biases and that you always remain open to considering opposing views.

In today’s polarized environment, many people think of themselves as critical thinkers simply because they ask skeptical questions—often directed at, say, certain government policies or ideas espoused by those on the “other side” of the political divide. The problem is, they may not be asking these questions with an open mind or a willingness to fairly consider opposing views.

When people do this, they’re engaging in “weak-sense critical thinking”—a term popularized by the late Richard Paul, a co-founder of The Foundation for Critical Thinking . “Weak-sense critical thinking” means applying the tools and practices of critical thinking—questioning, investigating, evaluating—but with the sole purpose of confirming one’s own bias or serving an agenda.

In AMBQ , I lay out a series of questions you can ask yourself to try to ensure that you’re thinking critically. Here are some of the questions to consider:

• Why do I believe what I believe?
• Are my views based on evidence?
• Have I fairly and thoughtfully considered differing viewpoints?
• Am I truly open to changing my mind?

Of course, becoming a better critical thinker is not as simple as just asking yourself a few questions. Critical thinking is a habit of mind that must be developed and strengthened over time. In effect, you must train yourself to think in a manner that is more effortful, aware, grounded, and balanced.

For those interested in giving themselves a crash course in critical thinking—something I did myself, as I was working on my book—I thought it might be helpful to share a list of some of the books that have shaped my own thinking on this subject. As a self-interested author, I naturally would suggest that you start with the new 10th-anniversary edition of A More Beautiful Question , but beyond that, here are the top eight critical-thinking books I’d recommend.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark , by Carl Sagan

This book simply must top the list, because the late scientist and author Carl Sagan continues to be such a bright shining light in the critical thinking universe. Chapter 12 includes the details on Sagan’s famous “baloney detection kit,” a collection of lessons and tips on how to deal with bogus arguments and logical fallacies.

Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments Into Extraordinary Results , by Shane Parrish

The creator of the Farnham Street website and host of the “Knowledge Project” podcast explains how to contend with biases and unconscious reactions so you can make better everyday decisions. It contains insights from many of the brilliant thinkers Shane has studied.

Good Thinking: Why Flawed Logic Puts Us All at Risk and How Critical Thinking Can Save the World , by David Robert Grimes

A brilliant, comprehensive 2021 book on critical thinking that, to my mind, hasn’t received nearly enough attention . The scientist Grimes dissects bad thinking, shows why it persists, and offers the tools to defeat it.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know , by Adam Grant

Intellectual humility—being willing to admit that you might be wrong—is what this book is primarily about. But Adam, the renowned Wharton psychology professor and bestselling author, takes the reader on a mind-opening journey with colorful stories and characters.

Think Like a Detective: A Kid's Guide to Critical Thinking , by David Pakman

The popular YouTuber and podcast host Pakman—normally known for talking politics —has written a terrific primer on critical thinking for children. The illustrated book presents critical thinking as a “superpower” that enables kids to unlock mysteries and dig for truth. (I also recommend Pakman’s second kids’ book called Think Like a Scientist .)

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters , by Steven Pinker

The Harvard psychology professor Pinker tackles conspiracy theories head-on but also explores concepts involving risk/reward, probability and randomness, and correlation/causation. And if that strikes you as daunting, be assured that Pinker makes it lively and accessible.

How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion and Persuasion , by David McRaney

David is a science writer who hosts the popular podcast “You Are Not So Smart” (and his ideas are featured in A More Beautiful Question ). His well-written book looks at ways you can actually get through to people who see the world very differently than you (hint: bludgeoning them with facts definitely won’t work).

A Healthy Democracy's Best Hope: Building the Critical Thinking Habit , by M Neil Browne and Chelsea Kulhanek

Neil Browne, author of the seminal Asking the Right Questions: A Guide to Critical Thinking, has been a pioneer in presenting critical thinking as a question-based approach to making sense of the world around us. His newest book, co-authored with Chelsea Kulhanek, breaks down critical thinking into “11 explosive questions”—including the “priors question” (which challenges us to question assumptions), the “evidence question” (focusing on how to evaluate and weigh evidence), and the “humility question” (which reminds us that a critical thinker must be humble enough to consider the possibility of being wrong).

Warren Berger is a longtime journalist and author of A More Beautiful Question .

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How to Think about Criminal Justice Reform: Conceptual and Practical Considerations

Charis e. kubrin.

Social Ecology II, University of California, Room 3309, Irvine, CA 92697-7080 USA

Rebecca Tublitz

How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. But consensus is hard to come by, and there has long been a distinction between “policy talk” or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, and “policy action” or the design and adoption of certain policies. In this essay, we seek to promote productive thinking and talking about, as well as designing of, effective and sustainable criminal justice reforms. To this end, we offer reflections on underlying conceptual and practical considerations relevant for both criminal justice policy talk and action.

Across the political spectrum in the United States, there is agreement that incarceration and punitive sanctions cannot be the sole solution to crime. After decades of criminal justice expansion, incarceration rates peaked between 2006 and 2008 and have dropped modestly, but consistently, ever since then (Gramlich, 2021 ). Calls to ratchet up criminal penalties to control crime, with some exceptions, are increasingly rare. Rather, where bitter partisanship divides conservatives and progressives on virtually every other issue, bipartisan support for criminal justice reform is commonplace. This support has yielded many changes in recent years: scaling back of mandatory sentencing laws, limiting sentencing enhancements, expanding access to non-prison alternatives for low-level drug and property crimes, reducing revocations of community supervision, and increasing early release options (Subramanian & Delaney, 2014 ). New laws passed to reduce incarceration have outpaced punitive legislation three-to-one (Beckett et al., 2016 , 2018 ). Rather than the rigid “law and order” narrative that characterized the dominant approach to crime and punishment since the Nixon administration, policymakers and advocates have found common ground in reform conversations focused on cost savings, evidence-based practice, and being “smart on crime.” A “new sensibility” prevails (Phelps, 2016 ).

Transforming extensive support for criminal justice reform into substantial reductions in justice-involved populations has proven more difficult, and irregular. While the number of individuals incarcerated across the nation has declined, the U.S. continues to have the highest incarceration rate in the world, with nearly 1.9 million people held in state and federal prisons, local jails, and detention centers (Sawyer & Wagner, 2022 ; Widra & Herring, 2021 ). Another 3.9 million people remain on probation or parole (Kaeble, 2021 ). And, not all jurisdictions have bought into this new sensibility: rural and suburban reliance on prisons has increased during this new era of justice reform (Kang-Brown & Subramanian, 2017 ). Despite extensive talk of reform, achieving actual results “is about as easy as bending granite” (Petersilia, 2016 :9).

How can we improve the effectiveness of criminal justice reform? At its core, a reform is an effort to ameliorate an undesirable condition, eliminate an identified problem, achieve a goal, or strengthen an existing (successful) policy. Scholarship yields real insights into effective programming and practice in response to a range of issues in criminal justice. Equally apparent, however, is the lack of criminological knowledge incorporated into the policymaking process. Thoughtful are proposals to improve the policy-relevance of criminological knowledge and increase communication between research and policy communities (e.g., Blomberg et al., 2016 ; Mears, 2022 ). But identifying what drives effective criminal justice reform is not so straightforward. For one, the goals of reform vary across stakeholders: Should reform reduce crime and victimization? Focus on recidivism? Increase community health and wellbeing? Ensure fairness in criminal justice procedure? Depending upon who is asked, the answer differs. Consensus on effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is and shared visions of what success looks like. Scholars of the policy process often distinguish “policy talk,” or how problems are defined and solutions are promoted, from “policy action,” or the design and adoption of policy solutions, to better understand the drivers of reform and its consequences. This distinction is relevant to criminal justice reform (Bartos & Kubrin, 2018 :2; Tyack & Cuban, 1995 ).

We argue that an effective approach to criminal justice reform—one that results in policy action that matches policy talk—requires clarity regarding normative views about the purpose of punishment, appreciation of practical realities involved in policymaking, and insight into how the two intersect. To this end, in this essay we offer critical reflections on underlying conceptual and practical considerations that bear on criminal justice policy talk and action.

Part I. Conceptual Considerations: Narratives of Crime and Criminal Justice

According to social constructionist theory, the creation of knowledge is rooted in interactions between individuals through common language and shared meanings in social contexts (Berger & Luckmann, 1966 ). Common language and shared meanings create ways of thinking, or narratives, that socially construct our reality and profoundly influence public definitions of groups, events, and social phenomena, including crime and criminal justice. As such, any productive conversation about reform must engage with society’s foundational narratives about crime and criminal justice, including views about the rationales for punishment.

I. Rationales of Punishment

What is criminal justice? What purpose does our criminal justice system serve? Answers to these questions are found in the theories, organization, and practices of criminal justice. A starting point for discovery is the fact that criminal justice is a system for the implementation of punishment (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982 ). This has not always been the case but today, punishment is largely meted out in our correctional system, or prisons and jails, which embody rationales for punishment including retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation, and restoration. These rationales offer competing purposes and goals, and provide varying blueprints for how our criminal justice system should operate.

Where do these rationales come from? They derive, in part, from diverse understandings and explanations about the causes of crime. While many theories exist, a useful approach for thinking about crime and its causes is found in the two schools of criminological thought, the Classical and Positivist Schools of Criminology. These Schools reflect distinct ideological assumptions, identify competing rationales for punishment, and suggest unique social policies to address crime—all central to any discussion of criminal justice reform.

At its core, the Classical School sought to bring about reform of the criminal justice systems of eighteenth century Europe, which were characterized by such abuses as torture, presumption of guilt before trial, and arbitrary court procedures. Reformers of the Classical School, most notably Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, were influenced by social contract theorists of the Enlightenment, a cultural movement of intellectuals in late seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe that emphasized reason and individualism rather than tradition, along with equality. Central assumptions of the Classical School include that people are rational and possessed of free will, and thus can be held responsible for their actions; that humans are governed by the principle of utility and, as such, seek pleasure or happiness and avoid pain; and that, to prevent crime, punishments should be just severe enough such that the pain or unhappiness created by the punishment outweighs any pleasure or happiness derived from crime, thereby deterring would-be-offenders who will see that “crime does not pay.”

The guiding concept of the Positivist School was the application of the scientific method to study crime and criminals. In contrast to the Classical School’s focus on rational decision-making, the Positivist School adopted a deterministic viewpoint, which suggests that crime is determined by factors largely outside the control of individuals, be they biological (such as genetics), psychological (such as personality disorder), or sociological (such as poverty). Positivists also promote the idea of multiple-factor causation, or that crime is caused by a constellation of complex forces.

When it comes to how we might productively think about reform, a solid understanding of these schools is necessary because “…the unique sets of assumptions of two predominant schools of criminological thought give rise to vastly different explanations of and prescriptions for the problem of crime” (Cullen & Gilbert, 1982 :36). In other words, the two schools of thought translate into different strategies for policy. They generate rationales for punishment that offer competing narratives regarding how society should handle those who violate the law. These rationales for punishment motivate reformers, whether the aim is to “rehabilitate offenders” or “get tough on crime,” influencing policy and practice.

The earliest rationale for punishment is retribution. Consistent with an individual’s desire for revenge, the aim is that offenders experience an unpleasant consequence for violating the law. Essentially, criminals should get what they deserve. While other rationales focus on changing future behavior, retribution focuses on an individual’s past actions and implies they have rightfully “earned” their punishment. Punishment, then, expresses moral disapproval for the criminal act committed. Advocates of retribution are not concerned with controlling crime; rather, they are in the business of “doing justice.” The death penalty and sentencing guidelines, a system of recommended sentences based upon offense (e.g., level of seriousness) and offender (e.g., number and type of prior offenses) characteristics, reflect basic principles of retribution.

Among the most popular rationales for punishment is deterrence, which refers to the idea that those considering crime will refrain from doing so out of a fear of punishment, consistent with the Classical School. Deterrence emphasizes that punishing a person also sends a message to others about what they can expect if they, too, violate the law. Deterrence theory provides the basis for a particular kind of correctional system that punishes the crime, not the criminal. Punishments are to be fixed tightly to specific crimes so that offenders will soon learn that the state means business. The death penalty is an example of a policy based on deterrence (as is obvious, these rationales are not mutually exclusive) as are three-strikes laws, which significantly increase prison sentences of those convicted of a felony who have been previously convicted of two or more violent crimes or serious felonies.

Another rationale for punishment, incapacitation, has the goal of reducing crime by incarcerating offenders or otherwise restricting their liberty (e.g., community supervision reflected in probation, parole, electronic monitoring). Uninterested in why individuals commit crime in the first place, and with no illusion they can be reformed, the goal is to remove individuals from society during a period in which they are expected to reoffend. Habitual offender laws, which target repeat offenders or career criminals and provide for enhanced or exemplary punishments or other sanctions, reflect this rationale.

Embodied in the term “corrections” is the notion that those who commit crime can be reformed, that their behavior can be “corrected.” Rehabilitation refers to when individuals refrain from crime—not out of a fear of punishment—but because they are committed to law-abiding behavior. The goal, from this perspective, is to change the factors that lead individuals to commit crime in the first place, consistent with Positivist School arguments. Unless criminogenic risks are targeted for change, crime will continue. The correctional system should thus be arranged to deliver effective treatment; in other words, prisons must be therapeutic. Reflective of this rationale is the risk-need-responsibility (RNR) model, used to assess and rehabilitate offenders. Based on three principles, the risk principle asserts that criminal behavior can be reliably predicted and that treatment should focus on higher risk offenders, the need principle emphasizes the importance of criminogenic needs in the design and delivery of treatment and, the responsivity principle describes how the treatment should be provided.

When a crime takes place, harm occurs—to the victim, to the community, and even to the offender. Traditional rationales of punishment do not make rectifying this harm in a systematic way an important goal. Restoration, or restorative justice, a relatively newer rationale, aims to rectify harms and restore injured parties, perhaps by apologizing and providing restitution to the victim or by doing service for the community. In exchange, the person who violated the law is (ideally) forgiven and accepted back into the community as a full-fledged member. Programs associated with restorative justice are mediation and conflict-resolution programs, family group conferences, victim-impact panels, victim–offender mediation, circle sentencing, and community reparative boards.

II. Narratives of Criminal Justice

Rationales for punishment, thus, are many. But from where do they arise? They reflect and reinforce narratives of crime and criminal justice (Garland, 1991 ). Penological and philosophical narratives constitute two traditional ways of thinking about criminal justice. In the former, punishment is viewed essentially as a technique of crime control. This narrative views the criminal justice system in instrumental terms, as an institution whose overriding purpose is the management and control of crime. The focal question of interest is a technical one: What works to control crime? The latter, and second, narrative considers the philosophy of punishment. It examines the normative foundations on which the corrections system rests. Here, punishment is set up as a distinctively moral problem, asking how penal sanctions can be justified, what their proper objectives should be, and under what circumstances they can be reasonably imposed. The central question here is “What is just?”.

A third narrative, “the sociology of punishment,” conceptualizes punishment as a social institution—one that is distinctively focused on punishment’s social forms, functions, and significance in society (Garland, 1991 ). In this narrative, punishment, and the criminal justice system more broadly, is understood as a cultural and historical artifact that is concerned with the control of crime, but that is shaped by an ensemble of social forces and has significance and impacts that reach well beyond the population of criminals (pg. 119). A sociology of punishment narrative raises important questions: How do specific penal measures come into existence?; What social functions does punishment perform?; How do correctional institutions relate to other institutions?; How do they contribute to social order or to state power or to class domination or to cultural reproduction of society?; What are punishment’s unintended social effects, its functional failures, and its wider social costs? (pg. 119). Answers to these questions are found in the sociological perspectives on punishment, most notably those by Durkheim (punishment is a moral process, functioning to preserve shared values and normative conventions on which social life is based), Marx (punishment is a repressive instrument of class domination), Foucault (punishment is one part of an extensive network of “normalizing” practices in society that also includes school, family, and work), and Elias (punishment reflects a civilizing process that brings with it a move toward the privatization of disturbing events), among others.

Consistent with the sociology of punishment, Kraska and Brent ( 2011 ) offer additional narratives, which they call theoretical orientations, for organizing thoughts on the criminal justice system generally, and the control of crime specifically. They argue a useful way to think about theorizing is through the use of metaphors. Adopting this approach, they identify eight ways of thinking based on different metaphors: criminal justice as rational/legalism, as a system, as crime control vs. due process, as politics, as the social construction of reality, as a growth complex, as oppression, and as modernity. Several overlap with concepts and frameworks discussed earlier, while others, such as oppression, are increasingly applicable in current conversations about racial justice—something we take up in greater detail below. Consistent with Garland ( 1991 ), Kraska and Brent ( 2011 ) emphasize that each narrative tells a unique story about the history, growth, behaviors, motivations, functioning, and possible future of the criminal justice system. What unites these approaches is their shared interest in understanding punishment’s broader role in society.

There are still other narratives of crime and criminal justice, with implications for thinking about and conceptualizing reform. Packer ( 1964 ) identifies two theoretical models, each offering a different narrative, which reflect value systems competing for priority in the operation of the criminal process: the Crime Control Model and the Due Process Model. The Crime Control Model is based on the view that the most important function of the criminal process is the repression of criminal conduct. The failure of law enforcement to bring criminal conduct under tight control is seen as leading to a breakdown of public order and hence, to the disappearance of freedom. If laws go unenforced and offenders perceive there is a low chance of being apprehended and convicted, a disregard for legal controls will develop and law-abiding citizens are likely to experience increased victimization. In this way, the criminal justice process is a guarantor of social freedom.

To achieve this high purpose, the Crime Control Model requires attention be paid to the efficiency with which the system operates to screen suspects, determine guilt, and secure dispositions of individuals convicted of crime. There is thus a premium on speed and finality. Speed, in turn, depends on informality, while finality depends on minimizing occasions for challenge. As such, the process cannot be “cluttered up” with ceremonious rituals. In this way, informal operations are preferred to formal ones, and routine, stereotyped procedures are essential to handle large caseloads. Packer likens the Crime Control Model to an “assembly line or a conveyor belt down which moves an endless stream of cases, never stopping, carrying the cases to workers who stand at fixed stations and who perform on each case as it comes by the same small but essential operation that brings it one step closer to being a finished product, or, to exchange the metaphor for the reality, a closed file” (pg. 11). Evidence of this model today is witnessed in the extremely high rate of criminal cases disposed of via plea bargaining.

In contrast, the Due Process model calls for strict adherence to the Constitution and a focus on the accused and their Constitutional rights. Stressing the possibility of error, this model emphasizes the need to protect procedural rights even if this prevents the system from operating with maximum efficiency. There is thus a rejection of informal fact-finding processes and insistence on formal, adjudicative, adversary fact-finding processes. Packer likens the Due Process model to an obstacle course: “Each of its successive stages is designed to present formidable impediments to carrying the accused any further along in the process” (pg. 13). That all death penalty cases are subject to appeal, even when not desired by the offender, is evidence of the Due Process model in action.

Like the frameworks described earlier, the Crime Control and Due Process models offer a useful framework for discussing and debating the operation of a system whose day-to-day functioning involves a constant tension between competing demands of different sets of values. In the context of reform, these models encourage us to consider critical questions: On a spectrum between the extremes represented by the two models, where do our present practices fall? What appears to be the direction of foreseeable trends along this spectrum? Where on the spectrum should we aim to be? In essence, which value system is reflected most in criminal justice practices today, in which direction is the system headed, and where should it aim go in the future? Of course this framework, as all others reviewed here, assumes a tight fit between structure and function in the criminal courts yet some challenge this assumption arguing, instead, that criminal justice is best conceived of as a “loosely coupled system” (Hagan et al., 1979 :508; see also Bernard et al., 2005 ).

III. The Relevance of Crime and Criminal Justice Narratives for Thinking about Reform

When it comes to guiding researchers and policymakers to think productively about criminal justice reform, at first glance the discussion above may appear too academic and intellectual. But these narratives are more than simply fodder for discussion or topics of debate in the classroom or among academics. They govern how we think and talk about criminal justice and, by extension, how the system should be structured—and reformed.

An illustrative example of this is offered in Haney’s ( 1982 ) essay on psychological individualism. Adopting the premise that legal rules, doctrines, and procedures, including those of the criminal justice system, reflect basic assumptions about human nature, Haney’s thesis is that in nineteenth century America, an overarching narrative dominated legal and social conceptions of human behavior—that of psychological individualism. Psychological individualism incorporates three basic “facts” about human behavior: 1) individuals are the causal locus of behavior; 2) socially problematic and illegal behavior therefore arises from some defect in the individual persons who perform it; and, 3) such behavior can be changed or eliminated only by effecting changes in the nature or characteristics of those persons. Here, crime is rooted in the nature of criminals themselves be the source genetic, biological, or instinctual, ideas consistent with the Classical School of Criminology.

Haney reviews the rise and supremacy of psychological individualism in American society, discusses its entrenchment in legal responses to crime, and describes the implications of adopting such a viewpoint. Psychological individualism, he claims, diverted attention away from the structural and situational causes of crime (e.g., poverty, inequality, capitalism) and suggested the futility of social reforms that sought solutions to human problems through changes in larger social conditions: “The legal system, in harmony with widely held psychological theories about the causal primacy of individuals, acted to transform all structural problems into matters of moral depravity and personal shortcoming” (pg. 226–27). This process of transformation is nowhere clearer than in our historical commitment to prisons as the solution to the problem of crime, a commitment that continues today. Psychological individualism continues to underpin contemporary reform efforts. For example, approaches to reducing racial disparities in policing by eliminating officers’ unconscious racial bias through implicit-bias trainings shifts the focus away from organizational and institutional sources of disparate treatment.

In sum, the various narratives of crime and criminal justice constitute an essential starting point for any discussion of reform. They reflect vastly differing assumptions and, in many instances, value orientations or ideologies. The diversity of ways of thinking arguably contribute to conflict in society over contemporary criminal justice policy and proposed reforms. Appreciating that point is critical for identifying ways to create effective and sustainable reforms.

At the same time, these different ways of thinking do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they collide with practical realities and constraints, which can and do shape how the criminal justice system functions, as well as determine the ability to reform it moving forward. For that reason, we turn to a discussion of how narratives about crime and criminal justice intersect with practical realities in the policy sphere, and suggest considerations that policymakers, researchers, and larger audiences should attend to when thinking about the future of reform.

Part II. Practical Considerations: Criminal Justice Reform through a Policy Lens

Criminal justice reform is no simple matter. Unsurprisingly, crime has long been considered an example of a “wicked” problem in public policy: ill-defined; with uncertainty about its causes and incomplete knowledge of effective solutions; complex arrangements of institutions responsible for addressing the problem; and, disagreement on foundational values (Head & Alford, 2015 ; Rittel & Webber, 1973 )—the latter apparent from the discussion above. Many note a large gap between criminological knowledge and policy (Mears, 2010 , 2022 ; Currie, 2007 ). While a movement to incorporate research evidence into the policy-making process has made some in-roads, we know less about how policymakers use this information to adopt and enact reforms. Put differently, more attention is paid to understanding the outcomes of crime-related policy while less is known about the contexts of, and inputs into, the process itself (Ismaili, 2006 ).

We identify practical considerations for policy-oriented researchers and policymakers in thinking through how to make criminal justice reform more effective. Specifically, we discuss practical considerations that reformers are likely to encounter related to problem formulation and framing (policy talk) and policy adoption (policy action), including issues of 1) variation and complexity in the criminal justice policy environment, 2) problem framing and policy content, 3) policy aims and outcomes, 4) equity considerations in policy design and evaluation; and, 5) policy process and policy change. These considerations are by no means exhaustive nor are they mutually exclusive. We offer these thoughts as starting points for discussion.

I. The Criminal Justice Policy Environment: Many Systems, Many Players

The criminal justice “system” in the United States is something of a misnomer. There is no single, centralized system. Instead, there are at least 51 separate systems—one for each of the 50 states, and the federal criminal justice system—each with different laws, policies, and administrative arrangements. Multiple agencies are responsible for various aspects of enforcing the law and administering justice. These agencies operate across multiple, overlapping jurisdictions. Some are at the municipal level (police), others are governed by counties (courts, prosecution, jails), and still others by state and federal agencies (prisons, probation, parole). Across these systems is an enormous amount of discretion regarding what crimes to prioritize for enforcement, whether and what charges to file, which sentences to mete out, what types of conditions, treatment, and programming to impose, and how to manage those under correctional authority. Scholars note the intrinsic problem with this wide-ranging independence: “criminal justice policy is made and put into action at the municipal, county, state, and national levels, and the thousands of organizations that comprise this criminal justice network are, for the most part, relatively autonomous both horizontally and vertically” (Lynch, 2011 :682; see also Bernard et al., 2005 ; Mears, 2017 ).

Criminal justice officials are not the only players. The “policy community” is made up of other governmental actors, including elected and appointed officials in the executive branches (governors and mayors) and legislative actors (council members, state, and federal representatives), responsible for formulating and executing legislation. Non-governmental actors play a role in the policy community as well, including private institutions and non-profit organizations, the media, interest and advocacy groups, academics and research institutions, impacted communities, along with the public at large (Ismaili, 2006 ).

Any consideration of criminal justice reform must attend to the structural features of the policy environment, including its institutional fragmentation. This feature creates both obstacles and opportunities for reform. Policy environments vary tremendously across states and local communities. Policies championed in Washington State are likely different than those championed in Georgia. But the policy community in Atlanta may be decidedly different than that of Macon, and policy changes can happen at hyper-local levels (Ouss & Stevenson, 2022 ). Differences between local jurisdictions can have national impacts: while urban jurisdictions have reduced their reliance on jails and prisons, rural and suburban incarceration rates continue to increase (Kang-Brown & Subramanian, 2017 ). Understanding key stakeholders, their political and policy interests, and their administrative authority to act is critical for determining how effective policy reforms can be pursued (Miller, 2008 ; Page, 2011 ). Prospects for, and possible targets of, reform thus necessitate a wide view of what constitutes “policy,” 1 looking not only to federal and state law but also to state and local administrative policies and practices (Reiter & Chesnut, 2018 ).

II. Policy Talk: Framing Problems, Shaping Possible Solutions

While agreement exists around the need for reform in the criminal justice system, this apparent unanimity belies disagreements over the proposed causes of the problem and feasible solutions (Gottschalk, 2015 ; Levin, 2018 ). This is evident in how reform is talked about in political and policy spheres, the types of reforms pursued, and which groups are its beneficiaries. Since the Great Recession of 2008, bipartisan reforms have often been couched in the language of fiscal conservatism, “right-sizing” the system, and being “smart on crime” (Beckett et al., 2016 ). These economic frames, focused on cost-efficiency, are effectively used to defend non-punitive policies including changes to the death penalty, marijuana legalization, and prison down-sizing (Aviram, 2015 ). However, cost-saving rationales are also used to advance punitive policies that shift the costs of punishment onto those who are being sanctioned, such as “pay-to-stay” jails and the multitude of fines and fees levied on justice-involved people for the cost of criminal justice administration. Economic justifications are not the only arguments that support the very same policy changes; fairness and proportionality, reducing prison overcrowding, enhancing public safety, and increasing rehabilitation are all deployed to defend various reforms (Beckett et al., 2016 ). Similarity in rhetorical justifications—cost-efficiency and fiscal responsibility, for example—can obscure deep divisions over how, and whom, to punish, divisions which stem from different narratives on the causes and consequences of crime.

The content of enacted policies also reveals underlying disagreements within justice reform. Clear distinctions are seen in how cases and people are categorized, and in who benefits from, or is burdened by, reform. For example, many states have lowered penalties and expanded rehabilitation alternatives for non-violent drug and other low-level offenses and technical violations on parole. Substantially fewer reforms target violent offenses. Decarceration efforts for non-violent offenders are often coupled with increasing penalties for others, including expansions of life imprisonment without parole for violent offenses (Beckett, 2018 ; Seeds, 2017 ). Reforms aimed only at individuals characterized as “non-violent, non-serious, and non-sexual” can reinforce social distinctions between people (and offenses) seen as deserving of lenient treatment from those who aren’t (Beckett et al., 2016 ).

The framing of social problems can shape the nature of solutions, although the impact of “framing” deserves greater attention in the criminal justice policy process (Rein & Schön, 1977 ; Schneider & Ingram,  1993 ). Policies can be understood in rational terms—for their application of technical solutions to resolve pre-defined problems—but also through “value-laden components, such as social constructions, rationales, and underlying assumptions” (Schneider & Sidney, 2006 :105). Specific frames (e.g., “crime doesn’t pay” or “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time”) derive from underlying narratives (e.g., classical school, rational-actor models of behavior, and deterrence) that shape how crime and criminal justice are understood, as discussed in Part I. Framing involves how issues are portrayed and categorized, and even small changes to language or images used to frame an issue can impact policy preferences (Chong & Druckman, 2007 ). Public sentiments play an important role in the policy process, as policymakers and elected officials are responsive to public opinion about punishments (Pickett, 2019 ). Actors in the policy community—criminal justice bureaucrats, elected officials, interest groups, activists—compete to influence how a problem is framed, and thus addressed, by policymakers (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009 ; Benford & Snow, 2000 ). Policymakers, particularly elected officials, commonly work to frame issues in ways that support their political goals and resonate with their constituents (Gamson, 1992 ).

As noted at the outset, public support for harsh punishments has declined since the 1990’s and the salience of punitive “law and order” and “tough-on-crime” politics has fallen as well, as public support for rehabilitative approaches has increased (Thielo et al., 2016 ). How can researchers and policymakers capitalize on this shift in public sentiments? Research suggests that different issue frames, such as fairness, cost to taxpayers, ineffectiveness, and racial disparities, can increase (or reduce) public support for policies for nonviolent offenders (e.g., Dunbar, 2022 ; Gottlieb, 2017 ) and even for policies that target violent offenders (Pickett et al., 2022 ). Public sentiment and framing clearly matter for what problems gain attention, the types of policies that exist, and who ultimately benefits. These themes raise orienting questions: In a specific locale, what are the dominant understandings of the policy problem? How do these understandings map to sets of foundational assumptions about the purpose of intervention (e.g., deterrence, retribution, rehabilitation, restoration) and understandings of why people commit crime (e.g., Classical and Positivist approaches)? What types of issue frames are effective in garnering support for reforms? How does this support vary by policy context (urban, suburban, rural; federal, statewide, and local) and audience (elected officials, agency leadership, frontline workers, political constituents)?

III. Proposed Solutions and Expected Outcomes: Instrumental or Symbolic?

There are a variety of motivations in pursuing various policy solutions, along with different kinds of goals. Some reflect a desire to create tangible change for a specific problem while others are meant to mollify a growing concern. As such, one practical consideration related to policymaking and reform that bears discussion is the symbolic and instrumental nature of criminal justice policies.

Policies are considered to have an instrumental nature when they propose or result in changes to behaviors related to a public problem such as crime—that is, when they change behavior through direct influence on individuals’ actions (Sample et al., 2011 :29; see also Grattet & Jenness, 2008 ; Gusfield, 1963 ; Oliver & Marion, 2008 ). Symbolic policies, by contrast, are those that policymakers pass in order to be seen in a favorable light by the public (Jenness, 2004 ), particularly in the context of a “moral panic” (Barak, 1994 ; Ben-Yehuda, 1990 ). As Sample et al., ( 2011 :28) explain, symbolic policies provide three basic functions to society: 1) reassuring the public by helping reduce angst and demonstrate that something is being done about a problem; 2) solidifying moral boundaries by codifying public consensus of right and wrong; and 3) becoming a model for the diffusion of law to other states and the federal government. Symbolic policies are thus meant to demonstrate that policymakers understand, and are willing to address, a perceived problem, even when there is little expectation such policies will make a difference. In this way, symbolic policies are “values statements” and function largely ceremonially.

This distinction has a long history in criminological work, dating back to Gusfield’s ( 1963 ) analysis of the temperance movement. Suggesting that policymaking is often dramatic in nature and intended to shift ways of thinking, Gusfield ( 1963 ) argues that Prohibition and temperance were intended as symbolic, rather than instrumental, goals in that their impacts were felt in the action of prohibition itself rather than in its effect on citizens’ consumptive behaviors.

A modern-day example of symbolic policy is found in the sanctuary status movement as it relates to the policing of immigrants. Historically, immigration enforcement was left to the federal government however state and local law enforcement have faced increasing demands to become more involved in enforcing immigration laws in their communities. Policies enacted to create closer ties between local police departments and federal immigration officials reflect this new pattern of “devolution of immigration enforcement” (Provine et al., 2016 ). The Secure Communities Program, the Criminal Alien Program, and 287g agreements, in different but complementary ways, provide resources and training to help local officials enforce immigration statutes.

The devolution of immigration enforcement has faced widespread scrutiny (Kubrin, 2014 ). Many local jurisdictions have rejected devolution efforts by passing sanctuary policies, which expressly limit local officials’ involvement in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Among the most comprehensive is California’s SB54, passed in 2017, which made California a sanctuary state. The law prohibits local authorities from cooperating with federal immigration detainer requests, limits immigration agents’ access to local jails, and ends the use of jails to hold immigration detainees. At first glance, SB54 appears instrumental—its aim is to change the behavior of criminal justice officials in policing immigration. In practice, however, it appears that little behavioral change has taken place. Local police in California had already minimized their cooperation with Federal officials, well before SB54 was passed. In a broader sense then, “…the ‘sanctuary city’ name is largely a symbolic message of political support for immigrants without legal residency” and with SB54 specifically, “California [helped build] a wall of justice against President Trump’s xenophobic, racist and ignorant immigration policies,” (Ulloa, 2017 ).

Instrumental and symbolic goals are not an either-or proposition. Policies can be both, simultaneously easing public fears, demonstrating legislators’ desire to act, and having direct appreciable effects on people’s behaviors (Sample et al., 2011 ). This may occur even when not intended. At the same time, a policy’s effects or outcomes can turn out to be different from the original aim, creating a gap between “policy talk” and “policy action.” In their analysis of law enforcement action in response to the passage of hate crime legislation, Grattet and Jenness ( 2008 ) find that legislation thought to be largely symbolic in nature, in fact, ended up having instrumental effects through changes in enforcement practices, even as these effects were conditioned by the organizational context of enforcement agencies. Symbolic law can be rendered instrumental (under certain organizational and social conditions) and symbolic policies may evolve to have instrumental effects.

As another example, consider aims and outcomes of sex offender registration laws, which provide information about people convicted of sex offenses to local and federal authorities and the public, including the person’s name, current location, and past offenses. As Sample et al. ( 2011 ) suggest, these laws, often passed immediately following a highly publicized sex crime or in the midst of a moral panic, are largely cast as symbolic policy, serving to reassure the public through notification of sex offenders’ whereabouts so their behaviors can be monitored (Jenkins, 1998 ; Sample & Kadleck, 2008 ). While notification laws do not yield a discernable instrumental effect on offenders’ behavior (Tewksbury, 2002 ), this is not the sole goal of such policies. Rather, they are intended to encourage behavioral change among citizens (Sample et al., 2011 ), encouraging the public’s participation in their own safety by providing access to information. Do sex offender notification laws, in fact, alter citizen behavior, thereby boosting public safety?

To answer this question, Sample and her colleagues ( 2011 ) surveyed a random sample of Nebraska residents to determine whether they access sex offender information and to explore the reasons behind their desire, or reluctance, to do so. They find largely symbolic effects of registry legislation, with a majority of residents (over 69%) indicating they had never accessed the registry. These findings raise important questions about the symbolic vs. instrumental nature of criminal justice policies more broadly: “Should American citizens be content with largely symbolic crime policies and laws that demonstrate policy makers’ willingness to address problems, ease public fear, solidify public consensus of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, and provide a model of policies and laws for other states, or should they want more from crime control efforts? Is there a tipping point at which time the resources expended to adhere to symbolic laws and a point where the financial and human costs of the law become too high to continue to support legislation that is largely symbolic in nature? Who should make this judgment?” (pg. 46). These two examples, immigration-focused laws and sex offender laws, illustrate the dynamics involved in policymaking, particularly the relationship between proposed solutions and their expected outcomes. They reveal that instrumental and symbolic goals often compete for priority in the policy-making arena.

IV. Equity-Consciousness in Policy Formulation

As the criminal justice system exploded in size in the latter half of the twentieth century, its impacts have not spread equally across the population. Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities are disproportionately affected by policing, mass incarceration, and surveillance practices. At a moment of political momentum seeking to curb the excesses of the criminal justice system, careful attention must be paid not only to its overreach, but also to its racialized nature and inequitable impacts. Many evaluative criteria are used to weigh policies including efficiency, effectiveness, cost, political acceptability, and administrative feasibility, among others. One critical dimension is the extent to which a policy incorporates equity considerations into its design, or is ignorant about potential inequitable outcomes. While reducing racial disparities characterizes reform efforts of the past, these efforts often fail to yield meaningful impacts, and sometimes unintentionally exacerbate disparities. Equity analyses should be more formally centered in criminal justice policymaking.

Racial and ethnic disparities are a central feature of the U.S. criminal justice system. Decades of research reveals Black people, and to a lesser degree Latinos and Native Americans, are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system at all stages (Bales & Piquero, 2012 ; Hinton et al., 2018 ; Kutateladze et al., 2014 ; Menefee, 2018 ; Mitchell, 2005 ; Warren et al., 2012 ). These disparities have many sources: associations between blackness and criminality, and stereotypes of dangerousness (Muhammad, 2010 ); implicit racial bias (Spencer et al., 2016 ); residential and economic segregation that expose communities of color to environments that encourage criminal offending and greater police presence (Peterson & Krivo, 2010 ; Sharkey, 2013 ); and, punitive criminal justice policies that increase the certainty and severity of punishments, such as mandatory minimum sentences, life imprisonment, and habitual offender laws, for which people of color are disproportionately arrested and convicted (Raphael & Stoll, 2013 ; Schlesinger, 2011 ). Disparities in initial stages of criminal justice contact, at arrest or prosecution, can compound to generate disparate outcomes at later stages, such as conviction and sentencing, even where legal actors are committed to racial equality (Kutateladze et al., 2014 ). Disparities compound over time, too; having prior contact with the justice system may increase surveillance and the likelihood of being arrested, charged, detained pretrial, and sentenced to incarceration (Ahrens, 2020 ; Kurlychek & Johnson, 2019 ).

Perspectives on how to reduce disparities vary widely, and understanding how the benefits or burdens of a given policy change will be distributed across racial and ethnic groups is not always clear. Even well-intentioned reforms intended to increase fairness and alleviate disparities can fail to achieve intended impacts or unintentionally encourage inequity. For example, sentencing guidelines adopted in the 1970s to increase consistency and reduce inequitable outcomes across groups at sentencing alleviated, but did not eliminate, racial disparities (Johnson & Lee, 2013 ); popular “Ban the Box” legislation, aimed at reducing the stigma of a criminal record, may increase racial disparities in callbacks for job seekers of color (Agan & Starr, 2018 ; Raphael, 2021 ); and “risk assessments,” used widely in criminal justice decision-making, may unintentionally reproduce existing disparities by relying on information that is itself a product of racialized policing, prosecution, and sentencing (Eckhouse et al., 2019 ). Conversely, policies enacted without explicit consideration of equity effects may result in reductions of disparities: California’s Proposition 47, which reclassifies certain felony offenses to misdemeanors, reduced Black and Latino disparities in drug arrests, likelihood of conviction, and rates of jail incarceration relative to Whites (Mooney et al., 2018 ; Lofstrom et al., 2019 ; MacDonald & Raphael, 2020 ).

Understanding the potential equity implications of criminal justice reforms should be a key consideration for policymakers and applied researchers alike. However, an explicit focus on reducing racial disparities is often excluded from the policymaking process, seen as a secondary concern to other policy goals, or framed in ways that focus on race-neutral processes rather than race-equitable outcomes (Chouhy et al., 2021 ; Donnelly, 2017 ). But this need not be the case; examinations of how elements of a given policy (e.g., goals, target population, eligibility criteria) and proposed changes to procedure or practice might impact different groups can be incorporated into policy design and evaluation. As one example, racial equity impact statements (REIS), a policy tool that incorporates an empirical analysis of the projected impacts of a change in law, policy, or practice on racial and ethnic groups (Porter, 2021 ), are used in some states. Modeled after the now-routine environmental impact and fiscal impact statements, racial impact statements may be conducted in advance of a hearing or vote on any proposed change to policy, or can even be incorporated in the policy formulation stages (Chouhy et al., 2021 ; Mauer, 2007 ). Researchers, analysts, and policymakers should also examine potential differential effects of existing policies and pay special attention to how structural inequalities intersect with policy features to contribute to—and potentially mitigate—disparate impacts of justice reforms (Anderson et al., 2022 ; Mooney et al., 2022 ).

V. Putting It Together: Modeling the Policy Change Process

Approaches to crime and punishment do not change overnight. Policy change can be incremental or haphazard, and new innovations adopted by criminal justice systems often bear markers of earlier approaches. There exist multiple frameworks for understanding change and continuity in approaches to crime and punishment. The metaphor of a pendulum is often used to characterize changes to criminal justice policy, where policy regimes swing back and forth between punishment and leniency (Goodman et al., 2017 ). These changes are ushered along by macro-level shifts of economic, political, demographics, and cultural sensibilities (Garland, 2001 ).

Policy change is rarely predictable or mechanical (Smith & Larimer, 2017 ). Actors struggle over whom to punish and how, and changes in the relative resources, political position, and power among actors drive changes to policy and practice (Goodman et al., 2017 ). This conflict, which plays out at the level of politics and policymaking and is sometimes subsumed within agencies and day-to-day practices in the justice system, creates a landscape of contradictory policies, logics, and discourses. New policies and practices are “tinted” by (Dabney et al., 2017 ) or “braided” with older logics (Hutchinson, 2006 ), or “layered” onto existing practices (Rubin, 2016 ).

Public policy theory offers different, but complementary, insights into how policies come to be, particularly under complex conditions. One widely used framework in policy studies is the “multiple streams” framework (Kingdon, 1995 ). This model of the policymaking process focuses on policy choice and agenda setting, or the question of what leads policymakers to pay attention to one issue over others, and pursue one policy in lieu of others.

The policy process is heuristically outlined as a sequential set of steps or stages: problem identification, agenda setting, policy formulation, adoption or decision-making, implementation, and evaluation. However, real-world policymaking rarely conforms to this process (Smith & Larimer, 2017 ). In the multiple streams lens, the process is neither rational nor linear but is seen as “organized anarchy,” described by several features: 1) ambiguity over the definition of the problem, creating many possible solutions for the same circumstances and conditions; 2) limited time to make decisions and multiple issues vying for policymakers’ attention, leading to uncertain policy preferences; 3) a crowded policy community with shifting participation; and, 4) multiple agencies and organizations in the policy environment working on similar problems with little coordination or transparency (Herweg et al., 2018 ).

In this context, opportunity for change emerges when three, largely separate, “streams” of interactions intersect: problems , politics , and policies . First, in the “problem stream,” problems are defined as conditions that deviate from expectations and are seen by the public as requiring government intervention. Many such “problems” exist, but not all rise to the level of attention from policymakers. Conditions must be re-framed into problems requiring government attention. Several factors can usher this transformation. Changes in the scale of problem, such as increases or decreases in crime, can raise the attention of government actors. So-called “focusing events” (Birkland, 1997 ), or rare and unexpected events, such as shocking violent crime or a natural disaster (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic), can also serve this purpose. The murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, for instance, was a focusing event for changing the national conversation around police use of force into a problem requiring government intervention. Finally, feedback from existing programs or policies, particularly those that fail to achieve their goals or have unwanted effects, can reframe existing conditions as problems worthy of attention.

The “policy stream” is where solutions, or policy alternatives, are developed to address emerging problems. Solutions are generated both by “visible” participants in the stream, such as prominent elected officials, or by “hidden” actors, such as criminal justice bureaucrats, interest groups, academics, or consultants. Policy ideas float around in this stream until they are “coupled,” or linked, with specific problems. At any given time, policy ideas based in deterrence or incapacitation rationales, including increasing the harshness of penalties or the certainty of sanctions, and solutions based in rehabilitative rationales, such as providing treatment-oriented diversion or restorative justice programs, all co-exist in the policy stream. Not all policy alternatives are seen as viable and likely to reach the agenda; viable solutions are marked by concerns of feasibility, value acceptability, public support or tolerance, and financial viability.

Lastly, the “political stream” is governed by several elements, including changes to the national mood and changing composition of governments and legislatures as new politicians are elected and new government administrators appointed. This stream helps determine whether a problem will find a receptive venue (Smith & Larimer, 2017 ). For example, the election of a progressive prosecutor intent on changing status quo processing of cases through the justice system creates a viable political environment for new policies to be linked with problems. When the three streams converge, that is, when conditions become problems, a viable solution is identified, and a receptive political venue exists, a “policy window” opens and change is most likely. For Kingdon ( 2011 ), this is a moment of “opportunity for advocates of proposals to push their pet solutions, or to push attention to their special problems” (pg. 165).

Models of the policy change process, of which the multiple streams framework is just one, may be effectively applied to crime and justice policy spheres. Prior discussions on the ways of thinking about crime and criminal justice can be usefully integrated with models of the policy change process; narratives shape how various conditions are constructed as problems worthy of collective action and influence policy ideas and proposals available among policy communities. We encourage policymakers and policy-oriented researchers to examine criminal justice reform through policy process frameworks in order to better understand why some reforms succeed, and why others fail.

When it comes to the criminal justice system, one of the most commonly asked questions today is: How can we improve the effectiveness of reform efforts? Effective reform hinges on shared understandings of what the problem is as well as shared visions of what success looks like. Yet consensus is hard to come by, and scholars have long differentiated between “policy talk” and “policy action.” The aim of this essay has been to identify conceptual and practical considerations related to both policy talk and policy action in the context of criminal justice reform today.

On the conceptual side, we reviewed narratives that create society’s fundamental ways of thinking about or conceptualizing crime and criminal justice. These narratives reflect value orientations that underlie our criminal justice system and determine how it functions. On the practical side, we identified considerations for both policy-oriented researchers and policymakers in thinking through how to make criminal justice reform more effective. These practical considerations included variation and complexity in the criminal justice policy environment, problem framing and policy content, policy aims and outcomes, equity considerations in policy design and evaluation, and models of the policy change process.

These conceptual and practical considerations are by no means exhaustive, nor are they mutually-exclusive. Rather, they serve as starting points for productively thinking and talking about, as well as designing, effective and sustainable criminal justice reform. At the same time, they point to the need for continuous policy evaluation and monitoring—at all levels—as a way to increase accountability and effectiveness. Indeed, policy talk and policy action do not stop at the problem formation, agenda setting, or adoption stages of policymaking. Critical to understanding effective policy is implementation and evaluation, which create feedback into policy processes, and is something that should be addressed in future work on criminal justice reform.

Biographies

is Professor of Criminology, Law & Society and (by courtesy) Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Among other topics, her research examines the impact of criminal justice reform on crime rates. Professor Kubrin has received several national awards including the Ruth Shonle Cavan Young Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology (for outstanding scholarly contributions to the discipline of criminology); the W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Western Society of Criminology (for significant contributions to racial and ethnic issues in the field of criminology); and the Paul Tappan Award from the Western Society of Criminology (for outstanding contributions to the field of criminology). In 2019, she was named a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology.

, M.P.P. is a doctoral student in the Department of Criminology, Law & Society at the University of California, Irvine. Her research explores criminal justice reform, inequality, courts, and corrections. She has over 10 years of experience working with state and local governments to conduct applied research, program evaluation, and technical assistance in criminal justice and corrections. Her work has appeared in the peer-reviewed journals Justice Quarterly and PLOS One.

1 No single definition of public policy exists. Here we follow Smith and Larimer ( 2017 ) and define policy as any action by the government in response to a problem, including laws, rules, agency policies, programs, and day-to-day practices.

Publisher's Note

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Contributor Information

Charis E. Kubrin, Email: ude.icu@nirbukc .

Rebecca Tublitz, Email: ude.icu@ztilbutr .

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School resource officer teaches students critical thinking skills for police interactions

SOUTH BEND — A decade ago, Jalen Lee played linebacker and running back for Washington High School 's football team.

Now, he patrols his alma mater's halls as its School Resource Officer, which he has done for the past two years. 

But he wants to be more than a cop to today's students: He wants to be a role model and teacher to them, just as Washington's SRO was to him when he was a Panther.

Lee, who attended Washington from 2012-2016, looks up to the past SROs as “giants with a magnitude and impact that can’t be measured,” he said.

“Washington High School has a long and rich history of School Resource Officers,” he said. “It’s a story that’s not really told. It’s my story.”

And he's put that story, from what he learned from the police officers he knew in his youth to what he learned during his first two years as a patrol officer with the South Bend Police Department , into his second book, “ Street Skills: a guide to master interactions with the police .”

Specifically, Lee names Eric Crittendon, David Herron, Brian Kendall, Antown Jones, Tomar Thomas and Anthony Pearson as officers who all influenced him and helped shape his career trajectory. He met them working with the  Police Athletic League  as a student.

“If it wasn’t for my School Resource Officer,” Lee said, referring to Anthony Pearson, “I probably would have never become a police officer.”  

Pearson remembers Lee as a bright young man who made his policing stronger. It was their interactions, Pearson said, that gave Lee an insight into what police do.  

“School Resource Officers have the power to change student lives,” Pearson said. “I think this is unlike any other position as a police officer, because you’re strictly dealing with minds that are moldable.”

Pearson, who has been working with the SBPD for over 20 years and has been in the South Bend Community School Corporation since 2004, he estimated, working at Washington, Riley High School and, currently, Adams High School , has seen previous students, like Lee, now take their place in South Bend’s community as teachers, police officers and parents. 

“Our conversations helped me be a better mentor because I had someone who was truly interested in what I did for a living,” Pearson said. “It was a no-brainer to jump on the train with him and push him forward to be doing even greater things that he’s doing now.” 

From football to public speaking

Those “greater things” for Lee included attending Ball State University , where he played football as a slot receiver. However, Lee’s trajectory shifted when he was cut from the team his freshman year.

“After that, I had no idea what I wanted to do,” Lee said. “I had been an athlete my whole life, and at the time, that was a key to my identity.” 

With football being “stripped away,” he had to find his next step. “What else do you do besides being a top athlete?” he asked.

Lee leaned into speaking, majoring in communications and keynote speaking and criminal justice. He wrote his first book while attending Ball State. During his junior and senior years, he averaged 150 speaking engagements, speaking in front of people and crafting easily digestible messages, he said. 

“Being from around here, I never heard of anyone who was a professional speaker and who did it as their job. It was an amazing time,” he said, “It showed me what I wanted to do.” 

Speaking engagements halted as the COVID-19 pandemic hit during Lee’s senior year. He had a full schedule of speaking engagements in 2020, but within a few weeks, they were canceled. 

Lee came home. 

“I utilized the second half of my degree and went into law enforcement,” he said.

Lee joined the South Bend Police Department in 2020, serving in the patrol division for his first two years.

After being on the streets and making a lot of arrests, he said, he began to question whether that was the right role for him within the department,

Incarcerations are a part of the job of being an officer, Lee said, but in the schools, there’s less of it. 

“The goal of an SRO is not to arrest kids,” he said. “We exercise discretion as an educator. It’s about working with these kids as we educate them about the decisions they're making and the consequences that come with those decisions.”

In 2022, Lee decided to return to Washington, which had been without an SRO for two years, and serve in the school. To him, it felt right.

“This is my place,” he said. “This is where I’m from.”

A return to writing and speaking

Students brought new life to his creative side. They reinvigorated him, he said, and brought back the fire of speaking and writing, which led to his second book, “Street Skills: a guide to master interactions with the police,” released on Feb. 11.

“I see the need of the students, because they come to me with that need,” Lee said. 

He provides scenario-based practices, based on his own experiences as an officer and questions he’s received from students he interacts with each day. 

“My experience and the things that I see are mine,” he said. 

The book takes the reader through five of the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights: freedoms, petitions and assembly (Amendment 1), right to bear arms (Amendment 2), searches and arrests (Amendment 4), rights in criminal cases (Amendment 5), and right to a fair trial (Amendment 6).

The subtitle of the book, to master interactions with the police, Lee said, is so much more.

“There’s a lot our kids are dealing with,” he said. 

Some schools might be dealing with fighting or underage alcohol abuse, Lee said, adding that the program can be shaped and molded per the needs of each school district.

In addition to his book, Lee wrote a workbook to educate students about the criminal justice system. Through his company, Jalen Lee & Associates , he does public speaking within schools. 

He’s in negotiations with the South Bend Community School Corporation and Penn-Harris-Madison, he said, to provide his product and services to schools.

“Some schools are not equipped to teach these topics,” he said. “They have their standardized curriculum and a lot of these topics that we talk about don't really fall under the curriculum you need to graduate.”

For him, it’s important that students practice real life situations, so he provides a ratio of 30% content to 70% scenarios.

"The scenarios are the key," he said, "You can teach the content, but you have to make it real for students."

Scenario-based education

Lee said scenarios get students’ minds working and allow them to think more critically. This, he said, leads students to feeling more equipped. 

“We want to focus on students’ decision making and leadership skills,” Lee said. “It’s not necessarily about teaching students what their rights are but how to apply them.”

From his past interactions on patrol, Lee said, he learned that “if anxiety doesn’t get them, fear will. If fear doesn’t get them, then they’re overthinking it. When you feel trapped, you can’t listen to what I’m telling you to do.” 

He wants to pull students out of that frame of thinking by teaching them that they are allowed to think and respond to what’s happening. 

“Most times, if you can critically think, you can get through most situations. I’ve been in some of the most hostile situations and some of the least hostile,” he said. “In all of those situations, what really separates those is your ability to think and process.” 

Lee referenced his experience of pulling over a young African American male in a traffic stop in Chapter 5 of his book. 

“After speaking with the young man, he explained that he had never been pulled over before and he was extremely nervous to the point he began to cry,” Lee wrote in “Street Skills.” 

“He was literally shaking,” Lee said. “He paused me. This is not how our relationship is supposed to be.”

Lee said when an officer pulls over a car, they’re “in a position of dominance,” he said. “When I saw the emotions he was dealing with, I first asked myself, ‘What can I say to de-escalate him?’” 

He asked the young man to step out of the car and explained that being stopped for a minor traffic offense "is not the end of the world," even though he understands why people might view it as such.

“I’m not here to get you, rough you up, mistreat you or talk down to you,” Lee said he told the scared driver that day. “That’s why I pulled you out of the car, because I wanted to talk to you on level ground, eye-to-eye.” 

Lee said he took time to break down barriers between them.

“I knew at this moment," he wrote in "Street Skills," "I was given the power to change his reality and perception of the police. … I explained that the police are public servants at the core. We are here to serve, protect, and improve quality of life, not harass, abuse, or cause fear. I understand how we’ve gotten to this point where there’s an unhealthy fear toward police. I can’t change the history of the police and the public, but I can be intentional about how I treat the people I deal with daily to continually build the public’s trust in the police.”

“People view the police, sometimes, as this bigger-than-life person, or creature,” he said, “as a thing that’s ever-knowing or ever-powerful, but that’s not the reality. A lot of police interactions that we’ve seen in our society that have gone wrong, is because, most times, that police officer has human characteristics. Fear. Anxiety. Maybe, they didn’t make the best decision in a split second,” he said.

"Police are human,” Lee said but added that he doesn’t speak for anyone other than himself. 

He recalled getting pulled over when he was 16 and 17 years old. “I’m not naïve to why,” Lee said. “I’m a kid who grew up here on the west side.” 

However, contrary to the man he pulled over, Lee didn’t share the same perception of law enforcement. 

“I knew police officers,” he said, referring again to the rich history of a police presence at Washington High School. “Anthony Pearson showed me that all police weren’t like that.”

In his interaction with the young man, Lee endeavored “to show him that all police aren’t bad.” 

In his time with SBPD, working with everyone, he said, “It has nothing to do with skin tone. Good police officers come in all shapes, forms or sizes. There is no mold. It’s all based on who you are. What do you stand on? What are some of the morals and pillars that you lead your life with?”

Email Tribune staff writer Camille Sarabia at  [email protected] .