In order to facilitate a community discussion on reentry we feel that it is important that all participants be able interact using the same vocabulary. This initial list of definitions will help to facilitate the conversation pertaining to reentry and criminal justice.
A more extensive list will be forthcoming.
Conditional Release: The release of an inmate from prison to a period of community supervision, typically with a standard set of conditions he or she must abide by in order to remain on parole or post-release supervision. These conditions may include regular reporting, maintenance of a known residence, drug testing, compliance with a curfew, and other such conditions. Violation of the conditions of supervision may result in the imposition of sanctions. Such sanctions may be community-based or may result in the revocation of supervision status and a return to prison.
Felony: Usually considered a more serious offense, for which there is typically a term of imprisonment for one year or more.
Halfway House: A highly supervised residential environment designed to help individuals returning to the community from prison, or to provide housing for individuals awaiting trial. Less than one-half of one percent of all inmates released in 1999 were reportedly served by halfway houses.
Inmate: An individual remanded to the custody of a local, county, state, or federal correctional facility, including jails and prisons.
Jail: A correctional facility designed to detain individuals pending judicial hearings or to provide brief periods of incarceration, generally less than one year, for sentenced inmates. Jails are typically operated by local or county jurisdictions.
Mandatory Sentencing: Strictly speaking, mandatory sentencing refers to the practice of a legislature setting a fixed penalty for the commission of a criminal offense. Usually, however, the expression is used to refer to a particular form of mandatory sentencing involving the imposition of a significant minimum penalty for an offense. This penalty is typically a period of incarceration, often with escalating penalties for subsequent offenses. "Three strikes and you're out" statutes are the best-known example of this form. These and other forms of mandatory sentencing are overwhelmingly directed at "street crime" - offenses involving violence, as well as some drug and property related offenses.
Mandatory sentencing removes a judge's discretion to select a sentence in light of an offender's background and the circumstances in which a crime was committed. Instead, for certain legislated offenses, a judge is bound to impose a prescribed penalty on every offender convicted. This practice has a long history, dating back at least as far as the seventeenth century in England and colonial America. In the course of the nineteenth century, however, this approach was abandoned in favor of legislatures setting a maximum, but no minimum, penalty, with the sentencing judge being responsible for selecting the appropriate sentence for individual offenders. Only toward the end of the twentieth century did the practice have a significant revival. During the 1980s and 1990s, more than twenty-four states, as well as Congress, passed some form of mandatory sentencing, despite widespread opposition from judges, lawyers and researchers.
Mandatory sentencing is said to serve the instrumental functions of preventing crime and promoting consistency and certainty in sentencing. It is possible, though, that in reality these functions are less important than the expressive function of these laws and that mandatory sentencing legislation is primarily a response to a community's outrage at particular crimes.
Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Sentencing statutes or regulations requiring convicted criminal defendants to a period of incarceration based on the type of offense and/or the individual's criminal history. Along with other types of mandatory sentencing guidelines, including determinate sentencing and Truth-in-Sentencing laws, many states have enacted mandatory minimum sentencing since the 1970s.
Misdemeanor: Usually a petty offense - a less serious crime than a felony - that is generally punishable by less than a year of confinement.
Mentally Ill Offenders: Crime by mentally ill people has become a matter of heightened public concern in recent years. The inpatient population of mental hospitals in the United States shrunk from a peak of 550,000 in 1955 to 70,000 in 2000. As a result, many severely mentally ill people who in earlier decades would have spent much of their lives as mental hospital patients now live elsewhere. Many cycle through periods of homelessness, brief psychiatric hospitalization, and incarceration in jail or prison.
The relationship between crime and mental illness is complex. Most crime is committed by people who are not mentally ill. Similarly, most people with mental illness don not engage in criminal behavior.
For a small percentage of people, mental illness so distorts their perception or judgment that it causes them to commit crimes. Most crimes caused by mental illness are public order offenses such as vagrancy and public intoxication, minor property destruction, and minor assaults. Unfortunately, infrequent and highly publicized violent offenses by mentally ill people capture the public imagination and distort perceptions of mentally ill offenders and mentally ill people generally.
Parole: In the United States, few convicts serve their entire sentence in prison. Instead, most are released on parole. From the French parole meaning "word of honor," parole was originally a means of releasing prisoners of war who promised not to resume fighting. Parole refers to the discretionary release of prison inmates by a parole board, although the term is sometimes used to identify any release of an inmate before the expiration of his or her sentence. The practice has its roots in the British penal system, in particular the "Irish system" of Walter Crofton.
Parole Board: A discretionary panel of individuals usually appointed by the governor which examines an inmate's institutional adjustment and future life plans in order to make a release decision. Today, less than one-quarter of prisoners are released by a parole board, as the vast majority are released according to mandatory sentencing guidelines. In most cases, a parole board sets the terms and conditions of release, even for those released by sentencing guidelines.
Prison: A correctional facility that houses inmates generally sentenced to a period of incarceration exceeding one year. Prisons are typically operated by state corrections agencies, although private companies also operate prisons in some states.
Prison Systems: A nation's prison system holds people who have been convicted by the courts and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. Offenders in the United States may be placed in a state or in a federal correctional facility. If they are sentenced for less than one year, they will be held in a local or county jail. Other factors that determine which type of penal institution an individual is sent to include the crimes for which he or she has been convicted and his or her sex, age, mental health, and physical health. Juvenile offenders, unless they are tried as adults, are held separately from adult criminals in juvenile detention centers.
Since the 1980s, the prison population in the United States has increased dramatically. Between 1980 and 1998 alone, it "ballooned from 329,821 to 1,302,019 - a rise of 295 percent" - and as the population continues to rise beyond two million, "there is little evidence that America's imprisonment campaign will end soon" (Austin and Irwin 2001: 1). As the population has increased, so, too, have the costs of housing them as "spending on corrections rose from $9.1 billion in 1982 to nearly $40 billion in 1995" (Austin and Irwin 2001: 13). In light of the expansion of the confined population and the corresponding increase in the financial burdens of incarceration, it is becoming increasingly urgent to consider what prison is like and what it is for.
Probation: By far the most extensively used form of corrections in the United States. Nearly 60 percent of all adults under correctional authority are serving probation sentences. In 1999, this figure represented more than 3,400,000 persons. Probation is traditionally defined as a criminal sentence allowing the offender to serve the sanctions imposed by the court while living in community under supervision. All penal codes restrict the availability of probation to certain types of offenses and certain offenders - usually first - or second-time felons convicted of property crimes, or violent offenses involving impulsive, unarmed acts of aggression. Legislation that provides for probation specifies the conditions under which the judge "may" impose a term of probation: Probation is a discretionary privilege offered by the court, not a right of the offender who meets the criteria. Laws never compel the decision by indicating specific offenses or offenders for which the judge "shall" choose probation. Instead, sentencing law allows probation only when the court arrives at certain conclusions, typically, that the offender does not represent an undue risk to community safety, that a term on probation is not inappropriate given the seriousness of the offense, and that the offender's circumstances are such that a term of probation offers the best opportunity for a successful adjustment to crime-free community life.
Recidivism: The reoccurrence of criminal behavior by prior offenders. The term also refers to a tendency to return to criminal behavior by offenders previously in the criminal justice system. Studies of criminal behavior consistently show that after intervention by the criminal justice system - arrests, convictions, punishments, and correctional programs - some offenders return to crime.
The concept of recidivism is analogous to the concept of relapse. Used in the substance abuse treatment field, relapse means the resumption of alcohol or drug use after receiving treatment. Treatment providers and researchers study relapse to understand why treatment sometimes fails to prevent future substance abuse. Likewise, those who work in and study the justice system analyze recidivism to understand why the system sometimes does not prevent subsequent criminal behavior and to identify interventions that may decrease recidivism.
Reentry: The process of transitioning from prison or jail to the community.
Release from Supervision: Successful completion of the guidance, treatment, and regulation process by an individual under community supervision.
Supervised Release: Transferring an individual from the custody of a correctional facility into community supervision.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): A federal program that provides assistance and work opportunities to needy families by granting states the federal funds and wide flexibility to develop and implement their own welfare programs. Overseen by the Office of Family Assistance (OFA) in the US Department of Health and Human Services, TANF was created by the Welfare Reform Law of 1996 , and replaced what was then commonly known as welfare: Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) programs.
Truth in Sentencing Laws: Sentencing that require individuals convicted of a crime to serve a substantial portion of their sentence in a correctional facility, as opposed to under some form of community supervision, thereby reducing the apparent discrepancy between the sentence imposed and actual time served in prison. Along with other types of mandatory sentencing guidelines, including determinate sentencing and mandatory minimum sentencing, many states have enacted Truth-in-Sentencing laws over the last three decades.
Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit: A federal income tax credit that encourages employers to hire long-term public assistance recipients - which can include people released from prison or jail or their family members. Established by the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, this tax credit can reduce employers' federal tax liability by as much as $8,500 per new hire (depending on the amount that the new hire earns) over the first two years. The Welfare-to-Work Tax Credit, as well as the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, had an original reauthorization date of January 2004. Although the date has passed, neither programs has yet been reauthorized; however, both programs have been extended until Congress takes some further action.
Work Release: A form of correctional work that permits soon-to-be released prisoners to work outside the prison walls during the day and to return to prison, a halfway house, or other secure facility in the evenings.
- Definitions were provided by either the Encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment, the 2002 edition, or the Reentry Policy Council's "Report of the Reentry Policy Council." The full report is available on their website in pdf format.
- If there any terms that you feel are missing or that the definitions are not clear enough, please email us at info@prisontohome.com.