Todd R Clear
Biographic Data
| ID | 128303 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Todd R Clear |
| GIVEN NAMES | Todd R |
| FAMILY NAME | Clear |
| SIGNATURE | CLEAR T R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 251 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1976 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Commentary
Prospects for the ACJS "Quest for Quality in Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJ)" should be understood in light of three contextual forces: changes in faculty training and orientation, dynamics affecting higher education generally, and similarities between CCJ and other social science programs. Many of the original objectives of the "Quest" have been achieved, and the fact that the ACJS process faces an uncertain future is unlikely to undermin…
The Punishment Imperative
Over the last 40 years, the US penal system has grown at an unprecedented rate—five times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. In The Punishment Imperative, eminent criminologists Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost argue that America’s move to mass incarceration from the 1960s to the early 2000s was more than just a response to crime or a collection of policies adopted in isolation; it was a grand social ex…
Decarceration Problems and Prospects
Incarceration rates in the United States are far higher than in the world's other Western democracies, so high that they are referred to as mass incarceration. After nearly 40 years of sustained growth in US incarceration rates, a broad consensus exists to bring them down. The Iron Law of Prison Populations directs attention to the fact that 51 different jurisdictional-level penal policies, rather than crime, drive incarceration rates, making sys…
Rehabilitation for “Cost of Crime” Models
Response to Cohen and Farrington
The Community Justice Ideal
Over the past quarter-century, U.S. politicians have responded to the public's fear of crime by devoting ever more resources to building and strengthening the criminal justice apparatus, which as a result has grown tremendously in size and cost. Policymakers have also taken steps to toughen procedures for dealing with suspects and criminals, and broaden legal definitions of what constitutes crime, which has led to the incarceration, under harsher…
Theories of Mass Incarceration
This essay focuses in greater detail on sources of the massive increase in US prison admissions in the late 20th century. It argues that subtle, and not so subtle, shifts in policy and practice lead to changes in the way people approach crime prevention and control, and those shifts ultimately explain changing rates of incarceration. Elsewhere, these dynamics have been referred to as the “iron law” of prison populations. Explaining increases (or …
Justice Reinvestment
In summary, the book describes: how the concept of justice reinvestment developed and how its usage differs between countries; what a place-based approach means and why the Australian model is so unique in its approach; how measuring outcomes, as always, is fraught with complexities, but how the approach used is also such an important determinant of understanding what does and doesn’t work; and how marginalised and socially disadvantaged groups —…
A Thug in Prison Can't Shoot Your Sister”
Toward a Criminology of Prison Downsizing
Response 3
A private‐sector, incentives‐based model for justice reinvestment
A private‐sector, incentives‐based model for justice reinvestment
Research Summary Justice reinvestment is a recent strategy designed to reduce the use of incarceration and divert the savings to improve the circumstances of communities that have high incarceration rates. More than a dozen states have mounted justice reinvestment projects. While support for justice reinvestment remains high, actual results have been mixed. In particular, the “community reinvestment” aspect of justice reinvestment has been disapp…
The prison industry and the marketplace
Policy and Evidence
The Effects of High Imprisonment Rates on Communities
When large numbers of parent‐aged adults, especially men, cycle through stays in prison and jail at very high rates, communities are negatively affected in myriad ways, including damage to social networks, social relationships, and long‐term life chances. These effects impair children, family functioning, mental and physical health, labor markets, and economic and political infrastructures. There are considerable methodological challenges in tryi…
Imprisoning CommunitiesHow Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse
At no time in history, and certainly in no other democratic society, have prisons been filled so quickly and to such capacity than in the United States. And nowhere has this growth been more concentrated than in the disadvantaged—and primarily minority—neighborhoods of America's largest urban cities. In the most impoverished places, as much as 20% of the adult men are locked up on any given day, and there is hardly a family without a father, son,…
Productivity of Criminal Justice Scholars Across the Career
From the moment young scholars enter the academy, they are cautioned that they should be prepared to "publish or perish." Because a demonstrable record of scholarly publication is arguably the most important consideration at most universities and colleges that award tenure, junior faculty would be advised to heed that caution. But is there a reduction in pressure post‐tenure, and if so, does this result in a reduction in the publication productiv…
Informing Public Policy
Doctoral Education in Criminology and Criminal Justice
With more than half of all doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice admitting their first doctoral student after 1990, growth in doctoral education in criminology and criminal justice in recent years has been substantial. Using seven years of data from annual surveys of all institutions known to offer the doctorate in criminology and criminal justice, we document and explore the contours of that growth in doctoral education in crimin…
The Impacts of Incarceration on Public Safety
Todd R. Clear The Impacts of Incarceration on Public Safety IN T H E PAGES TH A T FOLLOW W E W ILL TAKE A LOOK IN S ID E TH E BLACK box of the largest penal experim ent in world history: the quintupling of the prison population in the United States between 1973 and 2006. A central question that emerges and that will be our focus is: W hat have been the social consequences of our incarceration policy? One objective is to provide insight into w hat…
Places not Cases
John Augustus, the ‘first probation officer’, carried a caseload assigned by the court. And ever since, this way of organising the probation officer's accountability has dominated the profession. To be sure, there are plenty of probation officers who do not carry caseloads, but probation officers who ‘work the line’ do so around an assignment of specific cases. This tradition has considerable implications for the professional identity of the prob…
Thinking About Crime
Coercive mobility and crime
This article explores how incarceration affects crime rates at the neighborhood level. Incarceration is analyzed as a form of residential mobility that may damage local network structures and undermine informal control. Geocoded data are combined with census data, data on incarceration convictions and releases, and crime data for Tallahassee, Florida. The results show a positive relationship between the rate of releases one year and the community…
Faith and Public Policy
Incarceration, Social Capital, and Crime
This study is a theoretical exploration of the impact of public social control on the functioning of local social controls. Set within the framework of social disorganization and systemic theory, the study argues that an overreliance on incarceration as a formal control may hinder the ability of some communities to foster other forms of control because they weaken family and community structures. At the ecological level, the side effects of polic…
Policy and Evidence
The Effects of High Imprisonment Rates on Communities
When large numbers of parent‐aged adults, especially men, cycle through stays in prison and jail at very high rates, communities are negatively affected in myriad ways, including damage to social networks, social relationships, and long‐term life chances. These effects impair children, family functioning, mental and physical health, labor markets, and economic and political infrastructures. There are considerable methodological challenges in tryi…
The Punishment Imperative
Over the last 40 years, the US penal system has grown at an unprecedented rate—five times larger than in the past and grossly out of scale with the rest of the world. In The Punishment Imperative, eminent criminologists Todd R. Clear and Natasha A. Frost argue that America’s move to mass incarceration from the 1960s to the early 2000s was more than just a response to crime or a collection of policies adopted in isolation; it was a grand social ex…
Decarceration Problems and Prospects
Incarceration rates in the United States are far higher than in the world's other Western democracies, so high that they are referred to as mass incarceration. After nearly 40 years of sustained growth in US incarceration rates, a broad consensus exists to bring them down. The Iron Law of Prison Populations directs attention to the fact that 51 different jurisdictional-level penal policies, rather than crime, drive incarceration rates, making sys…
A private‐sector, incentives‐based model for justice reinvestment
Universal Applicability of Probation Risk‐Assessment Instruments
A probation risk‐assessment instrument developed by the State of Wisconsin is receiving wide use throughout the nation and has been recognized by the National Institute of Corrections as part of a “model system.” However, this has been done without extensive validation on populations other than Wisconsin probationers and parolees. The validity of the instrument for a population of City of New York probationers is assessed in this study. It was fo…
Probationer violations and officer response
Doctoral Education in Criminology and Criminal Justice
With more than half of all doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice admitting their first doctoral student after 1990, growth in doctoral education in criminology and criminal justice in recent years has been substantial. Using seven years of data from annual surveys of all institutions known to offer the doctorate in criminology and criminal justice, we document and explore the contours of that growth in doctoral education in crimin…
The Impacts of Incarceration on Public Safety
Todd R. Clear The Impacts of Incarceration on Public Safety IN T H E PAGES TH A T FOLLOW W E W ILL TAKE A LOOK IN S ID E TH E BLACK box of the largest penal experim ent in world history: the quintupling of the prison population in the United States between 1973 and 2006. A central question that emerges and that will be our focus is: W hat have been the social consequences of our incarceration policy? One objective is to provide insight into w hat…
Criminology & Public Policy
Private Prisons
Crime and Utility Maximization
(1976). Crime and Utility Maximization: A Note on Danzinger and Wheeler. Review of Social Economy: Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 83-85
Crime and Utility Maximization
(1976). Crime and Utility Maximization: A Note on Danzinger and Wheeler. Review of Social Economy: Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 83-85
Injustice for all
Evaluating the Cook County Sentencing Guidelines
This article examines the empirical basis for current criminal sentencing guidelines being used in Cook County, Illinois. Unlike in many other sentencing reforms, guidelines have generally been developed out of an empirical analysis of past sentencing decisions through the identification of variables most predictive of sentence. However, when the statistical analysis is inadequate or faulty, the resultant sentencing guidelines must be questioned.…
Universal Applicability of Probation Risk‐Assessment Instruments
A probation risk‐assessment instrument developed by the State of Wisconsin is receiving wide use throughout the nation and has been recognized by the National Institute of Corrections as part of a “model system.” However, this has been done without extensive validation on populations other than Wisconsin probationers and parolees. The validity of the instrument for a population of City of New York probationers is assessed in this study. It was fo…
The American Prison
Probationer violations and officer response
On the core of the criminal justice curriculum
Alternatives to Imprisonment
The detrimental effects of imprisonment have been documented and accepted in most western countries. As a result, alternatives to incarceration have been sought in the effort to reform the penal system. Although during the last thirty years several Nordic official committees have recommended a reduction in the use of jail sentences and an increase in other forms of punishment (i.e. fines and probation) in the hope of decreasing crime and rehabili…
Harm in American Penology; Offenders, Victims and Their Communities
Incarceration, Social Capital, and Crime
This study is a theoretical exploration of the impact of public social control on the functioning of local social controls. Set within the framework of social disorganization and systemic theory, the study argues that an overreliance on incarceration as a formal control may hinder the ability of some communities to foster other forms of control because they weaken family and community structures. At the ecological level, the side effects of polic…
The Value of Religion in Prison
In recent years, religious programming for inmates is being applauded by some as the latest answer to recidivism. Policy makers and correctional officials alike are among the supporters of these programs that go well beyond conventional prison ministry. The emphasis in promoting the expansion of religion-based programs indeed lies in the claim that faith in a higher power prevents relapse into criminal activity better than secular strategies. Whe…
Has academic criminal justice come of age?
(2001). Has academic criminal justice come of age? Justice Quarterly: Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 709-726.
Incarceration and the Community
Prior research has established that the characteristics of “places” are an important aspect of public safety and local quality of life. Growth in the rates of incarceration since 1973, combined with social disparity in the experience of imprisonment among certain groups, has meant that some communities experience concentrated levels of incarceration. This article examines the spatial impact of incarceration and explores the problems associated wi…
Criminology & Public Policy
Prisoners, Prison, and Religion
During the twentieth century there has been much speculation by scholars in the United States about the relationship between religion and prisoners. In spite of the fact that both religion and the prison have been subjected to considerable study, we know little about religion in prison, particularly as it relates to the psychological adjustment of offenders to the prison environment and reduction in problematic behaviors such as disciplinary infr…
What is Community Justice
As described in this title, the aim of the new efforts is to explicitly integrate the community and the criminal justice process in probation programs. There are five goals that this text addresses to achieve this end
Private Prisons
Three Strikes
Coercive mobility and crime
This article explores how incarceration affects crime rates at the neighborhood level. Incarceration is analyzed as a form of residential mobility that may damage local network structures and undermine informal control. Geocoded data are combined with census data, data on incarceration convictions and releases, and crime data for Tallahassee, Florida. The results show a positive relationship between the rate of releases one year and the community…
Faith and Public Policy
Inmate Classification
Places not Cases
John Augustus, the ‘first probation officer’, carried a caseload assigned by the court. And ever since, this way of organising the probation officer's accountability has dominated the profession. To be sure, there are plenty of probation officers who do not carry caseloads, but probation officers who ‘work the line’ do so around an assignment of specific cases. This tradition has considerable implications for the professional identity of the prob…
Thinking About Crime
Imprisoning CommunitiesHow Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse
At no time in history, and certainly in no other democratic society, have prisons been filled so quickly and to such capacity than in the United States. And nowhere has this growth been more concentrated than in the disadvantaged—and primarily minority—neighborhoods of America's largest urban cities. In the most impoverished places, as much as 20% of the adult men are locked up on any given day, and there is hardly a family without a father, son,…
Productivity of Criminal Justice Scholars Across the Career
From the moment young scholars enter the academy, they are cautioned that they should be prepared to "publish or perish." Because a demonstrable record of scholarly publication is arguably the most important consideration at most universities and colleges that award tenure, junior faculty would be advised to heed that caution. But is there a reduction in pressure post‐tenure, and if so, does this result in a reduction in the publication productiv…
Criminology (37 works) · Political science (31 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Law (25 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (24 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (21 works) · Psychology (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Economic Justice (16 works) · Computer Science (15 works)