Business Briefing: the business of prisons
CC BY31.3 MB (download)
Prisons are big business in Australia. Companies not only run entire prisons but provide many of the services. But what does the research say about the impact?
Articles on Recidivism
Displaying 41 - 60 of 61 articles
The Supreme Court may soon hear a case on data-driven criminal sentencing. Research suggests that algorithms are not as good as we think they are at making these decisions.
Repealing a legal provision that excludes people in prison or jail from Medicaid could improve access to treatment, save state and local governments money and reduce recidivism.
To reduce female recidivism rates, we need to address inmates’ histories of trauma and abuse.
Reducing stubbornly high levels of violence can be achieved if there is a focus on ensuring that children are not exposed to violence or toxic stress at home.
Case management from nurses combined with peer coaching from ex-offenders helps recently released parolees avoid the behavior that got them locked up in the first place.
Data-driven algorithms drive decision-making in ways that touch our economic, social and civic lives. But they contain inherent biases and assumptions that are too often invisible to the public.
Closing Victorian jails is an opportunity to create prisons that benefit inmates – and society.
Even though mental illness is consistently associated with criminal behavior, these conditions are largely undertreated in our prison system.
Two-thirds of released prisoners in the US are arrested again within three years. Here’s how we could change that.
President Obama wants to reopen access to Pell grants to prisoners. Studies show when men and women enroll in college programs, they are less likely to return to prison.
Women coming out of jail require forms of assistance that are not simply directed at technologies for prevention or elimination of recidivism, but rather that are focused on health and well-being.
The success of probation programmes based on swift and certain sanctions has led to more than 160 such schemes operating in the US. Australia should consider whether the model might work here too.
Sentencing policy is a mixed bag of approaches: punishment, deterrence, protection and rehabilitation. The system will remain costly and ineffective until punitive instincts give way to a more rational approach.
We simply don’t know how many prisoners are released each year, nor their demographic characteristics. As a result, we cannot tailor services that would reduce ex-prisoners’ risks of re-offending.
Imprisonment rates in Tasmania have steadily declined over the past decade – the only state or territory where this has happened. That is a result of progressive and effective corrections policies.
The Northern Territory stands out for having one of the highest imprisonment rates in the world - much higher even than in the US - and it’s hard to argue that this does the community much good.
The ACT’s first prison opened in 2009 with lofty ideals, but rising prisoner numbers and high rates of re-imprisonment are presenting a severe test of the capital’s reformist corrections agenda.
Queensland’s rates of imprisonment had been falling, but have undergone a sharp reversal - much of it driven by the nation’s highest rates of return by prisoners released into the community.
Improving health services in the juvenile justice system and the community could reduce the risk of youth offenders repeating anti-social behaviours, an Australian study has found. Published in the Journal…
Top contributors
-
Research fellow, North-West University
-
Professor of Criminology, University of Tasmania
-
Head, Justice Health Group, Curtin University
-
Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminology, University of Windsor
-
Professor of Criminology, Australian National University
-
Professor of Criminology, University of Bath
-
Director - Centre for Social Impact
-
Senior research fellow at the Institute for Security Studies and research associate, Durban University of Technology
-
Professor of Social Work; Leneen Forde Chair in Child & Family Research, Griffith University
-
Academic Director/ Clinical Ethicist, Children’s Bioethics Centre at the Royal Children’s Hospital, and Associate Professor in Health Ethics at the Centre for Health and Society, The University of Melbourne
-
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Queen's University, Ontario
-
PhD Researcher, Menzies School of Health Research
-
Assistant Professor of Epidemiolgy, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
-
Associate Professor of Statistics, MIT Sloan School of Management
-
Director of Sydney Executive Plus, Business School, University of Sydney