"Perhaps the most significant improvement in the field of corrections over the last several decades has been the advancement and routinization of risk and risk–need assessment instruments within justice agencies (Andrews, Bonta, and Wormith, 2006; Bonta, 2002). Actuarial risk-prediction instruments can tell us which offenders are most likely to reoffend as well as whom among the offender population we might want to target for more intensive rehabilitative programming.1 Adhering to the risk principle by targeting higher risk offenders and matching the intensity of controls and services to risk levels has been found to improve the effectiveness of correctional interventions (Andrews and Bonta, 2010; Dowden and Andrews, 1999a, 1999b; Landenberger and Lipsey, 2005; Lowenkamp and Latessa, 2005; Lowenkamp, Latessa, and Holsinger, 2006)."
A "Get Out of Jail Free Card" Will Not Work Most of America's prison reform advocates only approach the issues from the standpoint of the prisoner-as-victim. Law enforcement policies under the prevailing liberal view are characterized as the main cause and perpetrator of mass incarceration. We rarely hear these folks tell us what punishment the guilty should have or how criminals should accept the consequences of their crimes. Many times they propose drug treatment, Drug Court, therapy, commitment to mental institutions, rehabilitation, "alternative sentences," and the extremely general solutions of fairness, equality, education and "community corrections." Most critics of mass incarceration focus on the process, not the substance of the problems. The process is flawed, they say, because of the failed War on Drugs, inadequate indigent defense, excessive prosecutorial power, mandatory sentences, exce...