Court orders against those who administer jails provide an opportunity to examine a major irony of formal social control: the justice system sanctioning itself for not punishing violators within the boundaries of the law. This study examines the problem of jail overcrowding in California, and the conditions which have led to county jail systems being declared in violation of Constitutional provisions. The authors analyze alleged violations, the extent of court-ordered relief, and the various mechanisms by which counties have attempted to comply with court-ordered reforms to inform both theory and policy.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Advisory Commission
. 1984. Jails: Intergovernmental Dimensions of a Local Problem. Washington, DC: Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.
2.
Associated Press
. 1991. “U.S. Prison Population Up 8.2 Percent to 771,243.”Philadelphia Inquirer, May 16, p. 19B.
3.
Austin, James
and Aaron David McVey. 1989. The 1989 NCCD Prison Population Forecast: The Impact of the War on Drugs. San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
4.
Balbus, Isaac D.
1977. The Dialectics of Legal Repression: Black Rebels before the American Criminal Courts. New York: Transaction Books.
5.
Board of Corrections
. 1985. The State of Jails in California. Report #2: Prisoner Flow and Release. Sacramento: Board of Corrections.
Busher, Walter
. 1983. Jail Overcrowding: Identifying Causes and Planning for Solutions. Washington, DC: Office of Justice Assistance, Research and Statistics.
8.
California Legislative Analyst
. 1987. Analysis of the 1987-88 Budget Bill. Report to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee. Sacramento: State of California.
9.
Casper, Jonathan D.
, David Brereton, and David Neal. 1981. The Implementation of the California Determinate Sentence Law. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
10.
Clear, Todd R.
and Patricia M. Harris. 1987 “The Costs of Incarceration.” Pp. 37-55 in America's Correctional Crisis, edited by D. Gottfredson and S. McConville. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
11.
Cullen, Francis T.
, Gregory A. Clark, and John F. Wozniak. 1985. “Explaining the Get Tough Movement: Can the Public Be Blamed?”Federal Probation49:16-24.
12.
Feeley, Malcolm M.
1983. Court Reform on Trial: Why Simple Solutions Fail. New York: Basic Books.
13.
Feeley, Malcolm M.
and Roger P. Hanson. 1986. “What We Know, Think We Know and Would Like to Know about the Impact of Court Orders on Prison Conditions and Jail Crowding.” Presented at the Meeting of the Working Group on Jail and Prison Crowding, Committee on Research on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice, National Academy of Sciences, Chicago, IL.
14.
Flynn, Edith E.
1983. “Jails.” Pp. 915-922 in Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice, edited by S. H. Kadish. New York: Macmillan.
15.
Foucault, Michel
. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage.
16.
Goldfarb, Ronald
. 1975. Jails. Garden City, NY: Anchor.
17.
Harriman, Linda
and Jeffrey Straussman. 1983. “Do Judges Determine Budget Decisions?”Public Administration Review43:343-351.
18.
Hicks, Jerry
. 1985a. “Gates Bars State, U.S. Prisoners to Relieve Jam at Jail.”Los Angeles Times, March 20, Sec. II, p. 1.
19.
Hicks, Jerry
. 1985b“Sheriff May Free Some New Prisoners to Meet Deadline.”Los Angeles Times, August 22, Sec. II, p. 1.
20.
Irwin, John
. 1985. The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
21.
Kizziah, Carol A.
1984. The State of the Jails in California. Report #1: Overcrowding in the Jails. Sacramento: Board of Corrections.
22.
Landis, J. Richard
and Gary G. Koch. 1977. “The Measurement of Observer Agreement for Categorical Data.”Biometrics33:159-174.
23.
McCoy, Candace
. 1984. “Determinate Sentencing, Plea Bargaining Bans, and Hydraulic Discretion in California.”Justice System Journal9:256-275.
24.
National Prison Project
. 1990. “Status Report: State Prisons and the Courts.”Journal of the National Prison Project22:7-8, 14-17, 20.
25.
Needham, John
. 1987. “Gates Again Held in Contempt for Jail Overcrowding.”Los Angeles Times, May 1, Sec. II, p. 1.
26.
Newman, Graeme
. 1978. The Punishment Response. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott.
27.
Orange County Administrative Office
. 1986. Systems Approach to Jail Crowding in Orange County. Prepared for the Board of Supervisors, Orange County, CA.
28.
Petersilia, Joan
. 1987. Expanding Options for Criminal Sentencing. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
29.
Pontell, Henry N.
1984. A Capacity to Punish: The Ecology of Crime and Punishment. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
30.
Pontell, Henry N.
, Wayne N. Welsh, Matthew Leone, and Patrick Kinkade. 1989. “Prescriptions for Punishment: Official Ideologies and Jail Overcrowding.”American Journal of Criminal Justice14:43-70.
31.
Rothman, David J.
1980. Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alternatives in Progressive America. Boston: Little, Brown.
32.
Rusche, Georg
and Otto Kirchheimer. 1939. Punishment and Social Structure. New York: Russell and Russell.
33.
Schumacher, Michael
. 1987. Supervised Electronic Confinement. Final Report. Orange County Probation Department, CA.
34.
Sherman, Michael
and Gordon Hawkins. 1983. Imprisonment in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
35.
Sutton, John R.1987. “Doing Time: The Dynamics of Imprisonment in the Reformist State.”American Sociological Review52:612-630.
36.
Taft, Philip B., Jr.1983. “Jail Litigation: Winning in Court Is Only Half the Battle.”Corrections Magazine9:22-27, 30-31.
37.
Taggart, William A.1989. “Redefining the Power of the Purse: The Impact of Court Ordered Prison Reform on State Expenditures for Corrections.”Law and Society Review23:241-271.
38.
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics
. 1988. Jail Inmates 1987. Bulletin NCJ-114319. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
39.
U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics
. 1990. Jail Inmates 1989. Bulletin NCJ-123264. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
40.
Welsh, Wayne N.
1990. “The Impact of Jail Litigation on County Financial Expenditures.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, November, Baltimore.
41.
Welsh, Wayne N.
, Matthew C. Leone, Patrick T. Kinkade, and Henry N. Pontell. 1991. “The Politics of Jail Overcrowding: Public Attitudes and Official Policies.” Pp. 131-147 in American Jails: Public Policy Issues, edited by J. Thompson and G. L. Mays. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
42.
Welsh, Wayne N.
and Henry N. Pontell. 1991. “Counties in Court: Interorganizational Adaptations to Jail Litigation in California.”Law and Society Review25:73-101.
43.
Welsh, Wayne N.
, Henry N. Pontell, Matthew C. Leone, and Patrick T. Kinkade. 1990. “Jail Overcrowding: An Analysis of Policymaker Perceptions.”Justice Quarterly7:341-370.
44.
Wilson v. Superior Court (Branson), 240 Cal Rptr. 131 (Cal. App. 6 Dist. 1987).
