Abstract
When calls for reforming criminal justice arise, they frequently target particular—rather than systems-level—problems. This approach can be effective when only a few such problems exist. But it risks worsening rather than improving crime and justice by ignoring many other problems, including system-level issues that undermine efforts to promote safety and justice and to do so cost-efficiently. At the same time, this approach can contribute to continued investment in micro-level changes that ultimately achieve little or fail, in part because they do not address systemic problems. By contrast, systemic change—focused on changes throughout criminal justice and on criminal justice as a system—holds the potential to escape from this Sisyphean vicious cycle and to create greater public safety and justice at less cost.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Akers, R. L., Sellers, C. S., & Jennings, W. G. (2021). Criminological theories: Introduction, evaluation, and application (8th ed.). Oxford.
Alpert, G. P., & Moore, M. H. (1993). Measuring police performance in the new paradigm of policing. In U.S. Department of Justice, Performance measures for the criminal justice system (pp. 109–142). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Auerhahn, K. (2008). Dynamic systems simulation analysis: A planning tool for the new century. Journal of Criminal Justice, 36(4), 293–300. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2008.06.007
Bartos, B. J., & Kubrin, C. E. (2018). Can we downsize our prisons and jails without compromising public safety? Findings from California’s Prop 47. Criminology & Public Policy, 17(3), 693–715. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12378
Beckett, K. (2018). The politics, promise, and peril of criminal justice reform in the context of mass incarceration. Annual Review of Criminology, 1, 235–259. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-032317-092458
Beckett, K., Reosti, A., & Knaphus, E. (2016). The end of an era? Understanding the contradictions of criminal justice reform. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 664(1), 238–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716215598973
Beeman, M. (2018). National indicators of quality indigent defense. National Legal Aid and Defender Association.
Bernard, T. J., Paoline, E. A., III., & Pare, P. P. (2005). General systems theory and criminal justice. Journal of Criminal Justice, 33(3), 203–211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2005.02.001
Blasko, B. L., Souza, K. A., Via, B., Del Principe, S., & Taxman, F. S. (2016). Performance measures in community corrections: Measuring effective supervision practices with existing agency data. Federal Probation, 80, 26–32.
Blomberg, T. G., Brancale, J. M., Beaver, K. M., & Bales, W. D. (Eds.). (2016). Advancing criminology and criminal justice policy. Routledge.
Blumstein, A., & Larson, R. C. (1972). Analysis of a total criminal justice system. In A. W. Drake, R. L. Keeney, & P. M. Morse (Eds.), Analysis of public systems (pp. 317–355). MIT Press.
Blumstein, A., & Petersilia, J. (1995). Investing in criminal justice research. In J. Q. Wilson & J. Petersilia (Eds.), Crime (pp. 465–487). Institute for Contemporary Studies Press.
Burt, M. R. (1981). Measuring prison results: Ways to monitor and evaluate corrections performance. US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice.
Camus, A. (1955). The myth of Sisyphus, and other essays. Knopf.
Cate, S. D. (2021). The Mississippi model: Dangers of prison reform in the context of fiscal austerity. Punishment & Society (forthcoming).https://doi.org/10.1177/14624745211006176
Chettiar, I., & Waldman, M. (Eds.). (2015). Solutions: American leaders speak out on criminal justice. Brennan Center for Justice.
Clear, T. R. (2007). Imprisoning communities: How mass incarceration makes disadvantaged neighborhoods worse. Oxford University Press.
Cole, G. F. (1993). Performance measures for the trial courts, prosecution, and public defense. Performance measures for the criminal justice system (pp. 87–108). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Cullen, F. T., Jonson, C. L., & Mears, D. P. (2017). Reinventing community corrections. Crime and Justice, 46(1), 27–93.
Davis, R. C., Ortiz, C. W., Euler, S., & Kuykendall, L. (2015). Revisiting “measuring what matters”: Develo** a suite of standardized performance measures for policing. Police Quarterly, 18(4), 469–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098611115598990
DiIulio, J. J. (1993). Rethinking the criminal justice system: Toward a new paradigm. Performance measures for the criminal justice system (pp. 1–18). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Duffee, D. E. (2015). Why is criminal justice theory important? In E. R. Maguire & D. E. Duffee (Eds.), Criminal justice theory: Explaining the nature and behavior of criminal justice (pp. 5–26). Routledge.
Dunbar, A. (2022). Arguing for criminal justice reform: Examining the effects of message framing on policy preferences.Justice Quarterly (forthcoming). https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2022.2038243
Eisen, L. B., & Krinsky, M. A. (2021). The necessity of performance measures for prosecutors. In R. F. Wright, K. L. Levine, & R. M. Gold (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of prosecutors and prosecution (pp. 227–257). Oxford University Press.
Fader, J. J., VanZant, S. W., & Henson, A. R. (2020). Crime and justice framing in an era of reform: How the local matters. Justice Quarterly, 37(6), 1119–1139. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2019.1589555
Farrington, D. P., & Welsh, B. C. (Eds.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of crime prevention. Oxford University Press.
Fielding, N., & Innes, M. (2006). Reassurance policing, community policing and measuring police performance. Policing & Society, 16(2), 127–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/10439460600662122
Fichtelberg, A. (2020). Criminal (in)justice: A critical introduction. Sage.
Forst, B. (2003). Errors of justice: Nature, sources, and remedies. Cambridge University Press.
Freeman, K. R., Hu, C., & Jannetta, J. (2021). Racial equity and criminal justice risk assessment. The Urban Institute.
Gaes, G. G., Camp, S. D., Nelson, J. B., & Saylor, W. G. (2004). Measuring prison performance: Government privatization and accountability (Vol. 2). Rowman and Littlefield.
Gau, J. M. (2018). Criminal justice policy: Origins and effectiveness. Oxford University Press.
Gelb, A. (2018). You get what you measure: New performance indicators needed to gauge progress of criminal justice reform. The executive session on community corrections (pp. 1–8). National Institute of Justice.
Gorby, D. M. (2013). The failure of traditional measures of police performance and the rise of broader measures of performance. Policing, 7(4), 392–400. https://doi.org/10.1093/police/pat023
Hagan, J. (1989). Why is there so little criminal justice theory? Neglected macro- and micro-level links between organization and power. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 26(2), 116–135. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427889026002002
Hamilton, E. (1940). Mythology: Timeless tales of gods and heroes. Little, Brown, and Company.
Hatry, H. P. (2006). Performance measurement: Getting results (2nd ed.). The Urban Institute.
Heilbroner, D. (1990). Rough justice: Days and nights of a young D.A. Pantheon.
James, N. (2019). The First Step Act of 2018: An overview. Congressional Research Service.
Jeglic, E., & Calkins, C. (Eds.). (2022). Handbook of issues in criminal justice reform in the United States. Springer.
Johnson, B. D. (Ed.). (2011). The Oxford handbook of crime and criminal justice. Oxford University Press.
Kane, P. (2022). Republicans, after years of pushing for softer criminal sentences, return to the party’s law-and-order posture in Jackson’s confirmation hearing. The Washington Post, March 23. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/23/grassley-crime/
Kelly, W. R. (2021). The crisis in America’s criminal courts: Improving criminal justice outcomes by transforming decision-making. Rowman and Littlefield.
Kelly, W. R. (2015). Criminal justice at the crossroads: Transforming crime and punishment. Columbia University Press.
Kraska, P. B. (2006). Criminal justice theory: Toward legitimacy and an infrastructure. Justice Quarterly, 23(2), 167–185. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418820600688735
Lacey, N., Soskice, D., Cheliotis, L., & Xenakis, S. (Eds.). (2021). Tracing the relationship between inequality, crime and punishment. Oxford University Press.
Latessa, E. J., Listwan, S. J., & Koetzle, D. (2014). What works (and doesn’t) in reducing recidivism. Anderson Publishing.
Lattimore, P. K., Tueller, S., Levin-Rector, A., & Witwer, A. (2020). The prevalence of local criminal justice practices. Federal Probation, 83, 28–37.
Laub, J. H. (2021). Moving the National Institute of Justice forward: July 2010 through December 2012. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 37(2), 166–174. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986221999857
Laub, J. H., & Sampson, R. J. (2003). Shared beginnings, divergent lives: Delinquent boys to age 70. Harvard University Press.
Liebling, A., Hulley, S., & Crewe, B. (2012). Conceptualizing and measuring the quality of prison life. In D. Gadd, S. Karstedt, & S. F. Messner (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of criminological research methods (pp. 358–372). Sage.
Liebling, A., Maruna, S., & McAra, L. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford handbook of criminology. Oxford University Press.
Lilly, J. R., Cullen, F. T., & Ball, R. A. (2019). Criminological theory: Context and consequences (7th ed.). Sage.
Logan, C. (1993). Criminal justice performance measures for prisons. In Performance measures for the criminal justice system (pp. 15–59). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Lum, C. M., & Koper, C. S. (2017). Evidence-based policing: Translating research into practice. Oxford University Press.
Lum, C. M., & Nagin, D. (2017). Reinventing American policing: A seven-point blueprint for the 21st century. Crime and Justice, 46(1), 339–393.
Maayan, E., Ronen, B., & Coman, A. (2012). Assessing the performance of a court system: A comprehensive performance measures approach. International Journal of Public Administration, 35(11), 729–738. https://doi.org/10.1080/01900692.2012.670844
Mears, D. P. (2022). Bridging the research-policy divide to advance science and policy: The 2022 Bruce Smith, Sr. Award Address to the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. Justice Evaluation Journal (forthcoming).
Mears, D. P. (2019). Creating systems that can improve safety and justice (and why piecemeal change won’t work). Justice Evaluation Journal, 2(1), 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/24751979.2019.1569475
Mears, D. P. (2018). The Sisyphean dilemma in criminal justice reform: How systems research can help to illuminate and fix systems problems. The Criminologist, 43(5), 6–9.
Mears, D. P. (2017). Out-of-control criminal justice: The systems improvement solution for more safety, justice, accountability, and efficiency. Cambridge University Press.
Mears, D. P. (2010). American criminal justice policy: An evaluation approach to increasing accountability and effectiveness. Cambridge University Press.
Mears, D. P., & Bacon, S. (2009). Improving criminal justice through better decision making: Lessons from the medical system. Journal of Criminal Justice, 37(2), 142–154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2009.02.001
Mears, D. P., & Barnes, J. C. (2010). Toward a systematic foundation for identifying evidence-based criminal justice sanctions and their relative effectiveness. Journal of Criminal Justice, 38(4), 702–810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2010.04.044
Mears, D. P., & J. C. Cochran. (2022). Mass evidence-based policy (EBP) as an alternative to mass incarceration. In B. C. Welsh, S. N. Zane, & D. P. Mears (Eds.), Oxford handbook of evidence-based crime and justice policy. Oxford University Press. (Forthcoming.)
Mears, D. P., & Cochran, J. C. (2015). Prisoner reentry in the era of mass incarceration. Sage.
Mears, D. P., Cochran, J. C., Bales, W. D., & Bhati, A. S. (2016a). Recidivism and time served in prison. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 106(1), 83–124. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26402868
Mears, D. P., Cochran, J. C., & Lindsey, A. M. (2016b). Offending and racial and ethnic disparities in criminal justice: A conceptual framework for guiding theory and research and informing policy. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 32(1), 78–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986215607252
Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. Oxford University Press.
Miofsky, K. T., & Byrne, J. M. (2012). Evaluation research and probation: How to distinguish high performance from low performance programmes. In D. Gadd, S. Karstedt, & S. F. Messner (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of criminological research methods (pp. 336–357). Sage.
National Center for State Courts. (1990). Trial court performance standards. National Center for State Courts.
Ostrom, B. J., & Hanson, R. A. (2007). Implement and use court performance measures. Criminology & Public Policy, 6, 799–806.
Petersilia, J. (1993). Measuring the performance of community corrections. In Performance measures for the criminal justice system (pp. 61–86). Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Petersilia, J., & Reitz, K. R. (Eds.). (2012). The Oxford handbook of sentencing and corrections. Oxford University Press.
Reisig, M. D., & Kane, R. J. (Eds.). (2014). The Oxford handbook of police and policing. Oxford University Press.
Rossi, P. H., Lipsey, M. W., Freeman, H., & E. (2004). Evaluation: A systematic approach (7th ed.). Sage.
Sabol, W. J., & Baumann, M. L. (2020). Justice reinvestment: Vision and practice. Annual Review of Criminology, 3, 317–339. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-011419-041407
Thomas, C. W. (2005). Recidivism of public and private state prison inmates in Florida: Issues and unanswered questions. Criminology & Public Policy, 4, 89–100.
Tonry, M. (2011). The Oxford handbook of crime and criminal justice. Oxford University Press.
Wakefield, S. (2018). Sentence length and recidivism: Evidence and the challenges of criminal justice reform in the carceral state. Criminology & Public Policy, 17, 771–777. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12390
Weaver, V. M., & Geller, A. (2019). De-policing America’s youth: Disrupting criminal justice policy feedbacks that distort power and derail prospects. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 685(1), 190–226. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716219871899
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Mears, D.P. Esca** the Sisyphean Trap: Systemic Criminal Justice System Reform. Am J Crim Just 47, 1030–1049 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-022-09711-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-022-09711-7