Journal Article Review of “Death by Prison: The Emergence of Life Without Parole and Perpetual Confinement” Get access By Christopher Seeds University of California Press, 2022, 278 pages.https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520379985/death-by-prison Lyle C May, Lyle C May American University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Robert Johnson Robert Johnson American University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, soad024, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soad024 Published: 09 March 2023 Article history Received: 29 December 2022 Revision received: 20 January 2023 Accepted: 30 January 2023 Published: 09 March 2023

This essay is a call for American people to unite around a common cause to end systemic racism through honest dialog. Critical Race Theory (CRT), which was created to reveal the truth about history, can be used to solve the problem of racism in America, help end racial oppression, and create justice and equity for all Americans.

Classroom assessment is an effective way to collect evidence about student learning, and a teacher's professional responsibility in assessment is to use high quality, fair, and ethical assessment information to make decisions about students' learning and teachers' instruction. This study used a scenario-based survey and investigated college students' perceptions about the ethicality of classroom assessment practices in Chinese higher education. Participants included 2711 college students from 177 universities located in 23 provinces and 4 municipalities in China. The results revealed that students reported very different levels of agreement with experts on the scenarios, and it appeared to be more challenging for them to recognize unethical assessment practices in comparison with ethical assessment practices. Students valued using multiple assessment methods but reported inconsistent views with experts regarding grading effort. Confidentiality and communication about grading were found to be the key assessment issues to be addressed in Chinese educational context.

Context: Unaffordable or insecure housing is associated with poor health in children and adults. Tenant-based housing voucher programs (voucher programs) limit rent to 30% or less of household income to help households with low income obtain safe and affordable housing. Objective: To determine the effectiveness of voucher programs in improving housing, health, and other health-related outcomes for households with low income. Design: Community Guide systematic review methods were used to assess intervention effectiveness and threats to validity. An updated systematic search based on a previous Community Guide review was conducted for literature published from 1999 to July 2019 using electronic databases. Reference lists of included studies were also searched. Eligibility Criteria: Studies were included if they assessed voucher programs in the United States, had concurrent comparison populations, assessed outcomes of interest, were written in English, and published in peer-reviewed journals or government reports. Main Outcome Measures: Housing quality and stability, neighborhood opportunity (safety and poverty), education, income, employment, physical and mental health, health care use, and risky health behavior. Results: Seven studies met inclusion criteria. Compared with low-income households not offered vouchers, voucher-using households reported increased housing quality (7.9 percentage points [pct pts]), decreased housing insecurity or homelessness (−22.4 pct pts), and decreased neighborhood poverty (−5.2 pct pts). Adults in voucher-using households had improved health care access and physical and mental health. Female youth experienced better physical and mental health but not male youth. Children who entered the voucher programs under 13 years of age had improved educational attainment, employment, and income in their adulthood; children's gains in these outcomes were inversely related to their age at program entry. Conclusion: Voucher programs improved health and several health-related outcomes for voucher-using households, particularly young children. Research is still needed to better understand household's experiences and contextual factors that influence achievement of desired outcomes.

A trauma framework is applied to the experiences of execution team members. A directed content analysis of three seminal publications is used to investigate how execution team members respond to observing and participating in executions, a potentially traumatic stressor. Through these texts, supplemented by other research, the study finds that the execution process, meant to facilitate executions and insulate execution team officers from stress, only partially achieves these goals. The findings suggest that many of the concepts central to understanding executioners at work—how they understand and cope with their roles—are dynamic rather than static and vary in degree across persons and situations. Execution team officers report varying degrees of difficulty fully rationalizing and diffusing responsibility for their actions, ultimately leading to internal conflict and stress about the death penalty and participation in executions.

Assessment book authors’ perspectives on ethical assessment practices are not necessarily consistent with those of educators. This study’s purpose was to explore similarities and differences between the two perspectives. Researchers presented scenarios of classroom assessment practices to gain insights into educators’ perspectives on ethical issues. Fourteen scenarios that were common across three empirical research articles were selected. Educators had similar opinions on a scenario if 70% or more respondents selected “ethical” or “unethical” on one item. Twenty-five assessment-related books were reviewed to present the authors’ views on the ethicality of classroom assessment practices. The results showed that assessment book authors and educators held similar views on five of the 14 scenarios. Findings might inform the professional development of in-service teachers and the training of pre-service teachers. The results can inform assessment book authors in the future development to address ethics issues in assessment and practitioners in educational technology to consider ethical issues in the process of designing assessment tasks.

Death row inmate narratives, culled from online blogs, are used to explore the social determinants of mental health in the context of the stresses and deprivations of living on death row. Legal and correctional procedures that affect death row inmates are conceptualized as social determinants of mental health. These procedures include the granting or denying of stays of execution, conditions of solitary confinement during death row and the death watch, and impending dates of execution. Death row narratives offer a nuanced account of the many ways condemned prisoners must contend with their powerlessness as an essential element of life under sentence of death.

The history, evolution, and current uses of the death sentence are described, followed by an examination of the socially and morally problematic issues of racial bias, gender bias, dehumanization, errors that give rise to conviction of the innocent, and unsupported claims about the deterrent value of the sanction. A theoretical argument that promises a better way forward is advanced, marked by community reforms and the use of prison terms that offer persons convicted of capital crime a meaningful opportunity for release and re-entry into society.

Context: Poor physical and mental health and substance use disorder can be causes and consequences of homelessness. Approximately 2.1 million persons per year in the United States experience homelessness. People experiencing homelessness have high rates of emergency department use, hospitalization, substance use treatment, social services use, arrest, and incarceration. Objectives: A standard approach to treating homeless persons with a disability is called Treatment First, requiring clients be “housing ready”—that is, in psychiatric treatment and substance-free—before and while receiving permanent housing. A more recent approach, Housing First, provides permanent housing and health, mental health, and other supportive services without requiring clients to be housing ready. To determine the relative effectiveness of these approaches, this systematic review compared the effects of both approaches on housing stability, health outcomes, and health care utilization among persons with disabilities experiencing homelessness. Design: A systematic search (database inception to February 2018) was conducted using 8 databases with terms such as “housing first,” “treatment first,” and “supportive housing.” Reference lists of included studies were also searched. Study design and threats to validity were assessed using Community Guide methods. Medians were calculated when appropriate. Eligibility Criteria: Studies were included if they assessed Housing First programs in high-income nations, had concurrent comparison populations, assessed outcomes of interest, and were written in English and published in peer-reviewed journals or government reports. Main Outcome Measures: Housing stability, physical and mental health outcomes, and health care utilization. Results: Twenty-six studies in the United States and Canada met inclusion criteria. Compared with Treatment First, Housing First programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41%. For clients living with HIV infection, Housing First programs reduced homelessness by 37%, viral load by 22%, depression by 13%, emergency departments use by 41%, hospitalization by 36%, and mortality by 37%. Conclusions: Housing First programs improved housing stability and reduced homelessness more effectively than Treatment First programs. In addition, Housing First programs showed health benefits and reduced health services use. Health care systems that serve homeless patients may promote their health and well-being by linking them with effective housing services.

The purpose of this study was to explore Chinese university professors' decisions about ethical issues in classroom assessment. A survey with fifteen scenarios that describe professors' thoughts about ethics in assessment practices was administrated to 555 professors from 143 colleges and universities in 29 provinces in China. The results of the quantitative analysis indicated that professors' interest in professional development related to classroom assessment, and their dispositions were significantly associated with their agreement with experts in the field of classroom assessment. Professors' gender, highest degree, professional rank, and years of teaching experience did not significantly predict their agreement. The qualitative analysis revealed that maintaining fair assessment vs being caring to students and asserting professors' rights vs abiding by university policy were the crucial aspects for professors to consider in classroom assessment. Findings of the study could help educators identify ethical issues in assessment, develop guidelines to ensure fair assessment, and incorporate differentiated strategies in professional development workshops in higher education.

The U.S. Supreme Court anticipated that most juveniles sentenced to life-without-parole prison terms might well "mature and develop" over the course of their lives in confinement.As a result, the Court maintained that they should be given the opportunity to demonstrate their changed characters and earn a chance at release from prison.In this article, we rely on the research on life sentence prisoner adjustment, together with our experience as experts in juvenile life-withoutparole re-sentencing cases.We trace the maturation and development of juveniles sentenced to life terms, a multifaceted process that ultimately leads most juveniles sentenced to life to become solid citizens of the prison community who desist from misconduct, secure regular employment, participate in programs, and develop prosocial identities and reference groups that make them good candidates for release in due course.A caveat is that maturation in prison often entails a selfdefensive hardening of emotions that will need to be addressed in reentry programs._______________________________________________________________________________ When discussing juvenile life-without-parole (LWOP) sentences, the U.S. Supreme Court in Miller v. Alabama (2012) and related decisions anticipated that juveniles sentenced to life prison terms might well "mature and develop" over the course of their lives in confinement.The exceptions-the depraved, those beyond reform-would remain unregenerate and therefore deserving of permanent imprisonment.But nearly all juveniles, the Court presumed, could and The Life-Course of Juvenile Lifers: Understanding Maturation and Development as Miller and Its Progeny Guide Juvenile Life Sentence Release Decisions

A trauma framework is applied to the experiences of execution team members. A directed content analysis of three seminal publications on executioners at work is used to investigate how execution team members respond to observing and participating in executions, a potentially traumatic stressor. Through these texts, supplemented by other research where appropriate, we undertake a review of first-hand scholarship on the topic of executioners at work. The execution process, which is meant to facilitate executions and insulate execution team officers from stress, only partially achieves these goals. Our findings suggest that many of the concepts central to understanding executioners at work—how they understand and cope with their roles—are dynamic rather than static, varying in degree across persons and situations rather than being present or absent across all persons and situations. Execution team officers report varying degrees of difficulty fully rationalizing and diffusing responsibility for their actions, ultimately leading to internal conflict and stress about the death penalty and participation in executions.

As a guiding principle of incarceration, prisons should aim to maintain safe and rehabilitative environments. The key contextual factors that undergird such environments are access to purposeful activities and humane conditions of confinement. Independent authoritative reviews conducted by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) of the Council of Europe document the conditions of prison life in Sweden and England, permitting an assessment of these prison systems at three junctures: 2003, 2015-16, and 2019. The Swedish prison system, in contrast to its counterpart in England, addressed external criticisms in responsive ways, an instance of mature coping at the organizational level that demonstrates replicable policies promoting mature coping among individual prisoners

In Miller v. Alabama (2012), the United States Supreme Court held that mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles are unconstitutional. In Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), the Supreme Court made this holding retroactive, leaving the states to fashion new sentencing schemes for juveniles previously sentenced to life without parole. Complicating this task is the debate around “de facto,” or virtual, life sentences, which are term-of-years sentences that extend beyond an individual’s life expectancy. This essay proposes a framework to be used for sentencing juvenile lifers in light of the Supreme Court’s opinions and the Third Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision in United States v. Grant (2018). The framework considers an individual’s life expectancy and health, the national retirement age, and the time needed to reconnect with society. The output is a liveable term-of-years sentence that allows persons sentenced to life without parole as juveniles the prospect of release and the achievement of a meaningful life in the free world. “Incorrigibility is inconsistent with youth.” — Graham v. Florida (2010). _______________________________________________________________________________ It is difficult for most of us, who have never been sentenced to prison, to truly appreciate the reality of a life sentence. “Statistics” about abstractions like a life term “don’t bleed; it is the detail which counts” (Koestler, 1945, p. 91). Without prison experience, most of us in society lack the Livable Term Sentences as Alternatives to Juvenile Life Without Parole: A Sentencing Framework Based on United States v. Grant Journal of Criminal Justice and Law: Official Journal of the Law and Public Policy Section of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Volume 3, Issue 1, pp. 59-75 (2019) 60 Talia Roitberg Harmon and David McCord essential details needed to comprehend a life sentence. To most, a life sentence is just another term of punishment proclaimed by a judge or a punishment authorized by lawmakers, but for children subjected to this penalty, a life term means they will spend their entire lives in prison, a remote and alien world, until they die. Life in prison means 24 hours a day, 365 days per year, in one cage or another, among outcasts who sit ostracized from a society that is unwilling to give them a chance to show they have changed. In considerable measure a consequence of the fear of juvenile “super-predators,” the transfer of juvenile defendants to adult courts increased in the 1990s (Adams & Addie, 2009; Mauer & Nellis, 2018). One salient example of the harsh sentences meted out to juveniles in adult courts is the life-without-parole sanction. Many juveniles were sentenced to this sanction on a mandatory basis. Between 1979 and 1996 alone, the number of juveniles serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole increased from 9 to 160 (Mauer & Nellis, 2018). But, in the 2012 case of Miller v. Alabama, the United States Supreme Court declared mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles unconstitutional because these sentences do not consider the unique characteristics of juveniles, which make them both less culpable for their crimes and more capable of reform than adults. The Supreme Court made this holding retroactive in Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016). Establishing just and viable alternative sanctions is the central issue addressed in this essay. As a result of the Supreme Court’s decisions, states with juveniles serving mandatory life terms must resentence them or make them eligible for parole. Importantly, a significant number of states have abolished parole, so their remedy would be to resentence individuals or develop a new parole-like scheme that provides these juveniles with an avenue of release if they have matured and developed over the course of their confinement. In addition, the fact that many juveniles are serving, or could be resentenced to, de facto life sentences—terms of years that, as a practical matter, amount to life sentences—necessitates a sentencing scheme that offers a meaningful alternative to sentences of life without parole. Although a juvenile could theoretically be resentenced to life without parole, the Supreme Court has made clear that “[a]fter Miller, it will be the rare juvenile offender who can receive that same sentence” (Montgomery v. Louisiana, 2016, p. 734). We propose a sentencing scheme consistent with the original Third Circuit opinion, United States v. Grant (2018),1 which held that non-incorrigible juveniles should have (a) a presumption of release before the age of retirement that (b) allows at least a chance for a fulfilling life in the free world. Our sentencing scheme takes into account the typical age of retirement in the United States, an individual’s life expectancy, and the number of years it will take for a juvenile lifer to reenter society with a meaningful opportunity to fashion a decent life before he or she dies. By following this sentencing framework, courts and states can comply with the United States Supreme Court’s mandate that only incorrigible juveniles should be subject to life without the possibility of parole.2 1 This decision was appealed by the government and heard en banc on February 20, 2019, by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. The Third Circuit’s decision is on hold pending the outcome in Mathena v. Malvo (2019), which is set for oral argument before the United States Supreme Court on October 16, 2019 (Order, United States v. Grant, 2019). 2 In some cases (e.g., Jones v. Commonwealth, 2017; State v. Nathan, 2017), courts have held that the Supreme Court’s holding applies only to mandatory sentences of life without parole, which is the issue in Mathena v. Malvo (2019). Journal of Criminal Justice and Law: 61 Official Journal of the Law and Public Policy Section of the Academy of Crimial Justice Sciences

An ethical decision-making model in assessment was newly developed using researcher-developed scenarios. In this article, the authors examined the usability of this newly-developed model by applying authentic scenarios involving ethical dilemmas proposed by classroom teachers. Thirty-three educators in a graduate-level online assessment course participated in the study to describe their overall ethical decision-making process with a real scenario that they or their colleagues experienced in classroom assessment. The current study provided evidence supporting the validation of the newly-developed ethical decision-making model using authentic scenarios. The model can be used for teacher professional development at the district level and in teacher education at the university level.

The purpose of this study was to compare pre-service teachers’ views of ethical issues in assessment practices in the US and China. Focus group interviews were conducted among 16 pre-service teachers from the US and 15 pre-service teachers from China. Results indicated that the inclusion of effort in grading is a key issue for the pre-service teachers in both the US and China. American pre-service teachers have more consistent views with experts regarding using multiple assessment methods and Communications about grading. Pre-service teachers in both countries appeared to have consistent views with experts regarding the confidentiality and standardized test preparation. The findings of this study can help build guidelines regarding ethical issues in classroom assessment.