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As prison populations in the United States have soared over the last 30 years, offenders who are incarcerated for violating the conditions of their parole represent an increasingly large percentage of the overall population. Little is known, however, about who these offenders are, what they have done to be reincarcerated, or what factors make an offender more or less likely to succeed on parole. In this article, parole release data from the National Corrections Reporting Program are analyzed to identify individual-level predictors of parole success in four states and to assess the relative impact of demographic and legal factors on different offender groups (by race).

In this article, we document a shift in public conversations about punishment in the United States that has occurred as a result of a collision between the principles of punishment that have dominated public policy for the past three decades and the fiscal realities of the 21st century. Over the past three decades, legislators have created a conversation in which the inclusion of principles other than retribution and revenge is virtually impossible. This absence of practical considerations has led to policies that are, in many cases, outrageously expensive. During the past five years, many state governments have seen their expenses grossly outpace their revenues, leaving legislators now to face a reality in which the 'Get Tough' policies of the 1980s and 1990s are no longer economically sustainable. We argue that the changing fiscal situation provides a context in which the rhetoric of punishment is finally open to change, and we document some of the rhetorical shifts that occur.

In academic and policy circles, there is widespread optimism about the ability of reentry to change the terms of the punishment debate. In this article, we assess the impact of the reentry concept on discourse and reform in Colorado through analysis of the recent work of the Colorado Criminal and Juvenile Justice Commission. We identify two distinct reentry narratives, which we call the reintegration and recidivism reduction narratives. The reintegration narrative challenges dominant assumptions about punishment in ways consistent with the rehabilitation model, while the recidivism reduction narrative stays close to the retributive model. While the reintegration narrative was clearly present in the Colorado conversation about reform, most of the policy recommendations put forth were driven by the recidivism reduction narrative, in large part due to concerns about potential public perceptions of the Commission's work. We conclude that reentry has not only failed to change the discourse in any significant way, it has also served to further entrench the retributive framework of punishment.

The essays in this volume analyze strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and biographers interested in bringing the stories of early modern women to modern audiences. It also pays attention to the historical women creators themselves, who, be they saints or midwives, visual artists or poets and playwrights, stand out for their roles as active practitioners of their own arts and for their accomplishments as creators. Whether they delivered infants or governed as monarchs, or produced embroideries, letters, paintings or poems, their visions, the authors argue, have endured across the centuries. As the title of the volume suggests, the essays gathered here participate in a wider conversation about the relation between biography, historical fiction, and the growing field of biofiction (that is, contemporary fictionalizations of historical figures), and explore the complicated interconnections between celebrating early modern women and perpetuating popular stereotypes about them.

The essays in this volume analyze strategies adopted by contemporary novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, and biographers interested in bringing the stories of early modern women to modern audiences. It also pays attention to the historical women creators themselves, who, be they saints or midwives, visual artists or poets and playwrights, stand out for their roles as active practitioners of their own arts and for their accomplishments as creators. Whether they delivered infants or governed as monarchs, or produced embroideries, letters, paintings or poems, their visions, the authors argue, have endured across the centuries. As the title of the volume suggests, the essays gathered here participate in a wider conversation about the relation between biography, historical fiction, and the growing field of biofiction (that is, contemporary fictionalizations of historical figures), and explore the complicated interconnections between celebrating early modern women and perpetuating popular stereotypes about them.

This paper reports on a new methodology to estimate the "cost of crime." It is adapted from the contingent valuation method used in the environmental economics literature and is itself used to estimate the public's willingness to pay for crime control programs. In a nationally representative sample of 1,300 U.S. residents, we found that the typical household would be willing to pay between $100 and $150 per year for programs that reduced specific crimes by 10 percent in their communities. This willingness amounts, collectively, to approximately $25,000 per burglary, $70,000 per serious assault, $232,000 per armed