Analyzing stakeholder perceptions of the Public Health Emergency Credit Act and decarceration during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Drawing from semi-structured interviews, this paper examines the perspectives of 14 criminal justice stakeholders who were integral in creating and implementing the New Jersey Public Health Emergency Credits Act (2020). Stakeholders, including police administrators, corrections administrators, parole administrators, prison health administrators, and reentry service organization administrators, were interviewed. Stakeholders shared their viewpoints through three phases of the bill (pre-implementation, implementation, and post-implementation), highlighting their struggles with the lack of time and resources to support individuals upon their release, which later impacted their supervision capabilities. Implications suggest that future decarceration efforts may benefit from augmented planning and coordination.

KEYWORDS:

• Decarceration
• COVID-19
• qualitative methods
• legislation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anthony M. Azari

Anthony M. Azari is a Ph.D. Student in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers Newark. His research interests focus on decarceration policy, problem-solving courts, and risk assessments. His work can be found in Federal Probation, Criminal Justice and Behavior, and Criminal Justice Review.

Colleen M. Berryessa

Colleen M. Berryessa is an Assistant Professor at the Rutgers University School of Criminal Justice. Her research, utilizing both qualitative and quantitative methods, considers how psychological processes, perceptions, attitudes, and social contexts affect the criminal justice system, particularly related to courts, sentencing, and forms of punishment broadly defined. She received her Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.A. in Government and Mind, Brain, and Behavior from Harvard University.