Jail policy-making in a federal context

This research is an analysis of jail policy-making in a federal context. It deals with two county jails in Houston, Texas. These jails are typical of the nation's jails in the following ways: inmate living conditions are clearly inhumane; the jails are components of a badly fractured criminal justice system; and, recently they have come under the careful scrutiny of a United States district court. The federal court became involved in the local policy process in 1972 when the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action suit on behalf of the prisoners in the jails against the local officials who are responsible for jail operations. During that same year, the voters elected a new sheriff. The sheriff is the chief corrections officer in Texas county government. The research questions addressed in this project are, What impact did the federal court, the ACLU, and the new sheriff have on the jail policy process, and what impact did they have on jail policy outputs? To answer these questions, policy-making during the pre-1972 period (1955-1971) is compared with policy making during the post-1972 period (1972-1977). The conclusion drawn from the comparison is that the federal court, the ACLU, and the sheriff had a great impact on the policy process and a moderate impact on policy outputs. A sequential framework which allows for a focus on the policy process as well as on policy content is used to structure the research project. The framework posits a policy sequence which is composed of five functional categories of activity: problem definition, policy formulation, policy adoption, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. The kinds of data considered in this project, classified by source, are documents and records, interviews, court testimony, and observations. The observation technique was used primarily in the jails. The period of observation extended over a nine-month period, and it was conducted during all hours of the day and night. The principal benefit of this technique is that it allows the researcher to be less dependent on his subject's willingness and ability to accurately describe his behavior. Also the observation method frees the researcher from depending on documents, records etc. for his study. Such benefits are particularly significant for policy analysis in which the concern is with what is done as well as with what is said and written.