the crime report

In a package of stories, The Economist magazine concludes that justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country. About 2.4 million Americans are behind bars, roughly one in every 100 adults. If those on parole or probation are included, one adult in 31 is under “correctional” supervision. As a proportion of its total population, America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan. Overcrowding is the norm. Federal prisons house 60% more inmates than they were designed for. State lock-ups are only slightly less stuffed. (more…)

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Five years after the Supreme Court held that the federal sentencing guidelines are no longer binding, judges for the most part continue to follow them, though there is an ever-growing divergence, say recent federal sentencing statistics reported by the New Jersey Law Journal. Judges still are struggling to grasp the degree of discretion the high court handed back to them when it held that the guidelines violate the Sixth Amendment right to a jury because they required harsher sentences based on facts found by judges rather than jurors. (more…)

Senior Associate

Public Safety Performance Project

Pew Center on the States

Nevada

jahorowitz@pewtrusts.org

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Faced with a serious overpopulation of Pennsylvania prisons and the need to ship inmates to other states, legislators may consider easing some harsh sentencing guidelines so that nonviolent offenders aren’t automatically sent to prison for lengthy terms, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. State Rep. Tom Caltagirone, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said judges should be given more latitude in deciding on sentences for minor offenses — leeway they don’t have now due to mandatory sentencing laws approved 10 or 20 years ago in the heyday of “lock ‘em up, throw away the key” thinking. (more…)

Frank Soffen, now 70 years old, has lived more than half his life in prison, and will likely die there.

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