The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/corrections/prisoner-reentry/)
Because of a flawed “handoff” between prison and parole authorities, dozens of Nevada parolees per week get held past their release date, costing the state $1.6 million per year. That and other system flaws turned up in an audit performed this year.
First came a Florida voter initiative granting voting rights to people convicted of most felonies. Then legislators threw up barriers, only to be blocked by a court order. Now some prosecutors and judges have teamed up to find ways to work around the problems.
The record-setting $1 million-plus judgment last week against a Queens, NY developer who refused to rent to individuals with criminal records was a wake-up call to landlords across the nation who practice such “blanket bans,” writes the CEO of the Fortune Society.
Assuming he prevails in his election bid, incoming Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear plans to sign an order granting voting rights to more than 100,000 people with felony records. Incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin had blocked such a move.
A Queens, N.Y., landlord agreed to pay nearly $1.2 million for wrongly refusing to rent apartments to people who were previously incarcerated. The deal was hailed by the Fortune Society as an important legal precedent.
Ruling on a Florida measure aimed at restoring voting rights to felons, a federal judge said voting couldn’t be made contingent on paying fees, fines and restitution.
In a recent turn-the-tables exercise, some of the nation’s leading prosecutors experienced the confusion and frustration of incarcerated people released from prison. Their teachers: individuals who had been through it in real life.
Yes, according to a paper co-authored by Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., — but that means changing the “notion of what their jobs entail” to include working for expanded prisoner education and improved reentry strategies, as well as sentence reform.
A new lawsuit by former prisoners and the ACLU contests a law requiring former inmates to pay fees and fines before they can cast votes under an initiative restoring the right to vote for 1.4 million people.
The Housing Authority of New Orleans shortened the length of an applicant’s past that would be subject to a criminal background check and created a process for interviewing applicants on a case-by-case basis. Only one applicant has been denied in three years.