The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/reforming-the-system/)
Glenn Martin of JustLeadership USA, which wants to cut the U.S. prison population in half by 2030, said, “I think what you do during the Trump administration is that you double down locally.”
Keir Bradford-Grey, chief defender of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, believes it will. In a conversation with The Crime Report, she argues that the work of local jurisdictions and community groups in developing problem-solving courts, diversion programs and other reforms will be hard to reverse.
Art collector Agnes Gund sells 1962 Roy Lichtenstein “Masterpiece” and donates most of the proceeds to start a project supporting criminal justice reform and reducing mass incarceration.
Criminal justice reforms finally passed this year in Louisiana as a result mostly of conservative groups that have taken up the mantle of prison reform and offered their blessing to GOP members who cast their votes for the changes.
Thousands of Michigan residents lose their driver’s licenses each year because they cannot pay their fines. Punishing people for being poor is bad public policy, writes the director of Equal Justice Under Law, a Washington, DC non-profit.
Preventing wrongful convictions and misconduct means fixing mistakes and flaws before they happen. That’s only possible if justice agencies (and the media) stop focusing exclusively on whom to blame for an error, and look at the circumstances that make errors possible.
“Hurt feelings are impacting meaningful discussion” about reform measures said the Heritage foundation’s John Malcolm. Some hope that President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will take a larger role in the issue.
Targeted Community Alternative to Prison reforms, which are included in Gov. John Kasich’s budget proposal, include eliminating mandatory prison sentences for minor parole violations and transferring low-level, non-violent to local jails or to drug treatment programs or other community-based alternatives.
Texas inmates on Death Row have been placed in mandatory solitary confinement since 1999— a situation that some advocates say leads to ‘human rights abuse.’ The problem isn’t limited to Texas.
Fordham law professor John Pfaff says the country needs to re-examine the way “politics and punishment interact.” In part 2 of an extended conversation with TCR about his book, “Locked In,” Pfaff focuses on what he believes is local prosecutors’ aggressively punitive approach to people convicted of violence.