The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/reforming-the-system/)
In some Wisconsin counties, inmates pay an average of $390 a month in pay-to-stay fees. Advocates say such fees can criminalize poverty, according to an investigation by Wisconsin Watch.
Risk assessments “can increase consistency, transparency and accuracy” of judicial decisions, said Jennifer Skeem, associate dean of research at the University of California, Berkeley.
Many Californians could see their criminal records expunged automatically starting in 2021 under a bill sent to Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday.
Underfunding of indigent defense services is a major factor driving mass incarceration and racial bias in the U.S. justice system, more than 50 years after the Supreme Court ruled that everyone has a right to a lawyer regardless of ability to pay, says the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law.
Advocates, joined by a state lawmaker, are fighting an uphill struggle to end the practice of suspending driver’s licenses for nonpayment of fines, in the face of resistance from courts who depend on the money to fund their operations.
Led by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and Civil Rights Corps, the groups urge candidates in the 2020 elections to support a “unified vision for transforming our criminal-legal system into one that respects the humanity, dignity, and rights of all people.”
The Vermont-based ice cream maker is highlighting what it calls structural racism and a broken criminal justice system. It is working with the Advancement Project on Missouri and Florida programs.
The newly created Duke Center for Science and Justice intends to focus on legal and scientific research in its efforts to reform the criminal justice system.
Attorney General William Barr’s recent tirade against reform-minded prosecutors is a thinly veiled attempt to undermine communities that have chosen to take back control of justice decisions from”colonialist” policymakers in Washington, writes TCR’s legal columnist.
In a sweeping report, the Prison Policy Initiative says that at least a quarter of the 4.9 million people arrested and booked in U.S. jails each year are repeat offenders, and the majority are “disproportionately black, low-income, less educated and unemployed.”