The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/washington-report/)
While members of Congress spar over how much of the big health care law they can kill, on a much smaller scale, the U.S. Justice Department has its own case of a federally funded effort that won’t go away, at least so far this year, no matter how hard lawmakers try.
Under get-tough anticrime laws from the 1980s and 1990s, prisoners’ average length of stay has grown in every state since 2000, a report by the Urban Institute finds.
Leading criminologists told a conference at George Mason University yesterday they believe President Trump will embrace evidence-based practices in his administration’s war on crime. Officials “on the front line have to know what works, and how to pay for it,” said Laurie Robinson, a former Obama justice official.
A unanimous decision said Los Angeles sheriffs’ deputies could not be held liable for using reasonable force against a man who appeared to be pointing a rifle at them, even though the deputies had entered the property without a warrant.
Tucked away in Trump’s $4.1 trillion budget last week was a note that the White House was calling for a $54.8 million cut in school safety research. There was no explanation for the cut. When The Crime Report asked DOJ for an explanation, it said it was awaiting results of the earlier research.
The proposal includes $44.1 billion for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and $27.7 billion for the Justice Department, including what the White House calls “critical law enforcement, public safety and immigration enforcement programs and activities.”
Members of both parties reintroduce a “safety valve” law that would give federal judges the power to impose sentences below mandatory minimums, TCR’s Washington bureau chief reports.
The nation’s leading academic group of criminologists says the administration has ignored “well-established science” in its tough-on-crime moves and crackdown on immigration. The statement by the American Society of Criminology board was the toughest criticism in recent memory of a sitting president.
The budget deal that keeps the federal government running through September 30 provides increases for several anticrime programs, particularly in the anti-drug and immigration enforcement areas. It also creates four “enforcement groups” to target heroin abuse and 10 new “immigration judge teams.”
The 18-month commission would review practices “ranging from overburdened courts and unsustainable incarceration costs to strained relationships between law enforcement and communities,” according to Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), one of the sponsors. It would be the first comprehensive review of the justice system in 50 years.