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By mentor, August 15, 2010 6:47 pm

It’s really a lie of epic proportion, a distortion so great that it turns reality on its head. Yet immigration hardliners in the Congress and their lickspittles in the right-wing media have used it to convince a sizable chunk of the population that the federal government refuses, or at least has shown little zeal, to “enforce the law.” A Google search for “federal government won’t enforce immigration laws” returns 25 million hits; the narrative is often used to justify harsh local ordinances like Arizona’s draconian SB 1070.

via The Right-Wing Hardliner Immigration Approach Would Create a Police State — Is That What Those Supposed Freedom Lovers Want? | Immigration | AlterNet.

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By mentor, August 4, 2010 5:37 pm

Yesterday, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law. Though this new law retains an unjustifiable federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses, it is a remarkable criminal justice reform measure. Ten years ago, advocates working to repeal the notorious 100-to-1 sentencing disparity were thought of as naïve. Yet 2010 saw a bipartisan bill aimed at reforming a mandatory minimum actually get through Congress and receive the president’s signature for the first time since the Nixon administration. Yesterday’s passage of the Fair Sentencing Act is one of several recent developments signaling that the political landscape of criminal justice reform truly has shifted — perhaps not seismically, but significantly. The opportunity to cut and reform our bloated, inefficient system is now.

via Vanita Gupta: From Incredible to Inevitable: How the Politics of Criminal Justice Reform May Be Shifting.

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By mentor, July 28, 2010 9:30 pm

Earlier this month the DEA conducted several coordinated raids of California medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives. The federal agents raided a medical marijuana farm in the northern county of Mendocino, as well as a dispensary in San Diego. They destroyed all the marijuana plants and seized the grower’s computer and cash from the property.

Problem is, these DEA raids are in direct opposition to the directive issued by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder last year that designated raids on legal medical marijuana dispensaries to “not be a priority” for the DEA. The places raided by the DEA were not just in total compliance with state and local laws, but the raided farm was the very first to come into legal compliance with local authorities.

via What Part of “Not a Priority” Does the DEA Not Understand? | FDL Action.

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By mentor, June 22, 2010 6:54 pm

With the highest incarceration rate in the world, in 2008 the U.S. puts one out of every 48 working-age men behind bars and spent $75 billion on corrections, the majority of which was spent on incarceration. To make matters worse, a new study released by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) found that the $40 billion jump in state spending on corrections between 1988 and 2008 outpaced nearly every other state budget item, painting a bleak picture of incarceration in the U.S. and the resulting budgetary strain on the states.

As this Dispatch will outline, U.S. incarceration rates have far outpaced the growth in the population because inflexible policies from “truth in sentencing” to mandatory minimum laws have meant non-violent offenses crowd prisons without probation and parole being used to end the budgetary costs of keeping all of them in prison.

Partly due to recognition that filling prisons with non-violent offenders is a waste of human potential and partly because of the current budget crisis, states are beginning to reform their prison and sentencing policies to reduce bloated incarceration rates. Some states are engaging in emergency cuts in prison populations while others are more systematically cutting back or eliminating entirely the mandatory minimum and other rigid sentencing rules that fill prisons in the first place.

States are also directing some of the funds that will be saved from lower incarceration rates to helping ex-felons integrate back into the communities which they will be returning after prison. Such reentry programs recognize that investing in communities can replace the costs of incarceration with jobs and productive activity that actually generate economic development, tax revenues and a safer environment for all residents.

via Alternatives to Incarceration Can Save Millions for Cash-Strapped States | Progressive States Network.

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By mentor, June 10, 2010 8:48 pm

The United States currently incarcerates a higher share of its population than any other country in the world. We calculate that a reduction in incarceration rates just to the level we had in 1993 (which was already high by historical standards) would lower correctional expenditures by $16.9 billion per year, with the large majority of these savings accruing to financially squeezed state and local governments. As a group, state governments could save $7.6 billion, while local governments could save $7.2 billion.

These cost savings could be realized through a reduction by one-half in the incarceration rate of exclusively non-violent offenders, who now make up over 60 percent of the prison and jail population.

via The High Budgetary Cost of Incarceration.

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By mentor, June 7, 2010 12:41 pm

Wales, Wis. » After struggling for years to treat young criminals in razor wire-ringed institutions, states across the country are quietly shuttering dozens of reformatories amid plunging juvenile arrests, softer treatment policies and bleak budgets.

In Ohio, the number of juvenile offenders has plummeted by nearly half over the past two years, pushing the state to close three facilities. California’s closures include a youth institution near Los Angeles that operated for nearly 115 years. And one in Texas will finally go quiet after getting its start as a World War II-era training base.

The closures have juvenile advocates cheering.

“I can tell you it’s the best thing they can do,” said Aaron Kupchik, a University of Delaware criminologist. “Incarceration does nobody any good. You’re taking away most of their chance for normal development.”

via States closing youth prisons – Salt Lake Tribune.

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By mentor, April 14, 2010 3:40 pm

Several states have embraced ‘justice reinvestment’ as a way of reducing prison populations. But it still causes jitters among many legislators.

With most American prison cells full and state budgets hurting, “justice reinvestment” seems like an attractive concept. Why not spend taxpayer dollars on rehabilitation programs that may break the cycle of re-imprisonment instead of on expensive housing for criminals behind bars?

Indeed, the reinvestment idea has made good headway. A dozen states have adopted or at least are seriously considering its principles. A bill is making its way through Congress that would provide more federal funding to test it in other states.

The idea started in 2003 in Connecticut, where state leaders were disturbed about being asked to spend increasing sums on prison building and maintenance while many released inmates committed new crimes. “They wanted to know what taxpayers were paying and what they were getting for it,” says Marshall Clement of the Council of State Governments CSG Justice Center, which provides states with advice on governance and has been a leader in promoting the justice reinvestment concept.

via The Crime Report » Archive » Is There a Better Way to Spend Anti-Crime $$$?.

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By mentor, March 16, 2010 10:38 am

Criminologists have slated the nature of Australia’s prison system, saying billions of dollars are being poured into jails that fail to reform offenders and improve community safety.

Figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics ABS reveal that almost 60 per cent of people in prison last year had been in jail before.

The bureau also tracked a group of 30,000 inmates released between 1994 and 1997 and found that teenagers had the highest reimprisonment rate, with three out of five returning to jail within 10 years.

Of the entire group 40 per cent were reimprisoned within 10 years, suggesting prisons may foster further criminal behaviour for some offenders.

Experts say the system is outdated and in desperate need of change.

via Billions wasted on ‘revolving door’ jail system – ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

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By mentor, March 9, 2010 10:59 am

LOS ANGELES — James Gray once saw himself as a drug warrior, a former federal prosecutor and county judge who sent people to prison for dealing pot and other drug offenses. Gradually, though, he became convinced that the ban on marijuana was making it more accessible to young people, not less.

“I ask kids all the time, and they’ll tell you it is easier to get marijuana than a six-pack of beer because that is controlled by the government,” he said, noting that drug dealers don’t ask for IDs or honor minimum age requirements.

So Gray — who spent two decades as a superior court judge in Orange County, Calif., and once ran for Congress as a Republican— switched sides in the war on drugs, becoming an advocate for legalizing marijuana.

“Let’s face reality,” he says. “Taxing and regulating marijuana will make it less available to children than it is today.”

via Slowly, states are lessening limits on marijuana – USATODAY.com.

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By mentor, March 8, 2010 6:57 am

Something is afoot in America’s most “law-and-order” state. The number of people sent to death row is declining.

On Sept. 21, 2006, Juan Quintero, an undocumented Mexican national, was arrested after a routine traffic stop in Houston. The arresting officer, Rodney Johnson, frisked and cuffed Quintero, who was driving without a license, before placing him in the back seat of his patrol car. But Johnson missed the gun that Quintero had hidden on him. Moments later, as Johnson sat in the front seat writing up a report, Quintero fired seven times, killing the officer.

Johnson’s murder shocked Houston. But what happened afterwards may have been just as startling. Juries in Harris County (where Houston is located) were once notable for handing down death sentences. They stood out even in Texas, long a pro-death penalty state. During the 1990s the county sent more than a dozen convicted felons a year to death row—a larger number than some states—and currently accounts for more than a third of the inmates on Texas’ death row (106 of 332).

Nevertheless, Quintero received a life sentence following his trial in May 2008. Even his gruesome attack on a police officer did not alter the change of heart that has apparently transformed Houston from what anti-capital punishment advocates once dubbed the “capital of capital punishment” into a death-penalty-free zone.

It has, in fact, been more than two years since any Harris County jury has imposed a death sentence. The Quintero case, says Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) was a graphic demonstration that Texas is no longer ”so reliant on the death penalty.”

Statistics bear that out. Last year, the number of new death sentences handed down in Texas dropped to nine, the lowest number since the state revived the death penalty in 1976, and down from nearly 30 in 2003. That’s a remarkable contrast to the peak years in the late 1990s, when as many as 48 people a year would be sent to death row, according to the TCADP’s annual report on the state of Texas’ death penalty.

via The Crime Report » Archive » The Death Penalty in Texas: A Change of Heart?.

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