Links

• Securing Justice: Reforming Our Criminal Legal System
• Summary Page
• 2000 Winning Essay by Peter Buttigieg – Bernie Sanders (JFK Library)
• Pete Buttigieg has been criticized for his handling of policing. He hopes his criminal justice plan will change that. (Vox)
• Buttigieg Raised $19.1 Million in Third Quarter, Campaign Says (Yahoo News)

Links

• Kamala’s Plan to Transform the Criminal Justice System and Re-envision Public Safety in America

[Joe Biden] was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 at the age of 29, becoming the fifth youngest senator in history. – Britannica

• How Kamala Harris’ death penalty decisions broke hearts on both sides (CNN)
• Kamala Harris Touts Her Opposition to the Death Penalty. Her Track Record’s More Complicated (Mother Jones)
• Kamala Harris’s criminal justice reform plan, explained (Vox)
• Kamala Harris, Progressive Prosecutor? (On The Media, NPR)
• Kamala Harris Was Not a ‘Progressive Prosecutor’ (New York Times)

Links

• The Biden Plan for Strengthening America’s Commitment to Justice
• SAFE Justice Act (Bobby Scott)
• The Reverse Incarceration Act (The Brennan Center)
• Decriminalization Versus Legalization of Marijuana (Thought Co.)

Links

• Rethinking Public Safety to Reduce Mass Incarceration and Strengthen Communities (Team Warren)

The United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, but nearly 20% of the world’s prison population. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with over 2 million people in prison and jail.

Our system is the result of the dozens of choices we’ve made — choices that together stack the deck against the poor and the disadvantaged. Simply put, we have criminalized too many things. We send too many people to jail. We keep them there for too long. We do little to rehabilitate them. We spend billions, propping up an entire industry that profits from mass incarceration. And we do all of this despite little evidence that our harshly punitive system makes our communities safer — and knowing that a majority of people currently in prison will eventually return to our communities and our neighborhoods.

• The federal government oversees just 12% of the incarcerated population (PDF) (Bureau of Justice Statistics)

Links

• Rethinking Public Safety to Reduce Mass Incarceration and Strengthen Communities (Team Warren)

The United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, but nearly 20% of the world’s prison population. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with over 2 million people in prison and jail.

Our system is the result of the dozens of choices we’ve made — choices that together stack the deck against the poor and the disadvantaged. Simply put, we have criminalized too many things. We send too many people to jail. We keep them there for too long. We do little to rehabilitate them. We spend billions, propping up an entire industry that profits from mass incarceration. And we do all of this despite little evidence that our harshly punitive system makes our communities safer — and knowing that a majority of people currently in prison will eventually return to our communities and our neighborhoods.

• Debtors’ Prisons, Then and Now: FAQ (The Marshall Project)
• Dispelling Myths About Poverty (Equal Justice Under Law)

Preventing a mother from visiting her sons in prison because she cannot afford to pay parking tickets is wealth-based discrimination. Forcing someone to leave town because their mobile home is not worth enough is wealth-based discrimination. Keeping someone in jail prior to trial simply because they cannot afford bail — while those who can afford bail go free — is wealth-based discrimination. In all of these examples (and many more), people are penalized just for a lack of financial means.

• A Fair and Welcoming Immigration System (Team Warren)
• Some brain wiring continues to develop well into our 20s (Science Daily)
• Minimum Age for Delinquency Adjudication—Multi-Jurisdiction Survey (National Juvenile Defender Center)

While every state (and territory) sets a maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction (in most states it is 18), in about two thirds of the states (and territories), there is no statute that specifies a minimum age under which a child cannot be adjudicated delinquent.

In those states without a statutory minimum, there is nothing legally preventing the state from prosecuting even the youngest of children. This runs contrary to all of the scientific research and emerging case law that recognizes children are inherently less culpable than adults and that the younger a person, the less competent he or she may be.

Links

• Bernie Sanders – Justice and Safety For All (Bernie Sanders)

For most of our history as a country, the United States incarcerated people at about the same rates as other western democracies do today. In the early 1970s we had the same low crime rate as today, but we now have an incarceration rate five times higher. Indeed, America is now the world’s leading jailer. We lock up more than 2 million people in America, which is more of our own people than any country on Earth. And that does not include another 5 million people who are under the supervision of the correctional system.

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people in America have not been convicted of a crime and are solely in jail because they can’t afford their bail. We are criminalizing poverty.

• Second Chance Act (2007) (Wikipedia)
• 14-year-old to be tried as an adult in killing of 16-year-old (Baltimore Sun)
• 14-year-old charged as an adult for the rape and murder of an 83-year-old woman (USA Today)
• Cruel and Unusual Punishment: Confining Juveniles with Adults After Graham and Miller (Emory Law)

Thousands of juveniles are currently confined with adults in detention and correctional facilities throughout the United States. Juveniles confined in adult facilities face grave dangers to their safety and well-being, including significantly higher rates of physical assault, sexual abuse, and suicide than their counterparts in juvenile facilities. These dangers and other conditions of juvenile confinement with adults give rise to concerns of constitutional dimension. In its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, the United States Supreme Court has created categorical rules prohibiting the imposition of certain punishments on entire categories of offenders as cruel and unusual punishment. The Court’s 2010 decision in Graham v. Florida, in which it held that a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole violates the Eighth Amendment when applied to juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses, and its 2012 decision in Miller v. Alabama, in which it held that mandatory life-without-parole sentencing schemes violate the Eighth Amendment when applied to juveniles, open the door to challenge the constitutionality of the confinement of juveniles with adults.

• Supreme Court restricts life without parole for juveniles (Washington Post)

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Juveniles may not be sentenced to life in prison without parole for any crime short of homicide, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday, expanding its command that young offenders must be treated differently from adults even for heinous crimes.

The court ruled 5 to 4 that denying juveniles who have not committed homicide a chance to ever rejoin society is counter to national and “global” consensus and violates the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The decision follows the court’s 2005 decision that, no matter what crime they commit, juveniles may not be executed. It also reinforced the court’s view that the Eighth Amendment’s protections against harsh punishment must be interpreted in light of the country’s “evolving standards of decency.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said states must provide juveniles who receive lengthy sentences a “meaningful” chance at some point to show they should be released.

• Minimum Age for Delinquency Adjudication—Multi-Jurisdiction Survey (National Juvenile Defender Center)

While every state (and territory) sets a maximum age of juvenile court jurisdiction (in most states it is 18), in about two thirds of the states (and territories), there is no statute that specifies a minimum age under which a child cannot be adjudicated delinquent.

In those states without a statutory minimum, there is nothing legally preventing the state from prosecuting even the youngest of children. This runs contrary to all of the scientific research and emerging case law that recognizes children are inherently less culpable than adults and that the younger a person, the less competent he or she may be.

• Florida passed Amendment 4. That could be good news for Democrats (Pacific Standard)

A study published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in 2014 found that, in New York, New Mexico, and North Carolina, felons favored the Democratic Party. In New York, some 62 percent were registered Democrats, compared to 9 percent who registered Republican; in New Mexico, 52 percent were Democrats, while about 10 percent were Republicans; and about 54 percent were Democrats in North Carolina, compared to the roughly 10 percent who were Republicans.

• Ep. 5 - How do we know what works? – Episode where we discuss “Ban the Box”
• Violence Against Women Act (Wikipedia)
• Guards Waited Hours to Stop a Prison Riot That Left 7 Inmates Dead (The New York Times)

Links

• Bernie Sanders – Justice and Safety For All (Bernie Sanders)

For most of our history as a country, the United States incarcerated people at about the same rates as other western democracies do today. In the early 1970s we had the same low crime rate as today, but we now have an incarceration rate five times higher. Indeed, America is now the world’s leading jailer. We lock up more than 2 million people in America, which is more of our own people than any country on Earth. And that does not include another 5 million people who are under the supervision of the correctional system.

Hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people in America have not been convicted of a crime and are solely in jail because they can’t afford their bail. We are criminalizing poverty.

• Sanders’s Criminal-Justice Plan Is Wrong in So Many Ways (National Review)

It’s based on the false premise that the justice system is draconian and racially oppressive, and it ignores that most prisoners are in state, not federal, prisons.

• Ferguson, MO and Police Militarization: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (YouTube)
• Civil Forfeiture: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (YouTube)
• Indiana Risk Assessment System (Indiana)

Assessments are utilized to determine specific criminal risk factors and needs. They may be used by courts, probation, community corrections, institutional facilities, and can be used to assist with determining pre-trial release, sentencing, supervision intensity, and treatment needed (i.e. cognitive behavioral, mental health, and substance abuse.)

Links

• Jeffrey Epstein (Wikpedia)
• Ep. 15 - The Meaning of Life, with Marc Mauer
• Journalists should examine the leading cause of jail deaths, in light of Jeffrey Epstein (Poynter)
• The Daily Show with Trevor Noah clip (YouTube)
• Last Week Tonight with John Oliver clip (YouTube)
• Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000–2013 - Statistical Tables (PDF) (Department of Justice)

Suicide has been the leading cause of death in jails every year since 2000. In 2013, a third (34%) of jail inmate deaths were due to suicide. The suicide rate increased 14%, from 40 suicides per 100,000 jail inmates in 2012 to 46 per 100,000 in 2013.

• AP Investigation: Many US jails fail to stop inmate suicides (AP)

Suicide, long the leading cause of death in U.S. jails, hit a high of 50 deaths for every 100,000 inmates in 2014, the latest year for which the government has released data. That’s 2½ times the rate of suicides in state prisons and about 3½ times that of the general population.

• Metropolitan Correctional Center (Federal Bureau of Prisons)
• National Study of Jail Suicide: 20 Years Later (PDF) (National Institute of Corrections)

Following are some findings regarding characteristics of the suicide victims:• Sixty-seven percent were white.

• 93% were male.
• The average age was 35.
• 42% were single.
• 43% were held on a personal and/or violent charge.
• 47% had a history of substance abuse.
• 28% had a history of medical problems.
• 38% had a history of mental illness.
• 20% had a history of taking psychotropic medication.
• 34% had a history of suicidal behavior.

• Preventing Suicide in Jails and Prisons (PDF) (World Health Organization)

Suicide is often the single most common cause of death in correctional settings. Jails, prisons and penitentiaries are responsible for protecting the health and safety of their inmate populations, and the failure to do so, can be open to legal challenge. Further fuelled by media interest, a suicide in correctional facility can easily escalate into a political scandal. Moreover, suicidal behaviour by custodial inmates means a stressful event for officers and other prisoners faced with it. Therefore, the provision of adequate suicide prevention and intervention services is both beneficial to the prisoners in custody, as well as to the institution in which the services are offered. It is within this context that correctional settings worldwide struggle with the problem of preventing inmate suicide.

• Alaska Gov. Bill Walker introduces Walt Monegan (YouTube)

Follow Roger Przybylski’s work at:

• RKC Group
• Implementing Evidence-Based Practices (PDF)
• What Works - Effective Recidivism Reduction and Risk-Focused Prevention Programs (PDF)
• Special Issue on Evidence-Based Policy and Practice – Introduction (PDF)

Links

• National Criminal Justice Reform Project (NCJA)
• National Governors Association (Wikipedia)
• Formative Evalutation (Wikipedia)
• Summative Evaluation (Wikipedia)
• Types of summative assessment and formative assessment (ResourceEd)

“When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative [evaluation]. When the guests taste the soup, that’s summative [evaluation].”

– Robert E. Stake, Professor Emeritus of Education at the University of Illinois

Follow Marc Mauer’s work at:

• The Sentencing Project
• End Life Imprisonment
• The Meaning of Life: The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences (Amazon)

Links

• Sentator Gerald Malloy (South Carolina State House)
• Charles “Joe” Heinz (Wikipedia)
• Vera Institute of Justice (Wikipedia)
• Racial Impact Statements: Changing Policies to Address Disparities (The Sentencing Project)

In reaction to a study that found Iowa topped the nation in racial disparity in its prison population, Iowa Governor Chet Culver in April 2008 made history by signing into law the nation’s first piece of legislation to require policy makers to prepare racial impact statements for proposed legislation that affects sentencing, probation, or parole policies. In signing the bill, Gov. Culver noted that “I am committed to making sure government at all levels reflects our shared values of fairness and justice.” In the following months Connecticut and Wisconsin took similar action.

• James Bell (Burns Institute)
• Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers (National Criminal Justice Reference Service)
• Life Without Redemption (US News)

“One in every seven prisoners is serving some type of life sentence.”

– Marc Mauer

• Louisiana Amendment 2, Unanimous Jury Verdict for Felony Trials Amendment (2018) (BallotPedia)

• Louisiana Court Declares State’s Non-unanimous Jury Verdict Scheme Unconstitutional, Motivated by Racial Discrimination (Shadow Proof)
• The Angolite is the inmate-edited and published magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. (Wikipedia)
• Cory Booker aims to give aging prisoners ‘a second look’ (NBC News)
• Hillary Clinton Calls for an End to ‘Mass Incarceration’ (Time)
• Marc’s Recommendations for organizations to support:
  • ACLU - Smart Justice
  • Just Leadership USA
  • Drop LWOP

Links

• Decarceration Strategies – How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions (PDF, The Sentencing Project)

  • Connecticut: Declined 25%, 2007-2016

    • Focused on reducing young people’s contact with the justice system through reducing school suspensions, changing criteria for detention, and raising the age of adult jurisdiction from 16 to 18.

  • Michigan: Declined 20%, 2006-2016

    • Increased parole grants by expanding capacity of the parole board, and reduced returns to prison by establishing Technical Rule Violator centers for enhanced programming and services.

  • Mississippi: Declined 17.5%, 2008-2016

    • Reduced time served in prison by scaling back the “truth in sentencing” policy from 85% time served to 25%, and applied changes retroactively; adopted a risk assessment instrument that contributed to doubling of parole approval rate.

  • Rhode Island: Declined 23%, 2008-2016

    • Reduced time served in prison by establishing earned-time credits of 10 days per month, and eliminated mandatory sentences for drug crimes.

  • South Carolina: Declined 14%, 2008-2016

    • Reduced parole violator revocations to prison through diversion to alternative sanctions and reduced returns of 17-25 year-olds through enhanced job-related prison programming and Intensive Aftercare reentry services.

• Gina Raimondo (Wikipedia)

• Racial Disparity Map (The Sentencing Project)

  Rhode Island exceeds the national disparity index (8 to 1, Blacks to Whites incarcerated in Rhode Island versus 5 to 1 nationally)

• A Review of the Jail Function Within State Unified Corrections Systems (PDF, National Institute of Corrections)

• Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers, by Dennis Schrantz and Jerry McElroy (The Sentencing Project)

• Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s Jobs Video (YouTube, 2016)

• The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander (Amazon)

  

• Cornel West (Wikipedia)

• 13th (Netflix Documentary)

• The New Jim Crow Study Guide and Call to Action (Amazon)

  

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But, conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right”

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Proper Sense of Priorities”, February 6, 1968

• Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (Wikipedia)
• Why Your Brain Wants To Help One Child In Need — But Not Millions (NPR, Hidden Brain)
• We Followed Obama During His Visit To A Federal Prison | HBO Special Report (YouTube, Vice)

Links

• Economic Impact of Sentencing Reform Act Initiatives on the Economy, David Hughes, Ph.D, Clemson University, Clemson Institute for Economic and Community Development, 2.28.14 (PDF, South Carolina State House)

Based on a 2011 report conducted by the United States (U.S.) Government Accountability Office, and on data taken from a factsheet produced by the Children’s Defense Fund for South Carolina (2011), we estimated that 25 children are not in foster care and three children were not adopted out of foster care because of SRA initiatives.

When we examine impacts of SRA initiatives implemented by the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services for the three year period, the cumulative impact on the South Carolina economy is $50.896 million.

• Sandhill Research and Education Center (Clemson)
• Ep. 10 - Trust the Methodology, in which we discussed the Koch Brothers
• Senator Gerald Malloy
• Kwame Kilpatrick (Wikipedia)
• Ep. 8 - Unemployment, Before and After Prison, in which we discussed the importance of employment after prison
• Incarceration and Race in Michigan: Grounding the National Debate in State Practice (Amazon)

Links

• Criminal Defense Lawyer (Wikipedia)
• Judges are more lenient after taking a break, study finds (The Guardian)
• Failure to Appear (Wikipedia)
• Economic Impact of Sentencing Reform Act Initiatives on the Economy, David Hughes, Ph.D, Clemson University, Clemson Institute for Economic and Community Development, 2.28.14 (PDF, South Carolina State House)
• Victim offender reconciliation (National Institute of Corrections)
• ‘Close to a breaking point’: Public defenders walk off job over high caseloads (KATU)

  Law school was insanely expensive. I have colleagues who came out of law school with a quarter-million dollars in educational debt. Every year that I’ve been a public defender, I have taken on more cases than I had the year before. … I had 531 new cases last year, which is 131 more than the ABA recommends.

Links

• Michigan spending one-fifth of its general fund budget on prisoners (USA Today)

It cost the state — and by extension, taxpayers — an average of $36,106 to incarcerate a single person in Michigan in 2017.

You can buy a new Ford Explorer for that, according to Kelley Blue Book.

At that rate, a single prisoner sentenced to 30 or more years would cost Michigan taxpayers more than $1 million to incarcerate.

• Budget Briefing: Corrections (pdf) (Michigan House of Representatives)

FY 2018-19 MDOC Budget

$2,019,056,200 – Total spending authority from all revenue sources

• “Fix the damn roads” - Gretchen Whitmer
• The Second Chance Act of 2007 (Wikipedia)

Links

• Ep. 5 – How do we know what works?, in which we discussed Jennifer Doleac’s work previously.
• Jennifer Doleac’s thread on Twitter

Working on criminal justice topics gives me a very different perspective on the Kochs than my equally-liberal friends & family have. Charles Koch Foundation & Charles Kock Institute are perhaps the most important funders of research related to criminal justice policy & reform.

They also frequently host conferences that bring top-notch researchers and practitioners together in one room — a chance to meet everyone else who’s working in this space. In other words, they throw great parties — sounds trivial but this is super important & helpful!

Charles Koch Foundation has funded my own work related to prisoner reentry and I am deeply grateful for that as well as their broader support of my research. My contacts there & Charles Kock Institute are the first I call if I’m looking for practioner contacts. They know everyone!

As funders they are extremely hands-off — to a degree that is almost funny. I think they know people are watching them closely for missteps so are super careful. But most funders in this space have strong opinions abt what you should study & what you should find. They don’t.

Koch Industries for a long time was a major proponent of Ban the Box policies. When my research on BTB (which they did not fund) came out, showing detrimental effects, they were eager to hear about it & engage w the results. I really appreciated that.

To my fellow liberals that love to hate the Koch brothers, I simply say: the story is more complicated (as always, right?). Charles Koch in particular is enabling & supporting evidence-based CJ reform in red & blue states alike, and that is something we should all appreciate.

• “Ban the Box” does more harm than good, by Jennifer Doleac, May 31, 2016 (Brookings)
• Arnold Foundation
• Laura Arnold’s Podcast (Apple Podcasts)
• The Replication Crisis (Wikipedia)
• The File Drawer Problem (Wikipedia)
• Academic Tenure (Wikipedia)

Example of Correlation-Causation Escalation

• Periodontal Disease Bacteria Linked To Alzheimer’s Disease (American Academy of Periodontology)

The study, published in the journal Science Advances, uncovered a potential link between P. gingivalis, the bacteria associated with periodontal disease (commonly known as gum disease) and Alzheimer’s.

• Porphyromonas gingivalis in Alzheimer’s disease brains: Evidence for disease causation and treatment with small-molecule inhibitors (Science Advances)

Infectious agents have been found in the brain and postulated to be involved with AD, but robust evidence of causation has not been established.

Links

• Broken promises and lost funding: how Mississippi prison reform failed (The Guardian)

Between 1993 and 2013, Mississippi’s prison population more than quadrupled, thanks largely to mandatory minimum sentences, with the population peaking in the past decade at more than 23,000. The state had a higher per capita rate of incarceration than countries such as China or Russia.

By the time the bill became law in July 2014, the Mississippi Parole Board was paroling more offenders and had already reduced the prison population by about 2,000 inmates. Within six months, it fell even more, to below 19,000.

• Miss. locks up more per capita than China and Russia (Clarion Ledger)
• Pew predicted that by 2024 Mississippi would save $266 million (PDF) (Pew Charitable Trusts)
• Assessment platforms, discussed in detail on Ep 4 – Racial Disparity:
  • Northpointe’s COMPAS (Equivalent)
  • Ohio Risk Assessment System (NICIC)
  • Level of Service Inventory - Revised (MHS)
• Build vs. Buy (Wikipedia)
• Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting (MCIR)
• Judge Keith Starrett (Wikipedia)
• Miss. prison chief accused of bribery, money laundering (USA Today)

Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps was indicted Thursday, Nov. 6, 2014, on charges of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud. Epps resigned from his post Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2014.

• The Pew Charitable Trusts (Wikipedia)
• Center for Effective Public Policy (CEPP)
• Downscaling Prisons – Lessons From Four States, 2010, by Judith Greene and Marc Mauer
• Brad Bogue, director of J-SAT (LinkedIn)
• Pew Charitable Trusts – Washington, D.C. Headquarters

Links

• Unemployment benefits in Denmark (Wikipedia)
• Soft Skills (Wikipedia)
• Center for Employment Opportunities, in New York City
• New Orleans Business Alliance
• United Way Prosperity Center, South Eastern Louisiana (United Way)
• Work and opportunity before and after incarceration (Brookings)

• Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA)
• Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Integrated Reentry and Employment Strategies – Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Job Readiness (PDF) (BJA)

Links

• Judith Greene, Director of Justice Strategies (Justice Strategies)
• Bailing Out Private Jails, by Judith Greene (The American Prospect)
• Michael Jordan has NOT invested in prisons (Earth The Necklace)
• Marc Mauer, of the Sentencing Project (Wikipedia)
• Ankle Monitor (Wikipedia)

Links

• DOJ: Alabama prisoners exposed to horrifying violence, rape; murders a ‘regular’ occurrence (USA Today)
• Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Wikipedia)
• Inmates at Kentucky prison build teddy bears to give back to children (WKYT)
• Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Wikipedia)

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

• Give Working Prisoners Dignity — and Decent Wages (National Review)
• Angola Prison – Louisiana State Penetentiary (Wikipedia)
• Lansing Prison Visit, Part 1 (Original Buffalo Dale)

There is also an embroidery shop which makes all the hats for the NCAA, the NFL, major league baseball teams and companies such as Gear and Sprint. In addition there are several other smaller shops that make goods of various kinds, all with inmate labor. It is quite fascinating and keeping these men busy I believe is the reason this area seems so tranquil. There are several private companies that work inside the walls and supply “civilian” crew bosses who teach the inmates how to operate the machinery and provide them with a trade if they don’t have one.

At any given time there are 500-600 men working in the industrial division on three 8-hour shifts — 24 hours a day if needed. They are paid minimum prevailing wage to start and 25 percent goes back to the penitentiary for room and board. Ten percent is put into mandatory savings, a small amount is paid into each inmates commissary account and the balance is paid into a victims’ restitution fund.

• Prison Labor Stats (Prison Policy Initiative)

• Minimum wage in the United States, in dollars per hour: $5.15
• Average hourly rate paid at a prison camp in Nevada: $0.13
• Maximum wage paid to prisoner workers in dollars per day in Georgia and Texas: $0
• Most prisons that pay prisoners for work have a range of pay depending on the job. Average of the minimum wages for prisoners paid by the states, in dollars per day for non-industry work: $0.93
• Average of the maximum wages paid to prisoners by the states, in dollars per day: $4.73
• Lowest wage reported, in dollars per day, for prisoners working in private industry: $0.16

• NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard (Wikipedia)

• You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear (The Free Dictionary)

• Propensity Score Matching (Wikipedia)

• United Way Prosperity Center, South Eastern Louisiana (United Way)

Links

• EconTalk – Jennifer Doleac on Crime (EconTalk)
• Jennifer Doleac
• Randomized Controlled Trial (Wikipedia)
• Ban the Box (Wikipedia)
• Unintended Consequences: How “Ban the Box” Backfires for Minority Job Seekers (UVA Today)
• Propensity Score Matching (Wikipedia)
• United Way Prosperity Center, South Eastern Louisiana (United Way)

Links

• New Zealand bans suspect’s manifesto (The Detroit News)

• The New Jim Crowe, by Michelle Alexander (Wikipedia)

• Jack Maple – creator of CompStat methodology that reduced crime in NYC but ultimately lead to arrest quotas (Wikipedia)

• North Carolina Jury Sunshine Project findings (Wake Forest University)

  1. Women and men serve on felony trial juries at about the same rate.
  2. Prosecutors remove twice as many potential black jurors at trial as white jurors (20 percent of available black jurors compared with 10 percent of available white jurors).
  3. Judges remove 14 percent of available black jurors compared with 10 percent of available white jurors.
  4. Defense attorneys remove white jurors more often: they exclude 22 percent of the available white jurors versus 10 percent of the available black jurors.
  5. The differences in removal rates are different for urban and rural districts, with racial disparities larger on average in urban districts.
  6. The differences in removal rates are different from some urban districts than for other urban districts: the largest disparities occur in Charlotte, Durham, and Winston-Salem, while smaller disparities happen in Fayetteville, Greensboro, and Raleigh.
  7. Juries with more black males tend to acquit the defendant more often, all other things being equal.
  8. Juries with more white males tend to convict the defendant more often, all other things being equal.
  9. Juries with more black females tend to acquit more often, but only slightly; juries with more white females do not tend to acquit or convict any more often than the overall pool of trials.

• John Engler, 46th Governor of Michigan, from 1991 to 2003 (Wikipedia)

• First Step Act (Wikipedia)

• Criminal Conviction of Charles Kushner (Wikipedia)

• Assessment platforms:

  • Northpointe’s COMPAS (Equivalent)
  • Ohio Risk Assessment System (NICIC)
  • Level of Service Inventory - Revised (MHS)

Links

• Invisibilia, S05E02 - Post, Shoot (NPR)
• Plea Bargaining in the United States (Wikipedia)

But in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury. Most people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty.

– Michelle Alexander, Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System (NYTimes)

• Parens Patriae (Wikipedia)
• Van Jones & CT Governor Ned Lamont Lead Criminal Justice Reform Conversation at Quinnipiac (YouTube)
• Serial Podcast
• Van Jones

Links

• Michigan Governor – Gretchen Whitmer
• Northpoint Institute of Public Management, now Equivalent
• Florida Amendment 4, Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative (2018) - ✅ Approved (Ballotpedia)

The report [by The Sentencing Project] estimated that, as of 2016, around 6.1 million people, or about 2.5 percent of the U.S. voting age population, were disenfranchised due to a felony conviction. Florida was estimated to have 1,686,318 persons—10.43 percent of the voting age population—disenfranchised due to felonies. The majority of the disenfranchised persons, around 88.23 percent, were estimated to have completed their sentences. Florida had the highest rate of felons disenfranchised in the U.S. in 2016, according to the report. The estimated average rate of felon disenfranchisement across the 50 states was 2.28 percent in 2016.

– The Sentencing Project

• Nation Outside, in Michigan
• The Center for Community Transitions, in North Carolina
• Justice Reinvestment Initiative
• Ron Taylor, Prisons Division of National Institute of Corrections (NICIC)
• If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media (Psychology Today)
• Memorandum of Understanding (Wikipedia)

Links

• 40% of murders in the US went unsolved in 2017 (NY Post)
• Clearance Rate (Wikipedia) – Measure of percentage of “solved” crimes

• Bernie Sanders raises $5.9M in 24 hours after announcing 2020 campaign

• National Criminal Justice Reform Project (ncja.org)

• The Sentencing Project (Wikipedia)

• JEHT Foundation

• The Unmet Promise of Alternatives to Incarceration, by James Austin and Barry Krisberg (not actually Kay Harris)

• Kay Harris Obituary (philly.com)

• Stategies, Values, and the Emerging Generation of Alternatives to Incarceration (PDF), by Kay Harris

• Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers, by Dennis Schrantz and Jerry McElroy (The Sentencing Project)

• Voice of the Experienced (vote-nola.org)