Because 90% of all prisoners in the United States are in state facilities, the work that states are doing to reduce their prison populations is crucial. Attempting to end mass incarceration necessitates realizing this is a situation requiring not one national solution, but fifty state solutions. Below are current state solutions that could be effectively modeled by other states for meaningful reform.
“Last year, the Sunshine State became the first in the country to require its jails, prosecutors, public defenders, courts and prisons to coordinate their data collection, enabling lawmakers and the public to track how someone moves through the entire criminal justice system, from arrest to release. The new information will be sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which will publish it online.“
The Marshall Project
April 14, 2019
Read More"U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Sunday addressed the state’s prosecuting attorneys, who were gathered for their annual convention. He was not a cheerleader for the criminal justice reform that has been one of the hallmarks of Nathan Deal’s tenure as governor."
Atlanta Journal Constitution
July 23, 2018
Read More"On Monday morning, more than 40 attorneys sent a letter to all the judges in the county saying they will not be accepting new cases until the county commissioners agree to a recommendation for a pay raise. The move comes after more than two months of negotiating with the commissioners....The letter says that there has been no increase in the fees since 1995 and that Licking County has the second lowest fees in the state, behind only Vinton County."
Columbus Dispatch
July 23, 2018
Read More"The Arizona Ground Game hosts community forums every month in hopes of educating our community on controversial issues that can become complicated once you dive into the details....On Tuesday evening, TAGG brought Joel Feinman, head of the Pima County Public Defender’s office and adjunct professor in political science at the University of Arizona, to Pueblo High School’s Little Theater to talk about the causes of and solutions to mass incarceration."
Tucson Weekly
July 19, 2018
Read More"In June 2018, the ACLU of Vermont sent each of the candidates for state's attorney a 20-question survey, inviting them to state their personal views on a range of criminal justice issues ahead of this year’s elections, including prosecutor transparency, police accountability, the opiate epidemic, mental health services, and racial disparities in Vermont’s criminal justice system."
ACLU Vermont
July 1, 2018
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