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.
“Assembly Bill 1331, whose fate now rests with Newsom, would close some of the current gaps in criminal history records by tightening reporting requirements for law enforcement agencies and courts. It would require release of anonymized information to research agencies, which would then be able to sift through data to discover trends or biases. It would promote better and faster sharing of information among public agencies.“
LA Times
September 23, 2019
Read More“On his first day in the Oval Office, Booker would launch clemency reviews for federal prisoners who have been convicted of marijuana-related offenses or who received especially lengthy sentences for having crack cocaine, a punishment that has landed most heavily on black Americans.“
LA Times
June 20, 2019
Read More“Correctional officers and their families never forget the daunting conditions they face every day inside the state’s prisons. The money they pay into their union’s political coffers ensures that elected officials won’t forget, either.“
LA Times
September 23, 2018
Read More"But this year, a group of California legislators is confronting police unions in ways once unthinkable. They argue the organizations are out of touch with public sentiment over how officers use force and interact with communities of color. The shift comes amid the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter and criminal justice reform movements."
LA Times
August 15, 2018
Read More"The idea behind Proposition 47, which passed by a wide margin in 2014, was to reduce certain non-violent, non-serious felonies to misdemeanors in order to ensure that the resources of the criminal justice system are more wisely allocated, and that prison and jail beds are reserved for the offenders who are the greatest risks to cause harm if they are left at liberty."
LA Times
July 18, 2018
Read More"Over the last few years, California has made necessary criminal justice policy changes. What remains undone is the systems change that fleshes out those policies. AB 1065 and other bills like it will help get that change under way."
LA Times
July 14, 2018
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