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.
“The state of Illinois seems to be getting serious about downsizing its prison population and reducing the number of offenders who return to prison after being paroled. Governor Bruce Rauner created a task force in 2015, the Illinois State Commission of Criminal Justice and Sentencing Reform, to promulgate policies to achieve a 25 percent reduction in the state’s prison population by 2025. Recent data already show positive results.“
Prison Legal News
February 5, 2019
Read More“Klobuchar’s statements on juvenile justice read like a how-to guide on creating a school-to-prison pipeline. She blamed “violent popular culture” for mass shootings, and said low-level “engaging in delinquent behavior and committing low-level crimes” was a warning sign for such heinous acts of violence. As county attorney, Klobuchar claimed a causal relationship between kids skipping out on school and killing people. In 2003, Black kids faced over 60 percent of Klobuchar’s new juvenile delinquency petitions, despite Black people only being about 13 percent of her county’s population at that time.“
Filter Magazine
January 30, 2019
Read More‘Statewide, the practice can shift power to areas that host prisons, which tend to be more rural. Kuniholm said the census count helps determine what resources and services are allocated to an area. ‘It amplifies the voice of communities that have prisons and want to keep those prisons full, and it diminishes the voice of communities that are harmed by mass incarceration,’ she said.“
WITF Harrisburg
January 28, 2019
Read More“SB 91 has successfully fulfilled its intended purpose in improving the fairness, safety and effectiveness of bail and the state’s pretrial justice system as whole. As the Alaska Legislature considers the direction of criminal justice reform, state leaders would do well to maintain the pretrial justice components of SB 91. Wiping away policies that safely reduce jail populations while carefully evaluating who is released and who is not won’t keep Alaskans safe, it will leave us worse than where we started. “
Anchorage Daily News
January 24, 2019
Read More“In cities from coast to coast, the odds that police will solve a shooting are abysmally low and dropping. Homicides and assaults carried out with guns lead to arrests about half as often as when the same crimes are committed using other weapons or physical force.“
The Trace
January 24, 2019
Read More“Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent. Most troubling, Ms. Harris fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions that had been secured through official misconduct that included evidence tampering, false testimony and the suppression of crucial information by prosecutors.“
New York Times
January 17, 2019
Read More“But there are sensible ways of dealing with witness safety concerns. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which has for decades made its evidence files readily available, shows that reform is possible. Likewise, the states that have left the old model behind have seen no need to go back to it. It’s time for New York lawmakers to bring the rest of the state in line with this essential notion of justice.“
New York Times
January 15, 2019
Read More“‘Talk with someone who, by their own actions, hit rock bottom but decided to turn their life around,’ Reynolds will say Tuesday, according to her prepared remarks, portions of which were shared exclusively with the Des Moines Register. ‘Watch their face light up when they tell you about the person who offered them a helping hand. ... There are few things as powerful as the joy of someone who got a second chance and found their purpose’.“
Des Moines Register
January 15, 2019
Read More“Some 30 states and the District of Columbia passed laws or enacted statutes aimed at helping returning incarcerees adjust to life in civilian society, representing a “high point” in national efforts to restore rights and status to people with a criminal record, according to the Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC).“
The Crime Report
January 11, 2019
Read More“Pennsylvania’s state prison population saw its biggest drop ever in 2018, the fifth consecutive year the number of people behind bars in the state prison system has declined. The number of people incarcerated in state prison dropped to 47,370 inmates at the end of 2018 – a 1,068 decline from the prior year when there were 48,438 people behind bars in the state Department of Corrections. The state’s inmate population is down from 51,512 five years ago, corrections data show.“
New Castle News
January 11, 2019
Read More“Likely 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D–Calif.) released a new memoir this week. In The Truths We Hold, Harris touts her record as a "progressive prosecutor," but the book glosses over numerous instances where her office defended prosecutorial misconduct.“
Reason Magazine
January 9, 2019
Read More“Wilmington was a safer place last year. The tide of the city's gun violence epidemic, climaxing in 2017 with 197 people shot and 32 killed, has rolled back. Last year, there were 119 fewer shooting victims in Wilmington, a 60 percent drop.“
Delaware Online
January 9, 2019
Read More“Governors in most states have the power to pardon or commute sentences, either at their sole discretion or with some level of input from a commission. Since most convictions occur at the state level, some governors can wield even greater influence on criminal justice than the president can. But most governors rarely use this power, and few have made it a mainstay of their tenure in office—a major missed opportunity for justice and the public good.“
The New Republic
January 4, 2019
Read More“It’s not really obvious why this is the issue where divisions that often seem so entrenched are breaking down. But the fact that it can still happen in these impossibly divided times is stirring, and makes you wonder whether the same thing can happen on issues beyond criminal justice.“
The Advocate
December 22, 2018
Read More“Nearly half (45 percent) of adults in the U.S. ― or 113 million people nationwide ― have an immediate family member who has spent at least one night in jail or prison, according to a study released Dec. 6 by Cornell University and political advocacy group Fwd.us. “
Huffington Post
December 18, 2018
Read More“The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island said lawmakers got it wrong when it comes to some new prison sentences. More than two dozen laws that go into effect in January either create new crimes or increase prison sentences, according to the organization. The report says lawmakers tend to be overzealous in creating new laws and that the result is contributing to unnecessary incarceration.“
NBC 10 Rhode Island
December 18, 2018
Read More‘That’s right. No one—not even the federal government—is certain of exactly how many federal criminal laws are currently on the books, but some rough estimates have concluded that there are more than 5,000 criminal laws scattered through the U.S. Code. That’s a problem.‘
The Daily Signal
December 14, 2018
Read More“The idea was to relieve pressure on the overcrowded prison system while also breaking the cycle of incarceration for low-level felons. Instead, more than two decades later, people leaving state jail have a greater chance of reoffending than any other group in the Texas criminal justice system. Nearly 63 percent of people released from state jails are rearrested, compared to 46 percent of inmates released from Texas prisons, according to Legislative Budget Board data.“
Texas Observer
December 11, 2018
Read More“Available beds in Wyoming's prisons have diminished in recent years as the facilities suffered from budget cuts, understaffing and dilapidated facilities. Meanwhile, Wyoming judges have increased the rate at which people are incarcerated. In 2010, 374 of every 100,000 Wyomingites were behind bars. Six years later, 405 Wyomingites per 100,000 were in state prison custody at the year’s end.“
Casper Star Tribune
December 8, 2018
Read More“I do what I do because I witnessed a period of time when confinement in Maine didn’t necessarily result in this social destruction – and I am convinced that one way to bring about reform is to return to the progressive prison policies of old.“
The Guardian
December 6, 2018
Read More