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.
“Sanders’s plan is aiming for sweeping change: It’s an attempt to address the long list of complaints and criticisms raised against America’s criminal justice system for decades. Sanders also sets out a pretty ambitious goal “of cutting the incarcerated population in half.” The Sanders campaign said this is not just for the federal level, but the state level too.“
Vox
August 19, 2019
Read More“But in their rush to sound strong on criminal justice reform, the candidates left out one important fact. Drug crime is not what’s driving the high prison population in the United States. It’s crimes of violence. And this omission has consequences. It means that any “solution” is unlikely to achieve its intended goal and in the meantime society will continue to suffer long-term damage—physical, psychological and economic—from a persistent cycle of unaddressed violent crime.“
Politico
August 14, 2019
Read More“This blind spot is due to our lack of specific data about these intermediate steps of the criminal justice system. For example, we have no information about the racial make-up of who gets a plea deal and the types of plea deals offered. Collecting and sharing this type of information is crucial to addressing the still serious problems of mass incarceration, racial disparities, and recidivism in Utah.“
Salt Lake Tribune
August 17, 2019
Read More“Between 2007 and 2017, 34 states reduced both imprisonment and crime rates simultaneously, showing clearly that reducing mass incarceration does not come at the cost of public safety (for sources and definitions for crime data, see our latest crime report). The total number of sentenced individuals held in state prisons across the U.S. also decreased by 6 percent over the same decade. And these drops played out across the country.“
Brennan Center for Justice
August 6, 2019
Read More““Owens, 37, a candidate for district attorney of Hinds County in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary, knows his platform does not fit the norm of a Mississippi DA. As he seeks to lead criminal prosecutions in the county that includes the state capital of Jackson, Owens wants to utilize drug courts and restorative justice programs to send fewer people to prison. He won’t charge low-level marijuana cases, and he will only seek cash bail for defendants when he deems that not doing so would impact public safety or risk a no-show at trial."
Ozy
August 4, 2019
Read More“By stripping the law of the requirement that judges consider the original crime when weighing sentence reductions — and suggesting long sentences are rarely justified for youthful criminals “despite the brutality or coldblooded nature” of their offense — the council assured that proceedings will tilt in favor of convicts. The reform legislation’s sponsor, council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), contends the court could still consider a crime’s severity if it is weighed against other factors, including evidence of remorse and rehabilitation.“
Washington Post
August 3, 2019
Read More“With nearly 2.3 million prisoners behind bars, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Rachel Barkow, who served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission from 2013 to 2019, examines how we got to this point and what can be done to help reform the country's justice system. She currently serves as the vice dean and professor of regulatory law and policy at the NYU School of Law. In her recent book, "Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration," Barkow argues that years of bad policies resulted in a vicious cycle. However, there is a path to undo some of the damage. “
CBS
August 2, 2019
Read More“Wednesday night’s debate saw the first extended discussion of criminal justice issues as the Democratic presidential candidates jockey in a crowded and competitive field. Several candidates teed off those issues to score political points and jab at opponents. While their exchanges covered a wide range of topics, there were also critical issues that no one even mentioned. Here’s a guide, curated by our experts here at The Marshall Project, to what’s behind the one-liners and talking points—and what was left out. We include suggestions for further reading for those who want to delve deeper.“
The Marshall Project
August 1, 2019
Read More“It’s a riddle at the heart of Michigan’s efforts to reform its criminal justice system: How can it be that the state’s county jail population has tripled over the past 50 years even as crime rates have plunged to levels not seen in generations? Nobody seems to know. One major reason is nobody at the state level knows much about the inmates being housed in county jails, or why they are there.“
Bridges Magazine
July 24, 2019
Read More“‘We have one speaking Russian, one speaking Chinese, one speaking English … and then we’re wondering why we don’t have the data,’ Roper told the committee. ‘If we can’t get our data systems talking to each other, we’re going to be having the same conversation year after year’.“
The Colorado Independent
July 22, 2019
Read More“This Democratic unanimity makes sense in light of the criticism that many of the leading candidates have faced from activists, left-wing media, and other, more “woke,” presidential hopefuls for their earlier acceptance, or even endorsement, of proactive policing, quality-of-life enforcement, and incarceration as reasonable methods of combating crime.“
City Journal
July 22, 2019
Read More“Last year, Mr. Singleton began thinking more seriously about that question. He conceived of a project called Beyond Guilt, to emphasize that guilt is not an endpoint but the possible beginning of a “story of redemption.” The goal is to push for legislation to provide new avenues for early release, and to create a network of lawyers to take up individual cases.“
The New York Times
July 19, 2019
Read More“The Department of Corrections reported on Friday that in that period, the state's prison population fell by 1,400, down to a total of 31,756 — a number the state has not seen since the 1990s. The savings from lower incarceration costs will allow the state to further invest in initiatives aimed at keeping people from returning, or going, to prison, and supporting crime victims, officials said.“
The Advocate
July 19, 2019
Read More“New Hampshire's law allowed the attorney general's office to seek reimbursement if it determined that a current inmate had sufficient assets to pay for all or part of his or her incarceration costs. Inmates who objected could request hearings, and courts were required to consider the inmate's other financial obligations.“
Concord Monitor
July 16, 2019
Read More“The rate of incarceration in New York City jails is the lowest since 1978, Glazer said, attributing the decline to a citywide decrease in crime, decriminalization of marijuana leading to fewer arrests, and progressive policy changes such as bail reform. The number of people sitting in jail on any given day is down about 36% since 2014, the statistics show, the fastest decline in decades.“
New York Daily News
July 15, 2019
Read More“With our prisons bulging, Gov. Laura Kelly may be forced to send some Kansas inmates to a CoreCivic prison in Arizona to relieve overcrowding. That announcement was troubling, but there is a bigger problem at hand: Kansas’ refusal to enact criminal justice reform. Our state needs to immediately enact preventative, evidence-based solutions to ensure that fewer Kansans enter our overburdened system in the first place.“
The Wichita Eagle
July 14, 2019
Read More“Hassine’s death on May 2 has given me pause. And it should make anyone who considers the fate of those serving life sentences wonder whether anything that a lifer does to remake himself into someone who could meaningfully contribute to society means anything. Without freedom, all of that potential for success is meaningless. My life is a testament to this meaninglessness.“
The Crime Report
July 9, 2019
Read More“Corruption occurs regularly under mass incarceration, a system where it is absolutely normal for a man like Gerard Puana to be convicted and incarcerated with shoddy evidence, in which poverty is criminalized through dozens of unequally applied county and state laws, and where corporate prisons expand profits and build immigrant detention centers while successful community-based safety and education programs are chronically underfunded.“
Honolulu Civil Beat
July 9, 2019
Read More“In a ceremony Monday in a Lake Hood airplane hangar, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy fulfilled a campaign promise by signing legislation that repeals and replaces much of the criminal justice reform effort known as Senate Bill 91. That legislation, approved by the Legislature in 2016 in an effort to reduce the number of criminals who return to prison after release, has been blamed for contributing to a surge in crime statewide. As a candidate for governor, Dunleavy pledged to introduce legislation to fully repeal it. It had already been modified by the Alaska Legislature several times.“
Anchorage Daily News
July 8, 2019
Read More“If you had told me a year or so ago that these kinds of bills were going to pass the Senate unanimously, I'd have thought you were crazy. It was only three years ago that senators got in shouting matches over a bill to scale back "three strikes" sentencing laws. So why has the tide turned in favor of reform?“
Delaware Online
July 5, 2019
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