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DOJ Private Prisons Memo is a Good Start
By Serena Rabie Associate Editor, Vol. 21 Executive Editor, Vol. 22 On August 18, the Justice Department (DOJ) made waves when it issued a memorandum announcing the end of its use of private prisons. The memorandum instructs officials to either decline to renew the contracts for private prison operators when…The Price of Carceral Citizenship: Punishment, Surveillance, and Social Welfare Policy in an Age of Carceral Expansion
The unprecedented rise in the number of people held in U.S. jails and prisons has garnered considerable attention from policy makers, activists, and academics alike. Signaled in part by Michelle Alexander’s New York Times bestseller, The New Jim Crow, and the unlikely coalition of activists, policy makers, celebrities, and business leaders on both sides of the political aisle who have pledged to end mass incarceration in our lifetime, the prison system has returned to public policy discourse in a way that was unforeseen less than a decade ago. On any given day in 2014, just over 2.3 million people were held in U.S. jails and prisons.1 This figure represents a tenfold increase in the inmate census since 1973, and about 22 percent of the world’s prisoner population.2 Unfortunately, while the causes and consequences of mass incarceration warrant rigorous examination, the focus on arrest and imprisonment has left a curious, yet equally historic phenomenon hidden in plain sight—the rise of a supervised society, and with it, an alternate track of citizenship.Pretextual Sanctions, Contempt, and the Practical Limits of Bearden-Based Debtors’ Prison Litigation
At the time of this writing, recent events in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York City, and elsewhere have triggered quite justified social outrage at debtors’ prisons. Our country’s state and city courts keep scores of indigent people in jail for the crime of being poor, despite the Supreme Court’s clear prohibition on the practice. Skilled litigators and their journalist allies have seized on the moment to win victories in court and in the public eye, which prevent unconscionable bond and probation practices and try to reduce our burgeoning jail populations. Lost in the uproar, though, are the many ways that a savvy anti-defendant judge could insulate herself from corrective litigation, evade effective judicial oversight, and essentially perpetuate current debtors’ prisons by using pretextual sanctions and contempt orders to circumvent Bearden v. Georgia indigency determinations.The Ohio Model for Combatting Debtors’ Prisons
In 2013, the ACLU of Ohio released a report titled The Outskirts of Hope: How Ohio’s Debtors’ Prisons Are Ruining Lives and Costing Communities. The report exposed the blatantly unconstitutional practice in courts across Ohio of jailing people who were too poor to pay their court fines and fees, and along with our ongoing advocacy efforts, resulted in sweeping change across the state. This Essay looks at the destruction modern debtors’ prisons have on individuals, families, and communities and overviews the research, advocacy, and communications tools the ACLU of Ohio has used to successfully combat debtors’ prisons. The goal is to give an overview of the “Ohio Model” for combatting debtors’ prisons and to relay practical advice on launching similar campaigns in other states.Man still in jail after 897 days but hasn’t committed any crime
By Daniela Tagtachian Associate Editor Vol. 20 Executive Editor Vol. 21 Benito Vasquez-Hernandez, a 59 year old man, is awaiting to testify in a murder case. He has not done anything unlawful, he has committed no crime, but based on Oregon law, a judge has ordered him to…African-American Teen Imprisoned at Rikers Island for Three Years After Being Falsely Accused of Stealing a Backpack
By Whitney Robinson, Associate Editor Vol. 20 In May of 2010, 16 year-old Kalief Browder was walking home from a party in the Bronx with a friend. Suddenly, Browder and his friend were being stopped by police officers operating on a dubious tip from a man accusing Browder of stealing…The Right to Free Exercise of Religion in Prisons: How Courts Should Determine Sincerity of Religious Belief Under RLUIPA
Religion plays a vital role in the daily lives of many prisoners. For incarcerated persons, a connection to the divine can provide comfort during periods of isolation from their family and community. From a policy perspective, spiritual development and religious practice promote rehabilitation and reduce recidivism in inmates. While prisoners forfeit many of their civil liberties, Congress has ensured that religious exercise is not among them. As Congress enhanced religious freedom protections for prisoners, prison facilities became increasingly concerned that prisoners would feign religiosity to gain certain religious accommodations. To counter this concern, prison facilities conditioned accommodations on the sincerity of an inmate’s religious belief. Some facilities, however, instituted problematic methods for determining sincerity of religious belief, such as requiring physical evidence of doctrinal adherence or removing lapsing prisoners from religious accommodations.From Arbitrariness to Coherency in Sentencing: Reducing the Rate of Imprisonment and Crime While Saving Billions of Taxpayer Dollars
Dealing with criminals and preventing crime is a paramount public policy issue. Sentencing law and practice is the means through which we ultimately deal with criminal offenders. Despite its importance and wide-ranging reforms in recent decades, sentencing remains an intellectual and normative wasteland. This has resulted in serious human rights violations of both criminals and victims, incalculable public revenue wastage, and a failure to implement effective measures to reduce crime. This Article attempts to bridge the gulf that exists between knowledge and practice in sentencing and lays the groundwork for a fair and efficient sentencing system. The Article focuses on the sentencing systems in the United States and Australia. The suggested changes would result in a considerable reduction in incarceration numbers, lower crime, and a reduction in the expenditure on prisons. The key concrete recommendations of this Article are that the criminal justice system should move towards a bifurcated system of punishment, reserving imprisonment mainly for serious sexual and violent offenses and reducing the terms of imprisonment in general.
In the News: Life Without Parole
The American Civil Liberties Union just released an “extensive and astonishing report” describing the increasing frequency with which American judges are sentencing nonviolent offenders to life in prison without the possibility of parole. You can visit the ACLU’s interactive site here and read the…What the Sentencing Commission Ought to Be Doing Reducing Mass Incarceration
Beginning in the 1970s, the United States embarked on a shift in its penal policies, tripling the percentage of convicted felons sentenced to confinement and doubling the length of their sentences. This shift included a dramatic increase in the prosecution and incarceration of drug offenders. As a result of its move toward long prison sentences, the United States now incarcerates so many people that it has become an outlier; this is not just among developed democracies, but among all nations, including highly punitive states such as Russia and South Africa, and also in comparison to the United States' own long-standing practices. The present rate of incarceration in the United States is currently "almost five times higher than the historical norm prevailing throughout most of the twentieth century." In sum, the United States has a serious over-punishment problem. Our country's imprisonment rate has acquired the name, "mass incarceration," meant to provoke shame about the fact that the world's wealthiest democracy imprisons so many people, even at a time when crime rates have diminished and crime is "not one of the nation's pressing social problems." Most criminal justice scholars agree that our current prison population is too large. They also agree that the impact of imprisonment on the crime rate is modest and that the speed at which people are released from prison bears little relation to the likelihood that they will remain crime free. Many prisoners can serve shorter sentences without triggering an increase in crime. As a result, we can reduce sentence lengths substantially without adversely affecting public safety.
