Because it is often so very easy to notice and spotlight government failings in the crime and punishment arena, it is nice to have opportunities to highlight government successes in this world.  So, though I have noted before the great data about the success of persons released from federal prison early under the CARES Act, I am happy to see Molly Gill talking up this data in this new Washington Post opinion piece headlined “Thousands…

The Guardian has this notable lengthy new piece, fully headlined “The story of one US governor’s historic use of clemency: ‘We are a nation of second chances’; Kate Brown has granted more commutations or pardons than all of Oregon’s governor from the last 50 years combined.”  I recommend the full piece, and here is how it starts: Last October, Kate Brown, the governor of Oregon, signed an executive order granting clemency to 73 people…

The title of this post is the title of this notable recent report from the nonprofits More Than Our Crimes and The Washington Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs. Here is part of the report’s executive summary: Prison walls are erected not only to keep people in, but to prevent the world from seeing the abuses of our carceral system.  The inhumanity of what happens behind bars, as is demonstrated by the accounts…

Three years ago, as flagged in this post, the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) released a notable report detailing notable modern changes in the modern demographics of prison, jail, probation, and parole populations titled “Trends in Correctional Control by Race and Sex.”  Today, CCJ has released another important data report looking a racial disparity data under the title “Justice System Disparities: Black-White National Imprisonment Trends, 2000 – 2020.”  The full…

The title of post is the title of this new paper authored by Margo Schlanger and Betsy Ginsberg now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract: For over twenty-five years, the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) has undermined the constitutional rights of incarcerated people.  For people behind bars and their allies, the PLRA makes civil rights cases harder to bring and harder to win — regardless of merit.  We have seen the result in the…

I just noticed that the US Sentencing Commission late last week published this updated compassionate release data report, which includes data on all “motions decided by the courts during fiscal years 2020, 2021, and the first half of 2022 (October 1, 2019 – March 31, 2022).”   As I have noted with prior data runs, there are lots and lots of interesting data points throughout this report covering the period just before, during and…

This webpage at the Sentencing Project has the full text of this letter from formerly incarcerated individuals and advocacy organizations to new Federal Bureau of Prisons Director Colette Peters advocating for various reforms.  The full letter is worth a full read, and here are a few excerpts: As people formerly incarcerated in US Bureau of Prisons facilities and organizations dedicated to civil rights and justice, we know well the challenges that await you and hope…