Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Thursday, December 3, 2009

L.A. Times defends Huckabee, executive clemency

An L.A. Times editorial defends Mike Huckabee's 2000 decision to commute the sentence of Maurice Clemmons, noting that governors should be more open to considering executive clemency, not less.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

P-I: State cuts to criminal supervision 'are a tragedy waiting to happen'

A good Seattle P-I piece convincingly suggests that cutting community corrections budget to achieve cost savings may be penny-wise but pound-foolish.

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Footnotes re Recent Violence

Everyone is profoundly saddened by the murder of four Lakewood PD officers this weekend, as well as the slaying of SPD officer Timothy Brenton on 10.31.09.

Amidst the grief and chatter, however, a few important points may have been missed. While Mike Huckabee is being vilified for granting clemency to Clemmons, one hears little discussion of how mental illness is a factor in the criminal justice system.

Likewise,how many questions have been raised about how the alleged shooters obtained their guns? Absent indications otherwise in the case of Monfort (details are still too sketchy w/Clemmons), it appears that it was perfectly legal for him to assemble a small arsenal in his apartment.

Calls will doubtless be raised for "tougher" policies on crime. Will anyone ask about the wisdom of our gun laws? Or how about the utility of channeling the mentally ill and chemically dependent through the undiscriminating funnel of the crimninal justice system?

Good news for demagouges, bad news for the rest of us

Crime and Politics. This speaks for itself.

One can only hope that such madness does not engender more....

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

PA Youth as Chattel; Incarcerating the innocent and powerless paid very well

The full story is here:

A few of the details:

  • Two former Luzerne County judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, pleaded guilty in February to fraud charges. Prosecutors said they took $2.6 million in bribes to put juveniles in private detention centers
  • "I have never, not only in this state, never in the United States, seen a bribery case of this magnitude, and the effect that it's had on the children's lives is astounding," said state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille, who called it "probably the worst tragedy I've seen in the history of the United States."
  • Castille said a Supreme Court-appointed special master is reviewing the matter, and it's possible that 5,000 to 6,000 juvenile cases handled by the judges could be expunged. The master yesterday issued an order preserving the records of all juveniles whose cases went before Ciavarella between January 2003 and May 2008.

Strange bedfellows on criminal justice

Great Adam Liptak NYT article on how even some on the right wing are taking a look at criminal justice reform.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Rachel Maddow geeks out on corrections issues

MSNBC and AirAmerica's Rachel Maddow discusses her work with the ACLU National Prison Project (starting around 3:20) and goes on to discuss civil liberties more broadly here and here.

Is long-term segregation torture?

The New Yorker's Atul Gawande asks, is long term segregation torture?

Post-Incarceration Mortality

A New England Journal of medicine study of Washington DOC offenders reports that individuals are almost 13 times more likely die upon release from incarceration than their counterparts in the general population.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Welcome to Carceral State

Carceral State is a blog about prison and jail conditions in the United States, and the trends and developments that have made the U.S. the most incarcerated nation on the planet.