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The Sentencing Project is a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy center working for decarceration in the United States and seeking to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. The organization produces nonpartisan reports and research for use by state and federal policymakers, administrators, and journalists.
Retributive justice is a legal punishment that requires the offender to receive a punishment for a crime proportional and similar to its offense.
His Majesty's Prison Service (HMPS) is a part of HM Prison and Probation Service, which is the part of His Majesty's Government charged with managing most of the prisons within England and Wales.
Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of a penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is a United States federal law enforcement agency within the U.S. Department of Justice that operates U.S. federal prisons and is responsible for the care, custody, and control of federal prisoners.
Rehabilitation is the process of re-educating and preparing those who have committed a crime, to re-enter society. The goal is to address all of the underlying root causes of crime in order to ensure inmates will be able to live a crime-free lifestyle once they are released from prison. It generally involves psychological approaches which target the cognitive distortions associated with specific kinds of crime committed by individual offenders, but it may also entail more general education like reading skills and career training. The goal is to re-integrate offenders back into society.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Texas for murder, and participation in a felony resulting in death if committed by an individual who has attained or is over the age of 18.
The American juvenile justice system is the primary system used to handle minors who are convicted of criminal offenses. The system is composed of a federal and many separate state, territorial, and local jurisdictions, with states and the federal government sharing sovereign police power under the common authority of the United States Constitution. The juvenile justice system intervenes in delinquent behavior through police, court, and correctional involvement, with the goal of rehabilitation. Youth and their guardians can face a variety of consequences including probation, community service, youth court, youth incarceration and alternative schooling. The juvenile justice system, similar to the adult system, operates from a belief that intervening early in delinquent behavior will deter adolescents from engaging in criminal behavior as adults.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, and private correctional facilities, funding and certain oversight of community supervision, and supervision of offenders released from prison on parole or mandatory supervision. The TDCJ operates the largest prison system in the United States.
Allan B. Polunsky Unit is a prison in West Livingston, unincorporated Polk County, Texas, United States, located approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Livingston along Farm to Market Road 350. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) operates the facility. The unit houses the State of Texas death row for men, and it has a maximum capacity of 2,900. Livingston Municipal Airport is located on the other side of FM 350. The unit, along the Big Thicket, is 60 miles (97 km) east of Huntsville.
The House I Live In, directed by Eugene Jarecki, is a 2012 documentary film about the War on Drugs in the United States.
Right On Crime is a national, conservative criminal justice reform initiative in the U.S. that aims to gain support for criminal justice reform by sharing research and policy ideas, mobilizing leaders, and raising public awareness. Right On Crime reforms are focused on "reducing crime, restoring victims, reforming offenders, and lowering taxpayers' costs." The initiative primarily focuses on nine issues: prosecutorial innovation, correctional leadership, over-criminalization, civil asset forfeiture, juvenile justice, adult probation, parole and re-entry, law enforcement, and victims' rights. Right On Crime is a campaign of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank. After its founding in Texas, Right On Crime has contributed to many criminal justice reforms in over 38 states, working with bipartisan partners throughout the country.
Jerome Gilbert Miller was an American social worker, academic and public sector corrections administrator, who was an authority on the reform of juvenile and adult corrections systems. He was a prominent advocate for alternatives to incarceration for offenders as well as for the de-institutionalization of individuals with developmental disabilities. His career involved university teaching, administration of juvenile justice services for three states, clinical work with offenders and advocacy for systemic change in public sector correctional services. Miller's work first drew national attention for his leadership in closing several juvenile reformatories in Massachusetts in the early 1970s. Miller went on to emerge as a prominent national advocate, administrator and educator working for systemic change in public sector corrections and disability service delivery systems. He was the co-founder of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives.
Proposition 47, also known by its ballot title Criminal Sentences. Misdemeanor Penalties. Initiative Statute, was a referendum passed by voters in the state of California on November 4, 2014. The measure was also referred to by its supporters as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. It recategorized some nonviolent offenses as misdemeanors, rather than felonies, as they had previously been categorized.
Criminal justice reform seeks to address structural issues in criminal justice systems such as racial profiling, police brutality, overcriminalization, mass incarceration, and recidivism. Reforms can take place at any point where the criminal justice system intervenes in citizens’ lives, including lawmaking, policing, sentencing and incarceration. Criminal justice reform can also address the collateral consequences of conviction, including disenfranchisement or lack of access to housing or employment, that may restrict the rights of individuals with criminal records.
Glenn E. Martin is the president and founder of GEMtrainers.com, a social justice consultancy firm that partners with non-profits from across the United States to assist with fundraising, organizational development and marketing. Glenn is a longstanding American criminal justice reform advocate and is the founder and former president of JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA). He also founded the campaign, #CLOSErikers and co-founded the Education from the Inside Out Coalition, a national campaign working to remove barriers to higher education facing students while they are in prison and once they are released.
The Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform is a fifteen-member, non-partisan state commission tasked with conducting annual comprehensive reviews of criminal laws, criminal procedure, sentencing laws, adult correctional issues, juvenile justice issues, enhancement of probation and parole supervision, better management of the prison population and of the population in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice, and other issues relates to criminal proceedings and accountability courts in the state of Georgia.
The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act is a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill introduced into the United States Senate on October 1, 2015, by Chuck Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa and the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
Decarceration in the United States involves government policies and community campaigns aimed at reducing the number of people held in custody or custodial supervision. Decarceration, the opposite of incarceration, also entails reducing the rate of imprisonment at the federal, state and municipal level. As of 2019, the US was home to 5% of the global population but 25% of its prisoners. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. possessed the world's highest incarceration rate: 655 inmates for every 100,000 people, enough inmates to equal the populations of Philadelphia or Houston. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinvigorated the discussion surrounding decarceration as the spread of the virus poses a threat to the health of those incarcerated in prisons and detention centers where the ability to properly socially distance is limited. As a result of the push for decarceration in the wake of the pandemic, as of 2022, the incarceration rate in the United States declined to 505 per 100,000; meaning that the United States no longer has the highest incarceration rate in the world, but remains in the top 5.
Cynthia Ellen Jones is a criminal defense attorney and professor of law at the American University Washington College of Law specializing in criminal law and procedure as well as bail reform. Jones is an expert in racial disparities in the pretrial system and was previously the Director of the Public Defenders Service in Washington, D.C. She is a leading scholar in criminal procedure. In 2011, she was awarded the American University Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching. Jones was the director of the Stephen S. Weinstein Trial Advocacy Program at the university. She has written three textbooks related to criminal law and procedure.
References
- ↑ Cohen, Andrew (12 August 2015). "How White Users Made Heroin a Public-Health Problem". The Atlantic. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
- 1 2 Hermann, Peter (22 August 2015). "Police say repeat offenders driving crime rise in District and elsewhere". Washington Post. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
- 1 2 "Marc Mauer". Sentencing Project website. Archived from the original on 15 January 2016. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
- ↑ Johnson, Carrie (14 May 2015). "After Baltimore And Ferguson, Major Momentum For Criminal Justice System Reform". NPR. Retrieved 21 March 2016.
