Calif.¿s correctional system is in a tailspin that threatens public safety & raises the risk of fiscal disaster. State prisons are packed beyond capacity. Inmates sleep in classrooms, gyms & hallways. Fed. judges control inmate med. care & oversee mental health, use of force, disabilities act compliance, dental care, parolee due process rights, & most aspects of the juvenile justice system. Thousands of local jail inmates are let out early every week as a result of overcrowding & court-ordered pop¿n. caps. A fed. judge has given the State 6 months to make progress on overcrowding or face the appoint. of a panel of fed. judges who will manage the prison pop¿n. This report makes recommend. to the Calif. State Leg. on how to resolve these problems. Illus.
Despite 15 years of reform efforts, the incarceration rate in the United States remains unprecedentedly high. This book provides the first comprehensive survey of these reforms and explains why they have proven to be ineffective. After many decades of stability, the imprisonment rate in the United States quintupled between 1973 and 2003. Since then, nearly all states have adopted multiple reforms intended to reduce imprisonment, but the U.S. imprisonment rate has only decreased by a paltry 2 percent. Why have American sentencing reforms since 2000 been largely ineffective? Are tough mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders the primary reason our prisons are always full? This book offers a fascinating assessment of the wave of sentencing reforms adopted by dozens of states as well as changes at the federal level since 2000, identifying common themes among seemingly disparate changes in sentencing policy and highlighting recent reform efforts that have been more successful and may point the way forward for the nation as a whole. In The Failed Promise of Sentencing Reform, Michael O'Hear exposes the myths that American prison sentencing reforms enacted in the 21st century have failed to have the expected effect because U.S. prisons are filled to capacity with nonviolent drug offenders as a result of the "war on drugs" or because of new laws that took away the discretion of judges and corrections officials. O'Hear then makes a convincing case for the real reasons sentencing reforms have come up short: because they exclude violent and sexual offenders, and because they rely on the discretion of officials who still have every incentive to be highly risk-averse. He also highlights how overlooking the well-being of offenders and their families in our consideration of sentencing reform has undermined efforts to effect real change.
Offering rare insiders perspectives, Trends in Corrections: Interviews with Corrections Leaders Around the World is a comprehensive survey of correctional programming and management styles used across nations. Twelve chapters present transcribed interviews of corrections leaders along with a brief portrait of the corrections system in those jurisd
In this century the central and quintessential correctional facility program ought to be the library. While the U.S. prison industry has embraced a massive reentry movement emphasizing literacy and job readiness for former felons, prison libraries have been ignored as potential sources for reintegration. In The Prison Library Primer: A Program for the Twenty-First Century, Brenda Vogel addresses the unique challenges facing the prison librarian. This practical guide to operating and promoting a correctional library focuses on the basic priorities: collection development; location, space planning, and furnishing suggestions; information on court decisions and legislation affecting prisoners' rights. This volume also includes an information-skills training curriculum, sample administration policies, essential digital and print sources, and community support resources. Equipped with practical library science tools and creative solutions, The Prison Library Primer is an invaluable resource that will help the librarian and library advocate develop, grow, and maintain an effective, user-centered library program.
Federal Courts deservedly has the reputation of being an exceptionally difficult course, and this book is designed to make it accessible to students by providing the context of cases and doctrines, as well as explaining their relevance to the issues being litigated in the 21st century. Federal Courts in Context supports what pedagogic research calls "deep learning." It does so by framing federal jurisdiction and structural constitutional law using clear, concise explanations of the social and historical context of canonical cases to reveal the concrete stakes of traditional debates about federal judicial power. The result is an engaging, accessible, and richly textured account of the subject supporting not only more sophisticated doctrinal and jurisprudential analysis, but also the necessary foundation for inclusive pedagogy in the training of diverse 21st century lawyers. The focus is on canonical cases and their context rather than notoriously dense treatise-like material common to other books in the field. The book is also organized to dovetail with Erwin Chemerinsky's Federal Jurisdiction to maximize the accessibility of the casebook content and learning outcomes. Benefits for instructors and students: Structured to pair with the most commonly used secondary reference in the field, Erwin Chemerinsky's Federal Jurisdiction Focuses on canonical cases and excerpts rather than long, dense notes and treatise-like material Directly addresses the structural constitutional significance of the Civil War, Reconstruction Amendments, and the retreat from Reconstruction for federalism, the modern Court's federalism revival, and separation of powers Makes explicit the influences of Indian Removal, allotment, and the late nineteenth century extension of American empire on doctrines of sovereignty, jurisdiction, plenary power, and non-Article III courts Provides interdisciplinary contextualization of the labor movement, the New Deal, and the reproductive rights movement to enrich analysis of reverse-Erie cases, the rise of the administrative state, agency adjudication, and standing Marries doctrinal and theoretical precision about the course's core concepts (federalism, separation of powers, the Supremacy Clause, and jurisdiction) with legal realist sensibilities and attention to how ordinary people are affected by structural constitutional law, rather than abstractions, Socratic questions without answers, or other pedagogic techniques divorced from the research on deep learning
This handbook surveys American sentencing and corrections from global and historical views, from theoretical and policy perspectives, and with attention to a number of problem-specific issues.
Sentencing policy is an often crude means by which we seek to achieve justice by means of a quantitative measure of time. Linda Ross Meyer shows that our complicated ways of thinking about time often lead to contradictory and counterproductive outcomes in criminal justice-and suggests alternative ways of approaching sentencing the convicted.
A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.
"The COVID-19 disaster in California's prisons stands out as the worst medical prison catastrophe in the state's history. Three-quarters of the state's prison population was infected; 264 incarcerated people and 50 staff members died. In Fester, authors Hadar Aviram and Chad Goerzen expose the COVID-19 correctional experience through hundreds of first-person accounts, months of courtroom observations, years of carefully collected quantitative COVID-19 data, and a wealth of policy documents. Already vulnerable from decades of overcrowding and abysmal healthcare, California's prison population bore the brunt of the COVID-19 horror. Fester bears witness to the immense suffering we bring on ourselves and our fellow humans through dehumanization, fear, and ignorance, and stands as a monument for a brave coalition of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, family members and loved ones, advocates and activists, doctors and journalists, who worked to shed light on one of the darkest times in the Golden State's correctional system"--
