The Georgia Supreme Court sent a message to prosecutors in an October 2, 2017 opinion: A police officer’s testimony as to a defendant’s performance on a horizontal gaze nystagmus (“HGN”) test cannot, by itself, establish a numeric blood alcohol content level. The HGN test is one of several field sobriety tests used by police officers
By Christopher Zoukis The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit focused on racial and economic policy, in conjunction with Forward Together and a dozen other community and civil rights organizations recently released a study which surveyed hardships experienced by former prisoners and their families. The study examined the experiences of over 1,080 current
In the last five years, Georgia has been successful in making badly needed, sweeping changes to its criminal justice system under the direction of Republican Governor Nathan Deal. The state has come a long way from where stood in 2009 when a Pew Research Center study indicated that one in 13 citizens were involved in
On May 27th, the Nebraska legislature made the landmark decision to ban the death penalty in the state. A vote by the legislature came down in favor of overturning Governor Pete Rickett’s attempt to veto a ban on capital punishment in the state. And while some may be surprised that the red state has made this determination,
It is a clear violation of the Ohio Revised Code and the Code of Ethics for a Judge to represent a criminal defendant in any capacity. The Ohio Revised Code holds: “A person that is a candidate for public office, or nominated, or has filed a petition or petitions SHALL not (A) Authorize, or employ
On the fateful day, October 24, 1999, Carol Kent was awakened by a phone call that changed her life forever. Her only child, Jason P. Kent, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Jason was a model citizen, an Annapolis Naval Academy graduate with no prior record. He was convicted and sentenced to life in
By Nicole D. Porter, The Sentencing Project
For more than forty years, the correctional system has been dominated by growth. In 1969, the crime rate was 3,680 per 100,000 population and the incarceration rate was 97 state and federal prisoners per 100,000 population. Today the crime rate is slightly lower at 3,667 per 100,000 population but the incarceration rate is five times higher, at 492 per 100,000. The culture of punishment, in part driven by political expediency with “tough-on-crime” policies marketed as the solution to “fear of crime,” has been aggressively implemented at every stage of the criminal justice process: arresting, charging, sentencing, confining, releasing and supervising.
Today, there is general agreement that this vast expansion of the criminal justice system and the seven million people currently under U.S. correctional control did not occur by accident, but as the result of deliberate policy choices that impose intentionally punitive sentences that have increased both the numbers of people entering the system and how long they remain there.
The destructive effects of mass incarceration are visited disproportionately upon individuals and communities of color. Justice Reinvestment was conceived as part of the solution to this problem. Justice Reinvestment originated as an ambitious strategy to reduce reliance on incarceration and repair the harm to individuals and communities through reinvestment in neighborhoods with high concentrations of residents in the criminal justice system.
The initial purpose of Justice Reinvestment was to make state government accountable to impoverished communities – mostly (though not exclusively) black and Latino – where the burden of punishment and incarceration has been the heaviest. These already disadvantaged neighborhoods were being driven deeper into perpetual economic divestment, social isolation, political disenfranchisement and physical distress by the coercive, downward mobility caused by locally concentrated pockets of incarceration and the forced migration of residents to and from prison. The intent was to reduce corrections populations and budgets, thereby generating savings for the purpose of reinvesting in high incarceration communities to make them safer, stronger, more prosperous and equitable.
Critics of the criminal justice system have no shortage of issues to examine. Whether an academic analyzes inequalities in death sentencing or a social activist protests drug laws, it seems the entire spectrum of criminal justice is in need of reform. From who and why police are arresting particular individuals and how courts administer justice
We have profiled every prison within the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Learn about each prison’s location, security level, educational and recreational offerings, and much more.
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