In this post from the summer, I highlighted the great new podcast created by Doug Passon, a defense attorney and documentary filmmaker, called “Set for Sentencing.” Doug continues to produce a lot of terrific content each week, all
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"Suffering Before Execution"
The title of this post is the title of this new article authored by Lee Kovarsky now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:
When condemned people suffer before their executions, does that suffering represent punishment? I argue that it…
Effective coverage of compassionate release challenges at the state level
Since the First Step Act made it much easier for federal prisoners to get their motions for sentence reductions before judges, discussion and debate (and litigation) over the federal approach to so-called compassionate release has been robust. And, on-going consideration…
Rounding up some sentencing and punishment stories in an exhausting week that was
A horrible series of mass shootings and the release of awful videos defined the criminal justice week that was. But there were also a bunch of sentencing and punishment stories of note and interest that I did not have time…
Effective look at the many ugly realities of probation
The March 2023 issue of Reason magazine has this terrific article about probation systems authored by C.J. Ciaramella and Lauren Krisai. This lengthy piece is worth a full read, and its full title notes its basic themes: “U.S. Probation System…
VERA Institute provides first-person accounts of "The Human Toll of Jail"
Via email today I learned that the Vera Institute of Justice has launched another round of first-person essays about jail experienced under the titled “The Human Toll of Jail.” Here is how the project is introduced on the…
New year and new Congress brings a new effort to advance new EQUAL Act
Regular readers likely recall some of my posts over the last two years about the EQUAL Act, a bill to reform federal crack cocaine sentencing by finally treating crack and powder cocaine the same at sentencing. In short form, passage…
Latest CCJ accounting of crime trends shows mostly encouraging news from 2022 about violent crimes (but not property crimes)
In this post last week, I flagged some of the encouraging 2022 homicide data drawn from this AH Datalytics webpage‘s “YTD Murder Comparison” Dashboard. And I am now very pleased to see that the Council on Criminal Justice…
"Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration"
The title of this post is the title of this new report from the Prison Policy Initiative authored by Emily Widra. Here is how the data-heavy report gets started:
One of the most important criminal legal system disparities in the…
Jury trials on hold in New Orleans because of apparent long-running failure to comply with new law to allow certain persons with felony convictions to serve as jurors
This local article, headlined “Jury trials in New Orleans criminal court halted through February,” reports on interesting development in the Big Easy. Here are the highlights:
Criminal court judges in New Orleans decided on Monday afternoon to put all…