The Political Dynamics of Justice Reform in The U.S.

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The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. 

Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities 

Achieve Their Full Potential 

Since its founding in 2003, The Advocacy Foundation has become recognized as an effective 

provider of support to those who receive our services, having real impact within the communities 

we serve. We are currently engaged in community and faith-based collaborative initiatives, 

having the overall objective of eradicating all forms of youth violence and correcting injustices 

everywhere. In carrying-out these initiatives, we have adopted the evidence-based strategic 

framework developed and implemented by the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency 

Prevention (OJJDP). 

The stated objectives are: 

1. Community Mobilization; 

2. Social Intervention; 

3. Provision of Opportunities; 

4. Organizational Change and Development; 

5. Suppression [of illegal activities]. 

Moreover, it is our most fundamental belief that in order to be effective, prevention and 

intervention strategies must be Community Specific, Culturally Relevant, Evidence-Based, and 

Collaborative. The Violence Prevention and Intervention programming we employ in 

implementing this community-enhancing framework include the programs further described 

throughout our publications, programs and special projects both domestically and 

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Dedication 

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Every publication in our many series’ is dedicated to everyone, absolutely everyone, who by 

virtue of their calling and by Divine inspiration, direction and guidance, is on the battlefield dayafter-day 

striving to follow God’s will and purpose for their lives. And this is with particular affinity 

for those Spiritual warriors who are being transformed into excellence through daily academic, 

professional, familial, and other challenges. 

We pray that you will bear in mind: 

Matthew 19:26 (NLT) 

Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. 

But with God everything is possible.” (Emphasis added) 

To all of us who daily look past our circumstances, and naysayers, to what the Lord says we will 

accomplish: 

Blessings!! 

- The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. 



The Transformative Justice Project 

Eradicating Juvenile Delinquency Requires a Multi-Disciplinary Approach 

The Juvenile Justice system is incredibly 

overloaded, and Solutions-Based programs are 

woefully underfunded. Our precious children, 

therefore, particularly young people of color, often 

get the “swift” version of justice whenever they 

come into contact with the law. 

Decisions to build prison facilities are often based 

on elementary school test results, and our country 

incarcerates more of its young than any other 

nation on earth. So we at The Foundation labor to 

pull our young people out of the “school to prison” 

pipeline, and we then coordinate the efforts of the 

legal, psychological, governmental and 

educational professionals needed to bring an end 

to delinquency. 

We also educate families, police, local businesses, 

elected officials, clergy, schools and other 

stakeholders about transforming whole communities, and we labor to change their 

thinking about the causes of delinquency with the goal of helping them embrace the 

idea of restoration for the young people in our care who demonstrate repentance for 

their mistakes. 

The way we accomplish all this is a follows: 

1. We vigorously advocate for charges reductions, wherever possible, in the 

adjudicatory (court) process, with the ultimate goal of expungement or pardon, in 

order to maximize the chances for our clients to graduate high school and 

progress into college, military service or the workforce without the stigma of a 

criminal record; 

2. We then endeavor to enroll each young person into an Evidence-Based, Data- 

Driven Transformative Justice program designed to facilitate their rehabilitation 

and subsequent reintegration back into the community; 

3. While those projects are operating, we conduct a wide variety of ComeUnity- 

ReEngineering seminars and workshops on topics ranging from Juvenile Justice 

to Parental Rights, to Domestic issues to Police friendly contacts, to Mental 

Health intervention, to CBO and FBO accountability and compliance; 


4. Throughout the process, we encourage and maintain frequent personal contact 

between all parties; 

5 Throughout the process we conduct a continuum of events and fundraisers 

designed to facilitate collaboration among professionals and community 

stakeholders; and finally 

6. 1 We disseminate Monthly and Quarterly publications, like our e-Advocate series 

Newsletter and our e-Advocate Monthly and Quarterly Electronic Compilations to 

all regular donors in order to facilitate a lifelong learning process on the everevolving 

developments in both the Adult and Juvenile Justice systems. 

And in addition to the help we provide for our young clients and their families, we also 

facilitate Community Engagement through the Transformative Justice process, 

thereby balancing the interests of local businesses, schools, clergy, social 

organizations, elected officials, law enforcement entities, and other interested 

stakeholders. Through these efforts, relationships are built, rebuilt and strengthened, 

local businesses and communities are enhanced & protected from victimization, young 

careers are developed, and our precious young people are kept out of the prison 

pipeline. 

Additionally, we develop Transformative “Void Resistance” (TVR) initiatives to elevate 

concerns of our successes resulting in economic hardship for those employed by the 

penal system. 

TVR is an innovative-comprehensive process that works in conjunction with our 

Transformative Justice initiatives to transition the original use and purpose of current 

systems into positive social impact operations, which systematically retrains current 

staff, renovates facilities, creates new employment opportunities, increases salaries and 

is data-proven to enhance employee’s mental wellbeing and overall quality of life – an 

exponential Transformative Social Impact benefit for ALL community stakeholders. 

This is a massive undertaking, and we need all the help and financial support you can 

give! We plan to help 75 young persons per quarter-year (aggregating to a total of 250 

per year) in each jurisdiction we serve) at an average cost of under $2,500 per client, 

per year. * 

Thank you in advance for your support! 

* FYI: 

1 In addition to supporting our world-class programming and support services, all regular donors receive our Quarterly e-Newsletter 

(The e-Advocate), as well as The e-Advocate Quarterly Magazine. 


1. The national average cost to taxpayers for minimum-security youth incarceration, 

is around $43,000.00 per child, per year. 

2. The average annual cost to taxpayers for maximum-security youth incarceration 

is well over $148,000.00 per child, per year. 

- (US News and World Report, December 9, 2014); 

3. In every jurisdiction in the nation, the Plea Bargaining rate is above 99%. 

The Judicial system engages in a tri-partite balancing task in every single one of these 

matters, seeking to balance Rehabilitative Justice with Community Protection and 

Judicial Economy, and, although the practitioners work very hard to achieve positive 

outcomes, the scales are nowhere near balanced where people of color are involved. 

We must reverse this trend, which is right now working very much against the best 

interests of our young. 

Our young people do not belong behind bars. 

- Jack Johnson 



The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. 

Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities 

Achieve Their Full Potential 

…a compendium of works on 

The Political Dynamics of 

Justice Reform in The U.S. 

“Turning the Improbable Into the Exceptional” 

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Dea. John C Johnson III, J.D. 

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Biblical Authority 

______ 

Daniel 6:4-15 (NIV) 

4 

At this, the administrators and the satraps tried to find grounds for 

charges against Daniel in his conduct of government affairs, but they were 

unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him, because he was 

trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. 5 Finally these men said, “We 

will never find any basis for charges against this man Daniel unless it has 

something to do with the law of his God.” 

6 

So these administrators and satraps went as a group to the king and said: 

“May King Darius live forever! 7 The royal administrators, prefects, satraps, 

advisers and governors have all agreed that the king should issue an edict 

and enforce the decree that anyone who prays to any god or human being 

during the next thirty days, except to you, Your Majesty, shall be thrown 

into the lions’ den. 8 Now, Your Majesty, issue the decree and put it in writing 

so that it cannot be altered—in accordance with the law of the Medes and 

Persians, which cannot be repealed.” 9 So King Darius put the decree in 

writing. 

10 

Now when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went 

home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. 

Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his 

God, just as he had done before. 11 Then these men went as a group and 

found Daniel praying and asking God for help. 12 So they went to the king and 

spoke to him about his royal decree: “Did you not publish a decree that 

during the next thirty days anyone who prays to any god or human being 

except to you, Your Majesty, would be thrown into the lions’ den?” 

The king answered, “The decree stands—in accordance with the law of the 

Medes and Persians, which cannot be repealed.” 

13 

Then they said to the king, “Daniel, who is one of the exiles from 

Judah, pays no attention to you, Your Majesty, or to the decree you put in 

writing. He still prays three times a day.” 14 When the king heard this, he was 

greatly distressed; he was determined to rescue Daniel and made every 

effort until sundown to save him. 


15 

Then the men went as a group to King Darius and said to him, “Remember, 

Your Majesty, that according to the law of the Medes and Persians no decree 

or edict that the king issues can be changed.” 

Psalm 12:8 

8 who freely strut about when what is vile is honored by the human race. 

Proverbs 28:15 

15 Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a helpless people. 

2 Samuel 15:2-6 

2 He would get up early and stand by the side of the road leading to the city gate. 

Whenever anyone came with a complaint to be placed before the king for a decision, 

Absalom would call out to him, “What town are you from?” He would answer, “Your 

servant is from one of the tribes of Israel.” 3 Then Absalom would say to him, “Look, 

your claims are valid and proper, but there is no representative of the king to hear you.” 

4 And Absalom would add, “If only I were appointed judge in the land! Then everyone 

who has a complaint or case could come to me and I would see that they receive 

justice.” 

5 Also, whenever anyone approached him to bow down before him, Absalom would 

reach out his hand, take hold of him and kiss him. 6 Absalom behaved in this way 

toward all the Israelites who came to the king asking for justice, and so he stole the 

hearts of the people of Israel. 

Romans 12:8 

8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it 

is to lead,[a] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. 

1 Timothy 2:2 

2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all 

godliness and holiness. 


Table of Contents 

…a compilation of works on 

The Political Dynamics 

of Justice Reform In The U.S. 

Biblical Authority 

I. Introduction: The Politics of Justice ……………………………….. 19 

II. Judicial Independence in U.S. Courts………………………………. 47 

III. The Criminal Justice Debate in The New Millennium.……………… 57 

IV. Mass Incarceration and The Prisoner Dilemma in Texas ………… 73 

V. Juvenile Justice Reform on Life-Support…………………………. 101 

VI. 

Prison Reform: Reimagining Prison………………….……………..115 

VII. Final Word: Breaking The Unwritten Rule of Prison ..………....... 131 

VIII. References……………………………………………………............ 135 

______ 

Attachments 

A. Top Trends in State Criminal Justice Reform 

B. The Effort to Reform The Federal Criminal Justice System 

C. The Consensus Myth in Criminal Justice Reform 

Copyright © 2003 – 2019 The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 


This work is not meant to be a piece of original academic 

analysis, but rather draws very heavily on the work of 

scholars in a diverse range of fields. All material drawn upon 

is referenced appropriately. 


I. Introduction 

The Politics of Justice 

The Economist | Sep 4th 1997 

Striking the right balance between constitutional rigidity and political flexibility is the 

great challenge for a supreme court 

The United States Supreme 

Court is the most paradoxical of 

government institutions. Its rulings 

are studied by judges and lawyers 

in many countries, and so have 

considerable influence beyond 

America's borders. Yet all other 

democracies have shrunk with 

distaste from the idea of giving their 

supreme courts the same sweeping 

powers as America's. 

In the United States itself, the 

Supreme Court's proper role has 

always been a subject of hot 

debate. Yet it probably commands 

more public respect than either of 

the other arms of government: the 

presidency and the Congress. 

Though many people vehemently 

disagree with particular decisions 

of the court, its legal power to strike 

down state or federal laws, to 

arbitrate disputes between the 

president and Congress, and 

between either of them and the 

states, remains unchallenged. 

Throughout American history, many of the country's best minds have devoted 

themselves to puzzling over these paradoxes, and arguing about how the court should 

go about its business. Each of these books casts light on that continuing debate. 

Antonin Scalia's serves as a crash course in the subject. Since his appointment to the 

Supreme Court in 1986, he has argued against what he sees as unwarranted judicial 

activism. In his view, since the early 1950s the court has regularly overstepped the 

boundary between adjudicating and legislating. Too often, he complains, the court's 


judges, using techniques of a now antiquated common law tradition, have made new 

law, when their proper role is to interpret the constitution. For Justice Scalia that means, 

first and foremost, to elucidate the original meaning of the text. Only by concentrating on 

the text's original meaning, he maintains, can unelected judges avoid the danger of 

acting undemocratically when they strike down laws passed by elected legislatures. 

His essay is followed first by comments from four leading academics, and then by his 

own responses to these comments. What is clear from these exchanges is that the task 

Justice Scalia sets for the court is far more challenging than he seems to believe. 

The truth is that the constitution is a peculiar amalgam of specific provisions and broad 

terms (“due process”, “equal protection of the laws”, “unreasonable search and seizure”, 

“cruel and unusual punishments”) which demand judicial interpretation. It is hard to see 

how judges—even when adhering to the text—can avoid interpreting such terms in 

controversial ways. 

And what exactly is “original meaning”? The original intent of the drafters of the 

constitution? Justice Scalia rejects this as too ambiguous to be a reliable restraint. In 

any case, intent obviously varied among the different drafters. The enacted text of the 

constitution should be the primary authority, he says, and then only its “original 

meaning” to the public at the time of its enactment. But, as Jack Rakove's impressive 

history makes clear, disagreement broke out about the constitution's meaning almost 

before the ink was dry. 

Justice Scalia does not deny that literalist readings of the constitution can be 

inappropriate. He scorns a reading of the first amendment which protects only freedom 

of speech and the press, and not other forms of expression such as letter writing or 

making television programmes. But this promptly opens the door to interpretive dispute. 

Justice Scalia tries to slam the door by claiming that the first amendment should be 

limited to the “then extant speech rights of Englishmen” in 1791 when the amendment 

was passed. However, he himself has voted to strike down federal and state laws 

prohibiting flag burning, cross burning and animal sacrifice, none of which would have 

been considered protected forms of expression in 1791. 

His reply is that past Supreme Court judgments bound his hands, that precedent must 

sometimes prevail over interpretation. But when exactly? 

Despite the incoherence of his position, Justice Scalia should be listened to, if only as a 

useful contrast to far broader approaches to constitutional interpretation. One of the 

most sweeping is advocated by Ronald Dworkin, a professor of law at both New York 

University and Oxford. He argues for a “moral reading” of the American Constitution, an 

approach outlined in the first essay of “Freedom's Law”, and then applied in subsequent 

chapters to a range of recent controversies. 

Oddly, Mr Dworkin, like Justice Scalia, also claims to be an “originalist”—at least in his 

comment in Justice Scalia's book. But he says that the original meaning of the 


constitution is not what its authors expected the language they used in the document to 

do solely during their lifetime, but what they meant it to say. In other words, the framers 

did not mean to freeze America in a single historical moment by dictating that only the 

legal or political outcomes they expected should be seen as legitimate for all time to 

come. Instead they employed highly abstract phrases throughout the document to 

sketch out a “moral” vision of how the American government should operate—and this 

is what the text of the constitution, if read properly, actually says. So the original 

meaning of the first amendment, for example, is not the common law rights of free 

speech or the press in 1791—in fact there was no agreed set of such rights at the 

time—but an abstract statement of the right to freedom of expression to be interpreted 

and reinterpreted as circumstances and society's attitudes change. 

Mr Dworkin's words carry the ring of truth. The drafters of the constitution were steeped 

in the liberal writings of Enlightenment philosophers and legal scholars. It is a matter of 

historical record that they sought to construct a machinery of government which would 

endure for generations. 

He is an exhilarating writer, and his view seems so much more exciting, and inspiring, 

than the sometimes crabbed reasoning of Justice Scalia. But the thought of Mr Dworkin 

sitting on the Supreme Court is more disturbing than exhilarating. An unabashed 

liberal—in both the philosophical and American political senses of the word—his 

behaviour on the bench would be that of an extreme activist who would seek to turn the 

Supreme Court into little more than a third legislative chamber. 

In practice, most judges are pragmatists who try to pursue an interpretative philosophy 

somewhere between the two extremes of Justice Scalia and Mr Dworkin. But however 


they approach their task, they seem fated to make new law, simply by virtue of their role 

in the constitutional order. 

Nevertheless, the rationale for judicial review remains: it is a legitimate check on elected 

legislatures because they are, by their nature, imperfect representatives of the popular 

will. That was widely accepted in America at the time of the constitutional convention. 

For the same reason, other countries have embraced some form of judicial review— 

even Britain, which has no written constitution to back it up. But the limits of judicial 

review remain as problematic as they were when they were debated two centuries ago. 

In fact, as Stephen Griffin lucidly argues, the court has never managed to follow a 

consistent interpretative approach for long. Conservative, as well as liberal, courts have 

been activist and both have also, in different periods, exercised restraint, sometimes to 

the point of subservience to Congress or the president. 

What clearly emerges from Mr Griffin's account is a view of the court not as the final 

arbiter on constitutional questions, but as only one element in a tripartite system of 

government designed to divide power and create friction between the three branches. 

The court may not be elected, but its members are nominated by the president and 

confirmed by Congress, which also has considerable power over the funding and 

operation of the federal court system. Both president and Congress have 

unapologetically used their powers to mould the court throughout American history. 

Although these efforts have sometimes backfired, and have often been decried as “too 

political”, they have always been an integral part of American governance. As a result, 

the court's history is one of zigzags and reversals, reflecting the changed attitudes of 

the nation, sometimes leading, sometimes following. The court has usually been widely 

respected, but occasionally derided. 

Even most of its justices have not seen the Supreme Court as a final, unaccountable 

arbiter. Many of the greatest justices, such as John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell 

Holmes, have been known as “great dissenters”, who spent their careers on the bench 

writing eloquent opinions addressed to future Supreme Court justices, in the hope that 

their views would eventually prevail. As subject to the buffeting of political storms as 

either of the other two branches of government, and like them capable of making 

mistakes, the court's legitimacy survives because its contribution is distinct and 

respected. It represents the voice of reasoned argument in America's permanent 

conversation with itself. 

https://www.economist.com/review/1997/09/04/the-politics-of-justice 

________ 

Criminal Justice Reform in The U.S. 

Criminal Justice Reform in the United States is aimed at fixing perceived errors in 

the criminal justice system. Goals of organizations spearheading the movement for 


criminal justice reform include decreasing the United States' prison population, reducing 

prison sentences that are perceived to be too harsh and long, altering drug sentencing 

policy, policing reform, reducing overcriminalization, and juvenile justice reform. 

Criminal justice reform also targets reforming policies for those with criminal convictions 

that are receiving other consequences from food assistance programs, outside of 

serving their time in prison. 

There are many organizations that advocate to reform the criminal justice system such 

as: ACLU Penal Reform International, Sentencing Project, Brennan Center for 

Justice, Cut 50 and the Innocence Project. Most states have a criminal justice reform 

act as well. These organizations use legal disputes and public events to make the 

problems aware to the public but mostly the state and federal governments. 

Sentencing 

Areas for Reform 

Sentencing laws within the U.S. criminal justice system are criticized for being both 

draconian and racially discriminatory. Additionally, they are cited as the main contributor 

to the growing and excessive prison population known as mass incarceration. 


Discriminatory Sentencing 

In 2016, according to the Sentencing Project's Fact Sheet on Trends in U.S. 

Corrections, 2.2 million individuals were in America's prisons or jails. This reflects a 

500% increase since the mid 1980s, which has come to be known as mass 

incarceration. Those in support of criminal justice reform perceive the issue to be an 

increase in surveillance and the use of draconian sentencing laws, especially within 

communities of color. While some researches claim that racial sentencing disparities 

are a reflection of differences in criminal activity, crime seriousness, and recidivism 

between different communities, other researchers believe that racial minorities are 

punished more harshly than their white counterparts who commit similar crimes. 

Findings from a study done by Cassia C. Spohn, explained in “Thirty Years of 

Sentencing Reform: The Quest for a Racial Neutral Sentencing Process” indicate that 

an individual's race and ethnicity play a role in sentencing outcomes. 

Sentencing Regulation 

Individuals are sentenced more often and for longer with the average sentence in the 

U.S. being nearly twice as long as Australian and five times as long as German 

sentences. [3] Truth in Sentencing laws and mandatory minimums are perceived to be 

two forms of draconian policies that contribute to prison overcrowding. 

Truth in sentencing law requires that offenders serve the majority of their sentences 

before being eligible for release, restricting or eliminating sentencing exceptions such as 

good-time, earned-time, and parole board release. The majority of truth in sentencing 

laws require offenders to complete at least 85% of their sentence. Due to the formation 

of the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Grants Program 

by Congress in 1994, states are given grants if they require violent offenders to serve at 

least 85% of their sentences. 

Mandatory minimum laws are those that require judges to sentence an individual to a 

specified minimum for the committed crime. This shifts power from the power of judges 

to prosecutors who have the ability to use the threat of an extremely long sentence in 

order to pressure defendants into accepting a plea bargain. 

Drug Policy 

Proponents of drug policy reform point to the war on drugs, marijuana law reform, and 

reducing drug harm as key issues. Advocates for policy change such as the Drug Policy 

Alliance believe that the War on Drugs was and is a policy failure that has led to wasted 

resources, human potential, and a violation of rights. The mass incarceration of drug 

users is viewed as a waste of taxpayer money by drug reform advocated. The United 

States spends over $51 million yearly on the war on drugs. 


Organizations that focus on reform such as the Sentencing Project and Campaign 

Zero also claim that the likelihood of imprisonment for drug related charges is racially 

disparate. In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of 

Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander originates the claim that the War on Drugs is a new 

form of systematic oppression and social control that resembles Jim Crow laws that 

enforced racial segregation. The enactment of the War on Drugs in the 1980s is 

primarily responsible for the dramatic rise in incarceration rates in the U.S. In the 1980s, 

40,900 individuals were incarcerated due to drug offenses, and by 2015 there were 

469,545. In 2016 1,572,579 individuals were arrested for drug law violations (84% of 

which were due to possession). 

Of this number, 643,249 were arrested due to marajuana violations (89% of which were 

due to possession). Approximately half of the individuals currently incarcerated in 

federal prisons are there due to a drug offense. Half of the individuals in federal prison 

are there due to a drug offense. Compared to 1980, there are ten times as many people 

in state prisons for drug offenses. 

The focus of the War on Drugs is cited as being misguided for stigmatizing drug 

users. Drug use is framed as a criminal rather than addiction and health issue. The 

Drug Policy Alliance points to countries that focus on the reduction of drug related 

harms such as overdose, addiction, and disease as metrics for drug policy 

success. Portugal is often cited as extremely successful for their drug policies since 

decriminalizing low level drug possession in 2001 and shifting towards a health-based 

approach to drug use. Since doing so Portugal has seen a decrease in violent crime, 

addiction, and the transmission of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. 


Policing 

Policing reform typically focuses on police brutality and the use of dangerous force 

against minority individuals. Police brutality refers to the "use of excessive physical 

force or verbal assault and psychological intimidation" by law enforcement against 

individuals. 

According to Mapping Police Violence, police killed 1,147 individuals in 2017. This 

shows an increase from previous years with 963 individuals killed by fatal force in 2016 

and 995 killed in 2015. The distribution of these killings varies widely by state with the 

majority of incidences occurring in states such as California, Texas, Florida, and 

Arizona and the least in Rhode Island, Vermont and North Dakota. While the distribution 

of killings by state within the U.S. is not even, overall more individuals die due to police 

shootings and other acts of excessive force than in any other Western, developed 

nation. Additionally, there are racial disparities within statistics of police killings. Of the 

1,147 individuals killed by the police in 2017, a quarter were Black, meaning Black 

individuals were three times as likely to be killed by the police than their White 

counterparts. 30% of the Black victims were unarmed, compared to 21% of White 

Victims that were. 

Police Brutality 

Those in favor of criminal justice reform point to recurring examples of discriminatory 

violence towards individuals such as the Watts Riots of 1965, the beating of Rodney 

King in 1991, and the death of Amadou Diallo in the 1990s. 

Theories from various fields including sociology and psychology have attempted to 

explain the phenomena of police brutality. Sociological theories of brutality focus on the 

way in which interactions between police and individuals are influenced by the status of 

the individual. This means that differences race, gender, and socioeconomic status 

result in disparate treatment by law enforcement. Additionally, “situational factors” such 

as the character of the neighborhood also affect the interactions. Each of these factors 

are cues that push officers to make judgements about how to proceed. So, according to 

this theory minorities are overrepresented in police killings simply due to perceptions of 

their race. Psychological theories of police brutality emphasizes that different outlooks 

and personalities result in differing behavior by the police. This follows behavioral 

psychology in suggesting that differences in gender, socioeconomic status, educational 

and experiences affect one's responses. Organizational theory suggests that police 

brutality is a result of the organizational structure of law enforcement. The use of 

excessive force is seen as a response to disrespecting their authority. 

In his book Punishing Race, Michael Tonry of University of Michigan, claims that White 

individuals and groups typically excuse police brutality due to a deep seated prejudice 

towards Blacks. Media representations of Black individuals and disparate sentencing 

contribute to the idea that Black individuals are inherently more criminal. Research 

reveals that Black males with features considered Afrocentric such as darker skin tone, 


oad noses, and full lips, receive longer sentences than their lighter skinned 

counterparts with Eurocentric features. 

Broken Windows Policing 

Broken windows policing, or quality of life policing, is based on a criminological theory 

known as broken windows theory. This theory suggests that repairing broken windows 

in buildings and other form of physical disorder within a city indicate whether or not 

there is crime. When translated to policing tactics, minor offenses are targeted as a way 

to deter greater, more serious crime. Reformers point to the ways that broken windows 

policing negatively impacts communities of color through criminalization and excessive 

force. Additionally, it is typically seen as responsible for over policing and the 

militarization of neighborhoods. Offenses such as drug possession, “suspicious” 

activities or mental health crises often lead to the characterization of a neighborhood as 

disorderly and in need of stronger policing. 

Opponents of broken windows policing and theory suggest that this leads to the 

inherent criminalization of poor, minority and homeless individuals. It creates a stigma 

that reinforces the underlying problems that lead to the perception of crime within the 

neighborhood. Additionally, those that oppose the theory suggest that these issues are 

improperly addressed by law enforcement and instead should be treated by social 

workers or healthcare professionals. 


Predictive Policing 

Predictive policing is an analytical technique used by law enforcement in order to predict 

where crime is likely to occur. It involves predicting both the potential time and place of 

crimes and individuals likely to commit them. It is used as an alternative to full reliance 

and trust in the “hunches” and instincts of law enforcement that are believed to come 

with training. Proponents of predictive policing believe that it is a way to minimize bias 

and discriminatory practices within policing. 

Opponents of predictive policing point to the fact that (1) the data used to isolate 

patterns of criminal behavior uses a privatized algorithm that only companies have 

access to and (2) its potential to reinforce existing biases against poor and minority 

communities. Because predictive policing algorithms use existing data to make 

predictions, it would follow that existing bias within the system is not eliminated but 

amplified. Additionally, opponents believe that it is a way to “manufacture” crime; it 

reinforces the idea that crime in an area exists and just needs to be found by law 

enforcement. 

Stop and Frisk 

Stop-and-frisk stops refer to “a brief non-intrusive police stop of a suspect” warranted by 

“reasonable suspicion” that often involve a pat down of the suspect. Stop-and-frisk 

policies became a large part of criminal justice reform efforts following NYPD's use of 

the tactic. NYPD vowed to end its implementation of stop and frisk policies August 12, 

2013 when ruled unconstitutional in Floyd v. City of New York. Although this is the case, 

similar policies are used in other cities throughout the U.S. 

Opponents of stop-and-frisk believe that it is unconstitutional, ineffective, and racist. 

Most cases in which stop and frisk is used are a result of the War on Drugs. In line with 

this, the majority of those targeted are racial minorities, specifically African 

Americans. A report by the Public Advocate's office indicates that of the 532,911 stops 

made in 2012 in New York City, 53% of individuals were Black and 31% 

were Hispanic. Additionally, the New York Civil Liberties Union indicated that only 

97,296 stops were made in 2002, or less than a fifth of those made in 2012. Opponents 

point to the fact that stop-and-frisk is often unproductive and fails to fulfill its aim. Of the 

2.3 million instances of police stopping Black males based on reasonable suspicion 

between 2004 and 2012, only 16,000 resulted in the seizure of illicit goods. 

Re-Entry 

Those that believe re-entry programs need reform typically point to recidivism rates 

within the United States criminal justice system. While those against reform claim 

that recidivism rates are indicative of inherent criminality amongst certain groups, those 

in support of reform believe it is indicative of the ineffectiveness of re-entry and parole 

programs. 


Different types of disenfranchisement exist that affect the formerly incarcerated after 

their release. Advocates of criminal justice reform in the United States often also push 

for the reform of restrictions on federal aid and societal participation. Federal restrictions 

that exist include bans on the use of welfare programs and federal financial aid for 

education. Restrictions on societal participation include felons not being allowed to hold 

public office, teach or work in child care, or vote. Voting restrictions are known as felony 

disenfranchisement. This refers to the regulations that prevent those with a felony 

conviction from voting in local, state, and federal elections on the basis of their 

conviction. 6.1 million individuals were unable to vote due to felony disenfranchisement 

in 2016. 

Former prisoners are 

incarcerated multiple 

times, increasing 

recidivism rates, because 

they are unable to follow 

strict rules and 

regulations. Advocates of 

parole reform perceive 

these regulations as not 

being focus on 

community well being but 

instead on controlling 

parolees. A report for 

Columbia University's 

Justice lab showed that 

in the four years since 

January 1, 2018, New 

York City's jail population 

declined 

by 

21%. However, during 

this time period, the 

population of individuals 

incarcerated due to 

parole violations 

increased by 15%. 

The challenge of finding 

employment 

opportunities is another 

barrier for reintegration. 

Many employers deny 

applicants due to criminal 

records. Other reasons for difficulty finding employment is lack of available support such 

as personal networks and resources from correction systems. The chance of successful 

reintegration can come from the community surrounding the newly released individual. 


Those who return to disadvantaged neighborhoods have a higher chance of recidivism 

than those who return to communities with rich and affluent resources. Lack of stable 

housing and resources to combat mental health and drug and alcohol abuse create 

obstacles for formerly incarcerated to successfully reintegrate. 

Former prisoners are incarcerated multiple times, increasing recidivism rates, because 

of many factors that often do not include real crime. Most often they are re-incarcerated 

because of strict parole rules and regulations. Advocates of parole reform perceive 

these regulations as not being focus on community well being but instead on controlling 

parolees. A report for Columbia University's Justice lab showed that in the four years 

since January 1, 2018, New York City's jail population declined by 21%. However, 

during this time period, the population of individuals incarcerated due to parole 

violations increased by 15%. 

There are many forms of successful re-entry. Government intervention such as 

implementing "wrap-around" services are proven to help income and boost 

employment. Comprehensive social services that offer independent housing and jobs 

alongside counseling and rehabilitation help formerly incarcerated reintegrate. 

The Second Chance Act was passed with bipartisan support in an effort to reduce 

recidivism rates and improve outcomes for individuals following their released from 

juvenile facilities, jails and prisons. Second Chance Grant Programs include those that 

focus on substance use and mental disorders, mentoring and transitional services for 

adults, improvement for the outcomes for youth in the juvenile justice system, and 

technology career training. 

The "Band the Box" Act is a program that has been implemented in 23 states that offers 

fair chance hiring for the formerly incarcerated by eliminating the requirement of 

addressing criminal history on employment applications This act strives to end criminal 

record discrimination and has improved employment opportunities for formerly 

incarcerated with employers such as Target, Starbucks, and Home Depot. "Ban the 

Box" also influences racial discrimination as employers began to guess who has 

criminal records, and individuals mostly targeted by these assumptions are Hispanics 

and Blacks. 

Juvenile Justice Reform 

The push for reform within juvenile justice highlights the notion that Black and Latinx 

individuals, especially males, are criminalized prior to adulthood. The juvenile justice 

system is viewed in the same light as the criminal justice system as a form of social 

control that incapacitates Black and Latinx youth. Criminalization is also thought to 

occur in other social institutions such as school businesses, the streets and community 

centers. The juvenile justice system itself is also often criticized by reformers for 

perpetuating the notion that non-criminal individuals are criminal. The majority of 

individuals that enter the system have committed non-violent offenses, but still 

experience the effects of indirect punishment, direct punishment, and criminalization of 


their violent counterparts. Overall, this criminalization is thought to be harmful due to its 

impact on the perception and Black and Latinx youth have of themselves and their 

capability to be successful within society. 

Many also believe that the juvenile justice system is a part of the school to prison 

pipeline which funnels individuals from public school to the criminal and juvenile justice 

systems. Harsher disciplinary rules prevent individuals from re-entering schools 

following an offense, making it more likely for them to experience social pressures such 

as law income and unemployment that reform groups perceive to lead to criminal 

activity. 

Additionally, in school arrests contribute to the pipeline. Advocates of reform point to the 

fact that 70% of students arrested at school are Black, further contributing to the 

criminalization and mass incarceration of Black individuals. 

“There is a growing body of evidence that identifies child maltreatment as a predictor of 

lifetime anti-social and criminal behavior” (Basto-Pereira, Miranda, Ribeiro, & Maia. 

(2016). Whatever the reason for the criminal behavior, there must be countermeasures 

that are developed to keep people that are more than likely to commit a crime from 

committing them. After school programs, community involvement in youth, diversionary 

programs must be in place to keep youth that have a higher risk of committing a crime 

from continuing their crime involvement. If you do not start something at the beginning, 

you will never address the cause of the issue. 


Arguments On Criminal Justice Reform 

Arguments exist for and against criminal justice reform in the United States. While it is 

more common for those on the left to support reform, some conservative groups and 

individuals also believe that the system must be reformed. 

Conservative Support for Reform 

Support for Reform 

There is a push from conservative groups such as Right on Crime to reclaim ground in 

the debate for criminal justice reform. Although support for reform is typically associated 

with liberal ideology, conservative criminological views emphasize the role of individual 

responsibility in crime. This parts from the liberal viewpoint that societal pressures 

contribute to crime in society. 

Conservative responses to crime emphasize holding prisoners accountable. They also 

strongly believe in the concept of victim reconciliation, or restorative justice. Restorative 

justice focuses on mediation between a victim and offender in order to satisfy both 

parties. Furthermore, they believe that victim engagement benefits victims and 

offenders because a large part of rehabilitation is the recognition of the impact of their 

criminal acts. 

The conservative case for criminal justice reform is based on a moral belief in the need 

to help offenders turn their lives around, but also necessary for public safety. The 

conservative belief is that high incarceration rates reflect an expansion of government 

power. Fiscal discipline reflects a large portion of conservative support for 

reform. Those that have been advanced in support of criminal justice reform include that 

the prison population of the United States costs about $80 billion per year to 

maintain. The push for reform emphasizes that it is inefficient to continue to spend such 

a large portion of state and national taxpayer dollars on incarcerating such a large 

number of individuals. Additionally, conservatives believe that the government should 

have greater accountability in reducing rates. 

Their proposed reforms have been criticized by some who claim the reforms are driven 

primarily by cost benefit analysis and recidivism, not a concern for justice and human 

rights, including sociologist Marie Gottschalk, who stated "cost-benefit analysis is one of 

the principal tools of the neoliberal politics on which the carceral state is founded." 

Liberal Support for Reform 

Liberal reformers believe that since the civil rights era, a form of color-blind racism has 

developed, reflecting a shift from de jure to de facto racism. Within this, racial minorities, 

most often African Americans of a low socioeconomic status, “are subject to unequal 

protecton of the laws, excessive surveillance, extreme segregation, and neo-slave labor 

via incarceration, all in the name of crime control.” Beyond tangible punishments there 


are “invisible punishments” such as felony disenfranchisement, restrictions on holding 

public office, occupational bans on professions such as law enforcement, teaching and 

child care, bans on welfare and federal assistance, and federal financial aid for 

education. Because mass incarceration and “invisible punishments” that also impact 

communities of color are thought of and referred to as the New Jim Crow, or another 

form of racialized social control, prison abolitionists draw parallels between prison 

abolition and the abolition of slaves. 

The prison abolition movement, typically believed to be on the far left, view prisons as a 

form of Neo-slavery that is unjust and racist. The movement dates back to Emma 

Goldman's 1911 abolitionist essay, The Priest and the Devil to open Prisons: A Social 

Crime and Failure. There exists the belief that prisons are obsolete, financially 

motivated, and better replaced by more humane institutions that directly focus on the 

rehabilitation of individuals. 

The abolition movement believes that prisons should not be reformed by replaced as 

they are not productive social institutions and instead only serve to incapacitate 


Opposition to Reform 

Opposition to criminal justice reform typically is expressed by conservatives who do not 

perceive errors in the criminal justice system. Those that believe this also typically reject 

the claim from reform activists that the criminal justice system acts in a way that is 


acially disparate, and do not acknowledge the War on Drugs as "the new Jim Crow." 

Instead, "blue racism," or discrimination against law enforcement is seen as 

existing. Policing is viewed as a colorblind process that has no consideration for the 

race of offenders. Right wing media outlets frequently fight the notion of racially 

disparate policing that groups such as Black Lives Matter and Campaign Zero with the 

idea that police officers are reacting to compromising situations in a normal and rational 

way. 

Crime is cited as the rationale for any police reaction, and “violent criminal attacks are 

(cited as) the best predictor of whom police might shoot in America" according to those 

opposed to reform. 

Reform Organizations 

Several non-profits, organizations, and initiatives also focus on criminal justice reform 

including the ACLU, Campaign Zero, Right on Crime, The Innocence Project, The 

Sentencing Project, and the Marshall Project. The goals of these organizations is to 

spread awareness about perceived injustices within the criminal justice system and to 

promote action against it through social and policy change. 

In 2015 a number of reformers, including the ACLU, the Center for American 

Progress, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, Koch family foundations, 

the Coalition for Public Safety, and the MacArthur Foundation, announced a bipartisan 

resolution to reform the criminal justice system in the United States. Their efforts were 

lauded by President Obama who noted these reforms will improve rehabilitation and 

workforce opportunities for those who have served their sentences. 

Reform in the States 

A common theme of reform bills in the states aim for reform on sentencing laws, civil 

asset forfeiture laws, bail reform, "ban the box" policies, and juvenile justice reform. 

Alabama 

Reformed the policy of allowing people with a felony drug conviction apply for 

assistance programs such as food and cash assistance. Alabama reformed this policy 

to expand the criteria as a case-by-case premise. 

Alaska 

In 2016, Alaska chose not to participate in the law that doesn't allow people with a 

felony drug conviction to apply for programs to assist in their living and family situations. 

Include in their new policy under Senate Bill 91, someone with a felony drug conviction 

must follow the courts rehabilitation treatments and remain on good behavior under the 

assigned parole requirements. 


Arizona 

In April 2017, Arizona amended the civil assets forfeiture law allowing agencies of the 

government to take property from criminal enterprises whether there was a conviction or 

not. 

Arkansas 

Most recently Arkansas passed Act 423 of 2017 to allow offenders who break probation 

or parole to be housed in a different, more rehabilitative facility for a shorter amount of 

time instead of overcrowding the prison system. This law also keeps offenders who 


commit crimes from being intoxicated by drugs or because of their mental health out of 

prison and jails. Their focus is on reducing the prison population. They agree, 

bipartisan, to do this by reducing prison sentences and adding reentry programs while 

keeping it cost effective. 

California 

The recent governor of California proposed to reduce the population of prisons with 

three new eligibility requirements approved by the public. Proposition 57 included on 

policy for judge's approval on juvenile offenders being tried as an adult, changing the 

eligibility requirements for adult with violent convictions allowing them to be granted 

parole, and advising the prison system to be more lenient on the "good behavior" rules 

for those incarcerated to be released early. 

Colorado 

Senate Bill 181 was created in 2016 and allows juveniles that were previously 

sentenced to life without the option of parole to file for a resentencing hearing, in hopes 

of reducing the prison population. 

Connecticut 

In August 2017, the governor passed a reform bill for the criminal justice system of 

Connecticut. This bill included a bail reform to get ride of cash bail for misdemeanor 

level and non-violent offenses. It also included a requirement of a criminal conviction 

before seizing the asset(s) someone put up for bail. The governor also created "Second 

Chance Society" to reduced the consequences of drug possession and offenders who 

committed non-violent offenses to apply for parole or get their conviction pardoned. 

Delaware 

Delaware amended the "three-strikes" law by allowing more convictions before the 

offender was sentenced under the law. Under Senate Bill 163 Delaware lowered the 

sentencing requirement for the "three-strikes" law and is allowing offenders already 

convicted to be resentenced. In 2016, Delaware also reformed their policy that made 

people with convicted felonies to pay their fines off before they could vote. SB 242 

allows convicted felons to vote without paying off their fines. 

Florida 

Florida reformed one of their sentencing policies in 2016. Aggravated assault is no 

longer a crime that sentences a 10 to 20 or 20 to Life mandatory minimum statue, under 

SB 228. 

Georgia 


Georgia, like Alabama amended their policy for food assistance programs for a case-bycase 

premise under Senate Bill 367. 

Hawaii 

The summer of 2012 the governor enacted two bills to reform the justice system for both 

juveniles and adults. House Bill 2515 and Senate Bill 2776, which was agreed upon by 

both parties, were signed to reduce the number of prisoners by reducing recidivism 

rates and use rehabilitation more than prisons. 

Idaho 

In 2005, Idaho created 

a group of members 

from the branches of 

government to 

contemplate the 

issues in the criminal 

justice system and find 

the most cost effective 

and safe practices to 

keep the public safe 

and reform the 

system. 

They have created 

guidelines to reduce 

recidivism rates in 

their state. Idaho, 

most recently, has 

revised a policy for 

posting cash bail 

bonds for low-level 

driving offenses. 

Illinois 

Illinois adopted House 

Bill 1437, in 2016, requiring the Criminal Justice Information Authority to evaluate the 

reporting practices. 

It also regulates the requirements for reporting practices such as arrest without charges, 

most involving racial demographics. 


Indiana 

There has been framework to amend sentencing policies that coincide with the offense 

rather than the standard for everyone. It includes the use of rehabilitation for drug 

offenders to keep them out prison and tightening the ropes of offenders on probation. 

Iowa 

In 2016 Iowa reduced the mandatory minimum sentencing for second degree robbery 

offenses from seven years to five or six years. The House File 2064 also allows 

offenders who committed non-violent drug offenses to be released early after serving 

half their mandatory minimum sentence. 

Kansas 

In April 2016, Kansas passed Senate Bill 367 to save money on offenders who are 

considered "low-risk" by serving their time helping the community while they live at 

home. Instead, the bill intends that the money is spent rehabilitating the "high-risk" 

offenders to keep them from entering the criminal justice system again after they are 

released. SB 367 is also aimed at fixing the juvenile justice system by categorizing them 

as "low-risk" offenders and keeping them out of the prison systems to 

lower incarceration rates. 

Kentucky 

Kentucky passed House Bill 40 to allow offenders to file to have their low-level 

conviction removed from their record. This also allows people with their felony records 

removed to vote. 

Louisiana 

Louisiana allowed House Bill 266, a “ban the box” policy that holds up the question 

“have you ever been convicted of a felony” on employment applications to give a fair 

chance to those that have. In 2016, they also passed Senate Bill 324, changing the age 

for juveniles to be considered criminally responsible to 18. 

Maine 

This reform is aimed at fixing police misconduct and the policies that impact the public 

of an indigent nature. In April, the governor enacted a bill that reformed the bail system, 

waiving fines and fee in certain cases, called LD 1639. 

Maryland 

With House Bill 1312, Maryland reversed the mandatory minimum sentence for drug 

crimes that weren't violent. It also allowed offenders that are incarcerated and can apply 


for aged and medical parole earlier and allowing the prison system to award more 

credits to offenders for finishing programs that are educational. Maryland also allowed 

HB 980, without the governors permission, to allow offenders in felony parole to vote. 

Massachusetts 

In Massachusetts, a person will no longer get their license suspended if they are 

convicted of a drug offense also getting rid of the fee to get your license back, under 

Senate Bill 2021. 

Michigan 

The governor signed to enact multiple bills in March 2017. One includes Senate Bill 8, a 

bill that will reform the recidivism rates by applying supervision practices for offenders 

on probation or parole to agencies that get state funding. SB 22 is another bill that 

reforms the rehabilitative services to those in the age range of 18 and 22. Lastly, SB 9 

reforms the reentry program to make it an easier transition back to functioning society. 

Minnesota 

Minnesota has become more lenient on the sale and possession laws by reducing the 

imprisonment time for first-degree and second-degree sales and possession charges for 

drugs including heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamines. With Senate File 3481, 

Minnesota has increased the amount for a first-degree sale and possession charge from 

10 grams to 17. For offenses with violent factors such as firearms, the imprisonment 

term has increased. 


Mississippi 

House Bill 812 was signed by the governor to regulate civil forfeiture reporting made 

easier for departments in the state. 

Missouri 

Missouri also amended their law defining the voting requirements for offenders in the 

state. The governor also held up the “ban the box” policy. 

Montana 

In October 2017, Montana signed into law House Bill 133. This bill reforms the system 

by reforming sentencing for a wide range of first-time misdemeanors or by eliminating 

incarceration time. It also got rid of mandatory minimum sentences for felony drug 

offenses but revised the mandatory minimum statutes for felony sex crimes. 

Nebraska 

Nebraska passed three bills reforming the criminal justice system. Legislative Bill 172 

which was directed towards sentencing of midlevel felon charges by reducing or getting 

id of the mandatory minimum sentences. LB 173 was directed towards the “threestrikes” 

law by reducing the requirements to only violent crimes. Lastly, LB 483 which 

would reenact a rule from the 1980s. This is the “one third” rule that forces judges to 

sentence minimum sentences that are a third of the maximum sentence. 

Nevada 

Nevada has reformed the policy for voting by allowing convicted felons to vote in 

Assembly Bill 181. They have reformed the amount of time to file for a petition to seal 

conviction records in Senate Bill 125 and allowing offenders who are incarcerated to 

speak with their families to find a job for when they reenter society in Senate Bill 420. 

New Hampshire 

Most recently in New Hampshire, they have decriminalized a small amount of marijuana 

with House Bill 640. Senate Bill 200 reduces the likeliness that you will have served jail 

time for not being able to afford a fine and its fees. 

New Jersey 

New Jersey passed a bill reforming the treatment of offenders while they are 

incarcerated by only allowing offenders to be housed in solitary confinement for less 

than 15 consecutive days at a time. S51 also prohibits solitary confinement for those 

with disabilities, mental illnesses, and the LGBTQ community. If an offender is housed 


in solitary confinement, S51 requires they are seen by a medical professional everyday 

for their stay. 

New Mexico 

The reform for New Mexico has focused mostly on making the sentencing tougher, but 

there has been a campaign that advocates for reform called New Mexico Safe. 

New York 

New York passed a 2017 Criminal Justice Reform Act only approving, so far, reforming 

the bail determination system, raising the age of juvenile offenders, and providing a 

speedy trial for all. 

North Carolina 

Most recent controversy about North Carolina is the passing of House Bill 142 that 

prevents the protection of the members in the LGBTQ community. Senate Bill 145 puts 

a limit on the role of the highway department patrol enforcing federal immigration laws. 


North Dakota 

North Dakota has passed two bills reforming the criminal justice system in different 

ways. One bill, House Bill 1221, reforms the confidential informant use by the police 

restricting juveniles to be an informant, making sure the informant has spoken with a 

lawyer and both parties are aware of the safety risks. The other bill, House Bill 1195, 

reforms the juvenile sentencing for murder. Instead of being sentenced as an adult, if 

they are tried as an adult, they are sentenced as a juvenile so they won't receive the 

sentence of life without the option of parole. 

Ohio 

Most recently, Ohio has passed Senate Bill 97 to increase the amount of time someone 

who has committed a crime with a weapon spends in prison by 50%. It also restricts 

offenders with a violent background and violent criminal history to buy or use a firearm. 

They have also passed a variation of the “ban the box” policy by requiring employers of 

the public to not consider the criminal background as the first thing to rule them out. 

Oklahoma 

Oklahoma has amended classifications for drug possession charges and property 

offenses to reflect as misdemeanors under State Question 780. They also approved 

State Question 781 to use the money funding offenders in the previous state question 

towards rehabilitation instead. In 2016, Oklahoma also held up the “ban the box” policy. 

Oregon 

Most recent efforts from Oregon is a complain, They Report to you, to make the criminal 

justice system clearer to the average person, focus on the reason an offender commits 

a crime but also with a prevention and rehabilitative approach. 

Pennsylvania 

Reform in Pennsylvania has enacted a Senate Bill 100, Criminal Justice Reform Act that 

changes laws such as sending offenders who violate parole conditions to a community 

correction center instead of prison and to sentencing offenders of misdemeanor level 

offenses to prison. 

Rhode Island 

Rhode Island has passed a human trafficking reform this past year (2017) and a 

Juvenile Reinvestment package. 

South Carolina 

The age for criminal responsibility was increased with Senate Bill 916 to age 17. 


South Dakota 

South Dakota has eliminated the life without the option of parole for juveniles completely 

for people under 18 years-old when they committed the crime with Senate Bill 140. 

Tennessee 

In recent years, many groups have been created to battle the task of reforming the 

criminal justice system. They all aim to impact the bail system, and juvenile justice. In 

2017 a juvenile justice reform bill was passed that makes judges let juveniles know 

when they can and can't expunge their record and lowered the age of allowing them to 

do that to 17. 

Texas 

Texas, just like Alabama, Missouri, and Georgia has reformed the voting eligibility 

requirements for offenders based on their cases. In Texas in 2007 they were seeking to 

build more prisons at a cost of 2 billion dollars. The legislature enacted criminal justice 

reforms and by 2010 they closed 4 prisons and are planning on closing more and the 


crime rate dropped. 

A person that has paid his or her debt to society should get "ALL" American Rights 

back. Depending on if he or she has led a good life after said debt has been paid in full 

and should not be held against him or her after 20 years of no other felony convictions. 

Utah 

With House Bill 405, Utah also eliminated the life without parole for juveniles under 18 

for capital offenses. 

Vermont 

In 2016, Vermont granted House Bill 95 and got rid of the discretion for the state to 

charge juveniles as adults for certain and less serious offenses. 

Virginia 

The governor pushed executive orders that allowed about 70,000 people who have 

completed their sentence, parole included to vote in 2016. 

Washington 

Washington has reformed their sentencing structure also while restructuring 

their discretionary powers for those involved in the criminal justice system. In 

September 2017, the voting rights of people with felony convictions were reenacted 

allowing them to vote once their sentence is completed. Another reform Washington is 

working towards is bail reform. 

West Virginia 

Senate Bill 393 was passed in April 2015 to reform the juvenile justice system by 

keeping the juveniles at home instead of incarcerated. 

Wisconsin 

Wisconsin has also recently adopted a form the “ban the box” policy to require the 

employers of state jobs to hold off on asking about any criminal convictions until the end 

of the application process in the Wisconsin Act 150. The state has also pursued more 

options for those who committed low-level nonviolent crimes out of prisons and jails and 

more resources in the community in Assembly 657. 

They have also tightened the penalty process for repeat offenders of driving while 

intoxicated in AB 536 and Senate Bill 455. 


Wyoming 

One bill in 2017 aimed at fixing the criminal justice system wasn't passed in the Senate. 

It was aimed at reforming sentences and reforming the parole and probation violations 

and the conditions and resentencing. 

Global Criminal Justice Reform Efforts 

As an example, in 2016, it was reported that Britain was considering reforming its own 

criminal justice system in similar ways that Texas had done so in recent years. 

There is an organization called the United Nations Office of Drug and Crime. They 

advocate for criminal justice reform globally as well. They advocate for reform in the 

police departments, prosecutorial reform, court reform, prison reform, and mostly for 

restorative justice. UNODC helps countries develop plans such as legislature to pass to 

reform their entire criminal justice system. They also work closely with other groups 

mostly fixating on the global drug problem. 



II. Judicial Independence 

in U.S. Courts 

Judicial Independence is the concept that the judiciary should be independent from 

the other branches of government. That is, courts should not be subject to improper 

influence from the other branches of government or from private or partisan interests. 

Judicial independence is important to the idea of separation of powers. 

Different countries deal with the idea of judicial independence through different means 

of judicial selection, or choosing judges. One way to promote judicial independence is 

by granting life tenure or long tenure for judges, which ideally frees them to 

decide cases and make rulings according to the rule of law and judicial discretion, even 

if those decisions are politically unpopular or opposed by powerful interests. This 

concept can be traced back to 18th-century England. 

In some countries, the ability of the judiciary to check the legislature is enhanced by the 

power of judicial review. This power can be used, for example, by mandating certain 

action when the judiciary perceives that a branch of government is refusing to perform a 

constitutional duty or by declaring laws passed by the legislature unconstitutional. 

Theory of Judicial Independence 

Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers of the United 

States, by portraitist Daniel Huntington c. 1865. In The Federalist 

No. 78, published 28 May 1788, Hamilton wrote: "The complete 

independence of the courts of justice is particularly essential in a 

limited constitution." 

Importance 

Judicial independence serves as a safeguard for the 

rights and privileges provided by a limited constitution 

and prevents executive and legislative encroachment 

upon those rights. It serves as a foundation for the rule 

of law and democracy. The rule of law means that all 

authority and power must come from an ultimate 

source of law. Under an independent judicial system, the courts and its officers are free 

from inappropriate intervention in the judiciary's affairs. With this independence, the 

judiciary can safeguard people's rights and freedoms which ensure equal protection for 

all. 

The effectiveness of the law and the respect that people have for the law and the 

government which enacts it is dependent upon the judiciary's independence to mete out 

fair decisions. Furthermore, it is a pillar of economic growth as multinational businesses 


and investors have confidence to invest in the economy of a nation who has a strong 

and stable judiciary that is independent of interference. The judiciary's role in deciding 

the validity of presidential and parliamentary elections also necessitates independence 

of the judiciary. 

Disadvantages 

The disadvantages of having a judiciary that is seemingly too independent include 

possible abuse of power by judges. Self-interest, ideological dedication and even 

corruption may influence the decisions of judges without any checks and balances in 

place to prevent this abuse of power if the judiciary is completely independent. The 

relationship between the judiciary and the executive is a complex series of 

dependencies and interdependencies which counter-check each other and must be 

carefully balanced. One cannot be too independent of the other. Furthermore, judicial 

support of the executive is not as negative as it seems as the executive is the branch of 

government with the greatest claim to democratic legitimacy. If the judiciary and 

executive are constantly feuding, no government can function well. 

Also, an extremely independent judiciary would lack judicial accountability, which is the 

duty of a public decision-maker to explain and justify a decision and to make 

amendments where a decision causes injustice or problems. Judges are not required to 

give an entire account of their rationale behind decisions, and are shielded against 

public scrutiny and protected from legal repercussions. However judicial accountability 

can reinforce judicial independence as it could show that judges have proper reasons 

and rationales for arriving at a particular decision. While judges are not democratically 

accountable to the people, the key is for judges to achieve equilibrium between the two 

to ensure that justice is upheld. 

Economic Basis 

Constitutional economics studies issues such as the proper distribution of national 

wealth including government spending on the judiciary. In transitional and developing 

countries, spending on the judiciary may be controlled by the executive. This 

undermines the principle of judicial independence because it creates a financial 

dependence of the judiciary on the executive. It is important to distinguish between two 

methods of corruption of the judiciary: the state (through budget planning and privileges) 

being the most dangerous, and private. State corruption of the judiciary can impede the 

ability of businesses to optimally facilitate the growth and development of a market 

economy. 

In some countries, the constitution also prohibits the legislative branch from reducing 

salaries of sitting judges. 


National and International Developments 

Development of The Concept 

The development of judicial independence has been argued to involve a cycle of 

national law having an impact on international law, and international law subsequently 

impacting national law. This is said to occur in three phases: the first phase is 

characterized by the domestic development of the concept of judicial independence, the 

second by the spread of these concepts internationally and their implementation in 

international law, and the third by the implementation in national law of these newly 

formulated international principles of judicial independence. 

A notable example illustrating this cycle is the United Kingdom. The first phase occurred 

in England with the original conception of judicial independence in the Act of Settlement 

1701. The second phase was evident when England’s concepts regarding judicial 

independence spread internationally, and were adopted into the domestic law of other 

countries; for instance, England served as the model for Montesquieu’s separation of 

powers doctrine, and the Founding Fathers of the US Constitution used England as 

their dominant model in formulating the Constitution’s Article III, which is the foundation 

of American judicial independence. Other common law countries, including Canada, 

Australia, and India, also adopted the British model of judicial independence. 


In recent decades the third phase of judicial independence has been evident in the 

UK, as it has been significantly influenced by judicial independence principles 

developed by international human rights constitutional documents. The European Court 

of Human Rights (ECtHR) has had a significant impact on the conceptual analysis of 

judicial independence in England and Scotland. This process began in the 1990s with 

the ECtHR hearing UK cases and, more significantly, in the application of the European 

Convention on Human Rights in British law through the Human Rights Act 1998, which 

came into force in the UK in 2000. 

Where British national law had previously impacted the international development of 

judicial independence, the British Constitutional Reform Act 2005 marked a shift, with 

international law now impacting British domestic law. The Constitutional Reform Act 

dramatically reformed government control over the administration of justice in England 

and Wales; importantly, it discontinued the position of the Lord Chancellor, one of the 

country’s oldest constitutional offices, who was entrusted with a combination of 

legislative, executive, and judicial capacities. The Lord Chancellor served as speaker of 

the Upper House of Parliament, the House of Lords; as a member of the executive 

branch and member of the senior cabinet; and as the head of the judiciary. Historically, 

the appellate function had a connection with the executive branch due to the types of 

cases typically heard – impeachment and the hearing of felony charges against 

peers. The Constitutional Reform Act established new lines of demarcation between the 

Lord Chancellor and the judiciary, transferring all the judicial functions to the judiciary 

and entrusting the Lord Chancellor only with what are considered administrative and 

executive matters. In addition, the Constitutional Reform Act replaced the Lord 

Chancellor by the Lord Chief Justice as head of the judiciary, separated the 

judicial Appellate Committee of the House of Lords from the legislative parliament, 

reforming it as the Supreme Court, and creating a Judicial Appointments 

Commission. The creation of the Supreme Court was important, for it finally separated 

the highest court of appeal from the House of Lords. 

Thus, the United Kingdom, where judicial independence began over three hundred 

years ago, illustrates the interaction over time of national and international law and 

jurisprudence in the area of judicial independence. In this process, concepts and ideas 

have become enriched as they have been implemented in successive judicial and 

political systems, as each system has enhanced and deepened the concepts and ideas 

it actualized. In addition to the UK, similar developments of conceptual cross-fertilization 

can be seen internationally, for example in European Union law, in civil law countries 

such as Austria, and in other common law jurisdictions including Canada. 

International Standards 

The International Association of Judicial Independence and World Peace produced the 

Mt. Scopus International Standards of Judicial Independence between 2007 and 2012. 

These built on the same association's New Delhi Minimum Standards on Judicial 

independence adopted in 1982 and their Montréal Universal Declaration on the 

Independence of Justice in 1983. Other influences they cite for the standards include 


the UN Basic Principles of Judicial Independence from 1985, the Burgh House 

Principles of Judicial Independence in International Law (for the international judiciary), 

Tokyo Law Asia Principles, Council of Europe Statements on judicial independence 

(particularly the Recommendation of the Committee of Ministers to Member States on 

the independence, efficiency and role of judges), the Bangalore Principles of Judicial 

Conduct 2002, and the American Bar Association's revision of its ethical standards for 

judges. 

The Justice System 

In recent years, the principle of judicial independence has been described as one of the 

core values of the justice system. 

Australia 

There was a struggle to establish judicial independence in colonial Australia, but by 

1901 it was entrenched in the Australian constitution, including the separation of judicial 

power such that the High Court of Australia held in 2004 that all courts capable of 

exercising federal judicial power must be, and must appear to be, independent and 

impartial. Writing in 2007 Chief Justice of Australia Murray Gleeson stated that 

Australians largely took judicial independence for granted and the details were not 

matters of wide interest. No federal judge and only one supreme court judge has 


een removed for misconduct since 1901. Immunity from suit for judicial acts, security 

of tenure, and fixed remuneration are all established parts of judicial independence in 

Australia. The appointment of judges remains exclusively at the discretion of the 

executive which gives rise to concerns expressed that judicial appointments are political 

and made for political gain. Issues continue to arise in relation to dealing with judicial 

misconduct not warranting removal and incapacity of judges. In 2013 Chief Justice of 

NSW Tom Bathurst identified the way in which judicial and court performance was 

measured as one of the most substantial risks to the separation of powers in Australia. 

Canada 

Canada has a level of judicial independence entrenched in its Constitution, awarding 

superior court justices various guarantees to independence under sections 96 to 100 of 

the Constitution Act, 1867. These include rights to tenure (although the Constitution has 

since been amended to introduce mandatory retirement at age 75) and the right to a 

salary determined by the Parliament of Canada (as opposed to the executive). In 1982 

a measure of judicial independence was extended to inferior courts specializing 

in criminal law (but not civil law) by section 11 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and 

Freedoms, although in the 1986 case Valente v. The Queen it was found these rights 

are limited. They do, however, involve tenure, financial security and some administrative 

control. 

The year 1997 saw a major shift towards judicial independence, as the Supreme Court 

of Canada in the Provincial Judges Reference found an unwritten constitutional norm 

guaranteeing judicial independence to all judges, including civil law inferior court judges. 

The unwritten norm is said to be implied by the preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867. 

Consequently, judicial compensation committees such as the Judicial Compensation 

and Benefits Commission now recommend judicial salaries in Canada. There are two 

types of judicial independence: institutional independence and decisional 

independence. Institutional independence means the judicial branch is independent 

from the executive and legislative branches. Decisional independence is the idea that 

judges should be able to decide cases solely based on the law and facts, without letting 

the media, politics or other concerns sway their decisions, and without fearing penalty in 

their careers for their decisions. 

Hong Kong 

In Hong Kong, independence of the judiciary has been the tradition since the territory 

became a British crown colony in 1842. After the 1997 transfer of sovereignty of Hong 

Kong to the People's Republic of China pursuant to the Sino-British Joint Declaration, 

an international treaty registered with the United Nations, independence of the judiciary, 

along with continuation of English common law, has been enshrined in the territory's 

constitutional document, the Basic Law. 

Singapore 


Judicial independence in Singapore is protected by the Constitution of Singapore, 

statutes such as the State Courts Act and Supreme Court of Judicature Act, and 

the common law. To safeguard judicial independence, Singapore law lays down special 

procedures to be followed before the conduct of Supreme Court judges may be 

discussed in Parliament and for their removal from office for misconduct, and provides 

that their remuneration may not be reduced during their tenure. By statute, judicial 

officers of the State Courts, and the Registrar, Deputy Registrar and assistant registrars 

of the Supreme Court have immunity from civil suits, and are prohibited from hearing 

and deciding cases in which they are personally interested. The common law provides 

similar protections and disabilities for Supreme Court judges. 

The Chief Justice and other Supreme Court judges are appointed by the President of 

Singapore acting on the advice of the Cabinet of Singapore. The President must consult 

the Chief Justice when appointing other judges, and may exercise personal discretion to 

refuse to make an appointment if he does not concur with the Cabinet's advice. 

Supreme Court justices enjoy security of tenure up to the age of 65 years, after which 

they cease to hold office. However, the Constitution permits such judges to be reappointed 

on a term basis. 


United Kingdom 

England and Wales 

History 

During the middle ages, under the Norman monarchy of the Kingdom of England, the 

king and his Curia Regis held judicial power. Judicial independence began to emerge 

during the early modern period; more courts were created and a judicial profession 

grew. By the fifteenth century, the king's role in this feature of government became 

small. Nevertheless, kings could still influence courts and dismiss judges. The Stuart 

dynasty used this power frequently in order to overpower the Parliament of England. 

After the Stuarts were removed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, some advocated 

guarding against royal manipulation of the judiciary. King William III approved the Act of 

Settlement 1701, which established tenure for judges unless Parliament removed them. 

Contemporary Usage 

Under the uncodified British Constitution, there are two important conventions which 

help to preserve judicial independence. The first is that the Parliament of the United 

Kingdom does not comment on the cases which are before the court. The second is the 

principle of parliamentary privilege: that Members of Parliament are protected from 

prosecution in certain circumstances by the courts. 

Furthermore, the independence of the judiciary is guaranteed by the Constitutional 

Reform Act 2005. In order to try to promote the independence of the judiciary, the 

selection process is designed to minimize political interference. The process focuses on 

senior members of the judiciary rather than on politicians. Part 2 of the Tribunals, Courts 

and Enforcement Act 2007 aims to increase diversity among the judiciary. 

The pay of judges is determined by an independent pay review body. It makes 

recommendations to the government after taking evidence from a variety of sources. 

The government accepts these recommendations and will traditionally implement them 

fully. As long as judges hold their positions in "good order," they remain in post until 

they wish to retire or until they reach the mandatory retirement age of 70. 

Until 1 January 2010, the legal profession was self-regulating; with responsibility for 

implementing and enforcing its own professional standards and disciplining its own 

members. The bodies which performed this function were the Bar Council and the Law 

Society. However, this self-regulation came to an end when approved regulators came 

under the regulation of the Legal Services Board, composed of non-lawyers, following 

the passage of the Legal Services Act 2007. This saw the establishment of 

the Solicitors Regulation Authority to regulate solicitors and the Bar Standards Board to 

regulate barristers. 


United States of America 

Federal Courts 

Article III of the United States Constitution establishes the federal courts as part of 

the federal government. 

The Constitution provides that federal judges, including judges of the Supreme Court of 

the United States, are appointed by the President "by and with the advice and 

consent of the Senate." Once appointed, federal judges: 

...both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior, 

and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation which shall not be 

diminished during their Continuance in Office. 

Federal judges vacate office only upon death, resignation, or impeachment and removal 

from office by Congress; only 13 federal judges have ever been impeached. The phrase 

"during good behavior" predates the Declaration of Independence. John 

Adams equated it with quamdiu se bene gesserint in a letter to the Boston 


Gazette published on 11 January 1773, a phrase that first appeared in section 3 of 

the Act of Settlement 1701 in England. 

The President is free to appoint any person to the federal bench, yet typically he 

consults with the American Bar Association, whose Standing Committee on the Federal 

Judiciary rates each nominee "Well Qualified," "Qualified" or "Not Qualified." 

State Courts 

State courts deal with independence of the judiciary in many ways, and several forms of 

judicial selection are used for both trial courts and appellate courts (including state 

supreme courts), varying between states and sometimes within states. In some states, 

judges are elected (sometime on a partisan ballot, other times on a nonpartisan one), 

while in others they are appointed by the governor or state legislature. 

The 2000 case of Bush v. Gore, in which a majority of the Supreme Court, including 

some appointees of President George H. W. Bush, overruled challenges to the election 

of the George W. Bush then pending in the Florida Supreme Court, whose members 

had all been appointed by Democratic governors, is seen by many as reinforcing the 

need for judicial independence, both with regard to the Florida Supreme Court and the 

US Supreme Court. This case has increased focus and attention on judicial outcomes 

as opposed to the traditional focus on judicial qualifications. 


III. The Criminal Justice Debate 

in The New Millennium 

by Timothy Williams and Thomas Kaplan 

Published Aug. 20, 2019 | Updated Aug. 21, 2019 

The Criminal Justice Debate Has Changed Drastically. Here’s Why. 

Democratic candidates are pushing ideas that were considered radical just a few years 

ago. But the American public has changed its views, too. 

Marijuana would be decriminalized, mass incarceration would be reversed and the 

death penalty would be eliminated as part of sweeping changes that leading Democratic 

presidential candidates have proposed to make to the criminal justice system, which 

has become a dependable political foil for its inefficiency and excesses but has also 

proved resistant to change. 

Both liberal and centrist candidates are backing the overhauls, and some progressives 

are going further, pushing mainstream boundaries with proposals like ending solitary 


confinement in jails and prisons, paying inmates a living wage for work they do in prison 

and legalizing supervised injection sites for intravenous drug use. 

Until recently, such ideas were considered so radical in the United States that they 

would have been immediately dismissed even among reform-minded lawmakers. But 

they are now being instituted or seriously considered in cities and states across the 

nation. 

Experts say the changing debate reflects a seismic shift in how the American public 

views criminal justice issues. 

“This is a conversation that is unrecognizable from 10 years ago — even five years ago 

— when these kinds of proposals wouldn’t have been floated in back rooms, let alone in 

public,” said Adam Gelb, president of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan 

research organization. 

This week, the leading progressives in the Democratic field elevated some of those 

ideas in the presidential race. 

Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts became the latest Democratic contender to 

release a criminal justice plan on Tuesday, and like other candidates, she called for 

releasing more people from prison early, eliminating private prisons and strengthening 

oversight of the police. 

Two days earlier, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont introduced his own plan, which in 

some respects went even further. He called for banning the use of facial recognition 

software by police departments, raising the age of adult criminal liability to 18 and 

allowing certain areas to be set aside where people could legally inject intravenous 

drugs. 

Criminal justice is just one of the areas in which the Democratic presidential candidates 

have moved leftward in the proposals they are advocating in the primary race. In the 

policy debate over subjects like immigration, health care and gun control, the shift has 

been unmistakable. 

Democratic candidates have expressed support for providing comprehensive health 

coverage to undocumented immigrants and for decriminalizing illegal border crossings. 

A growing number of candidates support a national licensing system for gun owners. 

And the debate over health care has revolved around whether to move to a “Medicare 

for all” system that would eliminate private health insurance, an idea backed by Mr. 

Sanders and Ms. Warren. 

But the unapologetically progressive ideas being pushed by Democratic candidates are 

certain to be used by President Trump and his allies to tar whoever becomes the 

Democratic nominee. Mr. Trump has already accused Democrats of being the “party of 

crime” because of their views on illegal immigration. 


“They don’t mind crime,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in New Hampshire last week. “We do 

mind crime.” 

At the same time, Mr. Trump himself serves as an illustration of the bipartisan embrace 

of changing the country’s criminal justice system. Last year, he signed into law the First 

Step Act, a criminal justice overhaul that has been among the most prominent bipartisan 

legislative achievements to occur during his presidency. His re-election campaign has 

even paid for Facebook ads promoting the legislation. 

Michael S. Dukakis, who was famously attacked over his record on crime when he was 

the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, offered a warning to Democrats. Though 

violent crime has declined since then, he said the issue could still resonate with voters. 

“The challenge for whoever the Democratic nominee is going to be is to do a much 

better job than I did of defending this,” he said. 

Still, opinion polls have shown that there is wide support for various types of criminal 

justice reforms among both Democrats and Republicans. And the landscape is shifting 

quickly. 


On Monday, for example, California’s governor signed landmark legislation that limits 

the use of deadly force by police officers to circumstances in which it is “necessary” to 

defend themselves or others against the threat of imminent death or serious injury. 

Previously, officers were often able to avoid prosecution and keep their jobs after using 

lethal force if they said they felt “reasonable fear” for their safety — even if the person 

they confronted was unarmed. 

Also on Monday, a New York police officer was fired five years after his chokehold led 

to the death of Eric Garner, who at the time was being questioned for illegally selling 

cigarettes. 

Mr. Garner’s death, along with the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown Jr. in 

Missouri, galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement and focused public attention on 

how the police treated people — mostly black and Latino — suspected of low-level 

crimes. 

Since then, dozens of police departments and prosecutors’ offices have announced that 

they will no longer make arrests for minor crimes such as possession of small amounts 

of marijuana. Police officials have also apologized for their aggressive strategies of the 

past. 

As public attitudes have changed, some Democratic candidates have found their 

previous records on criminal justice thrown into question. 

Former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has become a target of criticism by other 

Democrats for his outspoken support of the 1994 crime bill, which expanded the use of 

the death penalty and imposed a federal “three strikes” law, among its other provisions. 

Many experts have said the bill laid the groundwork for an era of mass incarceration. 

Mr. Sanders has also taken criticism for voting for the bill as a congressman. 

Senator Kamala Harris’s tenure as a law enforcement official has come under 

scrutiny in part because she supported a state law as San Francisco’s district attorney 

under which parents with habitually truant children could be prosecuted — despite 

worries that enforcement would disproportionately affect low-income people of color. 

As California’s attorney general, Ms. Harris also opposed a bill requiring her office to 

investigate shootings involving police officers, and declined to support statewide 

standards regulating the use of body-worn cameras by police officers. 

Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey has been criticized for his support of the Police 

Department’s widespread use of “stop and frisk” tactics while he was mayor of Newark. 

The Justice Department found that the stops, which targeted African-Americans, were 

unconstitutional. 

And Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., has faced his own leadership test at 

home after a white police officer fatally shot a black man in June. That put a spotlight on 

Mr. Buttigieg’s already strained relations with his city’s black residents. 


Mr. Buttigieg has released a plan to address racial inequities; Mr. Booker championed 

the First Step Act in the Senate; and Ms. Harris has called for legalizing recreational 

marijuana, among other initiatives. 

The plans by both Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren call for spending what appears to be 

billions of dollars to remake the criminal justice system — from regulating the behavior 

of police officers and seeking to curb some of the discretionary authority of prosecutors 

to providing better mental health care inside prisons and jails. 

Mr. Sanders said he would triple federal outlays, to $14 billion annually, to prop up the 

faltering public defender system, which provides aid for poor people accused of crimes. 

As part of his plan, Mr. Sanders said he would establish a minimum starting salary for 

public defenders and cancel their student debt. 

“The criminal justice system is rigged,” Mr. Sanders wrote in his proposal. “The United 

States has a criminal justice system that is built to put the profit interests of billion-dollar 

industries like the bail bondsman over the interests of everyday, working people.” 


Mr. Sanders also included a plan to spend more than $25 billion over a five-year period 

to end homelessness, including $500 million to help direct homeless people to various 

programs and services. The number of homeless people has been swelling in many 

cities, leading to crackdowns by the police. 

In her policy plan, Ms. Warren used similar language to Mr. Sanders’s, writing that the 

criminal justice system “is the result of the dozens of choices we’ve made — choices 

that together stack the deck against the poor and the disadvantaged.” 

She called for repealing nearly all of the 1994 crime bill, and like Mr. Sanders, she said 

she planned to provide more resources for public defenders, increase oversight of the 

police, and end cash bail and the death penalty. 

But her plan spends more time addressing the justice system’s structural inequalities 

than Mr. Sanders’s does, and it points out that even when the crimes in question are the 

same, African-Americans are more likely than white people to be arrested, 

charged, wrongfully convicted and given harsh sentences. 

The criminal justice proposals so far made public by Mr. Biden have been less 

extensive and more moderate than those released by Ms. Warren and Mr. Sanders. But 

they are still far removed from the tough-on-crime persona that Mr. Biden cultivated in 

the 1980s and 1990s. 

Last month, Mr. Biden unveiled a plan that sought to undo some of the negative impacts 

of the 1994 crime bill, including eliminating discrepancies in sentencing between powder 

and crack cocaine and doing away with certain mandatory minimum sentences. 

He had also backed decriminalizing marijuana and expunging prior convictions for 

cannabis use, ending cash bail and eliminating the death penalty, a punishment he 

had long embraced. 

Asked about Ms. Warren’s proposal on Tuesday, Mr. Biden said she seemed to be 

backing elements of the 1994 crime bill, like the Violence Against Women Act. 

“What is it she doesn’t like about it?” Mr. Biden said. “It looks like she’s endorsing my, 

my crime bill.” 

________ 

Huffington Post 

POLITICS 

08/15/2019 04:50 pm ET Updated Aug 15, 2019 

Trump-Appointed Federal Prosecutor Launches Extraordinary 

Attack on Philly DA Larry Krasner 


William McSwain issued the inflammatory statement hours after a drug suspect 

shot and wounded six Philadelphia police officers 

President Donald Trump’s top federal prosecutor in Philadelphia launched an 

extraordinary attack on the city’s elected district attorney on Thursday, just hours after a 

drug suspect shot and wounded six of the city’s police officers. 

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania William McSwain issued an 

unusual and inflammatory statement slamming Philadelphia District Attorney Larry 

Krasner, a civil rights attorney elected in 2017 who has become one of the faces of the 

prosecutor movement in the U.S. McSwain said the shooting was “precipitated by a 

stunning disrespect for law enforcement” that is “promoted and championed by District 

Attorney Larry Krasner.” 

McSwain claimed that Krasner, who litigated cases against the Philadelphia Police 

Department before his election, engaged in “vile rhetoric” that endangered police, and 

accused him of “lawlessness” and “making excuses for criminals.” 

At a press conference outside the Philadelphia federal building, McSwain said he would 

be looking very closely at Krasner’s office and providing “adult supervision.” 

Krasner, in a statement issued to HuffPost after the press conference, suggested 

McSwain’s attacks were inappropriate. 

“The U.S Attorney is not a political elected office. I’m surprised that William McSwain 

would seek to detract from the great collaborative work of law enforcement last night ― 

for which bipartisan leaders in City Hall just minutes ago had nothing but praise, and 

rightly so ― for his own political agenda and personal gain,” said Krasner, who spoke 

with the shooting suspect, 36-year-old Maurice Hill, during the standoff with police. 

“Thank you for your question but I will not be part of a distraction from the serious work 

before law enforcement in Philadelphia, which is to fully investigate this assault on our 

police officers and neighbors, and to bring the perpetrator ― and any co-perpetrators ― 

to justice,” Krasner added. 

McSwain’s statement and press conference mark a remarkable escalation in the war of 

words between McSwain and Krasner. It comes days after Attorney General William 

Barr spoke before the Fraternal Order of Police, where he slammed “anti-law 

enforcement DAs” who “style themselves as ‘social justice’ reformers” and “spend their 

time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook, and refusing to enforce the 

law.” 

“It’s unfortunate to see this type of rhetoric and messages from a law enforcement 

leader,” Miriam Aroni Krinsky, the founder and executive director of the group Fair and 

Just Prosecution, told HuffPost of McSwain’s statement. “But perhaps not surprising 

given the tone that’s been set by some of our federal leaders.” 


Krinsky said McSwain’s statement was “an attack on law enforcement, an attack on our 

communities, an attack on voters who are making different choices about how they 

envision safer and healthier communities.” Using a shooting to launch a political attack 

“based on no facts at all,” she said, is “nothing short of outrageous.” 

Roy Austin, a former Obama administration official, said Barr’s speech was “an 

interesting attack coming from a Republican whose party once seemed to believe in 

local rule and autonomy.” 

“If the people elect prosecutors to change the way things have always been done, who 

is Barr to criticize?” he asked. 

________ 

Rapid City Journal 

Adult Diversion Keeps People Out 

of The Criminal Justice System 

Arielle Zionts Journal staff Jul 28, 2019 

John was frightened when a police officer pulled him over in November 2018 for a 

burned out tail light and found drugs in his car. It was the first time he'd been caught 

since he started using drugs two or three years ago. 

"It was panic mode instantly" at the thought of being convicted on a felony, the 43-yearold 

said. "Everything was shooting through my head: losing my job, losing my house, 

losing my ability to support my family, anger with the officer." 

But if all goes according to plan, he won't be convicted of drug possession and ingestion 

even though he was found with drugs and tested positive in jail. He'll avoid being 

labeled a felon, which can make it difficult to obtain a job, housing and financial aid, and 

can bar you from owning a gun, voting and serving on a jury. 

Instead of being prosecuted in court, John was accepted into the adult diversion 

program at the Pennington County State's Attorney Office, which is open to people with 

no or little criminal history. If participants stay out of trouble for a year and complete 

tasks to improve their behavior and life, the charge and arrest will be expunged so they 

avoid being sucked into the criminal justice system, which can be hard to escape and 

impact not just defendants but entire families and communities. 

"The whole idea is they've changed their behavior, they've become a productive 

member of society. We want them to be able to go out and work and be productive and 


not be forced back in" to the criminal justice system, said Diversion Coordinator Marty 

Krause. 

Eric Whitcher, a Pennington County public defender, said his office is entirely on board 

with the "terrific" program. 

"People make mistakes and bad choices, especially when they are young," he said. 

Diversion allows "for the acceptance of responsibility for the choices made, without the 

lifelong consequences of a criminal conviction." 

"It's really a second chance to make my life not go down the tubes," said John (the 

Journal is using a pseudonym to protect his identity). 

Customized program 

Diversion is hard work, said Krause. 

"They have to want to do this," he said. "The underlying premise to this is it is harder 

than pleading guilty. They will have more to do in this program than if they walked into 

court and pleaded guilty." 

Krause says the program is working so far: 900 people have been referred to diversion, 

80 percent of those who join complete their requirements and 84 percent aren't arrested 

within a year. Participants are tracked for five years so Krause can study the longerterm 

recidivism rate. 

Most participants are referred to the program by their defense lawyer during the initial 

court appearance, Krause said. But sometimes police officers will call him right after 

arresting someone they think would be a good fit for the program. 

After a referral, staff conducts an FBI background check to see if the person has a 

limited criminal history and if that's the case, they go through a one- to three-hour intake 

appointment to determine what they're struggling with, what resources and support they 

have, and what kind of help they need. 

Next, participants write a letter explaining the crime they committed, why they did it, and 

how being convicted would impact their life. Writing this down helps participants think 

about why they did what they did and can also be used to help convict them if they don't 

follow through with the program, Krause said. 

"That's kind of the teeth of the program, that's how we hold them accountable 

essentially," said Adam Shiffermiller, the deputy state's attorney who oversees 

diversion. 

After participants write the letter, sign a legal agreement and pay any restitution, Krause 

said, prosecutors drop the participant's charges. If they complete their customized 


program within three to four months and don't break laws for a year, their record and 

arrest are erased. 

"What they do is completely individualized to them" and their needs, Krause said. 

Someone with a job who tried drugs a few times may have to undergo a drug evaluation 

and do community service while someone who uses drugs everyday and doesn't have a 

job or high school degree may have to undergo treatment, find employment and obtain 

a GED, he said. 

John, who will complete his requirements in a week or two, said he completed a 

treatment program that made him realize that stress, especially about being in debt, 

triggered his drug use. So in addition to completing treatment, he had to be regularly 

drug tested, read a book about debt, and make a debt-repayment plan. 

"I actually feel like I have a plan in place, and I feel like I'll be able to attack it and get 

this burden off my back," he said. 

"It's not cookie cutter," that's why it's a successful program, Shiffermiller said. "We get 

people involved in things that they're interested in, we get people involved in ways that 

they can better their lives. So, it's not just here's your charge, do 10 hours of community 

service, go on your way." 

Program Expansion 

While juvenile diversion has existed in Pennington County for many years, adult 

diversion was created in January 2016 by State's Attorney Mark Vargo. It was overseen 

by the supervisor of the misdemeanor division and only accepted young adults (18- to 

25-year-olds) charged with petty theft or possessing two ounces or less of marijuana. 

Krause was hired in September 2016 with seed money from the MacArthur 

Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge, a program the county is participating in 

to address racial and economic inequality within the criminal justice system and reduce 

its jail population. Once he came on board, Krause began accepting young adults 

charged with other non-violent misdemeanors. 

"The young adult (program) was really based around the brain science," Krause said. 

"The science shows that a person's brain is not fully developed into an adult brain until 

they're 25" or as old as 30. 

Around March 2017, Krause began accepting young adults charged with low-level, nonviolent 

felonies. And two months ago, he expanded the program to adults of any age. 

The program sees people arrested for crimes ranging from property destruction to 

trespassing to embezzlement to drug possession, Shiffermiller said. But it's off limits to 

those arrested for DUIs or crimes related to heroin and meth. 


Those people may be eligible for DUI, drug or another speciality court, and heroin and 

meth users may qualify for the new drug diversion program, which recently accepted a 

few participants. 

The drug diversion program will allow for the longer-term treatment needed for people 

using those more addictive drugs, Shiffermiller said. Right now, he said, many people 

arrested for meth end up returning to court over and over again for more meth charges. 

The goal of drug diversion will be to catch people when they begin using and help them 

become sober so they avoid being caught in the criminal justice system. 

"If every person that went to prison on a meth case came out of prison and never used 

meth again, perfect, then we would do that," Shiffermiller said. "But we know that that 

doesn't work, so we have to think of other ways of fighting meth addiction because right 

now it's not working." 

Like the regular diversion program, the drug diversion program will at first be supported 

with money from the Safety and Justice Challenge before it's funded by the Pennington 

County State's Attorney Office to ensure continuity. 

While John was at first angry with the officer who caught him with drugs, he now feels 

thankful he was pulled over that day. 

The arrest and diversion program "changed my life" and I'm saving money and 

spending more time with my family, he said. "It's got me on a track where I think I'll have 

a lot better life." 

________ 

PhillyVoice 

Two Dozen Philly Academics: Inky Coverage Undermines 

Criminal Justice Reform 

Villanova Professor: Newspaper 'Has Done Some Great Reporting 

Over The Years, But Lately, It’s Slipped In Our Opinion' 

by BRIAN HICKEY 

A week after Malcolm Jenkins and Chris Long argued that the Inquirer’s Editorial Board 

“did not go far enough” in supporting the city’s district attorney against state officials 

seeking to usurp prosecutorial power in gun cases, two dozen faculty members at area 

universities and colleges have followed suit. 

In a letter to the newspaper’s editor and staff that was delivered Wednesday afternoon, 

and shared with PhillyVoice a day earlier, the academics say the Inquirer's “recent 


eporting on shootings in the city” is damaging criminal justice reform efforts in the city 

and beyond. 

“Rather than honestly reporting on gun violence and its causes and solutions, this string 

of stories is rife with misleading claims that risk stoking unfounded fear over criminal 

justice reform,” the letter read, calling out “fear-driven narratives” that were not fully 

investigated. 

The letter – spurred on through The Justice Collaborative – calls out crime reporting that 

repeats narratives fed by law enforcement and foes of criminal justice reform, and 

suggests that the reporting did not check for empirical evidence backing the claims. 

Similar letters were recently published in Boston-area media outlets. 

Among the 24 academics who signed the letter to the Inquirer was Brianna Remster, an 

associate professor in Villanova University’s department of sociology and criminology. 

She was quick to point out that the letter wasn’t written in a confrontational sense, but 

as a result of ongoing conversations within the academic community, most of whom are 

avid readers of the newspapers to which they wrote. 

“The Inky has done some great reporting over the years, but lately, it’s slipped in our 

opinion,” she said. “How crime is portrayed in the media has been a longstanding issue. 

There’s been a continual conversation about what’s happening in Philly and how it’s 

portrayed in a widely influential newspaper.” 

She questioned a lack of in-depth investigation seeking trends as opposed to quick-hit 

coverage, at a time when media outlets are being financially pared back, something that 

the letter-writers acknowledge is “so frustrating for reporters.” 

That disconnect, according to Remster, has helped bolster mass incarceration and 

other trends that criminal justice reformers aim to reverse. 

“There was an exciting interdisciplinary conversation going on for a while now, with 

people from fields I’d rarely interact with since we’re all in our own little silos,” she said. 

Media outlets “have incredibly scarce resources, but we need to find a way to balance 

the need to meet deadlines and demands with the need to share facts and context so 

readers can make up their minds for themselves. 

“It’s hard to overstate the power these pieces wield at a time when we have among the 

highest incarceration rates in the nation, and a district attorney who’s trying really hard 

to try new policies. The country is watching Philadelphia. It’s an important time. We just 

hope they take a step back and look at the big-picture consequences we wrote about.” 

Stan Wischnowski is the executive editor and senior vice president of The Inquirer, 

whose reporting on the issue includes a handful of stories cited by the academics. 

Offering a response to PhillyVoice upon receiving the letter late Wednesday afternoon, 

he defended the paper's coverage. 


"Like every public official, the district attorney and his policies are subject to scrutiny," 

he said. "While we respect the views of the local academics who signed this letter, and 

we welcome and appreciate all good-faith criticism of Inquirer coverage, we stand by 

our depth of reporting on gun violence in Philadelphia. 

"Our reporters, columnists and the editorial board have been fair, accurate, and 

thorough in covering this critically important issue.” 

The letter from the academics can be read in its entirety below: 

Dear Stan Wischnowski, Editor, and the Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Staff: 

We are 24 faculty members at Philadelphia area universities and colleges, including the 

University of Pennsylvania, Temple, Villanova, St. Joe’s, and Rutgers. We are 

responding to The Philadelphia Inquirer’s recent reporting on shootings in the city. 

Rather than honestly reporting on gun violence and its causes and solutions, this string 

of stories is rife with misleading claims that risk stoking unfounded fear over criminal 

justice reform. 

Local journalism provides the framework through which people assess whether their 

communities are safe and their justice system is fair. Reporters should state facts 

accurately and provide the public with sufficient context from which to draw informed 

conclusions. That often requires using evidence and data to dispel, and not exacerbate, 

fear-driven narratives around crime, especially those that emerge soon after violence 

like Philadelphia recently experienced. 

But several recent Inquirer stories do not provide that necessary context. Instead, they 

uncritically repeat criticisms of Krasner, strain to connect his policies on bail and drug 

reform to a spike in shootings over a single weekend, and bury facts, in order to drive 

home the false narrative of a Philadelphia that is getting less safe thanks to criminal 

justice reform policies – especially those that District Attorney Larry Krasner was 

elected to enact. 

One story, for example, quotes U.S. Attorney William McSwain. 

“There’s not the accountability that there used to be,” he says. “If there’s no 

accountability, the worst types of crimes are going to go up. I think that’s self-evident.” 

But McSwain opposes the very concept of prosecutors using their authority to stem the 

tide of mass incarceration, and he has long criticized Krasner’s decisions to not demand 

cash bail for certain charges and to seek shorter prison sentences. 

The story includes a reply from Krasner calling McSwain’s assertion “fact free,” 

but omits research that largely supports these reform policies and certainly doesn’t link 

them to increased violence. It’s not clear why the reporter would allow McSwain to 

repeat such a claim without interrogation or at least seeking to verify it with evidence. 


Even worse, Inquirer reporters have drawn a line from Krasner’s policies to gun violence 

with little factual support. The story, ““Criminal justice system at center of swirling 

debate as gun violence continues in Philly,” compares gun cases brought at the end of 

2017, before Krasner took office, and those brought at the end of Krasner’s first year, in 

2018. 

The story acknowledges that “criminal justice experts caution against drawing 

conclusions based on data tracking charging decisions or conviction rates alone,” but 

goes on to do just that, concluding that “Krasner’s office secured a lower percentage of 

guilty verdicts and saw more cases tossed than the year before.” 

The analysis doesn’t attempt to discern why more cases were dismissed, and there is 

no explanation as to how this supposedly relates to recent shootings. But the 

suggestion is clear: Krasner’s office does a poor job prosecuting cases, and that makes 

Philadelphia more violent. 

There are similar problems with another story about Krasner’s use of court diversion 

programs for gun cases. This one reports that Krasner has referred more cases of 

unlawful gun possession to diversion than did his predecessor. 

The lead anecdote involves a man who entered diversion after his first arrest, and who 

a year later was arrested and charged with murder. There is no apparent connection 

between the initial diversion referral and the subsequent murder, let alone to gun 

violence generally. But to make her point, the reporter resorts to hearsay, writing that 

there are “some on social media” who have held up this case “as an example of how 

they say District Attorney Larry Krasner’s policies are too lenient and lead to gun 

violence.” 

Throughout the piece, the reporter downplays positive outcomes and omits research 

showing that diversion helps people keep their lives on track, thereby improving public 

safety. She also acknowledges that Krasner’s office has rarely offered diversion to 

people with prior arrests or convictions, or to those who commit a shooting. But she 

ultimately highlights two exceptions out of more than 100, even though both shootings 

were deemed to have been accidental or defensive. 

Another story, “Philly’s top cop wonders if gunmen are emboldened by perception of ‘no 

consequences,'” uses a headline to suggest that Krasner is at fault for shootings, but 

omits the fact that police have “cleared” shootings at a rate no better than 30 percent in 

each of the last five years. 

Unsolved shootings predate Krasner, and the issue often has little to do with the actions 

of prosecutors, but those details are absent from this story. Additionally, the story 

minimizes the fact that Krasner has prosecuted gun cases brought to his office at a 

slightly higher rate than his predecessor -- a point that itself contradicts the throughline 

connecting each of these stories. 


As academics in the Boston area recently wrote to the Boston Globe, responsible 

journalism about criminal justice and public safety does not stoke irrational panic for the 

sake of creating a story. 

Research has demonstrated that media coverage of criminal justice issues influences 

public opinion about punishment, fostering punitive public attitudes and political 

conditions that drive up needless incarceration. 

We know from decades of experience that these counterproductive policies destabilize 

entire communities and only perpetuate cycles of poverty and violence. 

Serving the public interest requires the Inquirer to demonstrate a more factual and 

responsible approach to reporting on crime, punishment, rehabilitation, and safety. 

• Professor Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social 

Thought and professor of history; University of Pennsylvania 

• Professor Jack Bratich, associate professor & chair, journalism and media 

studies, Rutgers University 

• Professor Kate Cairns, assistant professor, Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers 

University 

• Professor Susan Clampet-Lundquist, associate professor of sociology, Saint Joseph’s 

University 

• Professor Brian Creech, associate professor, Klein College of Media and 

Communication, Temple University 

• Professor Susan L. DeJarnatt, professor of law, Temple University 

• Professor Jamie Fader, associate professor, criminal justice, Temple University 

• Professor Magda Konieczna, assistant professor, Klein College of Media and 


• Professor Rory Kramer, associate professor, Department of Sociology and 

Criminology, Villanova University 

• Professor Chenjerai Kumanyika, assistant professor of journalism and media 

studies, Rutgers University 

• Professor Jessa Lingel, assistant professor of communication, Annenberg School For 

Communication, University of Pennsylvania 


• Professor Larisa Kingston Mann, assistant professor, Klein College of Media and 


• Professor Joan Maya Mazelis, associate professor of sociology, Department of 

Sociology, Anthropology and Criminal Justice, Rutgers University 

• Professor Jill McCorkel, professor of sociology and criminology, Villanova University 

• Professor Louis M. Natali, professor of law, Temple University 

• Professor Wazhmah Osman, assistant professor, Klein College of Media and 


• Professor Victor Pickard, associate professor of communication, Annenberg School for 

Communication, and co-director of the MIC Center, University of Pennsylvania 

• Professor Adolph Reed, professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania 

• Professor Brianna Remster, associate professor, Department of Sociology & 


• Professor Dorothy Roberts, George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & 

Sociology; Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil 

Rights; founding director, Program on Race, Science, and Society; University of 

Pennsylvania 

• Robert Vitalis, professor of political science, University of Pennsylvania 

• Professor Kelly Welch, associate professor, Department of Sociology & 


• Professor Andrea Wenzel, assistant professor, Klein College of Media and 


• Professor Todd Wolfson, associate professor of journalism and media studies, and codirector 

of the MIC Center, Rutgers University 


IV. Mass Incarceration 

and The Prisoner Dilemma in Texas 

Texas Fails To Confront Mass Incarceration 

WHEN TEXAS INMATE DAVID RUIZ filed a handwritten petition to sue the Texas 

Department of Corrections in 1972, it led to a landmark case that turned on whether 

Texas prisons violated the United States Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual 

punishment. In 1980, a federal court judge in Tyler, Texas, sent shockwaves through 

the Lone Star State by ruling that they did. 

Ruiz v. Estelle initially spurred some important penal reforms, as the Texas 

Department of Corrections found itself under the supervision of federal judge William 

Wayne Justice, whose ruling exhaustively documented the department’s violations of 

prisoners’ rights—before stating in his conclusion that “it is impossible for a written 

opinion to convey the pernicious conditions and the pain and degradation which 

ordinary inmates suffer within TDC prison walls.” Justice mandated that Texas had a 

constitutional duty to relieve massive overcrowding, as well as conditions that deprived 

prisoners of basic guarantees of safety and health. But this widely celebrated prisoners’ 

rights decision ultimately contributed to the construction of a much larger penal system 

in Texas that today is one of the toughest places to serve time in the United States. 


As the TDC continued to fight aspects of Justice’s ruling on appeal through the 1980s 

and 1990s, Ruiz v. Estelle provided penal hard-liners in Texas with an opportunity to 

expand, bureaucratize, and professionalize the longstanding model of punishment 

based on maximum control at minimum cost, with little outside oversight. These hardliners, 

including top Republicans and Democrats, ultimately gutted many of the courtordered 

reforms. As for Ruiz, the lead plaintiff in what became a class-action lawsuit, he 

served out a life sentence for armed robbery, often in solitary confinement in a cramped, 

dank, dungeon-like cell. Just months before he died in 2005, he was moved to a prison 

hospital after being denied medical parole. As Robert Perkinson dryly notes in Texas 

Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire, his monumental history of crime and 

punishment in Texas, Ruiz fought the law, but the law ultimately won. 

As calls to end mass incarceration have escalated over the last decade, Texas is being 

hailed once again as a model for criminal justice reform. Politicians from Barack Obama 

to Donald Trump have lauded the Lone Star State for new “smart on crime” policies or 

for embracing “Right on Crime,” the criminal justice movement associated with 

prominent conservatives, including Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist, and the Koch 

brothers. Right on Crime promotes a view of mass incarceration as primarily a dollarsand-cents 

problem for taxpayers that requires a pragmatic, bipartisan approach— 

diverting attention from the racial, economic, and social inequities that built the carceral 

state and sustain it today. 

The origin story of the latter-day turnaround in Texas’s criminal justice system dates 

back to 2007, when legislators decided against spending an estimated $2 billion on new 

prison construction to accommodate projections that the state would need an additional 

seventeen thousand prison beds by 2012. Instead, they enacted some modest changes 

in probation and parole to redirect people to community supervision; they also restored 

some funding for substance abuse and mental health treatment. The attempt to slow 

down prison construction was, in fact, a big change from the post-Ruiz era, when the 

state attempted to build its way out of the overcrowding problem. And yet, even though 

Texas was required to face up to certain realities—first by the Ruiz case and later by 

budget constraints—the Texas penal system, after all these years, has not really 

changed its stripes. 

The Texas Prison Complex 

For all the hype, Texas remains “more or less the epicenter of mass incarceration on 

the planet,” according to Scott Henson, author of Grits for Breakfast, the indispensable 

blog on criminal justice and law enforcement in Texas. Other states have far surpassed 

Texas in reducing the size of their incarcerated populations and in providing safer and 

more humane lock-ups that are not such blatant affronts to the Eighth Amendment’s 

ban on cruel and unusual punishment. 

Texas today incarcerates nearly one-quarter of a million people in its jails and prisons— 

more than the total number of prisoners in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom 


combined. If Texas were a country, its incarceration rate would be seventh in the world, 

surpassed only by Oklahoma and five other Southern states. Texas still operates some 

of the meanest and leanest prisons and jails in the country. Two meals a day on 

weekends during budget shortfalls. Cellblocks without air-conditioning, fans, or even 

enough water to drink in triple-digit heat. Understaffed, overwhelmed, and unsafe lockups 

in isolated rural areas. 

All the applause that Texas received for the prisons it did not build and the handful of 

prisons it closed has overshadowed the fact that the Lone Star State continues to be 

one of the most punitive in the country. If you add the number of people in prison and 

jails to those on probation, parole, or some other form of community supervision in 

Texas, that quarter of a million number grows to about seven hundred thousand. This 

amounts to about one out of every twenty-five adults in the state. That’s enough to fill a 

city the size of El Paso. 

Between 2007 and 2018, the total number of people held in state prisons and county 

jails in Texas did fall somewhat—by about 6 percent. But while the number of 

incarcerated men in Texas prisons and jails has inched downward, the number of 

incarcerated women has continued to grow. The state’s female incarceration rate ranks 

fifteenth nationwide. 

Texas has yet to enact any landmark criminal justice reform legislation that would truly 

scale back the number of people in prisons and jails. Meanwhile, it has created 

hundreds of new crimes and dozens of enhanced penalties. Unlike many other states, 

Texas has yet to reduce the penalties for even low-level drug crimes. Last year, the 

number of new felony cases filed in Texas reached a near all-time high, “driven primarily 


y an increase in drug possession cases,” according to the annual report of the Texas 

Judiciary. For all the talk about the need to be “smart on crime” and to endorse “harm 

reduction strategies” to deal with substance abuse, Texas is one of the few states—and 

the only large state—that has no officially sanctioned statewide needle exchange 

programs. 

The war on sex offenders has also not let up in Texas. In 2007, lawmakers enacted 

draconian measures to stiffen what were already tough penalties for sex offenses. 

Compared to fifteen years ago, more people are now serving time for sex offenses than 

drug offenses in Texas state prisons. Some lawmakers have been pushing to make the 

state’s sex offender laws more punitive, even though Texas has one of the most 

expansive and intrusive sex-offender registries in the country and some of the toughest 

residency restrictions and community notification laws for people convicted of sex 

offenses. 

On several key indicators, Texas has lagged behind in juvenile justice reform. After the 

landmark 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that sentencing juvenile defendants to 

mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole was unconstitutional, many 

states, both red and blue, rewrote their sentencing laws to permit minors convicted of 

serious crimes to receive a parole hearing after serving twenty-five years or even less. 

Not Texas, which requires juveniles sentenced to life to serve forty years before 

receiving a parole hearing. (But that potential is mostly theoretical, since fewer than 5 

percent of the people serving life sentences in Texas are ever paroled.) Texas is one of 

just four states that still prosecutes seventeen-year-olds as adults, as raise-the-age bills 

continue to stall in the legislature. Violence and abuse continue to plague state juvenile 

facilities despite an overhaul several years ago. 

Texas didn’t even have a life-without-parole statute until 2005—preferring the death 

penalty for serious cases. Since then, legislators have expanded the list of crimes 

punishable by life without parole, often called “the other death penalty.” In a short period 

of time, the number of people serving life sentences in Texas has exploded. More than 

one out of every eight state prison inmates in Texas is currently serving a life sentence 

or a “virtual” life sentence of fifty years or more. 

Go Directly to Jail 

At the other extreme, even the most minor offenses can bring the punitive arm of the 

law down on people in Texas. You can be arrested, booked, and jailed for any violation, 

including nearly all misdemeanor traffic offenses, such as a broken tail-light or failure to 

signal. These are infractions that are not punishable by jail time if found guilty. Yet 

Texas traps hundreds of thousands of people in modern-day debtors’ prisons each 

year, thanks to its cash bail system and its extensive system of fees and fines for minor 

violations. Misdemeanor offenses that are punishable by fines routinely result in a 

“cascade of unconstitutional and devastating consequences,” according to a 2016 

report by the ACLU of Texas. People who cannot afford to pay off their traffic tickets or 

other fines right away end up in a maze that “virtually guarantees” they will receive even 


more tickets, fines, and penalties. Many eventually end up in jail for their failure to pay 

up. 

In 2017, Texas legislators eliminated “some of the most comically absurd elements” of 

this fine system, according to blogger-researcher Henson. Although the number of 

people jailed for failing to pay their fines and fees has since declined significantly, about 

half a million people were sent to jail for failure to pay in fiscal year 2018. 

As the movement to end cash bail gains ground around the country, Texas remains a 

powerful bastion of the bail bond industry. Despite support from top Democratic and 

Republican lawmakers and leading advocacy groups, proposals to even modestly 

reform cash bail have floundered in the Texas legislature. 

There’s an extensive civil asset forfeiture system in place, too. Police and prosecutors 

have wide latitude to seize cash, property, and other assets that they claim are related 

to criminal activity, even if the person involved is never charged with a crime. In 2017, 

lawmakers filed at least fifteen bills to curb civil asset forfeiture, but they went nowhere 

because of unwavering opposition from the Texas District and County Attorneys 

Association and police departments, and the lack of public support from Republican 

Governor Greg Abbott. 

To its credit, Texas has emerged as a national leader in preventing and uncovering 

wrongful convictions and in compensating people who have been exonerated. This 


ight spot has come from a dark place. As the death penalty capital of the Western 

world, Texas was poised to become ground zero in the problem of wrongful convictions, 

thanks to a wave of embarrassing and troubling high-profile exonerations, many of them 

linked to prosecutorial misconduct. 

Leaving aside these pioneering efforts to prevent and rectify wrongful convictions, the 

Texas District and County Attorneys Association’s 2011 summary of the legislature’s 

modest record on criminal justice reform still holds today: “Most of the let-’em-out-early 

bills failed to pass, thanks to the opposition of prosecutors.” 

The legislature’s failure to act is not the only stumbling block to real criminal justice 

reform that would scale back the carceral state. Public officials and policy-makers, 

notably the governor, the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, and the Texas 

Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), have considerable discretionary powers to 

reduce the prison and jail population and improve conditions in penal facilities that they 

have been unwilling to wield. 

The executive clemency process in Texas shows even less life today than it did fifteen 

years ago and is effectively moribund. As for elderly and gravely ill inmates, they are 

seldom granted medical parole, even though the state’s compassionate release laws 

have some remarkably liberal features, at least on paper. 

For decades now, the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole has been a key accelerator 

and brake on the state prison population. The total number of people in prisons and jails 

in Texas peaked in around 2010 and has generally been falling since then, thanks to a 

modest uptick in parole approval rates in 2012. The use of parole has largely been 

sustained since then, but it falls far short of the roughly 50 percent approval rates of the 

early 1990s, when Texas was under the federal court order to ease prison 

overcrowding. 

Life in Prison 

The hope after the Ruiz case was that humane conditions would gradually be imposed 

on the Texas prison system. But Texas remains exceptional today not only for the sheer 

number of people under state control, but also for the brutal and inhumane conditions 

that persist in its prisons and jails. 

In the 1990s, Texas and Arizona pioneered the extensive use of supermax cells and 

administrative segregation, commonly known as solitary confinement, in which 

prisoners are kept in their cells nearly around the clock and denied any meaningful 

human contact for months, years, or even decades. In 2011, UN Special Rapporteur 

Juan E. Méndez concluded that periods of solitary confinement greater than fifteen days 

constitute torture. 

Over the last decade, a national movement to end solitary confinement in the United 

States has been gaining momentum. Just within the past five years, top prison 


administrators in a number of states, though not Texas, have become outspoken critics 

of solitary confinement. 

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice reports that about 3 percent of state 

prisoners are housed in extreme isolation, which would place Texas in the bottom third 

of reporting states. But Texas leads the country by far in the number of prisoners 

serving long periods of time in solitary confinement. Nearly 70 percent of all the 

prisoners in the country who have been isolated for six or more years are housed in 

Texas state prisons. 

Solitary confinement in Texas is more austere and restrictive than in other states. A high 

proportion of segregated inmates in Texas state prisons have been diagnosed with 

mental illnesses. Denied social contact, people housed in solitary confinement get 

worse at relating to others. Until very recently, the TDCJ routinely released hundreds of 

people from solitary confinement directly to the streets each year without any step-down 

or transition programs. 

Incidents of major use of force against prisoners have increased about 50 percent over 

the last decade in Texas state prisons, likely due to chronic staffing shortages, high staff 

turnover, inexperienced guards, and prisons that get brutally hot in the summer. 

Thousands of untrained guards work in jails across Texas, thanks to a loophole that 

permits jails to employ temporary guards for up to a year. The deadly consequences of 

this loophole were shockingly apparent in the video of the death of Andy DeBusk, who 

was coming down from a meth high in a privately run jail outside of Fort Worth when he 

died of asphyxiation after being pepper-sprayed and shackled by poorly trained guards 

on Christmas Eve 2016. 


Newsweek and other publications have referred to Texas as the “prison rape capital of 

the United States” because it leads the country in sexual abuse in prison. A 2016 report 

by advocacy groups in Texas documented the state’s “Texas-sized failure” to comply 

with the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003. 

And the number of suicides is at a twenty-year high in Texas state prisons despite the 

dip in the total number of inmates. Suicides in county jails have declined, perhaps 

thanks to reforms mandated by the 2017 Sandra Bland Act, named after the twentyeight-year-old 

black woman who, in a contested series of events, allegedly committed 

suicide in a county jail in 2015 after being arrested by a Texas state trooper during a 

needlessly confrontational traffic stop. 

Mass Incarceration on the Cheap 

When faced with a budget shortfall in 2011, the Texas prison system eliminated lunch 

for many inmates on weekends. State Senator John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat 

who was a key architect of the 2007 penal reforms, quipped at the time, “If they don’t 

like the menu, don’t come there in the first place.” Some TDCJ inmates still only receive 

two meals a day on weekends today, even though the state budget is now flush. The 

TDJC used to have a policy of denying inmates dentures; they were forced instead to 

eat only soft food. This policy was only rescinded last year after it was reported in the 

media. 

Nearly two dozen Texas inmates have died since 1998 of heat-related causes; about 

four out of five state prisoners are housed in units without air-conditioning, according to 

lawsuits and other reports. Whitmire told reporters he was not alarmed by the heatrelated 

deaths—in his view, outfitting Texas prisons with air-conditioning was 

“unimaginable.” In 2017, a federal judge castigated the TDCJ, charging that it was 

“deliberately indifferent” to the risks posed by the heat. 

Evidence of inadequate health care was an important part of the Ruiz lawsuit, yet even 

today Texas ranks toward the bottom in per capita spending on prison health care. 

Michele Deitch, an expert on prison conditions at the University of Texas at Austin, told 

the press earlier this year that the prison health care system in Texas has been 

“teetering on the edge of unconstitutionality” for several years “because it is so 

underfunded.” 

Still, this cost-cutting doesn’t make much of a dent in prison spending overall. Most 

years, the TDCJ’s operating budget continues to hover around $3.3 billion in constant 

dollars, despite the modest drop in the state prison population over the last decade. 

This is not surprising. Most prison costs are fixed and not easily cut. Serious savings will 

only come by shutting down numerous penal facilities, laying off guards and other staff 

(which typically comprise about two-thirds of prison budgets), and then avoiding the 

escalating costs of an extensive monitoring regime, which can include home 

confinement, elaborate risk-assessment tools, electronic and GPS monitoring, 


widespread drug testing, and other means of surveillance that the private prison 

industry has been aggressively investing in and promoting to public officials. 

For more than two decades now, in fact, Texas has been at the center of the push by 

conservatives to find profit centers in criminal justice—including the exploitation of penal 

labor. The expansion of prison-based industries could reverse the exodus of U.S. jobs 

to low-wage countries, they claimed, as well as offset labor shortages due to the 

crackdown on undocumented workers, and make penal facilities more self-supporting. 

In 1995, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the powerful corporatefunded 

consortium of thousands of conservative legislators, began promoting its Prison 

Industries Act, which was modeled on a controversial bill that the Texas legislature had 

enacted to expand prison industries. 

Even though Texas was required to face up to certain realities—first by the Ruiz case 

and later by budget constraints—the Texas penal system, after all these years, has not 

really changed its stripes. 

Texas was the first state to adopt private prisons in 1985, and today has more people 

housed in for-profit penal facilities than any other state. The private prison industry has 

been an integral part of a broader conservative political movement in Texas, and 

nationally, to hollow out the government by turning public functions and services over to 

the private sector. Yet there is scant evidence that for-profit prison facilities and services 

save the government much money, and alarming evidence that they jeopardize the 

health and safety of inmates and staff. Some of the worst headlines about abuse in 

prisons have involved private facilities in Texas, including the $40 million-plus 

settlement against The GEO Group in the case of Gregorio de la Rosa, Jr., who was 

beaten to death by two fellow inmates as guards looked on and later tried to cover up 

evidence. 


The county jail system in Texas has excess capacity these days, with only about two 

out of every three beds filled, thanks to a boom in jails built on spec by private firms with 

public bonds. Public and private county jails have sought to cover their losses by 

securing contracts to provide beds for inmates transferred from other counties and from 

overcrowded state prisons in Texas and other states. They also have entered the brisk 

and lucrative market in federal immigrant detention. 

Texas leads the country in the number of immigrants held in privately run immigration 

detention facilities and local jails through contracts with the federal Immigration and 

Customs Enforcement agency. Over the past few years, immigrant detention for families 

has become the most profitable sector for the private prison industry, thanks to the 

policies of the Obama and Trump administrations. The private prison industry in Texas 

was among the greatest beneficiaries of the Obama administration’s decision to ramp 

up family detention on an unprecedented scale and demonstrate its toughness in the 

face of an uptick in migrant families from Central America seeking asylum in the United 

States. The controversies surrounding the Trump administration’s family separation and 

other immigration policies have spurred some local governments in Texas to terminate 

their immigrant detention contracts with the federal government, while others have 

sought to retain or expand these contracts. 

Wrong on Crime 

Meanwhile, despite the Right on Crime spin, Texas has been energetically divesting 

from the items proven to reduce crime and improve inmates’ quality of life: better 

education, good health care, adequate family planning, mental health, and social 

services, and living-wage jobs. Furthermore, Texas’s periodic budget shortfalls are not 

acts of nature but rather politically engineered crises by the very people hailed as 

leaders in penal reform. 

To take just health care as an example of the interlocking systems of harshness, 

consider that Texas has been ground zero in the political and legal trench warfare 

against the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Texas maintains some of the toughest Medicaid 

eligibility requirements, second only to Alabama’s stringent rules. Opposition to the ACA 

and Medicaid expansion has been a nonnegotiable red line for leading conservatives. 

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), the state’s most prominent conservative 

think tank, not only opposes Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, but has also 

advocated to turn the entire program into block grants for states to manage as they see 

fit without any interference from Washington. 

Right on Crime was the brainchild of the TPPF, which has deep and long-standing 

connections to ALEC, the powerful conservative organization. TPPF is funded by a 

Who’s Who of conservative individuals, foundations, and corporations, including the 

Koch brothers, the Bradley Foundation, Exxon, and Big Tobacco. 


For more than two 

decades now, Texas has 

been at the center of the 

push by conservatives to 

find profit centers in 

criminal justice— 

including the exploitation 

of penal labor. 

This unwavering 

opposition to Medicaid 

expansion starkly calls 

into question claims by 

Right on Crime and 

others that fiscal 

concerns in Texas and 

elsewhere will force 

states to forge bipartisan 

coalitions to support 

pragmatic, nonideological 

solutions to 

reduce the inmate 

population simply 

because they cannot 

afford not to. In opting 

out of Medicaid 

expansion under the 

ACA, Texas is leaving an 

estimated $114 billion in 

federal dollars on the 

table over the next 

decade and denying an estimated 1.2 million people in Texas federal health care 

through Medicaid. This works out to over $11 billion per year—or more than three times 

the TDCJ’s annual budget. 

If Texas opted in, the TDCJ would receive an estimated $55 million to $120 million in 

federal funds for prison health care, which is about 10 to 20 percent of the roughly half a 

billion dollars it spends each year on health care for inmates. In their indictment against 

the ACA, congressional Republicans charged at one point that Obamacare helps 

incarcerated people. So much for being smart on crime. 

What’s Right in Texas 

While Right on Crime promotes a narrow, top-down, fundamentally conservative 

approach to criminal justice reform that tinkers around the edges of the carceral state, 


there’s a risk that some of the most promising developments in Texas and elsewhere for 

real criminal justice reform are being rendered invisible. 

Compared to the prison-building boom years of the late 1980s and 1990s, Texas now 

has a number of powerful statewide and local organizations to counter the Texas 

District and County Attorneys Association and other law enforcement groups, which are 

the biggest obstacle to criminal justice reform. Groups that have been locked out for so 

long from political power in Texas are pushing back to claim their rightful place in 

policymaking and politics. The electoral and political mobilization of low-income people, 

people of color, and the people most hurt by the carceral state has, among other things, 

helped turn once-sleepy judicial and D.A. races into real political contests. 

The failure of the Democrats to turn any statewide offices blue in the 2018 midterm 

elections has obscured the political earthquake that occurred in Texas last fall, when the 

rate of voter turnout surged to rival that of presidential years. Democrats flipped four 

important intermediate state appeals courts and now hold majorities on half of the 

state’s fourteen appeals courts. In Houston’s Harris County, the Democratic Party 

completed a sweep of all countywide races, ousting fifty-nine municipal court judges. 

Most of the victorious municipal judge candidates, including nineteen black women who 

ran on the “Black Girl Magic” slate, supported cash bail reform, unlike their ousted 

opponents. In another upset victory, Harris County chose twenty-seven-year-old Lina 

Hidalgo, an ardent champion of criminal justice reform, as its next chief executive. 

There were also major Democratic upsets in D.A. races in other urban areas, including 

Dallas, San Antonio, and Fort Bend. 

Certainly these outcomes were part of the Beto O’Rourke effect (his challenge to 

incumbent Senator Ted Cruz helped energize Democratic voters), but that effect itself is 

part of a deeper political transformation in Texas that has radically changed the political 

landscape compared to thirty years ago, at the height of the prison boom, or even 

fifteen years ago, before mass incarceration became a national issue. 

This is why leading conservatives, many of them associated with Right on Crime, have 

been at the forefront of efforts in Texas and elsewhere to suppress the vote through 

enhanced prison terms and fines for voter fraud, through voter intimidation, and through 

fights to control redistricting power: in order to maintain the white, Republican minority. 

Uncritical promulgation of an elite-driven model of criminal justice reform with Right on 

Crime as its anchor has come at a high political cost. It is premised on promoting a 

“pragmatic” vision of politics that is actually deeply ideological and incapable of 

ameliorating the country’s most pressing problems—from mass incarceration to global 

warming to massive economic and political inequality. As Jane Mayer of The New 

Yorker has noted in looking at the particular role the Koch brothers play in criminal 

justice reform, there’s a strong strain of anti-government libertarianism at work—they 

distrust government power, and yet they have no affirmative vision for making life better 

for people being crushed. Participating in efforts like Right on Crime allows them to don 

cloaks of political reasonableness and moderation while they continue to pursue 


scorched-earth social and economic policies. Such an agenda serves to bolster, not 

build down, the carceral state in Texas and elsewhere. 

Marie Gottschalk is a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and 

the author of Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. 

________ 

Scientific American 

BEHAVIOR & SOCIETY 

Do Prisons Make Us Safer? 

New research shows that prisons prevent far less violent crime 

than you might think 

by David J. Harding on June 21, 2019 

One person is sentenced to state or federal prison every 90 seconds in the United 

States, amounting to almost 420,000 per year. The U.S. has the highest incarceration 

rate in the world. We incarcerate for multiple reasons, including justice and punishment, 

but one of the main justifications is public safety. Putting individuals convicted of crimes, 

especially violent crimes, in prison is thought to make the rest of us safer. 

But how much safety does all this imprisonment actually buy us? A study I recently 

published with colleagues shows the answer is very little, especially in the long-term. 

There are good reasons to think prisons might prevent crime. The experience of 

imprisonment could deter someone from committing crimes to avoid prison in the future. 

Prison might provide opportunities for rehabilitation, such as drug and alcohol treatment, 

education, or counseling. And, at the very least, someone who is in prison cannot 

commit a crime in the community, an effect criminologists call “incapacitation.” 

Yet there are also good reasons to believe that prisons might actually increase crime. 

The harsh prison environment could exacerbate mental health problems, make people 

more prone to aggression, or make them cynical and distrustful of the legal system. 

Prisons could isolate prisoners from friends and family who might help them find jobs 

eventually. Or prisoners may learn from other prisoners how to be better criminals. 

To examine how prison affects violent crime, our study compared people sentenced to 

prison to those sentenced to probation supervision in the community, using data on all 

individuals sentenced for a felony in Michigan between 2003 and 2006. They were 

followed through 2015 to track convictions for violent crimes. 

The study focused on people who had committed a violent crime and were eligible for 

both prison or probation sentences. Such people were typically convicted of crimes like 


obbery or assault (individuals convicted of more serious violent crimes like rape or 

murder are generally not eligible for probation). 

Determining whether differences in future violent offending are a result of prison itself is 

challenging, however. Those who are sentenced to prison are probably more likely than 

those sentenced to probation to commit a violent crime in the future, even if they had 

not been sentenced to prison. 

To overcome this challenge, the study used the random assignment of criminal 

defendants to judges to mimic a randomized experiment. Different judges are more 

harsh or lenient in their sentencing, even within the same county courthouse. The study 

compared defendants randomly assigned to harsher judges to those who were 

randomly assigned to more lenient judges. 

The study found that sentencing someone to prison had no effect on their chances of 

being convicted of a violent crime within five years of being released from prison. This 

means that prison has no preventative effect on violence in the long term among people 

who might have been sentenced to probation. 

It also found a preventative “incapacitation” effect in the short term, during the time 

when prisoners were still in prison, but this effect is smaller than we typically assume. 

Preventing one person who was previously convicted of a violent crime from committing 

a new violent crime within five years of their sentence requires imprisoning 16 such 


These findings are important for two reasons. First, imprisoning just one person 

costs tens of thousands of dollars per year. The short-term and small preventative effect 

of prison means those dollars could be better spent on other violence prevention or 

public safety strategies. 

Second, the high costs of prison combined with concerns about the negative collateral 

consequences for prisoners, their families, and communities have prompted renewed 

efforts in states around the country to reduce imprisonment. 

Yet despite the fact that over half of prison inmates were convicted of a violent crime, 

most criminal justice reforms exclude those with violent pasts. The results from this 

study mean that many people convicted of crimes like robbery and assault could be 

sentenced to probation rather than prison with little impact on public safety. 

________ 


Vox 

The Controversial 1994 Crime Law 

That Joe Biden Helped Write, Explained 

The 1994 “tough on crime” law remains a big topic of debate 

in 2020 Democratic debates. Here’s what you need to know. 

by German Lopez | Jun 20, 2019, 9:00am ED 

One of the most controversial criminal justice issues in the 2020 Democratic primary is 

a “tough on crime” law passed 25 years ago — and authored by current poll 

frontrunner Joe Biden. 

If you ask some criminal justice reform activists, the 1994 crime law passed by 

Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, which was meant to reverse decades of 

rising crime, was one of the key contributors to mass incarceration in the 1990s. 

They say it led to more prison sentences, more prison cells, and more aggressive 

policing — especially hurting black and brown Americans, who are disproportionately 

likely to be incarcerated. 

If you ask Biden, that’s not true at all. The law, he argued at a recent campaign stop, 

had little impact on incarceration, which largely happens at the state level. As recently 

as 2016, Biden defended the law, arguing it “restored American cities” following an era 

of high crime and violence. 

The truth, it turns out, is somewhere in the middle. 

The 1994 crime law was certainly meant to increase incarceration in an attempt to crack 

down on crime, but its implementation doesn’t appear to have done much in that area. 

And while the law had many provisions that are now considered highly controversial, 

some portions, including the Violence Against Women Act and the assault weapons 

ban, are fairly popular among Democrats. 

That’s how politicians like Biden, as well as fellow presidential candidate Sen. Bernie 

Sanders (I-VT), can now justify their votes for the law — by pointing to the provisions 

that weren’t “tough on crime.” 

But with Biden’s criminal justice record coming under scrutiny as he runs for 

president, it’s the mass incarceration provisions that are drawing particular attention as 

a key example of how Biden helped fuel the exact same policies that criminal justice 

reformers are trying to reverse. 

For some Democrats, the 1994 law is exhibit A for why Biden can’t be trusted to do the 

right thing on criminal justice issues should he become president. 


The 1994 Crime Law Had a Lot In It 

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, now known as the 1994 crime 

law, was the result of years of work by Biden, who oversaw the Senate Judiciary 

Committee at the time, and other Democrats. It was an attempt to address a big issue in 

America at the time: Crime, particularly violent crime, had been rising for decades, 

starting in the 1960s but continuing, on and off, through the 1990s (in part due to the 

crack cocaine epidemic). 

Politically, the legislation was also a chance for Democrats — including the recently 

elected president, Bill Clinton — to wrestle the issue of crime away from 

Republicans. Polling suggested Americans were very concerned about high crime back 

then. And especially after George H.W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis in the 1988 

presidential election in part by painting Dukakis as “soft on crime,” Democrats were 

acutely worried that Republicans were beating them on the issue. 

Biden reveled in the politics of the 1994 law, bragging after it passed that “the liberal 

wing of the Democratic Party” was now for “60 new death penalties,” “70 enhanced 

penalties,” “100,000 cops,” and “125,000 new state prison cells.” 

The law imposed tougher prison sentences at the federal level and encouraged states 

to do the same. It provided funds for states to build more prisons, aimed to fund 

100,000 more cops, and backed grant programs that encouraged police officers to carry 

out more drug-related arrests — an escalation of the war on drugs. 

At the same time, the law included several measures that would be far less 

controversial among Democrats today. The Violence Against Women Act provided more 

resources to crack down on domestic violence and rape. A provision helped fund 

background checks for guns. The law encouraged states to back drug courts, which 

attempt to divert drug offenders from prison into treatment, and also helped fund some 

addiction treatment. 

All of this was an old-school attempt to attract votes from lawmakers who otherwise 

might be skeptical — and it succeeded at winning over some Democrats. Bernie 

Sanders, for one, criticized an earlier version of the bill, written in 1991 but never 

passed, for supporting mass incarceration, quipping, “What do we have to do, put half 

the country behind bars?” But he voted for the 1994 law, explaining at the time, “I have 

a number of serious problems with the crime bill, but one part of it that I vigorously 

support is the Violence Against Women Act.” 

Biden also opposed some parts of the law, even while he helped write it. In 1994, 

he reportedly called a three-strikes provision — that escalated prison sentences up to 

life for some repeat offenses — “wacko” and illustrative of Congress’ “tough on crime” 

attitude. 


But the Democratic authors of the law were clear about their intentions: supporting a 

more punitive criminal justice system to rebuke criticisms that they were “soft on crime.” 

(The legislation wasn’t enough for some Republicans in Congress, who complained the 

bill included too much social spending and pledged to pass tougher laws as part of 

their 1994 campaign to take back the House.) On the website for his 2008 presidential 

campaign, Biden referred to the 1994 crime law as the “Biden Crime Law” and bragged 

that it encouraged states to effectively increase their prison sentences by paying them 

to build more prisons — a direct endorsement of more incarceration. 

Asked about Biden’s support for the law, the Biden campaign pointed to provisions like 

the Violence Against Women Act, the 10-year assault weapons ban, firearm 

background check funding, money for police, support for addiction treatment, and a 

“safety valve” that let a limited number of low-level first-time drug offenders avoid 

mandatory minimum sentences. They also cited some of his past criticisms of punitive 

sentences, including the three-strikes measure, and pointed out that a Republicancontrolled 

Congress later cut funding drastically for drug courts. 

In a 2016 interview with CNBC, Biden said that there were parts of the law he’d 

change, but argued that “by and large what it really did, it restored American cities.” 

(Although crime has dropped since the ’90s, the research suggests punitive criminal 

justice policies played at best a small, partial role in that decrease.) 

Biden also took credit for the law: “As a matter of fact, I drafted the bill, if you 

remember.” 

The 1994 Law Didn’t Really Cause Mass Incarceration 

In a 2019 context, the 1994 law has been criticized for contributing to mass 

incarceration. This goes back to at least 2016, when activists and writers like Michelle 

Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, cited the law to criticize Hillary Clinton’s 

presidential campaign. 

Facing these kinds of criticisms, Biden has argued that the 1994 law, as a federal 

statute, couldn’t have caused mass incarceration. He argued in May, “Folks, let’s get 

something straight: 92 out of every 100 prisoners end up behind bars are in a state 

prison, not a federal prison. This idea that the crime bill generated mass incarceration 

— it did not generate mass incarceration.” 

This is a bit of a dodge as to whether the bill intended to increase incarceration, but 

Biden is generally correct that the bill, despite its intentions, did not actually succeed at 

expanding incarceration much. 

Beyond the changes to hike federal penalties, the 1994 law attempted to encourage 

states to adopt harsher criminal justice policies. It provided money for states to build 

prisons and adopt “truth in sentencing” laws that increase prison sentences by requiring 

inmates to serve out at least 85 percent of their prison sentences without an early 


elease. It’s here where the law could have had most its impact on incarceration — 

since, as Biden indicated, nearly 88 percent of inmates are held at the state level. 

Yet evaluations of the 1994 crime law suggest these state-level provisions didn’t really 

work out. The 1994 law led only a few states to adopt harsher criminal justice policies, 

and the tougher policies the 1994 law encouraged weren’t the only measures that 

fueled mass incarceration overall. 

A 1998 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), for which federal 

investigators talked to state officials about whether the 1994 law influenced state 

policies, noted that just four states adopted “truth in sentencing” laws (TIS) solely as a 

response to the 1994 law: 

At the time of our review, based upon determinations made by DOJ, 27 states had TIS 

laws that met the requirements for receiving federal TIS grants. For each of these 27 

states, we contacted state officials to determine whether the availability of such grants 

was a factor in the respective state’s decision to enact a TIS law. Based on the 

responses to our telephone survey, the states can be grouped into three categories— 

TIS grants not a factor (12 states), TIS grants a partial factor (11 states), and TIS grants 

a key factor (4 states). 

Why did most states apparently not take much direction from the 1994 law? Many state 

officials said they were already interested in “tough on crime” measures before the 

federal law, GAO investigators found: 

According to Ohio officials, the state passed its TIS law in 1995, which is later than the 

enactment date of the 1994 Crime Act. However, the officials told us the state law was 

based on a July 1993 report by the Ohio Sentencing Commission. Thus, according to 

the state officials, the availability of federal grants did not influence the state’s decision 

to pass TIS legislation. Rather, according to Ohio officials, a widespread concern about 

early release of violent crime offenders was a major factor in the state’s decision to pass 

TIS legislation. 

Some state officials also argued that the funding incentives were too small to drive big 

policy changes. Vermont, for instance, said meeting the federal requirements for “truth 

in sentencing” would cost several million dollars but only result in about $80,000 in 

federal grants. 

A more recent report, published by the National Institute of Justice in 2002, produced 

similar findings: “Overall, Federal TIS grants were associated with relatively few State 

TIS reforms. There was relatively little reform activity after the 1994 enactment of the 

Federal TIS grant program, as many States had already adopted some form of TIS by 

that time.” 

“Truth in sentencing” laws were also only one way that federal and state governments 

embraced mass incarceration. They also flat-out increased prison sentences, adopted 


harsh mandatory minimum sentences, and encouraged police and prosecutors to 

be tougher on criminals — most of which happened separately from the 1994 law. 

That’s reflected in the statistics, which show that incarceration rates were climbing 

rapidly before the 1994 crime law and actually started leveling off a few years after. 

This is relevant to Democratic attempts to reverse mass incarceration, too. For 

example, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), another presidential candidate, has introduced a 

bill that would encourage states, with financial incentives, to cut back incarceration — a 

sort of antonym to the 1994 crime law. But as Fordham Law School criminal justice 

expert John Pfaff wrote for Vox, the approach overstates “the role of federal policy in 

expanding state prison populations” and “the role federal policy might play in reducing 

those populations.” 

In this way, a clear reading of the 1994 law’s actual effects is very relevant not just to 

Biden’s politics, but criminal justice reformers’ efforts to undo mass incarceration. 

Still, the 1994 law reflects Biden’s “tough on crime” history 

Whatever the effects of the 1994 crime law and Biden’s reasons for supporting it, it is 

only one piece of Biden’s much longer history backing “tough on crime” 

policies that at the very least attempted to escalate incarceration nationwide. 

Here are some examples from his record, drawn partly from Jamelle Bouie’s previous 

rundown at Slate: 

 

 

 

Comprehensive Control Act: This 1984 law, spearheaded by Biden and Sen. 

Strom Thurmond (R-SC), expanded federal drug trafficking penalties and civil 

asset forfeiture, which allows police to seize and absorb someone’s property — 

whether cash, cars, guns, or something else — without proving the person is 

guilty of a crime. 

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986: This law, sponsored and partly written by Biden, 

ratcheted up penalties for drug crimes. It also created a big sentencing disparity 

between crack and powder cocaine; even though the drugs are 

pharmacologically similar, the law made it so someone would need to possess 

100 times the amount of powder cocaine to be eligible for the same mandatory 

minimum sentence for crack. Since crack is more commonly used by black 

Americans, this sentencing disparity helped fuel big racial disparities in 

incarceration. 

Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988: This law, co-sponsored by Biden, increased 

prison sentences for drug possession, enhanced penalties for transporting drugs, 

and established the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which coordinates 

and leads federal anti-drug efforts. 

Just as with his comments around the 1994 law, Biden was also explicit about what his 

goals were with these other measures. In 1989, at the height of punitive anti-drug and 

mass incarceration politics, Biden even went on national television to criticize a plan 


from President George H.W. Bush to escalate the war on drugs. The plan, Biden said, 

didn’t go far enough. 

“Quite frankly, the president’s plan is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative 

enough to meet the crisis at hand,” he said. He called not just for harsher punishments 

for drug dealers but to “hold every drug user accountable.” Bush’s plan, Biden added, 

“doesn’t include enough police officers to catch the violent thugs, not enough 

prosecutors to convict them, not enough judges to sentence them, and not enough 

prison cells to put them away for a long time” — a direct call for more incarceration. 

All of this reflected a broader movement in the Democratic Party to both address the 

growing issue of crime and overcome successful Republican attacks about how 

Democrats are “soft on crime.” This helps explain not just why Biden said and did all 

these things, but why Bill Clinton signed the 1994 crime law and ran on its “tough on 

crime” provisions — including his support for the “death penalty for drug 

kingpins” — during his reelection bid in 1996. 

Biden has repented for some of his past, acknowledging that creating extra punitive 

penalties for crack was “a big mistake” and supporting efforts to reel back those 

penalties. “I haven’t always been right,” Biden said earlier this year, speaking to 

criminal justice issues. “I know we haven’t always gotten things right, but I’ve always 

tried.” 

That may not offer much comfort for criminal justice reformers. A big worry in the 

criminal justice reform space is what would happen if, say, the crime rate started to rise 

once again. If that were to happen, there could be pressure on lawmakers — and it’d at 

least be easier for them — to go back to “tough on crime” views, framing more 

aggressive policing and higher incarceration rates in a favorable way. 

Given that the central progressive claim is that these policies are racist and, based on 

the research, ineffective for fighting crime in the first place, any potential for backsliding 

in this area once it becomes politically convenient is very alarming. 

The concern, then, is what would happen if crime started to rise under President Biden: 

Would he fall back on old “tough on crime” instincts, calling for harsh prison sentences 

once again? 

“[E]ven if Biden has subsequently learned the error of his ways,” Branko Marcetic wrote 

for Jacobin, “the rank cynicism and callousness involved in his two-decade-long 

championing of carceral policies should be more than enough to give anyone pause 

about his qualities as a leader, let alone a progressive one.” 

That’s what the debate over the 1994 crime law is about. It’s not just that Biden messed 

up by helping write and supporting the law a quarter-century ago, but what his 

involvement says about him today and in the future. 

________ 


CALIFORNIA: EPICENTER 

OF MASS INCARCERATION REFORM 

bY NEWS BEAT June 4, 2019 

California has positioned itself at the epicenter of a growing movement to reform the 

criminal justice system, representing a seismic shift for a state that spent previous 

decades exponentially increasing its prison population. 

What began as a response to court intervention, including a U.S. Supreme Court 

mandate to substantially reduce prison overcrowding, has morphed into a wide-ranging 

set of initiatives addressing everything from police accountability to mass incarceration. 

California is hardly alone in such an undertaking. Still, its legislative ambitions, 

combined with contentious issues confronted by lawmakers and smaller municipalities, 


such as the city of Stockton, has put the state at the forefront of this movement. A 2018 

law abolishing cash bail, implementation of which has stalled pending a statewide 

referendum, is just one example of how the state is endeavoring to make a dramatic 

change. 

In 2011, California voters approved AB 109, also known as “realignment,” in response 

to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. In a 5-4 decision, the justices ordered dramatic cuts to 

the state’s prison population, which ballooned to 165,000 in 2006. By 2016, the number 

of inmates in state penitentiaries fell 25 percent, to about 110,000. The precipitous 

decline was largely the result of policies enacted under AB 109, which diverted 

prisoners convicted of certain crimes to local jails. 

Beyond addressing its once-infamous overcrowding problem, the state has adopted a 

medley of new reform-inspired laws: Prop 47 in 2014, which reduced sentences for lowlevel 

drug and property crimes; Prop 57 in 2016, which expanded parole eligibility for 

non-violent criminals; SB 1437, which effectively eliminated the so-called “felony murder 

rule;” and others. 

Whether these mushrooming measures have made California safer is a matter of 

constant—and passionate—debate. 

One thing, however, is clear: Crime in California is at historic lows, according to experts. 

But researchers are hesitant to assign credit—or blame—to the assortment of new 

policies, given the complexities of the criminal justice system, especially in a state as 

sprawling as California—numbering 58 counties and a population approaching 40 

million. 

Not surprisingly, reform remains a flashpoint. Some district attorneys strongly object to 

the gutting of the so-called “felony murder rule” and the powerful bail industry 

successfully petitioned the state to hold a public vote on a bail reform bill, known as SB 

10, that then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law last year. 

Initially endorsed by leading grassroots and reform organizations, many of SB 10’s key 

co-sponsors withdrew their support. They questioned whether the newly adopted 

framework, built around a controversial algorithmic risk assessment system, represents 

meaningful bail reform. 

The push to effectively eliminate bail, along with the growing list of laws and policies 

intended to dismantle mass incarceration, are prime examples of what non-profit news 

organization The Marshall Project has dubbed, “The California Experiment.” To 

highlight California’s prominence in the reform movement, News Beat podcast 

collaborated with The Marshall Project to further shine a light on California’s ambitious 

path forward, and to better understand how the state could become a model for the rest 

of the country. 


Related: How Supporters of Historic California Bail Abolition Bill Became Some 

Of Its Strongest Critics 

“California looks a lot like the nation,” Mia Bird, research fellow at the Public Policy 

Institute of California (PPIC), tells News Beat podcast. “And so there’s a lot to be 

learned from the California experience, but I certainly think across the country, you 

know, California may have been a bit on the leading edge because of circumstances 

and prison overcrowding, but across the country these are conversations that are being 

had and there’s legislation moving forward just to try to make the criminal justice system 

more cost effective and more equitable.” 

Going Back to Cali’s Past 

The United States continues to incarcerate higher rates of its own citizens than any 

other country in the world. But inmate populations have declined in recent years, largely 

due to substantial reductions inside a half-dozen states, including California. 

How the Golden State got to this point is a story that has resonance across the country. 

For decades, and especially through the ’80s and ’90s, tough on crime policies 

prevailed, buttressed by the so-called “War on Drugs”—a period characterized by a 

massive uptick in jail and prison populations, with minorities and women increasingly 

being locked up. 

California mirrored this national trend, according to Bird. In 1994, the state enacted a 

controversial “Three Strikes” sentencing law, which meant anyone who committed three 

felonies—even one considered minor—was automatically sentenced to at least 25 

years to life. The law, amended in 2012 to make the third “strike” a serious or violent 

felony, remains on the books. 

By 2006, California’s prisons—designed to hold 80,000 people—saw its inmate 

population surge to 160,000, double the maximum capacity. That year, then-Gov. 

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, declared a state of emergency inside the 

prisons in order to take “immediate action” to prevent death. 

This is around the same time that, according to Bird, the state began having honest 

conversations about “what it means to incarcerate this large a share of the population.” 

The Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Brown v. Plata outlined troubling 

conditions that endangered the lives of California’s inmates. Among these: Prisoners 

with mental illness were not receiving adequate mental health care, with some having to 

wait as long as a year for treatment; the suicide rate inside prisons was nearly 80 

percent higher than the national average; and overcrowding put such strains on the 

system that, according to a special three-judge court that originally reviewed the case, 

“constitutionally compliant” conditions would not be achievable until the thronged 

conditions were addressed. 


“This shortfall of resources relative to demand contributes to significant delays in 

treatment,” Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has since retired, wrote in the majority 

opinion. “Mentally ill prisoners are housed in administrative segregation while awaiting 

transfer to scarce mental health treatment beds for appropriate care. One correctional 

officer indicated that he had kept mentally ill prisoners in segregation for ‘[six] months or 

more.’” 

Abbie VanSickle is a staff writer at The Marshall Project, where her work on California’s 

prison reform movement is part of an ongoing series called “The California Experiment.” 

VanSickle, as with others closely monitoring the implications of newly adopted laws and 

initiatives, says California’s eagerness to pursue change can clearly be traced back to 

the court’s mandate nearly a decade ago. 

“It set in motion a sort-of series of changes in the way that the state’s prisons worked in 

who was held and for how long, and eventually how people could gain early release,” 

she tells News Beat podcast. 

Reform 

It all started with AB 109—or more popularly known as “realignment.” 

As VanSickle notes in the podcast, AB 109 essentially moved people with nonviolent, 

nonsexual and non-serious convictions out of prisons and into the custody of county 

jails. That meant the onus was on each individual county to figure out the best way to 

absorb low-level offenders into their respective systems, and come up with plans to 

reduce recidivism—AB 109’s ultimate goal. 

According to Bird, the law also included funding for local jurisdictions to develop 

“evidence-based practices.” 

“That’s really when we started to see the prison population come down in California,” 

she tells News Beat podcast. 

Along with lessening the degree to which people with non-serious felonies would serve 

their time in prison, AB 109 also “very importantly…prevented revocations to prison for 

most individuals who are leaving prison,” Bird notes. “And this meant that if they were 

picked up for misconduct they either needed to be formally processed through the court 

system and reconvicted of an offense or they needed to be revoked and serve that 

revocation term locally. 

The was significant, Bird says, because not only did it alleviate the pressure on prisons, 

but overall incarceration levels also fell. 

California no longer had “that sort of revolving door that had perpetuated the size of the 

prison population in California,” she explains. “And what we saw as a result was really a 

dramatic decline in the prison population. And that wasn’t surprising given that the rules 


directly affected who could go to prison. But we also saw an overall decline in 

incarceration. And so that’s to say the jail population just didn’t increase at the same 

level that the prison population was reduced.” 

Bird credits these improvements to a system of incentives and funding mechanisms 

contained in the law. Even as local jurisdictions’ justice systems were expanding, they 

were able to tap into government funds that allowed them to individually pursue projects 

that reduced incarceration and correctional costs, she says. 

Bird joined PPIC in 2012, just as California was beginning a massive wave of reforms. 

Along with her colleagues, Bird has helped spearhead an effort to gather data and 

analyze “realignments” impact. 

But getting to that point was no easy task—and still isn’t. As this reform movement was 

hitting its stride, the state was experiencing a “huge data gap,” Bird says. Critical 

information was “siloed,” she adds, so much so that crucial data points were not 

traveling upstream, making it nearly impossible for the county to conduct its own 

analysis. 

“Even just to evaluate a policy like ‘realignment’ or many of the subsequent policies that 

have followed in this era of reform, you really needed to bring state and local data 

together in order to do that,” Bird continues. 

“What we were able to learn based on those data is that realignment didn’t have—as 

some people feared—it didn’t have huge effects on crime rates and it didn’t actually 

have any negative effects on specifically violent crime rates,” she explains. “And that’s 

what folks were really worried about. If you reduced incarceration and in some respects 

to reduce the turn of going to prison, would we see a big increase in crime and would 

we see a big increase in particularly violent crime?” 

Even still, it’s “notoriously difficult” to draw conclusions from crime statistics, says 

VanSickle. 

“What I can say, we did look at crime data in California for the last couple of decades, 

and what we see now is that crime remains at historic lows in California,” she says. But 

to her larger point, VanSickle says crime rates were up in some counties and down in 

others, which is why researchers often scoff at making generalized conclusions about 

crime rates and the effect specific laws have had on public safety. 

Stockton Rising 

It wasn’t that long ago when the city of Stockton was famous for all the wrong reasons. 

The city, nestled in San Joaquin County, once had a murder rate that rivaled Chicago, 

and in 2012 became the largest American city to file for bankruptcy, still gripping from 

the economic downturn four years prior. 


Stockton has been on a long, arduous road to recovery. But the city with a population of 

310,000 has found its footing—swagger, even—thanks to an infusion of youth, pride, 

and chutzpah radiating off its 28-year-old mayor. 

When Michael D. Tubbs, the former councilman and Obama White House intern, took 

up the reigns at city hall in 2017, he became the city’s first black mayor and the 

youngest ever to hold the position. 

Tubbs is also somewhat of a celebrity mayor. He has made the rounds on national 

television to champion the city’s Universal Basic Income (UBI) experiment. Under the 

program, a random group of residents each month receive a $500 preloaded debit card 

with the freedom to spend as they wish. 

Tubbs’ goals are ambitious, perhaps even audacious. The UBI trial is one of many 

threads he’s pulling—seemingly all at once—so he can leave Stockton in a better place 

than how he found it, and that includes undoing generational challenges: poverty, poor 

education, and violence. 

While lawmakers statewide are seemingly committed to ending mass incarceration, 

jurisdictions like Stockton are doing their part as well, just on a more granular level. 

On Jan. 1, Tubbs published a celebratory tweet in which he announced that the city had 

reduced homicides and shootings by 40 and 30 percent, respectively. Most local 

leaders often take time to celebrate a decline in violence—after all, lawmakers want to 

keep their communities safe. But for a mayor whose return to Stockton was spurred by 

a horrific act of violence, this was deeply personal. 

Tubbs was a junior at Stanford University when he landed an internship at the White 

House’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Throw in a stint at Google, and Tubbs was 

on a path toward success—something that eluded many of the people he knew back 

home in Stockton. 

Then everything changed. Tubbs cousin was fatally shot, and that proved to be a 

“tipping point” for him, he tells News Beat podcast. 

After his cousin’s untimely death, Tubbs did a lot of “soul searching,” he says, which 

helped him uncover a harsh reality: “There was countless families in this country and 

countless of my community that felt the same pain and anger.” 

When he returned home, Tubbs ran for city council, and won. Preventing gun violence 

has been an obsession of his ever since. 

Among the most controversial initiatives has been the city’s partnership with anti-gun 

violence nonprofit Advance Peace, which the council approved last year. The program 

identifies residents most likely to commit violence and provides them with support 

networks and includes daily check-ins with mentors and job training. After six months in 


the program, participants are eligible to receive a stipend of up to $1,000—undoubtedly 

the most contentious aspect of the initiative. 

Tubbs has also promoted the Office of Violence Prevention, which includes Operation 

Ceasefire and Peacekeepers, a mentoring program for at-risk youth. 

The city’s holistic approach to stamping out gun violence comes as it is also bolstering 

its police department, which now has a record number of officers. 

Tubbs envisions a city in which the police work is part and parcel of a broader crimereduction 

strategy. 

“For the past 30 years, Stockton has been double or triple the state average 

consistently for gun violence and homicides. When I was elected to city council, we had 

71 homicides, which was more per capita than Chicago at the time. Unacceptably high 

rates of violence,” Tubbs says. “We now have more police officers than we ever had. 

But we also have an understanding that cops in and of itself are necessary but not 

sufficient. That the cops don’t do prevention work, they come in after a crime has been 

committed. But there’s a lot of upstream factors and indicators we can use to figure out 

who is it that’s going to drive gun violence in our community. And figure out how do we 

streamline our institutions so they track those signs early so we don’t have to go to 

enforcement to create change.” 

For Tubbs, his city, and the state itself, the work never ends. 

When we spoke with Tubbs in late April, the preceding weekend had been especially 

violent, with three recorded homicides in as many days. Tubbs and his staff were going 

to spend the rest of the week strategizing about how they could improve. 

“It’s not a sexy topic,” he explains. “It’s not one to easily win on. But it’s one I’m 

committed to making sure that by the time I leave as mayor of Stockton, we’re on a 

trend towards a steady decline in gun violence.” 



V. Juvenile Justice Reform 

on Life-Support 

The Marshall Project 

Nonprofit Journalism About Criminal Justice 

12 February 2016 

Justice Reform, RIP? 

The vaunted bipartisan drive to enact federal criminal justice reform 

is not quite dead. But its pulse is faint. 

Among advocates 

campaigning to reduce the 

country’s bloated prison 

population and invest in 

rehabilitation, there is a 

growing sense that a) 

Congress is unlikely to 

pass anything this year 

worthy of being called 

reform, and b) it might be 

better to start over in 2017. 

Even the decidedly 

modest reforms that had 

some momentum a few 

months ago – measures 

that would mainly reduce 

mandatory minimum 

sentences for some drug 

offenders – have run into 

fierce opposition from lawand-order 

hawks such as 

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark, 

who credits mandatory 

minimums for the 25-year decline in violent crime. 

Major reform still has a formidable array of advocates. President Obama yearns to 

make justice reform part of his legacy and has lobbied for it in public and in private. 

House Speaker Paul Ryan has also professed support, as a way of slowing the 

community-destroying cycle of poverty, crime and punishment, not to mention a way of 

demonstrating that the GOP is not indifferent to the blacks and Latinos who are 


disproportionately ground up in the current system. Reform is backed by a strangebedfellows 

alliance of conservative and progressive interest groups and by many bigcity 

law enforcement officials. And a new poll released Thursday by the Pew Charitable 

Trusts finds strong public support for reducing or even eliminating mandatory minimum 

sentences and letting prisoners earn time off their sentences by participating in 

programs like job training and drug counseling. 

Supporters of reform are mobilizing a last-ditch assault on Capitol Hill, hoping to 

convince lawmakers that reform is a matter of public safety and fiscal prudence. They 

are pinning some hopes on Ryan, on endorsements from police chiefs and prosecutors, 

and on the fact that everybody is still actively negotiating. “The clock has not run out,” 

said one congressional aide. Gloomier advocates say that even if Ryan delivers in the 

House, it would take a near-miracle to get anything bold through the Senate. 

Some reform proponents believe the best they can expect is that Congress will grant a 

very narrow reprieve for one group of crack cocaine offenders. Back in 2010, Congress 

reduced sentences for inmates who were punished under a law that treated crack 

cocaine far more severely than powder cocaine. (The most conspicuous difference 

between the two forms of the drug is that powder is more popular with white users, 

while crack users tend to be black.) An estimated 5,800 people convicted before 2010 

remain imprisoned. Congress could make these prisoners retroactively eligible for a 

judicial review of their sentences. 

In the absence of legislation, President Obama will surely come under pressure to use 

his powers of executive clemency aggressively in his final days. Thousands of federal 

prisoners have applied to have their sentences commuted, but the cases are backed 

up in a processing pipeline. 

If reform dies on Capitol Hill, the autopsy is likely to identify several causes of death. 

• There are few profiles in courage in an election year. Witness Sen. Ted Cruz, the 

Texas Republican who as recently as 2014 told a press conference that 

mandatory minimum sentences currently in force have condemned “far too many 

young men, and in particular far too many African-American young men” to lifedestroying 

sentences for relatively minor drug offenses. Touting his home state’s 

record of reduced incarceration and falling crime rates, he declared, “We need to 

recognize that young people make mistakes, and we should not live in a world of 

Les Miserables.” Now campaigning for the White House as the meanest man in 

the field, Cruz has swiveled, denouncing a bill that is considerably less generous 

to offenders than the one he supported back then. “We know to an absolute 

certainty that an unfortunately high percentage of those offenders will go and 

commit subsequent crimes,” he says now. “And every one of us who votes to 

release violent criminals from prison prior to the expiration of their sentence can 

fully expect to be held accountable by our constituents.” Cruz may be the least 

popular man in the Senate, but many a lawmaker can imagine hearing the same 

alarmist rhetoric coming from the lips (and campaign ads) of a primary opponent. 


• That is especially true in a campaign year fueled by anger and fear. Proponents 

of reform – pointing to the experience of several red states like Texas, Georgia, 

Mississippi and Utah – say it has become safe for politicians to be “smart on 

crime” rather than merely tough on crime. But surges of murder in several major 

cities, televised protests against police behavior, and fear-mongering by some 

presidential candidates have contributed to a perception – never mind the facts – 

that crime is rising ominously. 

• The heroin epidemic — which has hit especially hard in white suburbs, a.k.a. 

swing voter territory — may have made politicians wary of legislation that mainly 

benefits drug offenders in federal custody. Of course, in contrast to earlier heroin 

binges that hit black neighborhoods most heavily, this is being billed more as a 

health problem than a crime problem. But only up to a point: New Hampshire’s 

attorney general has proposed to begin charging drug dealers with second 

degree murder if their customers overdose. 

• Many Republicans would rather stick pencils in their eyes than pass something 

President Obama could claim as a legacy. Conversely, some Democrats fear the 

president wants a bill so badly he’ll settle for a bad bill. Last week the president 

met privately with the hardline chairmen of the House and Senate judiciary 

committees, no Democrats invited. Much speculation ensued about what deal the 

president might have cut. 

• Congressional process favors defense over offense. In the Senate, any member 

can demand “regular order,” which means the bill is open to amending. And 


opponents are surely prepared to sabotage sentencing reform by amending it to 

death. One potential poison pill is an amendment requiring the government to 

prove intent, or “mens rea” (Latin for “a guilty mind”), when it tries to convict 

someone of a crime, a measure the administration fears would make it harder to 

prosecute white-collar crimes. 

________ 



13 December 2018 

The Criminal Justice Reform Bill You’ve Never Heard Of 

Mitch McConnell’s Senate has quietly passed juvenile justice legislation 

that would ban states from holding children in adult jails. 

On Thursday, the House of Representatives passed the Juvenile Justice and 

Delinquency Prevention Act. It now will go to the White House for President Donald 

Trump's signature. 

The criminal justice buzz on Capitol Hill this week is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch 

McConnell, after stalling for weeks, will finally allow a prison reform bill called the First 

Step Act to come up for a vote. The legislation, which would reduce some federal 

mandatory-minimum sentences, could make it to President Trump’s desk by the end of 

this year. 

But that’s not the only perpetually-in-limbo crime bill that, in the span of a few days, 

suddenly appears likely to make it through a logjammed Congress and get signed into 

law. 

With much less fanfare, the Senate on Tuesday passed major juvenile justice legislation 

that has been postponed and picked over for more than a decade—and that would ban 

states from holding children in adult jails even if they’ve been charged with adult crimes. 

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, which is expected to pass the 

House as soon as today, would also require states receiving federal dollars to collect 

data on racial disparities in the juvenile system and to come up with concrete plans for 

addressing those inequities. It would ban the shackling of pregnant girls, as well as 

provide funding for tutoring, mental health, and drug and alcohol programs for kids. 

Despite the president’s usual tough-on-crime rhetoric, congressional staffers and youth 

advocates said he appears unlikely to veto the bill, which has bipartisan support and 

hasn’t generated much attention on Fox News or among his base supporters. 


“After hearings and briefings and votes and re-votes, finally, this hundred-page bill, this 

huge lift, which matters so much for kids, is actually going to be passed in a bipartisan 

and bicameral fashion,” said Marcy Mistrett, CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice, an 

advocacy group. “In the current political environment, that’s a really big deal.” 

The passage of the juvenile reform bill just as the First Step Act moves toward a vote 

comes at a pivotal time for federal oversight of local youth court systems. The legislation 

is a new version of a law that first passed in 1974 but expired in 2007. In the decade 

since, racial disparities in juvenile justice have dramatically worsened, and the Trump 

Justice Department has taken a quiet but decisive turn away from its mandate to try to 

reduce such inequality. 

According to a Marshall Project report in September, a little-known DOJ agency called 

the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention has, under Trump appointee 

Caren Harp, cut back on its data-gathering and monitoring of states’ attempts to fight 

racial inequity. 

But under the newly passed juvenile justice bill, that office will now face significantly 

increased congressional oversight, said Republican congressman Jason Lewis of 

Minnesota, who along with Bobby Scott of Virginia, a Democrat, spearheaded the 

House version of the legislation. 

The underlying purpose of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act is to 

use the promise of federal money to ensure four “core protections” for children in states’ 

youth justice systems. These include not locking kids up for age-based “status offenses” 

such as truancy, running away and curfew violations; removing them from adult jails, 

with few exceptions; always keeping them separate from adult inmates; and making 

states research and address racial disparities. 

But earlier versions of the law contained a loophole: Juveniles charged as adults could 

be held in adult jails pretrial. As a result, according to a recent UCLA study, more than 

32,000 youth spend time in adult facilities each year. 

The new bill would require that problem be fixed within three years, although it would 

still contain a “rural exception” letting jurisdictions with no juvenile detention facility hold 

kids in their adult jail for a period of a few hours while they await transportation 

elsewhere. 

Despite the bipartisan support for these changes, the legislation has been caught up for 

years in disputes over details. Its current version, for instance, contains a section 

providing shelters and outreach programs for runaway and homeless children, which 

some senators said should be more robust or be contained in a separate bill. But they 

reached a compromise. 

The bigger obstacle was Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, who nearly 

single-handedly held up the bill for more than two years because he felt that judges 


should have the discretion in some cases to lock up teenagers for status offenses, 

including truancy and curfew violations. Eventually, he was convinced to accept a 

seven-day limit on detaining kids for these kinds of crimes—which is also a compromise 

for youth advocates who had sought an outright ban. 

The new juvenile justice bill, like the First Step Act, is far from comprehensive. It 

budgets relatively little money—$80 million spread among the states—to fix problems 

as entrenched as racial disparities facing teens in the court system. 

But those who have worked on the legislation for years are surprised it passed the 

same week that a chance for a vote finally came along on a criminal justice bill many 

believed would never see the light of day, either. 

“You know, this is part and parcel of Washington,” said Lewis in an interview. “You 

come here and you serve with 434 other type-A personalities in the House and 100 

folks over in the other chamber and if you think you’re gonna get everything you want, 

you’re in the wrong business.” 

________ 



15 July 2015 

‘Justice and Redemption Go Hand in Hand.’ 

A Closer Look At The President’s Speech 

On Criminal Justice Reform. 

Whether or not you agree with President Obama about the need for criminal justice 

reform, it is undeniable that the speech he delivered in Philadelphia on Tuesday to the 

annual convention of the NAACP broke new ground. Many presidents have spoken 

before, and some with great ardor, about law and order. But no sitting president has 

ever publicly spoken at such length and in such detail as Obama now has about the 

persistent problems of crime and punishment in this country. 

Pointedly invoking the names of prominent Republicans like Senators Rand Paul of 

Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas, part of a bipartisan groundswell for smarter law 

enforcement, the president called for meaningful change at virtually every juncture: from 

the first interaction with police officers to prosecutorial charging discretion to the prison 

sentences imposed by judges to the conditions of confinement to the need for job 

training for those who are about to be released. Here are key passages from an 


address that surely will help shape the Congressional debate over justice reform in the 

weeks to come, along with links to some context: 

The Windup: 

In recent years, the eyes of more Americans have been opened to this truth. Partly 

because of cameras, partly because of tragedy, partly because the statistics cannot be 

ignored. We cannot close our eyes anymore, and the good news, and this is truly good 

news, is that good people of all political persuasions are starting to think that we need to 

do something about this. 

On over-sentencing of low-level, nonviolent drug offenders: 

In far too many cases the punishment simply does not fit the crime. If you are a lowlevel 

drug dealer or you violate your parole, you owe some debt to society. You have to 

be held accountable and make amends. But you don’t owe 20 years. You don’t owe a 

life sentence. That’s disproportionate to the price that should be paid. And by the way 

the taxpayers are picking up the tab for that price. (See: “Federal judge: My drug war 

sentences were ‘unfair and disproportionate’”) 

On The Opportunity Costs Of Mass Incarceration: 

Every year we spend $80 billion dollars to keep folks incarcerated. Eighty billion. Now to 

put that in perspective: for $80 billion dollars we could have universal preschool for 

every three-year-old and four-year-old in America. That’s what $80 billion dollars buys. 

For $80 billion dollars, we could double the salary of every high school teacher in 

America. For $80 billion, we could finance new roads and new bridges and new airports, 

job training programs, and research and development... For what we spend to keep 

everyone locked up for one year, we could eliminate tuition at every single one of our 

public colleges and universities. 

As Republican senator and presidential candidate Rand Paul has said… imprisoning 

large numbers of nonviolent drug offenders for long periods of time costs the taxpayers 

money without making them any safer. Roughly one-third of the Justice Department’s 

budget now goes toward incarceration. One third…. But every dollar they have to spend 

keeping nonviolent drug offenders in prison is a dollar they can’t spend going after drug 

kingpins or tracking down terrorists or hiring more police and giving them the resources 

that would allow them to do a more effective job of community policing. (See “White 

House Task Force on 21st Century Policing”) 

On Racial Disparities In Criminal Justice: 

And then of course there are the costs that cannot be measured in dollars and cents. 

Because the statistics on who gets incarcerated show that by a large margin, it 

disproportionately impacts communities of color. African Americans and Latinos make 

up 30 percent of our population; they make up 60 percent of our inmates…. The bottom 


line is that in too many places, black boys and black men, Latino boys and Latino men, 

experience being treated differently under the law…. This is not just anecdote. This is 

not just barbershop talk. 

One of the consequences of this is around one million fathers are behind bars. Around 

one in nine African-American kids has a parent in prison…. Our nation is being robbed 

of men and women who could be workers and taxpayers, who could be more actively 

involved in their children’s lives, could be role models, could be community leaders, and 

right now they are locked up for a nonviolent offense. So our criminal justice system 

isn’t as smart as it should be, it’s not keeping us as safe as it should be, it’s not as fair 

as it should be. (See “Charting the shocking rise of racial disparity in our criminal justice 

system”) 

On Changes To Federal Prosecutorial Discretion: 

Under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, now continued by Loretta Lynch, 

federal prosecutors got what he called “smart on crime,” which is refocusing efforts on 

the worst offenders, pursuing mandatory minimum sentences 20 percent less often than 

they did the year before. That idea is that you don’t always have to charge the max. To 

be a good prosecutor, you have to be proportionate. And it turns out that we are solving 

just as many cases, there are just as many plea bargains, it’s working, it’s just that we 

are just eliminating the excess. (See, Department of Justice memorandum, August 12, 

2013, regarding ”Department Policy on Charging Mandatory Minimum Sentences and 

Recidivist Enhancements in Certain Drug Cases”) 

On What The Reform Should Look Like In The Community: 

I believe crime is like any other epidemic. The best time to stop it is before it starts. And 

I am going to go ahead and say what I have said a hundred times before…. If we make 

investments early in our children we will reduce the need to incarcerate those kids. One 

study found that for every dollar we invest in pre-K, we save at least twice that down the 

road in reduced crime. Getting a teenager a job for the summer costs a fraction of what 

it costs to lock him up for 15 years. 

On The School-To-Prison Pipeline: 

What doesn’t make sense is treating entire neighborhoods as little more than danger 

zones…. Places like West Philly or West Baltimore, or Ferguson, Missouri, they are part 

of America, too. They are not separate. They are part of America like anywhere else, 

the kids there are American kids, just like your kids and my kids. We’ve got to make 

sure that boys and girls in those communities are loved and cherished and supported 

and nourished and invested in. 

And we have to have the same standards for those children as we have for our own 

children. So if you are a parent, you know there are times when a boy or a girl are going 

to act out in school. And the question is, are we letting principals and parents deal with 


one set of kids and we call the police on another set of kids. That’s not the right thing to 

do. We have to make sure that our juvenile justice system remembers that kids are 

different; don’t just tag them as future criminals, reach out to them as future citizens. * 

On Sentencing Reform: 

For nonviolent drug crimes, we need to lower long mandatory minimum sentences or 

get rid of them entirely. Give judges some discretion around nonviolent crimes so that 

potentially we can steer a young person who has made a mistake in a better direction... 

We need to ask prosecutors to use their discretion to seek the best punishment, the one 

that is going to be the most effective instead of just the longest punishment. We should 

invest in alternatives to prison, like drug courts and treatment and probation programs, 

which ultimately can save taxpayers thousands of dollars per defendant each year. 

(See SAFE Justice Act) 

On Prison Reform 

Some criminals still deserve to go to jail. And as Republican senator John Cornyn has 

reminded us, virtually all of the people incarcerated in our prisons will eventually, 

someday, be released, and that’s why the third place we need reform is in the 

cellblock… While the people in our prisons have made some mistakes, and sometimes 

big mistakes, they are also Americans. And we have to make sure that as they do their 

time, and pay back their debt to society, that we are increasing the possibility that they 

can turn their lives around. 

… We should not tolerate conditions in prison that have no place in any civilized 

country. We should not be tolerating overcrowding in prison, we should not be tolerating 

gang activity in prison, we should not be tolerating rape in prison, and we shouldn’t be 

making jokes about it in our popular culture. That’s no joke. These things are 

unacceptable. (See “Pulling the Teeth from the Prison Rape Elimination Act”)* 

On Solitary Confinement 

What’s more I have asked my Attorney General to start a review of the overuse of 

solitary confinement across American prisons. The social science shows that an 

environment like that is often more likely to make inmates more alienated, more hostile, 

potentially more violent. Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone 

in tiny cells for 23 hours a day for months, sometimes for years at a time? That is not 

going to make us safer, that’s not going to make us stronger, and if those individuals are 

ever released, how are they ever going to adapt? Our prisons should be a place where 

we can train people for skills that can help people find a job, not train them to become 

more hardened criminals. (See GAO Report on segregated housing in federal prison) 

Ban The Box — On Job-Training For Inmates And Opportunities For Ex- 

Offenders: 


Some places are doing better than others. Montgomery County, Maryland, put a jobtraining 

center inside the prison walls to give folks a head start in thinking about “what 

might you do otherwise” than committing crimes. That’s a good idea. Here’s another 

good idea, one with bipartisan support in Congress: let’s reward prisoners with reduced 

sentences if they complete programs that make them less likely to commit a repeat 

offense. Let’s invest in innovative new approaches to link former prisoners with 

employers, help them stay on track. 

Let’s follow the growing number of our states and cities and private companies who 

have decided to ban the box on job applications so that former prisoners who have 

done their time and are now trying to get straight with society have a decent shot with a 

job interview. And if folks have served their time, and they have reentered society, they 

should be able to vote. (See “Felony Disenfranchisement”) 

________ 



19 September 2018 

This Agency Tried to Fix the Race Gap in Juvenile Justice. 

Then Came Trump 

A new presidential appointee has quietly changed decades-old federal policies 

meant to improve racial disparities in youth incarceration. 

For two decades, the number of children behind bars in the U.S. has been on the 

decline—but the racial disparity has been dramatically worsening, with black youth 

several times more likely than their white counterparts to be incarcerated. 

A little-known Justice Department agency is supposed to tackle this problem: the Office 

of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which has been mandated by 

Congress since 1988 to try to shrink the racial gap by providing grants and training to 

local juvenile courts and law enforcement agencies. In return, states receiving federal 

dollars must gather data on inequality, explore why it’s happening and pursue solutions. 

But with an appointee of President Trump at the helm, the office has taken a quiet but 

decisive turn away from that mandate. 

Under new administrator Caren Harp, who took office in January, the agency is 

essentially dissolving its research arm—which had been the only federal team regularly 

compiling information on racial patterns in juvenile arrests and incarceration. 


And starting next month, the office will sharply cut back on its oversight of states’ 

attempts to reduce what is called “disproportionate minority contact” with the criminal 

justice system, largely by slashing the kinds of data that local agencies must collect. It 

has also rescinded multiple training manuals that juvenile justice officials around the 

country had been using to improve racial disparities, in what Attorney General Jeff 

Sessions said was a correction of unnecessary regulation. 

“OJJDP is dismantling protections for kids of color. It’s that simple,” said Lisa Thurau, 

executive director of Strategies for Youth, an advocacy organization based in 

Cambridge, Massachusetts, that focuses on police interactions with teens. 

Harp, a former prosecutor and professor at the evangelical Liberty University in 

Lynchburg, Virginia, said in an interview with The Marshall Project that after so many 

years of so little progress on racial disparities, something had to change. “I can’t put 50 

million more dollars into the exact same process,” she said. 

According to Harp, states have been spending too much time and money compiling 

data without improving real-life outcomes. 

She also said the agency’s research on racial disparities will continue under the 

auspices of the adult-focused National Institute of Justice, although experts have 

warned that studies on juveniles specifically might get sidelined as a result. 


To Harp, every issue in juvenile justice, including racial disparities, should be looked at 

through the lens of public safety and offender accountability. Local jurisdictions have 

“drifted a bit to a focus on avoiding arrests at all costs,” she said in a March 

interview with the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, a news and commentary 

website. “It went a little too far to the side of providing services.” 

Youth advocates counter that working to keep juveniles of color out of lockup has 

nothing to do with public safety. Black children get into fights, steal property, carry 

weapons and use and sell drugs at about the same rates as white kids, according to an 

analysis of federal data by the Sentencing Project—they just get disproportionately 

policed for it. 

Under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, first passed in 1974, the 

agency now run by Harp must ensure four “core protections” for children: not locking 

them up for age-based “status offenses” such as truancy, running away and curfew 

violations; removing them from adult jails, with few exceptions; always keeping them 

separate from adult inmates; and ensuring that states research and address racial 

disparities. 

Since 2000, states have seen considerable success in meeting the first three objectives. 

Many have raised the age at which kids are sent to adult facilities, and the number of 

youth incarcerated for status offenses has been cut to just a few hundred nationally. 

But three current officials in the Office of Justice Programs, which oversees the juvenile 

justice office, concede it has fallen short on the racial justice provision. The law is vague 

about how exactly local agencies must address disparities, and budgets relatively little 

money to fix such an entrenched problem. Some grants to state youth-justice systems 

are as small as $400,000, yet are meant to pay for a range of services including afterschool 

and anti-gang programs, job training, drug treatment, mentoring and legal 

defense for juveniles. 

“Congress doesn’t care about juvenile justice—that’s the underlying issue here,” said 

one of the officials, who declined to be named for fear of jeopardizing their employment. 

There’s also the challenge of incorrect or incomplete data reporting. While states like 

Washington assemble thorough statistics on racial trends, others, especially in the 

South, have not. 

Some insiders at the agency were heartened when Harp came in and said she’d be 

simplifying things. 

The office is known for frequent budget delays and leadership changes and blunders, 

including from an Obama-era administrator who employees said knowingly accepted 

bad data from states but gave them funding anyway. After Chuck Grassley, now 

chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, repeatedly wrote to the Justice 

Department in 2014 and 2015 accusing it of mismanaging the grant program, the 

agency overreacted by enforcing cumbersome procedures, some officials believed. 


“We kept putting out policy guidance for states, then retracting it, then putting another 

out. It was chaotic,” said one official. 

But for many, the rollback of racial justice efforts under the Trump administration has 

gone too far. 

Now, the agency is giving preference to states that promise to cooperate with the 

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency in fighting MS-13 and other youth gangs 

associated with immigrants. 

And it will let them come up with their own goals for lessening racial disparities. 

In the new grant application—slimmed to one page—states will no longer be expected 

to submit data on how often black and Latino children have charges filed against them, 

are convicted or are put on probation. Instead of furnishing specific, rigorous metrics on 

race, as in the past, they will only have to respond to general questions such as, “How 

much do you want to reduce [racial disparities] next year?”; “Is that reasonable? If yes, 

why?”; and “What safeguards will you put in place to ensure that as you work to reduce 

disproportionate minority contact, [you will still be] protecting the public, holding youth 

accountable, and equipping youth to live crime-free, productive lives?” 

One official said that none of the recent changes have been discussed with longtime 

staff: “We’re just told the decisions, not the reasoning behind it … I think they’re just 

trying to tear the whole thing down before someone pays attention.” 

The agency has also issued new language guidance for its employees, instructing them 

to refer to children in the justice system as “offenders,” to use the phrase “all youth” 

instead of “underserved youth” and to describe crime as a “public issue” not a “publichealth 

issue.” 

Harp, the new administrator, says that states can still collect as much data on racial 

disparities as they want. She also plans to start posting local agencies’ successes and 

failures on the office website in order to hold them accountable and share what works— 

a kind of “peer-to-peer training” instead of a top-down federal government approach. 

As another official sees it, that’s like saying, “Hey Mississippi, if you don’t want to do 

anything about this race thing anymore, that’s OK with us.” 



VI. Prison Reform: 

Reimagining Prison 




Prison As College Campus. Prison As Wellness Center. 

Prison As Monastery. 

“I’ve personally spent only one night in jail,” Frank Gehry confessed. “I didn’t like it very 

much.” Gehry, 88, who has been described as our greatest living architect (and, by an 

admiring pro-cannabis website, as a Very Important Pothead), said he got his only taste 

of incarceration when he was busted for possession many years ago. Last Friday in 

New Haven, that night behind bars was a kind of credential. An invited audience of 

architects and students, corrections officials and campaigners for criminal justice reform 

assembled at the Yale School of Architecture for the finale of Gehry’s semester-long 

“studio” on architecture and mass incarceration. A dozen students would present their 


projects — designs for a humane prison — to a jury consisting mostly of Friends of 

Frank. 

Gehry, best known for the billowing contours of his concert halls and museums, has 

never designed a prison, unless you count the episode of “The Simpsons” in which a 

Gehry concert hall is converted to a state prison when the town of Springfield discovers 

it hates classical music. He admitted to approaching the subject with some trepidation. 

“It’s heavy stuff, and I’m going to be 89, and it’s a little late,” Gehry told me during a 

lunch break. “I’m on the learning curve with everybody else.” 

The billionaire philanthropist George Soros put up the money for the student workshop 

and a like-minded research and advocacy group called Impact Justice managed the 

logistics. 

“We asked Frank, what would it mean to design a maximum security prison if you 

treated the corrections officers and the prisoners as the clients instead of the state 

bureaucracy,” said Christopher Stone, the outgoing president of Soros’s Open Society 

Foundation, who served as a juror. [OSF is a supporter of The Marshall Project.] “Frank 

kept saying, 'You don’t need me to design a prison. Nobody’s going to build a prison I 

design. We need to get a curriculum. We need to get architects thinking in different 

ways.'” 

Yale, one of Gehry’s several academic affiliations, offered to host it. Connecticut, where 

Governor Dannel Malloy is a prison reform enthusiast, invited the class to tour the 104- 

year-old, 1,600-bed Cheshire Correctional Facility about 20 miles north of New Haven. 

That site, students were told, was to be “re-imagined to house three hundred men 

convicted of serious, primarily violent offenses, serving sentences between five and 15 

years... The speculative nature of the project, based on contemporary research and 

theory, requires you to examine closely the role of architecture as a means to provide 

safety, refuge, and facilitate personal transformation...’’ 

The premise of the assignment was that only the most dangerous offenders will need to 

be confined if American prison populations are reduced to the levels in other developed 

countries, and even those incarcerated for violent crimes should be equipped with the 

skills and social discipline to rejoin society. 

During the semester, Gehry accompanied the class to prisons in Norway and Finland, 

where sentences for even the most heinous crimes rarely exceed 15 years and where 

prisons resemble college dormitories. Susan Burton, an activist who was in and out of 

jails as a young woman and now helps women released from prison find their feet, 

brought in parolees to educate the class about the grim reality of incarceration in 

America. 

As students laid out their cardboard models for inspection and pinned up their master 

plans, it was clear most had ignored the part about “men convicted of serious, primarily 

violent offenses.” They presented prison as university campus, prison as health and 


wellness facility, prison as monastery, prison as communal apartment complex, prison 

as summer camp, prison as textile workshop (complete with a mulberry orchard to feed 

the silkworms). Virtually every student incorporated classrooms, open space and fresh 

air, spaces for family visits and therapy. 

It fell to a formerly incarcerated juror, Dwayne Betts, to point out gently that neighbors 

might have security concerns about a prison where walls were decorative features and 

staying on site was more or less optional. 

“You seem to be designing prisons for people who shouldn’t be in prison,” Betts, who 

served eight years for a teenage carjacking and emerged to become a lawyer and poet, 

told one student. 

But the point was not to design things that would actually be built. It was to establish 

that there are public interests and human values other than retribution that ought to be 

reflected in the system we euphemistically call "corrections." A society where prisons 

resemble cages and warehouses has lessons to learn from monasteries and college 

campuses. 

“It’s a lot more theoretical,” Gehry said. “A studio in architecture is to unlock students’ 

feelings about form and space and time, and how that relates to people. A prison 

program happens to be more emotional for them,” he said. “And for me.” 


One guest who watched the presentation with particular interest was Elizabeth Glazer, 

director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, which is overseeing the 

closure of the notorious Rikers Island complex and restoration of jails in several 

boroughs. Unlike prisons, jails are designed for short stays — the average at Rikers is 

60 days — but many of the challenges are the same: preventing violence, easing 

access for families and lawyers, attending to mental health and addiction, and fitting the 

facilities into the neighborhoods around them. Glazer said she was struck that the 

student projects treated prison as not just a place for rehabilitation but as a “civic asset.” 

“You look at the jails that we currently have and they don’t feel like a part of our urban 

landscape,”she said. “Either we’ve put them far away, like Rikers, or we’ve made them 

forbidding, like the Tombs.” 

“Even though we may not be building those fabulous Gehry-like designs in our jails, the 

principles are something we need to pay very close attention to. We should try to 

normalize life inside as much as we can, because people are going to come back.” 

________ 




Will Millennials Embrace Prison Reform? 

A couple of Harvard guys aim to find out. 

Instead of spending their gap year zip-lining in Costa Rica or rail-passing across 

Europe, Scott Johnston and Pete Davis have decided to spend the year between their 

Harvard graduation and law school mobilizing students in support of prison reform. 

Using small grants from the Ford Foundation and other benefactors, the pair plans to 

visit ten campuses in the deep South to recruit “student ambassadors,” to stage events 

where former prisoners talk about the obstacles they faced returning to freedom, to 

create a Story-Corps-style bank of incarceration stories, and to build a “millennial prison 

reform agenda” for 2016. They held their first campus event last month at Georgetown 

University. 

“Millennials – a generation free from the baggage of old ‘tough on crime’ debates – have 

attitudes especially receptive to the project of revitalizing the rehabilitative mission of 

prisons,” they wrote in their mission statement. If the generation emerging into 

adulthood is introduced to the failings of American prisons, the two men believe, it can 

do for prison reform what it has helped to do for marriage equality and Dream Act 

immigrants. 


They talked with TMP’s Bill Keller. The conversation has been edited for length and 

clarity. 

The Marshall Project: What got you started on this issue? 

Pete: We noticed that this was not just another disheartening issue that could add to the 

national cynicism. This actually was starting to get traction as something that could 

change because of its bipartisan nature. When you see that KEN CUCCINELLI 1 and 

Newt Gingrich are posting op-eds about prison reform and groups like Right on Crime 

and libertarians and evangelicals are coming on to prison reform…suddenly in a time of 

congressional gridlock this might actually be something that we could have an effect on. 

KEN CUCCINELLI 1 Cuccinelli, a former attorney general of Virginia, was a Tea Partybacked 

candidate for governor in 2013. He lost to Terry McAuliffe. 

Scott: I think it’s pretty typical of millennials to be socially committed but to have a little 

bit of difficulty figuring out which of those social problems is the one that they want to 

commit to. There’s the environment and there’s campaign finance reform and there’s 

gun control. I’ve been interested in prisons for a long time. My mom is Cuban, and my 

grandfather was put in prison in Cuba. A big influence was studying with BRUCE 

WESTERN 2 . 

BRUCE WESTERN 2 A Harvard professor of criminal justice policy 

and an advocate of prison reform. 

So the plan is, you pile into a van and visit campuses in the deep South, where you will 

stage events focused on the problem of reentry? 


Pete: We want to make prison reform the millennial issue for the 2016 elections. 

Usually millennials get one or two nods during election season – “Oh, this is a youth 

issue” – and we want prison reform to be one of those issues. And the way that’s going 

to happen is by having a policy agenda and having enough millennials who believe that 

agenda is theirs, and that it’s worth voting and questioning candidates when they come 

to campus. We plan ten campus events – two per state in South Carolina, Georgia, 

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana – where we bring in students, formerly incarcerated 

people, professors, legislators and prison groups, all talking and sharing. And we expect 

an agenda to emerge. 

In your mission statement you say your generation is “especially receptive to the project 

of revitalizing the rehabilitative mission of prisons.” Why is that? 

Pete: In the 80s and early 90s there were stories of, “Oh, there are roving bands of 

teenagers who are coming to attack you.” When the Omnibus Crime bill passed in 1994 

it was basically the high tide of public fear. In 1994, I was four years old. By the time we 

were starting to listen to politicians – 2005 – the crime rate had declined sharply. I don’t 

think a Willie Horton ad would be as useful any more because crime is not so much in 

the public consciousness. 

But why should millennials care enough to get involved in this, of all causes? 

Pete: Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors who are not very different than ourselves 

are experiencing their twenties locked in a rusted system failing at its rehabilitative 

mission. Being passively tolerant is not enough to be just. It’s time we look behind the 

curtain and apply the generational creativity we have spent updating iPhone apps 

towards updating our prison system. 

Harvard is a pretty rarified sample of young America. Do you worry at all that this will 

come across as a couple of children of privilege preaching to the unenlightened? 

Scott: Yes, we were really nervous about that… 

Pete: That’s exactly why we’re designing this as a conversation. We’re not starting with 

an agenda...We can take the hits of, “Why should you be the MC’s of this conversation,” 

but we’re not going to come and tell you the content you have to believe. 

Scott: We’re creative, we’re young, we’re energetic. We went to Harvard, which, 

whether we deserved it or not, opened up a lot of doors for us. We can make something 

happen on this issue. 

You make a point of saying in your material that you, Scott, come from a conservative 

Mormon background and you, Pete, come from a progressive Catholic background. 


Pete: Scott’s dad listened to Rush Limbaugh in the car as they were driving to school. 

My mom has MSNBC on three televisions when I go home. 

Scott: The reason we bring that up at all is that we want people to see, even in the fact 

that the two of us are doing this together, that there are people on both sides of the aisle 

who care enough about this issue and are outraged enough to do something. 

Pete: It’s not that we got lucky and found a conservative Mormon who supports prison 

reform. It’s because he’s a conservative Mormon that he supports prison reform. 

Scott: There’s a passage in the Book of Mormon that says to follow Christ you have to 

“bear one another’s burdens…mourn with those that mourn…and comfort those that 

stand in need of comfort.” As Mormons, every Sunday we renew our commitment to do 

that, and I take it seriously. 

________ 




How One County Became a Lab for 

California’s Prison Reform 

San Joaquin went all in. Now it’s a model. 

When California lawmakers unveiled a plan in 2011 to reduce the number of inmates in 

state prison, officials in San Joaquin County thought the timing couldn’t have been 

worse. 

There were already signs that a recent dip in crime might be coming to an end in this 

Central Valley county east of San Francisco. Homicides were up by nearly 40 percent 

from the previous year. And in the midst of a financial crisis, the county and local cities 

were laying off police officers and prosecutors. 

Now the county would have to quickly absorb an influx of nearly 1,000 released 

prisoners. 

“We were super concerned,” said Stephanie James, the county’s probation chief. “It 

was such a significant number that were coming out of prison who were at a high risk to 

commit a violent offense.” 

As they braced themselves, county officials set up a system of collaborative courts to 

help former prisoners find jobs, housing and treatment for mental health and addiction 


problems. They pioneered a program that uses sophisticated risk assessments rather 

than cash bail to decide which defendants were safe to release before trial. And local 

officials launched an array of novel anti-crime programs, including one aimed at building 

trust between police and residents and another that gives stipends to young people 

considered at risk of committing gun violence. 

What happened next surprised many. 

While overall crime in California increased slightly after 2011, San Joaquin County’s 

dropped 20 percent and hit a decades-old low last year. The county’s jail, which had 

been under court-ordered monitoring because of dangerous overcrowding, now has 

empty beds. Participation in specialized drug courts has increased and recidivism 

among newly released offenders has dropped. 

It is unclear how much of the county’s success is the result of its new programs rather 

than other factors, such as hiring more officers once the county’s finances improved. 

But San Joaquin County has become an intriguing model for other counties curious 

about what might work in an era of criminal justice reform. 

Emissaries from Yuba County have drawn inspiration from its educational programs for 

offenders. A Kern County judge came to examine an alternative court and spoke highly 

of the collaborative court model to local leaders in Bakersfield. And after the governor 

signed sweeping legislation this year eliminating cash bail for pretrial defendants, 

dozens of counties sent representatives to learn how San Joaquin County adopted a 

similar approach years earlier. 

“I was very impressed,” said Ken Williams, a probation supervisor in Yuba County, who 

toured San Joaquin County’s day reporting center, which provides job training and life 

skills to former prisoners. 

San Joaquin County officials acknowledge there is more to do. Although the county’s 

crime rate has been cut almost in half since the mid-2000s, it remains among the 

highest in the state. And most of that reduction was in property crime, not violent 

offenses, which increased in the last few years before dipping slightly in 2017. 

But San Joaquin County offers useful lessons in how a county struggling with poverty 

and crime has adapted to — and embraced — recent criminal justice reforms. 

With a population of about 745,000, San Joaquin County is a largely rural, agricultural area. The 

landscape is dotted with cherry and apple orchards, fields of grape vines and tomatoes, 

and giant, boxy shipping warehouses that have sprouted in recent years. 

Its largest city, Stockton, has some of the dirtiest air in the nation and routinely makes 

lists of the worst places to live in the United States. Poverty is out in the open. Tents line 

a nearly empty canal a few blocks from downtown. Empty storefronts line the streets, 

many with hopeful “available” banners. 


After a housing boom abruptly ended in the 2008 financial crisis, Stockton became the 

largest U.S. city to declare bankruptcy. The number of officers in the city’s police 

department shrank by more than 20 percent. In Stockton, the police union put up signs 

around town: “Welcome to the 2nd most dangerous city in California: Stop laying off 

cops!” 

In 2011, California lawmakers passed Assembly Bill 109, known as “realignment,” which 

shifted responsibility for thousands of people convicted of nonviolent crimes from state 

prisons to counties. People convicted of nonviolent crimes would now serve sentences 

in county jails, not prison, and local communities, rather than state parole, were 

responsible for supervising them upon release. 

As part of AB 109, the state promised to shift billions of dollars to the counties. San 

Joaquin County decided to use its money—about $6.8 million in the first year—on its 

day reporting center; specialty courts aimed at helping former prisoners transition back 

to the community; and expanded use of a risk assessment tool to rank each former 

inmate’s likelihood of committing new crimes. 

The county tracked data on each person affected by the new laws. James said she 

noticed the vast majority of arrests of former prisoners were for property crimes. To her 

relief, the county’s homicides fell by nearly 50 percent in 2013. 


Stockton’s police chief, Eric Jones, credits the recent crime drops, at least in part, to a 

transformation in the city’s policing strategy. Stockton is one of six cities in the country 

chosen as part of a federally funded project called the National Initiative for Building 

Community Trust and Justice. 

During the project, which began in 2015, Stockton police officers have undergone 

training on how to limit racial and other types of bias and met with community members 

to discuss bias and how to avoid it. 

Representatives from law enforcement, probation, the courts, the district attorney’s 

office, the public defender’s office and social service agencies meet monthly to examine 

data on arrest rates and discuss how to help newly released inmates so they don’t 

reoffend. 

Once the financial outlook improved, Jones was able to increase his department’s 

ranks—as were other local law enforcement agencies. After dipping to a low in 2011 of 

866 sworn officers, the county added nearly 150 more officers by 2017. 

Local politics have also changed. After a scandal in the mayor’s office, voters selected 

26-year-old Michael Tubbs, a Stockton native, Stanford University graduate and the 

city’s first black mayor. 

Tubbs, who first decided to run for office after his cousin’s murder, has championed a 

number of experiments aimed at improving public safety and reducing poverty, including 

one that offers local families $500 a month in donated cash, no strings attached. 

“Crime has always been issue No. 1, but the narrative in this city is one about being a 

second chance city,” Tubbs said. 

Leading the court’s initiatives is Judge Richard Vlavianos, a former prosecutor who says 

he “probably sent more people to prison for drug offenses than any other DA in this 

county” before he joined the bench in 1999. 

As a judge, Vlavianos began doubting whether long prison sentences for drug crimes 

improved public safety. 

“You start to see people coming back over and over and over, and you see that 

something is not working,” he said. “And then you see their kids coming to court, and 

you really see it’s not working.” 

Vlavianos wondered if the courts could function more like a hospital emergency room. 

“All of the people coming in have injuries,” he said. “The job of the court is to screen, 

assess and refer. Because we’re never going to get a behavior change if we don’t 

address what’s bringing them in.” 


In 2008, he began experimenting with alternative sentencing courts aimed at connecting 

people with services such as housing, employment and substance abuse treatment, in 

addition to handling their criminal cases. He started with drunk drivers. When he saw 

recidivism drop, he added more courts. 

There are special courts for people who violate the rules of their state supervision under 

the new law and for people convicted of nonviolent felonies no longer requiring time in 

state prison. At any given time, about 1,500 people are enrolled in the collaborative 

courts, which last year accounted for about 7 percent of new case filings. 

“It’s the ER 

right there,” 

Vlavianos said, 

before going 

onto the bench 

on a recent 

afternoon. 

A woman in 

orange jail 

scrubs stood 

up, clearly 

agitated. She 

said she had a 

mental illness 

and missed her 

court dates 

because she 

was in and out of the hospital. The judge, glasses resting on the tip of his nose, looked 

at her calmly. 

“I need you to take a deep breath,” he said. “I need to have a plan before I release you.” 

He asked a case worker to talk with her. 

Vlavianos turned to a burly bald man with a mustache who had missed a meeting with a 

probation officer. The man said he’d had a hard time getting around because he relied 

on buses. 

“I need your help,” the judge said. “I keep trying to keep you out of jail, and you keep 

putting yourself back in.” 

Herbert Finton Jackson Jr., 45, had been in and out of state prison and under 

supervision for years when he landed in Vlavianos’ court about three years ago. The 

judge noticed him struggling with his drug addiction and Jackson was placed in a 

residential treatment center. 


Jackson finished his formal supervision and now has a job selling housewares at 

Macy’s. 

“That court turned my whole life around,” he said. 

The judge uses a strategy based on research that found a few days in jail is enough to 

disrupt problematic behavior, but that people kept in jail for longer periods get 

comfortable and are more likely to later reoffend. 

In his court that handles more hardened offenders, Vlavianos said he noticed a 40 

percent drop in violations this year after he reduced the time of jail stays for scofflaws 

and required more intense supervision. 

Defendants who flout Vlavianos’ rules can expect a knock on their door from Jason 

DiGiulio, one of two Stockton police officers assigned to work with the judge. 

Tall and stocky with short-cropped hair, DiGiulio is hardly a liberal reformer. He blames 

Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot initiative that reduced sentences for drug and some 

minor theft offenses, for making it harder to arrest shoplifting suspects. Under the law, 

thieves now have to steal more than $950 worth of goods—up from $400—before they 

can be charged with a felony. 

But he has warmed to his role bringing people directly to Vlavianos, not jail, so the judge 

can quickly find out why scofflaws are violating the rules. 

On a hot morning in late summer, DiGiulio flipped through a clipboard of mugshots in 

his patrol car. At any given time, he is looking for roughly 50 to 75 people. 

He pulled up to a white bungalow with a well-manicured lawn. A woman who answered 

said the man the officer was looking for lived in an apartment in the basement but that 

she hadn’t seen him in days. 

It took a few weeks before DiGiulio was able to bring the missing man to court, where 

Vlavianos ordered him to meet with a probation officer. 

About three months later, DiGiulio said, the man had earned a spot on what the judge 

calls “the A Team,” an honor roll of sorts for the collaborative courts. 

“Jail or prison is needed,” DiGiulio said. “But if you send an alcoholic or a drug addict to 

prison, when they get out, they will still have the addiction. You’ve got to find them at 

just the right point, and you wear them out.” 

The Marshall Project receives funding from the California Endowment and other 

organizations that favor efforts to reform California’s criminal justice system. Under terms 

of its funding, the Marshall Project has sole editorial control of its news reporting. 

________ 




22 July 2015 

The Nonviolent Offenders Congress Forgot 

While Prison Reform Gains Momentum, 

The Immigration Debate Remains “Tough On Crime.” 

With President Obama’s speech to the NAACP and his visit to a federal prison last 

week, the push for criminal justice reform took center stage. His statements crystallized 

the growing bipartisan agreement in Congress that it’s time to overhaul a system that 

incarcerates nonviolent offenders for far too long and strains crowded prisons and 

dwindling budgets. 

But bypassed in the emerging consensus is a key contributor to the problems in the 

federal system: the polarizing issue of immigration. 

The most serious offense for roughly 10 percent of the federal prison population is 

immigration-related, and over half of federal criminal convictions so far this year have 

been for illegal entry or re-entry. As lawmakers look to lessen the criminal 


consequences for drug convictions, even legal immigrants also remain at risk of 

deportation for those same crimes. 

Despite the momentum of prison reform, a tough-on-crime stance remains in much of 

the debate on immigration. And current events could push it even further in that 

direction. A week after Obama urged reductions in mandatory minimum sentences for 

nonviolent drug crimes, Congress discussed a new mandatory minimum for nonviolent 

immigration offenses. 

Those favoring a tougher approach got renewed support this month, after the shooting 

death of a young woman in San Francisco. The woman, Kathryn Steinle, was shot on 

July 1, as she walked along a city pier. An undocumented immigrant, Juan Francisco 

Lopez-Sanchez, was charged with her killing; his lawyers said it was accidental and he 

pleaded not guilty. Lopez-Sanchez had re-entered the U.S. after five deportations, and 

had been released from county jail after authorities refused to detain him at the request 

of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In the last few weeks, he has become 

immigration’s “Willie Horton,” invoked by numerous politicians and talking heads as they 

call for tougher border enforcement and an end to “sanctuary cities.” 

A hearing on Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee featured multiple family 

members of those killed by non-citizens. “I will not give up another child so that a foreign 

person can have a nicer life,” said Laura Wilkerson, whose son Joshua was killed by an 

undocumented immigrant in 2010. “Thank you to Mr. Trump for getting the message 

out.” 

The committee chairman, Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, blamed the deaths on 

the Obama administration’s “lax immigration policies.” 

“The Obama administration, in too many cases, has turned a blind eye to enforcement, 

even releasing thousands of criminals at its own discretion,” he said, addressing the 

panel. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, followed with: “Convicted 

felons should be removed from the country but not released into our streets.” 

Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — a supporter of drug sentencing reform — said 

he had introduced “Kate’s Law,” which would punish illegal re-entry into the U.S. with at 

least five years in federal prison. Senator Grassley announced a bill with a similar 

provision. “No more people should die at the hands of those who break our laws just by 

being here,” Grassley said. 

Lopez-Sanchez served four years in federal prison for returning to the U.S. after his 

deportation to Mexico. The average sentence is 18 months, but it can be as long as 20 

years depending on someone’s criminal and immigration history. 

The prosecution of immigration crimes has grown in recent years to make up a large 

part of federal law enforcement. A report by the Brookings Institute's Hamilton Project, 

from which Obama cited the overall cost of mass incarceration in the U.S., says that the 


“increase in federal imprisonment rates has been driven by increases in immigrationrelated 

admissions. Between 2003 and 2011, admissions to federal prisons for 

immigration-related offenses increased by 83 percent.” 

As Carl Takei, a staff attorney for the ACLU National Prison Project, put it, prosecutions 

for illegal border-crossing “have essentially taken over the federal criminal justice 

system in the Southwest.” 

When asked in the hearing how a new mandatory minimum would impact Immigrations 

and Customs Enforcement, ICE director Sarah Saldana replied, “We’re stretched on our 

resources already. To expand it...would be a very big problem for us.” 

Those sentences are mostly served at one of 13 “Criminal Alien Requirement” prisons 

run by private companies, as a way to cope with overcrowding in federal 

facilities. Prisoners there have reported many of the same problems Obama highlighted 


in his address: the overuse of solitary confinement, a dearth of programming, and 

inadequate health care. Conditions drove inmates at one such prison in Willacy, Texas, 

to riot this spring. 

Senators and family members that testified on Tuesday also called for swifter 

deportation of immigrants with criminal records — proposals that impact permanent 

residents and visa recipients as well as the undocumented. Even though many 

lawmakers have agreed to scale back criminal sentences for offenses like drug 

possession and sale, those same convictions can still end in removal for noncitizens. 

Many convicted of nonviolent crimes remain at the top of the list for deportation 

under the Department of Homeland Security’s “enforcement priorities.” 

As Obama explained in a speech last November, Homeland Security emphasizes 

deporting “Felons, not families. Criminals, not children.” His criminal justice speech, in 

contrast, focused on the fact that felons, too, have families (“around one million fathers 

are behind bars”) and that the current system treats many children like criminals (“We 

have to make sure that our juvenile justice system remembers that kids are different”). 

The drug treatment programs and other alternative sentencing being put forth as the 

solution to locking up low-level offenders may also not apply to immigrants. While the 

goal of such programs is to help individuals avoid a criminal record, they often require 

someone to plead guilty to participate. And under immigration law, a plea with court 

conditions can be as good as a conviction. Even with an expunged or deferred 

sentence, immigrants may be removed. 

“Even looking at the clemency that the president issued, if any of those recipients are 

immigrants, they would still be facing deportation,” said New York University law 

professor Alina Das, who focuses on immigration and criminal justice. “The immigration 

consequences of drug offenses have been ignored for too long.” 

Obama stressed the importance of second chances — for citizens — in his criminal 

justice remarks. “While the people in our prisons have made some mistakes, and 

sometimes big mistakes, they are also Americans,” he said. 

But he also noted: "In the immigrant tradition of remaking ourselves, in the Christian 

tradition that says none of us is without sin and all of us need redemption, justice and 

redemption go hand in hand." 


VII. Final Word: Breaking The 

Unwritten Rule of Prison 



30 August 2018 

Breaking the Unwritten Rule of Prison 

Or, What Happens When Guards and Prison Staff 

Interact As Just Human Beings. 

All of us condemned inmates were hurt when Chaplain Chestnut left the prison to 

pursue other opportunities and, he said, to save his marriage. 

“Guys,” he told us one day, “I spend more time on death row than with my wife. She 

gave me a choice: her, or my work. I love her, so I’ve got to go. I’m sorry.” 


Chestnut’s departure was devastating because he’d always treated us fairly, even 

favorably, going out of his way to treat us as equals and as parishioners. Before and 

after executions, he provided counsel when no one else bothered. “We may never 

understand God’s plans,” he’d say, “but rest assured the deaths of our friends and loved 

ones — however unjust — do not go unnoticed.” 

Chestnut grieved with us, shedding tears in the privacy of his office after each of us was 

put to death. 

But some of the other guards hated the way he felt about us. “Time’s up, Chaplain,” one 

said, during another of our grieving sessions, before hustling me down the hall to my 

cell. 

Chestnut left in 2004, and was replaced by a series of chaplains who behaved more like 

the guards — sticklers for the rules more interested in making the staff feel comfortable. 

Nobody sought their counsel. 

At the time, none of us connected his departure to any unwritten rule guiding 

interactions between inmates and staff, of which there are many in prison. The written 

policy against romantic or other fraternization between us and the guards is 

understandable. But human beings just insist on being social creatures, and no matter 

how much you indoctrinate or denigrate them, they remain as much. Officers are not 

emotionless robots any more than death-row prisoners are reducible to the crimes for 

which we have been convicted and sentenced. 

Some other staff members have gone out of their way to be kind, patient, respectful and 

compassionate. Ms. Johnson always gave us extra time for outside rec, waiting until a 

sergeant radioed her. 

Mr. Sutherland liked talking about fishing — with anyone. If you could discuss the 

difference between saltwater and freshwater fly-fishing, he’d turn a blind eye in the 

chow line if you wanted another tray. 

These were the simple courtesies that made our time and their job easier. TVs allowed 

to stay on after curfew, cell doors left open a bit longer than usual, maybe even a movie 

that a unit manager would bring us from home. 

Before my friend Earl was put to death in 2005, Ms. Williams got transferred to the 

kitchen — because she couldn’t stomach the thought that her employment might equate 

to a kind of participation in his execution. 

Months after his death, Mr. Beryl quit too, because he wouldn’t follow Lt. Wallace’s lead 

in writing us up for petty rules violations. 

Wallace enjoyed charging us the $10 write-up fee (a fortune for people in prison) and 

giving us extra “work” duty, which, since most of us didn’t have actual jobs, meant 


having us pick up rocks on the rec yard and pile them in a corner. Beryl found this to be 

a ridiculous practice. 

He also ignored the transgressions that his boss found unacceptable: unmade bunks, a 

family photo taped to the wall, having too much linen. “Y’all got death,” he’d say. “In my 

mind you’ve already been punished enough.” 

But for most, the unwritten rule on death row has remained: disinterest, allegiance to 

policy, frequent staff turnover to reduce familiarity, and above all a belief in the status 

quo. Flouting the idea that inmates are “less than” is not to be accepted. 

Some guards ask for transfers because accepting this rule means squelching the 

inclination to live and let live. Lt. Perry moved to another unit when every attempt he 

made to change the culture here was thwarted by the warden. His desire to run our 

cohort just like any other population made sense in terms of security, since there are 

fewer problems on death row than anywhere else at Central Prison. 

But his requisitions for new equipment went unanswered. Perry found he had less to do, 

and less authority, as a unit manager of death row until and unless he punished us. 

It happened to Dr. Kuhns too. From 2010 to 2017, he directed psychological treatment 

at Central Prison. A man of conviction, he established a number of therapeutic 

programs on death row: creative writing, chess, drama, yoga, Toastmasters, art and 

more. These groups improved our self-esteem, emotional maturity, and the overall 

behavior of our entire unit. 


The problem with Kuhns’ recognition and nurturing of our humanity is that it, too, 

ignored the unwritten rule. After a more security-minded administration came into 

power, he and 10 of his volunteers were scrutinized for their friendliness with five deathrow 

prisoners. (I was one of them.) All of the programs were stopped. 

The volunteers were scared away, and Dr. Kuhns eventually took a job elsewhere. 

The shrinks who replaced him carry the administrative line into our therapy sessions: 

“Actions have consequences,” they say, during treatment. 

And in January of this year, Sgt. Cross, too, retired. I remember meeting him for the first 

time in 1997 as a 19-year-old awaiting trial for capital murder. He saw how young I 

looked and pulled me aside. “Keep your head down and you’ll be alright,” he said. 

Years later, I learned that Cross had participated in “death watch” alongside several of 

my friends before they were executed. In the final 72 hours of their lives, he stayed with 

them in what otherwise would have been complete isolation. 

The guards assigned to death watch are connected more intimately to a death sentence 

than any judge, jury, politician, or voter. 

I asked Cross about this before he left. 

“Some of the guys ask for me to be there,” he told me. “At least they can die with 

somebody they know, so they don’t feel so alone.” 

After his retirement, Cross returned, once, to death row, in a civilian outfit and with his 

wife and son in tow. He pointed out various prisoners he knew more about than some of 

their own families. Guys he’d spent his days with and worked with for decades. He and 

his loved ones walked around a bit, then left with a wave. It was the goodbye of 

someone who had been a part of our lives, just as we had of his, regardless of the rules. 

Lyle May, 40, is incarcerated on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh, N.C., where he 

is awaiting execution for two counts of first-degree murder. He was convicted of killing a 

mother and her 4-year-old child. 


VIII. References 

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_justice_reform_in_the_United_States 

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_independence 

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/us/politics/criminal-justice-reform-sanders-warren.html 

4. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/larry-krasner-william-mcswainphiladelphia_n_5d55afffe4b056fafd08e07a?guccounter=1 

5. https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/adult-diversion-keeps-people-out-ofthe-criminal-justice-system/article_448b3b71-48fc-5e40-820c-ac56e1be136f.html 

6. https://www.phillyvoice.com/two-dozen-philly-academics-inquirer-crime-coverageundermines-criminal-justice-reform/ 

7. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-prisoner-dilemma-gottschalk 

8. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-prisons-make-us-safer/ 

9. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-lawmass-incarceration 

10. https://www.usnewsbeat.com/2019/06/04/california-epicenter-of-mass-incarceration-reform/ 

11. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/12/justice-reform-rip 

12. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/12/justice-reform-rip 

13. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/07/15/justice-and-redemption-go-hand-in-hand 

14. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/09/19/this-agency-tried-to-fix-the-race-gap-injuvenile-justice-then-came-trump 

15. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/12/21/reimagining-prison-with-frank-gehry 

16. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/01/will-millennials-embrace-prison-reform 

17. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/12/21/how-one-county-became-a-lab-for-californias-prison-reform 

18. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/07/22/the-nonviolent-offenders-congress-forgot 

19. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/08/30/breaking-the-unwritten-rules-of-prison 



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Attachment A 

Top Trends in State Criminal Justice Reform 





Attachment B 

The Effort to Reform The Federal 

Criminal Justice System 































Attachment C 

The Consensus Myth 

in Criminal Justice Reform 




































































The e-Advocate Quarterly 


Issue Title Quarterly 

Vol. I 2015 The Fundamentals 

I 

The ComeUnity ReEngineering 

Project Initiative 

Q-1 2015 

II The Adolescent Law Group Q-2 2015 

III 

Landmark Cases in US 

Juvenile Justice (PA) 

Q-3 2015 

IV The First Amendment Project Q-4 2015 

Vol. II 2016 Strategic Development 

V The Fourth Amendment Project Q-1 2016 

VI 


Juvenile Justice (NJ) 

Q-2 2016 

VII Youth Court Q-3 2016 

VIII 

The Economic Consequences of Legal 

Decision-Making 

Q-4 2016 

Vol. III 2017 Sustainability 

IX The Sixth Amendment Project Q-1 2017 

X 

The Theological Foundations of 

US Law & Government 

Q-2 2017 

XI The Eighth Amendment Project Q-3 2017 

XII 

The EB-5 Investor 

Immigration Project* 

Q-4 2017 

Vol. IV 2018 Collaboration 

XIII Strategic Planning Q-1 2018 

XIV 

The Juvenile Justice 

Legislative Reform Initiative 

Q-2 2018 

XV The Advocacy Foundation Coalition Q-3 2018 


XVI 

for Drug-Free Communities 


Juvenile Justice (GA) 

Q-4 2018 



Vol. V 2019 Organizational Development 

XVII The Board of Directors Q-1 2019 

XVIII The Inner Circle Q-2 2019 

XIX Staff & Management Q-3 2019 

XX Succession Planning Q-4 2019 

XXI The Budget* Bonus #1 

XXII Data-Driven Resource Allocation* Bonus #2 

Vol. VI 2020 Missions 

XXIII Critical Thinking Q-1 2020 

XXIV 

The Advocacy Foundation 

Endowments Initiative Project 

Q-2 2020 

XXV International Labor Relations Q-3 2020 

XXVI Immigration Q-4 2020 

Vol. VII 2021 Community Engagement 

XXVII 

The 21 st Century Charter Schools 

Initiative 

Q-1 2021 

XXVIII The All-Sports Ministry @ ... Q-2 2021 

XXIX Lobbying for Nonprofits Q-3 2021 

XXX 

XXXI 

Advocacy Foundation Missions - 

Domestic 

Advocacy Foundation Missions - 

International 

Q-4 2021 

Bonus 


Vol. VIII 

2022 ComeUnity ReEngineering 

XXXII 

The Creative & Fine Arts Ministry 

@ The Foundation 

Q-1 2022 

XXXIII The Advisory Council & Committees Q-2 2022 

XXXIV 

The Theological Origins 

of Contemporary Judicial Process 

Q-3 2022 

XXXV The Second Chance Ministry @ ... Q-4 2022 

Vol. IX 2023 Legal Reformation 

XXXVI The Fifth Amendment Project Q-1 2023 

XXXVII The Judicial Re-Engineering Initiative Q-2 2023 

XXXVIII 

The Inner-Cities Strategic 

Revitalization Initiative 

Q-3 2023 

XXXVIX Habeas Corpus Q-4 2023 

Vol. X 2024 ComeUnity Development 

XXXVX 

The Inner-City Strategic 

Revitalization Plan 

Q-1 2024 

XXXVXI The Mentoring Initiative Q-2 2024 

XXXVXII The Violence Prevention Framework Q-3 2024 

XXXVXIII The Fatherhood Initiative Q-4 2024 

Vol. XI 2025 Public Interest 

XXXVXIV Public Interest Law Q-1 2025 

L (50) Spiritual Resource Development Q-2 2025 


LI 

Nonprofit Confidentiality 

In The Age of Big Data 

Q-3 2025 

LII Interpreting The Facts Q-4 2025 

Vol. XII 2026 Poverty In America 

LIII 

American Poverty 

In The New Millennium 

Q-1 2026 

LIV Outcome-Based Thinking Q-2 2026 

LV Transformational Social Leadership Q-3 2026 

LVI The Cycle of Poverty Q-4 2026 

Vol. XIII 2027 Raising Awareness 

LVII ReEngineering Juvenile Justice Q-1 2027 

LVIII Corporations Q-2 2027 

LVIX The Prison Industrial Complex Q-3 2027 

LX Restoration of Rights Q-4 2027 

Vol. XIV 2028 Culturally Relevant Programming 

LXI Community Culture Q-1 2028 

LXII Corporate Culture Q-2 2028 

LXIII Strategic Cultural Planning Q-3 2028 

LXIV 

The Cross-Sector/ Coordinated 

Service Approach to Delinquency 

Prevention 

Q-4 2028 


Vol. XV 2029 Inner-Cities Revitalization 

LXIV 

LXV 

LXVI 

Part I – Strategic Housing 

Revitalization 

(The Twenty Percent Profit Margin) 

Part II – Jobs Training, Educational 

Redevelopment 

and Economic Empowerment 

Part III - Financial Literacy 

and Sustainability 

Q-1 2029 

Q-2 2029 

Q-3 2029 

LXVII Part IV – Solutions for Homelessness Q-4 2029 

LXVIII 

The Strategic Home Mortgage 

Initiative 

Bonus 

Vol. XVI 2030 Sustainability 

LXVIII Social Program Sustainability Q-1 2030 

LXIX 

The Advocacy Foundation 

Endowments Initiative 

Q-2 2030 

LXX Capital Gains Q-3 2030 

LXXI Sustainability Investments Q-4 2030 

Vol. XVII 2031 The Justice Series 

LXXII Distributive Justice Q-1 2031 

LXXIII Retributive Justice Q-2 2031 

LXXIV Procedural Justice Q-3 2031 

LXXV (75) Restorative Justice Q-4 2031 

LXXVI Unjust Legal Reasoning Bonus 


Vol. XVIII 2032 Public Policy 

LXXVII Public Interest Law Q-1 2032 

LXXVIII Reforming Public Policy Q-2 2032 

LXXVIX ... Q-3 2032 

LXXVX ... Q-4 2032 


The e-Advocate Monthly Review 

2018 

Transformational Problem Solving January 2018 

The Advocacy Foundation February 2018 

Opioid Initiative 

Native-American Youth March 2018 

In the Juvenile Justice System 

Barriers to Reducing Confinement April 2018 

Latino and Hispanic Youth May 2018 


Social Entrepreneurship June 2018 

The Economic Consequences of 

Homelessness in America S.Ed – June 2018 

African-American Youth July 2018 


Gang Deconstruction August 2018 

Social Impact Investing September 2018 

Opportunity Youth: October 2018 

Disenfranchised Young People 

The Economic Impact of Social November 2018 

of Social Programs Development 

Gun Control December 2018 

2019 

The U.S. Stock Market January 2019 

Prison-Based Gerrymandering February 2019 

Literacy-Based Prison Construction March 2019 

Children of Incarcerated Parents April 2019 


African-American Youth in The May 2019 

Juvenile Justice System 

Racial Profiling June 2019 

Mass Collaboration July 2019 

Concentrated Poverty August 2019 

De-Industrialization September 2019 

Overcoming Dyslexia October 2019 

Overcoming Attention Deficit November 2019 

The Gift of Adversity December 2019 

2020 

The Gift of Hypersensitivity January 2020 

The Gift of Introspection February 2020 

The Gift of Introversion March 2020 

The Gift of Spirituality April 2020 

The Gift of Transformation May 2020 

Property Acquisition for 

Organizational Sustainability June 2020 

Investing for Organizational 

Sustainability July 2020 

Biblical Law & Justice TLFA August 2020 

Gentrification AF September 2020 

Environmental Racism NpA October 2020 

Law for The Poor AF November 2020 

… 


2021 

Biblically Responsible Investing TLFA – January 2021 

International Criminal Procedure LMI – February 2021 

Spiritual Rights TLFA – March 2021 

The Theology of Missions TLFA – April 2021 

Legal Evangelism, Intelligence, 

Reconnaissance & Missions LMI – May 2021 

The Law of War LMI – June 2021 

Generational Progression AF – July 2021 

Predatory Lending AF – August 2021 

The Community Assessment Process NpA – September 2021 

Accountability NpA – October 2021 

Nonprofit Transparency NpA – November 2021 

Redefining Unemployment AF – December 2021 

2022 

21 st Century Slavery AF – January 2022 

Acquiesce to Righteousness TLFA – February 2022 

ComeUnity Capacity-Building NpA – March 2022 

Nonprofit Organizational Assessment NpA – April 2022 

Debt Reduction AF – May 2022 

Case Law, Statutory Law, 

Municipal Ordinances and Policy ALG – June 2022 

Organizational Dysfunction NpA - July 2022 

Institutional Racism Collab US – August 2022 


The Ripple Effects of Ministry TLFA - September 2022 

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 NpA – October 2022 

Organized Crime (In The New Millennium) ALG – May 2022 

Nonprofit Marketing NpA – June 2022 

The Uniform Code of Military Justice AF – July 2022 

Community Policing NpA – August 2022 

Wills, Trusts & Estates AF – September 2022 

International Incidents Series 

I. Ten Conflicts to Watch In 

The New Millennium LMI – October 2022 

II. International Hotspots LMI – November 2022 

III. International Cyber Terrorism LMI – December 2022 

2023 

I. International Sex Trafficking LMI – January 2023 

II. Brexit LMI – February 2023 

III. Global Jihad LMI – March 2023 

IV. The Global Economy LMI – April 2023 

Judicial Mistakes ALG May 2023 

The Political Dynamics of Justice TJP June 2023 

Reform in The U.S. 

… 


The e-Advocate Quarterly 

Special Editions 

Crowdfunding Winter-Spring 2017 

Social Media for Nonprofits October 2017 

Mass Media for Nonprofits November 2017 

The Opioid Crisis in America: January 2018 

Issues in Pain Management 

The Opioid Crisis in America: February 2018 

The Drug Culture in the U.S. 

The Opioid Crisis in America: March 2018 

Drug Abuse Among Veterans 

The Opioid Crisis in America: April 2018 

Drug Abuse Among America’s 

Teens 

The Opioid Crisis in America: May 2018 

Alcoholism 

The Economic Consequences of June 2018 

Homelessness in The US 

The Economic Consequences of July 2018 

Opioid Addiction in America 


The e-Advocate Journal 

of Theological Jurisprudence 

Vol. I - 2017 

The Theological Origins of Contemporary Judicial Process 

Scriptural Application to The Model Criminal Code 

Scriptural Application for Tort Reform 

Scriptural Application to Juvenile Justice Reformation 

Vol. II - 2018 

Scriptural Application for The Canons of Ethics 

Scriptural Application to Contracts Reform 

& The Uniform Commercial Code 

Scriptural Application to The Law of Property 

Scriptural Application to The Law of Evidence 


Legal Missions International 



Vol. I 2015 

I 

II 

God’s Will and The 21 st Century 

Democratic Process 

The Community 

Engagement Strategy 

Q-1 2015 

Q-2 2015 

III Foreign Policy Q-3 2015 

IV 

Public Interest Law 

in The New Millennium 

Q-4 2015 

Vol. II 2016 

V Ethiopia Q-1 2016 

VI Zimbabwe Q-2 2016 

VII Jamaica Q-3 2016 

VIII Brazil Q-4 2016 

Vol. III 2017 

IX India Q-1 2017 

X Suriname Q-2 2017 

XI The Caribbean Q-3 2017 

XII United States/ Estados Unidos Q-4 2017 

Vol. IV 2018 

XIII Cuba Q-1 2018 

XIV Guinea Q-2 2018 

XV Indonesia Q-3 2018 

XVI Sri Lanka Q-4 2018 


Vol. V 2019 

XVII Russia Q-1 2019 

XVIII Australia Q-2 2019 

XIV South Korea Q-3 2019 

XV Puerto Rico Q-4 2019 


Vol. VI 2020 

XVI Trinidad & Tobago Q-1 2020 

XVII Egypt Q-2 2020 

XVIII Sierra Leone Q-3 2020 

XIX South Africa Q-4 2020 

XX Israel Bonus 

Vol. VII 2021 

XXI Haiti Q-1 2021 

XXII Peru Q-2 2021 

XXIII Costa Rica Q-3 2021 

XXIV China Q-4 2021 

XXV Japan Bonus 

Vol VIII 2022 

XXVI Chile Q-1 2022 


The e-Advocate Juvenile Justice Report 

______ 

Vol. I – Juvenile Delinquency in The US 

Vol. II. – The Prison Industrial Complex 

Vol. III – Restorative/ Transformative Justice 

Vol. IV – The Sixth Amendment Right to The Effective Assistance of Counsel 

Vol. V – The Theological Foundations of Juvenile Justice 

Vol. VI – Collaborating to Eradicate Juvenile Delinquency 


The e-Advocate Newsletter 

Genesis of The Problem 

Family Structure 

Societal Influences 

Evidence-Based Programming 

Strengthening Assets v. Eliminating Deficits 

2012 - Juvenile Delinquency in The US 

Introduction/Ideology/Key Values 

Philosophy/Application & Practice 

Expungement & Pardons 

Pardons & Clemency 

Examples/Best Practices 

2013 - Restorative Justice in The US 

2014 - The Prison Industrial Complex 

25% of the World's Inmates Are In the US 

The Economics of Prison Enterprise 

The Federal Bureau of Prisons 

The After-Effects of Incarceration/Individual/Societal 

The Fourth Amendment Project 

The Sixth Amendment Project 

The Eighth Amendment Project 

The Adolescent Law Group 

2015 - US Constitutional Issues In The New Millennium 


2018 - The Theological Law Firm Academy 

The Theological Foundations of US Law & Government 

The Economic Consequences of Legal Decision-Making 

The Juvenile Justice Legislative Reform Initiative 

The EB-5 International Investors Initiative 

2017 - Organizational Development 

The Board of Directors 

The Inner Circle 

Staff & Management 

Succession Planning 

Bonus #1 The Budget 

Bonus #2 Data-Driven Resource Allocation 

2018 - Sustainability 

The Data-Driven Resource Allocation Process 

The Quality Assurance Initiative 

The Advocacy Foundation Endowments Initiative 

The Community Engagement Strategy 

2019 - Collaboration 

Critical Thinking for Transformative Justice 

International Labor Relations 

Immigration 

God's Will & The 21st Century Democratic Process 

The Community Engagement Strategy 

The 21st Century Charter Schools Initiative 

2020 - Community Engagement 


Extras 

The Nonprofit Advisors Group Newsletters 

The 501(c)(3) Acquisition Process 

The Board of Directors 

The Gladiator Mentality 

Strategic Planning 

Fundraising 

501(c)(3) Reinstatements 

The Collaborative US/ International Newsletters 

How You Think Is Everything 

The Reciprocal Nature of Business Relationships 

Accelerate Your Professional Development 

The Competitive Nature of Grant Writing 

Assessing The Risks 



About The Author 

John C (Jack) Johnson III 

Founder & CEO – The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. 

________ 

Jack was educated at Temple University, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Rutgers 

Law School, in Camden, New Jersey. In 1999, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia to pursue 

greater opportunities to provide Advocacy and Preventive Programmatic services for atrisk/ 

at-promise young persons, their families, and Justice Professionals embedded in the 

Juvenile Justice process in order to help facilitate its transcendence into the 21 st Century. 

There, along with a small group of community and faith-based professionals, “The Advocacy Foundation, Inc." was conceived 

and developed over roughly a thirteen year period, originally chartered as a Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Educational 

Support Services organization consisting of Mentoring, Tutoring, Counseling, Character Development, Community Change 

Management, Practitioner Re-Education & Training, and a host of related components. 

The Foundation’s Overarching Mission is “To help Individuals, Organizations, & Communities Achieve Their Full Potential”, by 

implementing a wide array of evidence-based proactive multi-disciplinary "Restorative & Transformative Justice" programs & 

projects currently throughout the northeast, southeast, and western international-waters regions, providing prevention and support 

services to at-risk/ at-promise youth, to young adults, to their families, and to Social Service, Justice and Mental 

Health professionals” in each jurisdiction served. The Foundation has since relocated its headquarters to Philadelphia, 

Pennsylvania, and been expanded to include a three-tier mission. 

In addition to his work with the Foundation, Jack also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law & Business at National-Louis 

University of Atlanta (where he taught Political Science, Business & Legal Ethics, Labor & Employment Relations, and Critical 

Thinking courses to undergraduate and graduate level students). Jack has also served as Board President for a host of wellestablished 

and up & coming nonprofit organizations throughout the region, including “Visions Unlimited Community 

Development Systems, Inc.”, a multi-million dollar, award-winning, Violence Prevention and Gang Intervention Social Service 

organization in Atlanta, as well as Vice-Chair of the Georgia/ Metropolitan Atlanta Violence Prevention Partnership, a state-wide 

300 organizational member violence prevention group led by the Morehouse School of Medicine, Emory University and The 

Original, Atlanta-Based, Martin Luther King Center. 

Attorney Johnson’s prior accomplishments include a wide-array of Professional Legal practice areas, including Private Firm, 

Corporate and Government postings, just about all of which yielded significant professional awards & accolades, the history and 

chronology of which are available for review online at LinkedIn.com. Throughout his career, Jack has served a wide variety of 

for-profit corporations, law firms, and nonprofit organizations as Board Chairman, Secretary, Associate, and General Counsel 

since 1990. 


Clayton County Youth Services Partnership, Inc. – Chair; Georgia Violence Prevention Partnership, Inc – Vice Chair; Fayette 

County NAACP - Legal Redress Committee Chairman; Clayton County Fatherhood Initiative Partnership – Principal 

Investigator; Morehouse School of Medicine School of Community Health Feasibility Study Steering Committee; Atlanta 

Violence Prevention Capacity Building Project Partner; Clayton County Minister’s Conference, President 2006-2007; Liberty In 

Life Ministries, Inc. Board Secretary; Young Adults Talk, Inc. Board of Directors; ROYAL, Inc Board of Directors; Temple 

University Alumni Association; Rutgers Law School Alumni Association; Sertoma International; Our Common Welfare Board of 

Directors President 2003-2005; River’s Edge Elementary School PTA (Co-President); Summerhill Community Ministries 

(Winter Sports Athletic Director); Outstanding Young Men of America; Employee of the Year; Academic All-American - 

Basketball; Church Trustee; Church Diaconate Ministry (Walking Deacon); Pennsylvania Commission on Crime & Delinquency 

(Nominee).

The Political Dynamics of Justice Reform in The U.S.

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