Blog Dec 22, 2008
We can’t just shoot ‘em
California’s growing budget crisis and prison lawsuits are focusing more attention on a serious policy question: Are there better ways to reduce crime and treat criminals than by spending $36,000 in taxpayer dollars every year to lock up each low-level property and drug possession offender in state prison? California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reports show the state now imprisons 30,000 offenders sentenced for non-invasion property crimes or simple drug possession, at a cost…
(ISSN 1530 – 3012) From the editor Racial Disproportionality in the American Prison Population: Using the Blumstein Method to Address the Critical Race and Justice Issue of the 21st Century Guns and Homicide: Is the Instrument-Focused Approach to Deterrence Efficacious? Guards or Guardians? A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of Parenting Styles in Juvenile Correctional Programs Criminal History on a “Need To Know” Basis: Employment Policies that Eliminate the Criminal History Box…
Recent reports by the W. Haywood Burns Institute and NAACP deploring disproportionate minority confinement in juvenile facilities raise an important ongoing issue. It is true, as the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice’s own investigations agree, that black and brown youth receive increasingly harsh treatment as they move from arrest through sentencing stages that the juvenile justice system must address. But there’s another troubling issue. A key CJCJ mission has been to reduce the use of…
Dec 18, 2008
Just Released! Fall 2008 Justice Policy Journal
Just Released! Fall 2008 Justice Policy Journal: CJCJ’s Premiere Online Academic Journal As one of the first online criminal justice journals with contributions from renowned scholars, the Justice Policy Journal (JPJ) is quickly becoming among the most widely read and discussed journals in the field. The JPJ provides an international forum for researchers and policymakers to examine current justice issues and promote innovative policy solutions in a web based format that maintains the…
Blog Dec 13, 2008
Avoid Easy “Blame the Media” Path on Crime
Two starkly diverging pathways for President-elect Barack Obama’s crucial, so far unknown, public stance toward crime issues are emerging. This brief discusses the Easy Path: Blaming youth, gangs, popular culture, and “the media” that former President Clinton largely embraced. News reports are abuzz with a barrage of “shocking new studies” declaring popular-media influences such as television, movies, rap music, and internet sites are pivotal causes of violence by youth. Unfortunately,…
Blog Dec 13, 2008
Abolish the Office of National Drug Control Policy
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy was established in the early 1980s, funded in 1986, and issued its first National Drug Control Strategy in 1987. In the middle of a massive crack-cocaine and heroin epidemic generating rising overdose deaths and dealer violence, the Strategy prioritized chasing around casual users, mostly of marijuana, on the grounds that moderate drug users set a bad “moral… example.” In the two decades during which the ONDCP and its “drug czar” have…
Blog Nov 29, 2008
Obama’s crime policy — no “change” yet
Think anew, exhorted Barack Obama. “The old ways simply can’t meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.” That’s been a campaign theme of the president-elect’s repeated, welcome calls for innovation on foreign policy, budget reform, and energy and an end to Washington’s stifling “groupthink.” But does Obama propose to extend this refreshing imperative to evolve new thinking America’s century of disastrously failed policies on crime, violence, drug abuse, and related social ills? After all,…
In criminal justice debate and policy, it is important to keep up with often startling realities – and California’s contain plenty of surprises. Consider three statements often made about adult-court prosecutions of juveniles: 1. The number of juveniles tried in adult court is increasing. False. Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) reports show the number and percentage of juvenile inmates in state facilities sentenced by adult criminal courts (as opposed to juvenile courts) has plummeted ‚…
Blog Nov 14, 2008
Time to Close the old California Youth Authority
The recent news from Sacramento that the state is confronting another round of midyear budget cuts that could amount to a stunning 7 billion dollars provides further reason to close the old California Youth Authority (CYA). Closing the CYA (now the Division of Juvenile Facilities) would save the state nearly $500 million and bring an end to a sad chapter in the history of California’s juvenile justice system. The current California youth corrections system is built on a 19th century training…
The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office and the Pacific Juvenile Defender Association staged their yearly juvenile justice roundtable on Friday, November 7. The conference was well attended by juvenile public defenders and defense counsel from around California. I was asked to speak on the topic of presenting incarceration alternatives at disposition hearings. The importance of defense attorneys providing options to juvenile court judges at disposition hearings cannot be overstated. I…
Blog Nov 7, 2008
More Election Reflections
While the loss of California’s Proposition 5 was a huge disappointment to the prison reformers, the sound rejection of Proposition 6 by California voters provides some consolation. Proposition 6 represented a billion dollar raid on the state treasury by Sacramento lobbyist for the benefit of their law enforcement and prison interest group clients. Because the initiative was intended to increase the jail and prison population, the campaign was bankrolled by private prison companies, bail…
Blog Nov 5, 2008
Election Reflections
Last night’s elections should give us all cause for hope that the United States is moving into a post conservative era that will usher in a new wave of social policy. However, the defeat of California’s Proposition 5 should be a reminder of the challenges ahead in shaping a more humane and rational criminal justice system. Proposition 5 offered an opportunity to bypass the prison industrial complex interest groups who exert a stranglehold on reform legislation at the state capital.…