This contains posts about reports, testimony and sign-on letters by District advocacy groups and other entities related to District criminal legal system issues.
The Council for Court Excellence (CCE) has published a new report offering a look into the significant challenges and innovations in the District ’s adult and youth criminal legal systems during 2021. Titled D.C.’s Justice Systems Overview 2021, the report provides updates on various challenges and developments in D.C.’s criminal legal system, as well as …
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The Vera Institute of Justice recently published a Police Data Transparency Index to see how locations across the United States are performing in their release of data and how much public access to the data that is available. According to Vera, their analysis of police transparency reflected in the index is “rigorous and informed by …
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The Vera Institute of Justice took a look at what an antiracist and equitable community crisis response program might look like. Researchers from Vera interviewed national subject matter experts and local program stakeholders, including people with direct experience in establishing and managing crisis response operations.
As reported by NPR, the Justice Department (DOJ) is looking to reduce racial disparities in a tool it uses to assess a prisoner’s risk of a return to crime, after scholars and justice advocates pressed for change.
A report recently released by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) describes the need for second chances for people serving extreme sentences.
Prison Policy Initiative has released a new report titled Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2022. The report seeks to better understand mass incarceration by piecing together the data about this country’s disparate systems of confinement. It provides a detailed look at where and why people are locked up in the U.S., and dispels some modern …
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The Justice Policy Institute has issued a report titled: Voices for Reform in DC: Recommendations for improving reentry following long prison terms. Since passage by the DC Council of the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act (IRAA), under which 65 people have been released to date, the report points out that providing reentry support for the IRAA …
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The National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the US Dept. of Justice, has published an article titled Redesigning Risk and Need Assessment in Corrections. The article introduces a report released by the agency titled Guidelines for Post-Sentencing Risk Assessment. The agency said it undertook to produced these guidelines because: “… the kind of …
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Galen Baughman was one of the original organizers of what became the ReThink Justice DC Coalition, assisting Charlie Sullivan in forming and operating the group, when it was called the First Friday Group. He was the group’s first administrator, until his incarceration in Virginia three years ago based on a technical violation of his parole. …
Continue reading “Galen Baughman case gains support to overturn unjust civil confinement”
Prison Policy Initiative has published a report–using D.C. as a case study–to show how much non-criminal – and often drug related – “technical” violations of probation and parole contribute to unnecessary jail incarceration. From their report: “In the nation’s capital, the scope of the problem is conspicuous. The Washington, D.C. Department of Corrections estimates that …
Continue reading “D.C. data shows how minor supervision violations contribute to excessive jailing”
