In a press release issued by her office, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton announced that her District of Columbia Home Rule Expansion Act (H.R. 8861), “the biggest expansion of D.C. home rule since passage of the D.C. Home Rule Act in 1973,” passed the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. The bill, if passed into law, …
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The Sentencing Project has compiled information on the state of private prison’s in the U.S. derived from data collected by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics. According to the data, thirty-one states and the federal government incarcerated 100,151 people in private prisons in 2020, representing 8% of the total state and federal …
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The bill is S.4664, the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2023. It was introduced in July. This is one of the appropriations bills that will be passed before the end of 2022. The total language in the bill relevant to the USPC is” “For necessary expenses of the United States Parole Commission …
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A press release issued by Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) reports that she sent a letter to the new Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Colette Peters, regarding critical issues facing District of Columbia residents in BOP custody. BOP is responsible for housing individuals convicted of D.C. Code felonies.
Newsweek published a piece providing a look into alternatives to armed police responses put in the context of alternatives to the “Defund the Police” policies. Titled ‘Defund the Police’ Is Dead But Other Reform Efforts Thrive In U.S. Cities, the article takes the position that the defund movement has “effectively ended.” However, the article goes …
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DCIST has reported that federal appellate judges have rejected the D.C. police union’s challenge of a law that gives the Metropolitan Police Department more power over police disciplinary processes. The law, originally passed in 2020, strips police discipline from collective bargaining processes and makes it easier for the department to fire police officers accused of …
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DCIST recently published an article raising questions about the implementation of the law extending the right to vote to incarcerated D.C. residents (passed by the D.C. Council two years ago) is actually being implemented. Titled D.C.’s Incarcerated Residents Have The Right To Vote, But Sometimes It’s Easier Said Than Done, it reports that advocates who …
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Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) has released what it calls the “first-ever national poll on prison oversight.” Survey results show that nearly three-quarters of Americans support reforming the nation’s criminal justice system and 82% of the public agree that states and the federal government should have a system of independent oversight for their prisons.
The Criminal Justice Coordinating Council (CJCC), a federally-funded independent D.C. agency, recently released a report on gun violence in the city. The Gun Violence Reduction Strategic Plan offers 16 recommendations designed to decrease violent crime and to alleviate the socioeconomic factors that give rise to violence in D.C. As reported in the Washington Post, and …
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Violence interruption is a community-based approach to reducing communal and interpersonal violence that treats violence as a public health problem. This type of model was reportedly created by the organization Cure Violence Global. Individuals providing violence interruption services are known as violence interrupters. Techniques used include mediation and measures to address underlying causes of violence. Violence interrupters …
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