Sentencing Law and Policy

"New Utah law allows organ donations from prisoners; nearly 250 sign up"

The title of this post is the headline of this new article via NBC News.   Here are excerpts:

Joanne Ford was a designated organ donor for decades, years before she was sentenced to time in Utah’s Draper Prison for possession and distribution of methamphetamines.  But it wasn’t until two weeks ago that the 48-year-old inmate was guaranteed the right to honor her wishes if she happened to die while incarcerated.

Utah’s governor, Gary R. Herbert, signed the first state law on March 28 that explicitly permits general prisoners to sign up for organ donation — and cracks the door to the controversial option of allowing death-row inmates to donate as well. 

“I think, why not?” says Ford, who is among 247 Utah prisoners who’ve signed up to donate their organs. “If you have healthy organs, why would you not be able to help someone else?”

Whether to accept organs from prisoners has long been a thorny issue.  Ethics experts say it pits questions of coercion of a vulnerable population against the desperate need for organs in a country where nearly 118,000 people are waiting for hearts, kidneys, livers and other life-saving transplants, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

In most states, accepting organs from inmates who die while in custody is permitted only rarely and under strictly controlled circumstances.  No state allows donation of organs from executed prisoners....

Utah state Rep. Steve Eliason, who pushed the law through the legislature, said he was inspired by the 2010 death of Ronnie Lee Gardner, a murderer who wanted to donate his organs but was prohibited from doing so.  “How disappointing is that, there’s somebody who maybe wants to atone for his sins in some way,” says the Republican from Sandy, Utah. “It’s a waste of perfectly good organs that could help others.”

Eliason first proposed a bill allowing prisoners to donate organs last year, but time ran out before it could be fully considered.  The next time, it passed unanimously....

Now that the law has passed, records of inmates who want to donate have been sent to Intermountain Donor Services, the agency that manages organ donations in Utah.  They’ve been added to the state donor registry.   “Any time we can expand the donor pool or make people aware of organ donation, we’re supportive of that,” says Alex McDonald, a spokesman.... 

[E]very organ donor can save the lives of up to eight people and tissue donors can help more than 50 people, transplant experts say....  The Utah law does not discriminate between general population prisoners and death-row inmates, Eliason noted. “Any prisoner is able to do this,” he says....

Some may wonder whether people in need would accept organs from prisoners, but Lori Haglund of Salt Lake City says there’s no question.  Her son, Brock Butler, had a progressive liver disease.  He died in September, a week before his 21st birthday, after spending three years on a waiting list for a liver.  “We were acutely aware of what we were asking someone to be giving,” says Haglund, 51.  “For anyone who would be willing, it gives them a chance to give something back.”

Joanne Ford agrees. Although she may have damaged her organs, particularly her liver, with drug use, she still hopes she may one day help others.  “There still may be one or two things that could still possibly be used,” she says.  Donating her organs after death would be one way to atone for her actions — in addition to prison time.  “I feel like I owe society a big debt,” she says.  “I caused a great damage out there.  I feel good about this.”

Weekend crime and punishment headlines from California

California has a large enough population to be a large nation all its own, and some crime and punishment stories that swirl around the state these days reveals just some of the ways that the Golden State is truly a unique jurisdiction.  Here are just some of the headline from the state which caught my eye this weekend:

• "California's dormant death penalty system faces another legal test"

• "Number of fugitive sex offenders spikes since California 'realignment'"

• "California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom calls for legalizing pot"

• "Gov. Jerry Brown vows fight with judges over prisons"

• "California's Prison Crisis is Now a Constitutional Crisis"

Guest post on federal sentencing data and costs of incarceration for child porn offenses

Experienced lawyer and federal sentencing guru Mark Allenbaugh (firm website here) sent me this "accounting" of the latest year-end federal sentencing data:

"Yesterday, the U.S. Sentencing Commission published its Annual Report to Congress, and Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics for fiscal year 2012.  Increasingly, this part of the Commission’s work is becoming of central importance to its mission.  Indeed, the stats reveal something rather startling, if not outright shocking, about the cost of incarceration. 

"Since United States v. Booker, the federal government has spent nearly $30 BILLION on incarceration, which exceeds the GDP of many countries including North Korea.  Of this, over $2 BILLION was spent on incarcerating child pornography offenders; 12,115 have been sentenced (not all to imprisonment, but most) under the guidelines since 2006.  What makes this rather startling is looking at other major offense categories.  For example, in the same period of time, over four times as many people have been sentenced for fraud offenses (54,813), however, the total cost of incarcerating those individuals was almost a billion dollars LESS!  ($2.1 billion for child pornography; $1.3 billion for fraud).  In other words, incarcerating 12,115 child pornography offenders cost the public fisc $2.1 billion, while incarcerating nearly 55,000 fraud offenders cost (only) $1.3 billion.

"So, why the big difference in cost?  Easy.  The increasingly longer sentences imposed on child pornography offender than for any other major offense category.  What that translates into is that the actual annual cost per offender is far higher for child pornography offenders than for any other major offense category.  We spend nearly $25,000 incarcerating child pornography offenders than fraud offenders, who cost only $3,500 per year.  Fraud is comparatively cheap because a substantial number do not receive any term of incarceration, and those that do often serve less than a year.  Here is a chart showing the AVERAGE sentences over the past 6 years for all major offense categories.  A quick glance shows how out of the ordinary child pornography offenses are, or more accurately, how obscenely out of whack they are.

"After spending $2 Billion over the last six years, it’s far past time to rein in this madness.  The Commission’s recent report on Federal Child Pornography Offenses effectively disavowing the sentencing guideline for non-production offenses is an enormous leap in the right direction.  We simply cannot afford to continue being fiscally foolish on child pornography sentencing; these data put the magnitude of the madness in sharp relief.  Hopefully Congress acts quickly to grant the Commission’s wish to have 'enact legislation providing the Commission with express authority to amend the current guideline provisions that were promulgated pursuant to specific congressional directives or legislation directly amending the guidelines.'

"[NOTE ON CALCULATION METHODS: the statistics were derived from table 13 and the BOP’s recent cost of incarceration estimate from FY 2012.  I simply took the total number sentenced each year (06-12), multiplied that by the MEDIAN sentence in months from each (to be conservative in my estimate; the mean or average would have resulted in much higher figures) and divided that by 12 to get the number of “Inmate Years” for a category.  I then multiplied the Inmate Years by $26,359, which is the average annual cost of incarceration per BOP.  This gives you the Total Cost FY06-12 for a category, e.g. $2,118,989,027 for Child Porn.  The Total Sentenced FY 06-12 is just exactly what it says.  Per Inmate, Per Year Cost is just the total cost divided by the total sentenced, then that number divided by 7 (7 years inclusive of FY2006-2012).]"

Federal judge decides California still cannot run its prison without monitoring

As reported in this article, which is headlined "Judge refuses to end prison monitoring," the California prison system appears not to be getting out of federal court monitoring anytime soon. Here is the story:

Treatment of 32,000 mentally ill inmates in California prisons remains seriously deficient, with staff and facilities shortages and a high number of preventable suicides, a federal judge declared Friday in rejecting Gov. Jerry Brown's request to end more than 17 years of court monitoring.

Brown's insistence that prison mental health care now exceeds constitutional standards, after billions of dollars of expenditures, conflicts with evidence from an ongoing series of prison inspections, said U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton of Sacramento.

"Systemic failures persist in the form of inadequate suicide-prevention measures, excessive administrative segregation of the mentally ill (in isolated lockups), lack of timely access to adequate care, insufficient treatment space and access to beds, and unmet staffing needs," Karlton said.

He said the inmate suicide rate, which had been declining for several years, has soared since 2009 to nearly 24 per 100,000 inmates, or 60 percent above the national average. More than 70 percent of the suicides might have been prevented with adequate treatment, Karlton said....

Friday's decision is a signal that the population-reduction order is still needed and will be upheld, said Michael Bien, a lawyer for mentally ill inmates who sued the state in 1991. After finding constitutional violations, Karlton appointed a monitor, called a special master, to inspect the prisons and report on mental health care in January 1996. The judge's refusal to end the monitoring "allows us to get back to the real work of fixing a dangerously flawed mental health care system that's shamed California for more than 20 years," Bien said....

Karlton said the evidence, from experts on both sides as well as the court-appointed monitor, showed that the prisons have not implemented their own suicide-prevention plans, keep too many mentally ill inmates in high-security lockups and are understaffed by more than 20 percent.

Potent new quote from AG Eric Holder: "Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason"

I am very pleased to have seen from this new Politico article that Attorney General Eric Holder last night stressed the need for national criminal justice reform at the end of a major speech delivered at the 15th Annual National Action Network Convention. The full text of the lengthy speech is available at this link, and here is some of the context for the potent quotable stressed above:

[W]e must also move to improve our nation’s criminal justice system — and to promote public safety, deterrence, efficiency, and fairness at every level. We’re providing increased support for programs offering quality legal representation to those who cannot afford it, in accordance with the Supreme Court’s decision in Gideon v. Wainwright — a landmark ruling, handed down 50 years ago last month, which held that every defendant charged with a serious crime has the right to an attorney.

We’re also asking larger questions about the mechanisms of our criminal justice system as a whole – and, where appropriate, exploring ways to recalibrate this system and ensure that it’s as fair and effective as possible.

Already, this urgent need has driven the Administration to advocate — successfully — for the elimination of the unjust 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine.  As we speak, it is propelling us to become both smarter and tougher on crime by facilitating more effective policing at the state and local levels; broadening the impact of innovative prevention, intervention, enforcement, and reentry programs; using intelligence-based strategies to target federal law enforcement resources and assistance to the areas where they’re most needed; and seeking new ways to help crime victims — especially victims of sexual assault — to make their lives whole again.

Our reform efforts are also driving us to engage allies like the Department of Education — and others — to confront the “school-to-prison pipeline” that transforms too many educational institutions from doorways of opportunity into gateways to the criminal justice system.  They are informing essential programs like the Department’s Defending Childhood Initiative and the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention — which are helping to rally federal leaders, state officials, private organizations, and community groups to examine how we can better understand, address, and prevent youth exposure to violence — as victims or as witnesses.  And these efforts are inspiring us to forge new partnerships like the Federal Interagency Reentry Council — a group I first convened in 2011, which brings together leaders from 20 federal agencies to address barriers that formerly incarcerated individuals face in rejoining their communities, to promote best practices, and to confront these and related issues as more than just criminal justice problems.

The sheer number of Americans contending with these challenges is staggering. Well over two million people are currently behind bars in this country.  As a nation we are coldly efficient in our incarceration efforts. One in 28 children has a parent in prison.  For African American children, this ratio is roughly 1 in 9.  In total, approximately 700,000 people are released from state and federal prisons every year.  Nine to 10 million more cycle through local jails.  And 40 percent of former federal prisoners — along with more than 60 percent of former state prisoners — are rearrested or have their supervision revoked within three years after their release.

Now, there’s no question that incarceration has a role to play in our criminal justice system.  But there’s also no denying that widespread incarceration at the federal, state, and local levels imposes a significant economic burden — totaling nearly $83 billion in 2009 alone — along with human and moral costs that are impossible to calculate.  As a nation — and as a people — we pay a high price whenever our criminal justice policies fall short of fairly delivering outcomes that deter and punish crime, keep the American people safe, and ensure that those who pay their debts to society have the chance to become productive, law-abiding citizens.

This is why — as we look toward the future — we must promote public safety and deterrence while at the same time ensuring efficiency and fairness. I am concerned by a troubling report released by the United States Sentencing Commission in February, which indicates that — in recent years — black male offenders have received sentences that are nearly 20 percent longer than those imposed on white males convicted of similar crimes. The Department of Justice is determined to continue working alongside Congressional leaders, judges, law enforcement officials, and independent groups — like the American Bar Association — to study the unintended collateral consequences of certain convictions; to address unwarranted sentencing disparities; and — where appropriate — to explore ways to give judges more flexibility in determining certain sentences.  Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason.  It is time to ask ourselves some fundamental questions about our criminal justice system.  Statutes passed by legislatures that mandate sentences, irrespective of the unique facts of an individual case, too often bear no relation to the conduct at issue, breed disrespect for the system, and are ultimately counterproductive. It is time to examine our systems and determine what truly works.  We need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, to rehabilitate, and to deter — and not simply to warehouse and forget.

I am so excited to now see that our nation's top law enforcement officer is now expressly saying, without reservation and in no uncertaint terms, what I have long believed about the big government waste in our massive modern criminal justice systems: "Too many people go to too many prisons for far too long for no good law enforcement reason."  I hope that, in addition encouraging that "ask ourselves some fundamental questions about our criminal justice system," that he will actively take the many possible steps within his power to get some of the people in prison for too long to ensure those who are now being just warehoused are no longer forgotten.

New ACLU of Ohio report documents "contemporary debtors’ prisons"

As reported in this local article, headlined "Poor unfairly jailed for failing to pay fines, report says," a new report by the ACLU of Ohio makes a set of provocative assertions about crime, punishment and modern economic realities. Here are the basics:

Courts in at least seven counties routinely jail Ohioans for owing court fines and fees, in violation of the state constitution and laws and against a 1983 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, according to a new study released by the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor says the report raises issues that “can and must receive further attention.”

While many defendants can pay their fines and walk away, for Ohio’s poor a fine “is just the beginning of a process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants, and even jail time,” the report says.

The ACLU documented debtors prison practices in Springboro mayor’s court and municipal courts in Hamilton County, Sandusky, Norwalk, Parma, Mansfield and Bryan....

Other courts, including Moraine mayor’s court, employ policies such as arresting defendants for not showing up for hearings where they’re supposed to explain why they haven’t paid their fines, said Mike Brickner, ACLU of Ohio communications director. The hearings are sometimes scheduled weekly, increasing the chances that the defendant will eventually miss one and face a bench warrant, he said....

The ACLU calls on the Ohio Supreme Court to issue administrative rules to require courts to hold hearings to determine whether a defendant is unable to pay fines owed or if they’re just unwilling.  Even if a defendant is just refusing to pay, he or she is supposed to be credited $50 per day spent in jail against the debt.

Jailing people costs between $58 and $65 per night, plus the time spent by officers and clerks to track the person down, arrest them, book them into the jail and file paperwork. Often the costs exceed the debts owed.  “It is not a good deal for the taxpayers.  (The defendants) aren’t not paying because they don’t feel like it.  They’re not paying because the literally have no money,” Brickner said.   Brickner said it creates a two-tier justice system for those who are able to pay fines and those who can’t.

The ACLU of Ohio's report is titled "The Outskirts of Hope" and is available at this link.  Here are a few paragraphs from the report's introduction:

The resurgence of contemporary debtors’ prisons sits squarely at this intersection of poverty and criminal justice. While this term conjures up images of Victorian England, the research and personal stories in this report illustrate that debtors’ prisons remain all too common in 21st century Ohio. In towns across the state, thousands of people face the looming specter of incarceration every day, simply because they are poor.

Taking care of a fine is straightforward for some Ohioans — having been convicted of a criminal or traffic offense and sentenced to pay a fine, an affluent defendant may simply pay it and go on with his or her life.  For Ohio’s poor and working poor, by contrast, an unaffordable fine is just the beginning of a protracted process that may involve contempt charges, mounting fees, arrest warrants, and even jail time.  The stark reality is that, in 2013, Ohioans are being repeatedly jailed simply for being too poor to pay fines. The U.S. Constitution, the Ohio Constitution, and Ohio Revised Code all prohibit debtors’ prisons. The law requires that, before jailing anyone for unpaid fines, courts must determine whether an individual is too poor to pay.  Jailing a person who is unable to pay violates the law, and yet municipal courts and mayors’ courts across the state continue this draconian practice. Moreover, debtors’ prisons actually waste taxpayer dollars by arresting and incarcerating people who will simply never be able to pay their fines, which are in any event usually smaller than the amount it costs to arrest and jail them.

The Outskirts of Hope documents how contemporary debtors’ prisons work in Ohio and profiles some of the real people who have been impacted by this system.  The constant threat of incarceration has left an imprint on each of these individuals’ lives, interfering with their families, health, employment, and housing.  By shining a light on this dark practice in Ohio, this report hopes to move our state towards the promise of greater justice and fairness for those with the fewest resources.

"Pretrial Detention and the Right to Be Monitored"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper available via SSRN by Samuel Wiseman. Here is the abstract:

The typical academic concern with respect to advancing criminal justice technology, be it wiretaps or surveillance drones, is that there will be too much of it.  In the context of pretrial justice, however, we have the opposite problem.  Although detention for dangerousness has received far more attention in recent years, a significant number of non-dangerous but impecunious defendants are jailed to ensure their presence at trial due to continued, widespread reliance on a money bail system.  Increasingly sophisticated forms of electronic monitoring have the potential to mitigate flight risk at least as well as money bail at a cost to defendants and the state lower than money bail’s necessary concomitant, pretrial detention.  But the long, mostly sad history of bail reform efforts suggests that, unlike wiretaps, electronic monitoring in lieu of detention will not be adopted through the political process in many jurisdictions.

This paper develops two related claims.  First, in the near term, electronic monitoring will present a superior alternative to money bail for addressing flight risk.  In contrast to previous proposals for reducing pretrial detention rates, including increased use of personal recognizance bonds and varying forms of supervision by pretrial services agencies, electronic monitoring has the potential to both reduce fugitive rates (by allowing the defendant to be easily located) and government expenditures (by reducing the number of defendants detained at state expense).  Moreover, the usual objections to government monitoring -- the intrusion on individual privacy and the threat of surveillance extending to new segments of society -- have relatively little force in the pretrial context, where detention currently all but extinguishes privacy interests, and the number of criminal defendants is largely independent of the means of preventing flight.

Secondly, despite the potential benefits to defendants and governments, electronic monitoring is not likely to be adopted by legislative or executive action.  The commercial bail industry has a significant financial incentive to maintain the status quo, and it has repeatedly blunted previous reform efforts.  Thus, although there is a lively debate over the institutions best suited to respond to advances in investigative technology, here the best prospect for meaningful change is clearly the judiciary generally, and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of Excessive Bail more specifically.  To achieve this goal, however, the courts will, for the first time, have to develop a meaningful jurisprudence of excessiveness to test the fit between the government’s pretrial goals and the means employed to accomplish them.  The paper begins this inquiry, arguing that the text, purpose, and history of the Amendment all support the requirement that the chosen means be, at minimum, not substantially more burdensome than necessary.  Under this standard, a money bail system that leads to widespread detention without a corresponding increase in performance or savings cannot survive in the face of a less restrictive technological alternative.

Long-time readers know I am a fan of both the Eighth Amendment and of the potential of technocorrections to reduce the modern incarceration "footprint."  I thus find especially intriguing and appealing the notion that the Eighth Amendment might give defendants a right to demand a technocorrections alternative to incarceration in some settings.

Protests scuttle private prison group's plans to get name on university stadium

As reported in this prior post a few weeks back, the private prison corporation GEO Group Inc. had a deal in the works to give a huge check to a university in Florida and to get a stadium named after it in return.  But, as highlighted in this new Huffington Post piece, the deal is off:

It was a move that baffled sports marketing experts: Florida Atlantic University struck a deal in February to name its football stadium after a private prison company.

But after more than a month of backlash from students, faculty and human rights groups, the GEO Group Inc. pulled out of the $6 million deal with Florida Atlantic on Monday, citing the "distraction" it had caused for the company and the university.

"What was originally intended as a gesture of GEO's goodwill to financially assist the University's athletic scholarship program has surprisingly evolved into an ongoing distraction to both of our organizations," GEO Group chairman and chief executive George Zoley said in a statement released by the university on Monday.

Soon after the deal was announced in mid-February, it got attention in national news outlets and garnered a segment on the Colbert Report. Citing lawsuits against the company and federal reports detailing horrible conditions at a GEO-operated youth prison in Mississippi, host Stephen Colbert quipped: "This criticism is just one of the downsides of paying millions of dollars to have people pay attention to your company …. People start paying attention to your company."

The GEO Group is based in Boca Raton, Fla., just a few miles from Florida Atlantic University. Zoley, the company's chairman and chief executive, received bachelor's and master's degrees from the university and was a former chairman of the board of trustees. The university had been seeking a corporate sponsor for two years to pay down the debt on its newly built stadium, and the GEO Group pledged to pay $6 million over 10 years in exchange for the naming rights.

Student groups at Florida Atlantic quickly coalesced against the GEO Group Stadium deal, dubbing the facility "Owlcatraz" -- a play on the university's mascot, an owl. They staged a sit-in outside the university president's office in February and demanded that university leadership organize forums and discussions about GEO's human rights record.

The school's faculty senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution against the stadium name last month, noting that GEO Group's business practices "do not align with the missions of the university."...

The GEO Group's revenue has nearly tripled over the last decade, as the private prison company has captured greater shares of state and federal prison populations, including facilities that hold undocumented immigrants. GEO has also donated more than $1.2 million to the Florida Republican Party over the last three election cycles. Republicans in the state legislature last year came close to approving a massive expansion of private prisons in south Florida, an opportunity that the GEO Group mentioned frequently in calls with investors....

In a statement, Florida Atlantic President Mary Jane Saunders said Zoley and the company "have been loyal supporters of this university" and that she was thankful for all organizations that give to support "our mission, our pursuit of academic excellence and valuable contributions to this community."...

It is unclear where the university will get the money needed to pay off debt for its stadium. FAU had been searching for more than two years for a corporate sponsor before GEO Group agreed to pay $6 million over 10 years. The university built the $70 million football stadium in 2011, borrowing more than $45 million.

Some recent and older related posts: 

• "A Company That Runs Prisons Will Have Its Name on a Stadium"
• "Billions Behind Bars: Inside America's Prison Industry"
• Might private prisons actually cost taxpayers more than public prisons?
• "Who Benefits When A Private Prison Comes To Town?"
• New ACLU report critical of private prisons 
• "Too Good to be True: Private Prisons in America"

New York Times editorial urges "Shrinking Prisons, Saving Billions"

While on the road, I missed this notable New York Times editorial from this past weekend.  Here are excerpts:

The mandatory sentencing craze that gripped the country four decades ago drove up the state prison population sevenfold — from under 200,000 in the early 1970s to about 1.4 million today — and pushed costs beyond $50 billion a year.  Until recently, it seemed that the numbers would keep growing. But thanks to reforms in more than half the states, the prison census has edged down slightly — by just under 2 percent — since 2009.  A new analysis by the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that the decline would have been considerably larger had the other states not been pulling in the opposite direction.

Over the last five years, 29 states have managed to cut their imprisonment rates, 10 of them by double-digit percentages.  California, which has been ordered by the Supreme Court to ease extreme prison crowding, led the way with a 17 percent drop, mainly by reducing parole and probation revocations and shifting custody of low-level offenders to counties.  Other states reduced prison terms for low-level offenses; diverted some offenders to community supervision; and strengthened parole programs, so that fewer offenders landed back in jail for technical violations like missed appointments or failed drug tests.

Even law-and-order states like Texas, which cut its imprisonment rate by 7 percent, have discovered that they can shrink the prison population without threatening public safety. Investing heavily in drug treatment and community supervision, Texas has avoided nearly $2 billion in spending on new prisons, while the crime rate has dropped to levels unseen since the 1960s.  But even as the national prison population has declined, 20 other states — including Arizona, Arkansas, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — keep sending more people to prison than need to be there....

States that lag in reducing their prison populations should swiftly embrace these kinds of reforms.

"Vulnerability and Just Desert: A Theory of Sentencing and Mental Illness"

The title of this post is the title of this significant new article by E. Lea Johnston, which is now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

This Article analyzes risks of serious harms posed to prisoners with major mental disorders and investigates their import for sentencing under a just deserts analysis. Drawing upon social science research, the Article first establishes that offenders with serious mental illnesses are more likely than non-ill offenders to suffer physical and sexual assaults, endure housing in solitary confinement, and experience psychological deterioration during their carceral terms.

The Article then explores the significance of this differential impact for sentencing within a retributive framework.  It first suggests a particular expressive understanding of punishment, capacious enough to encompass foreseeable, substantial risks of serious harm proximately caused by the state during confinement and addresses in particular the troublesome issue of prison violence.  It then turns to just desert theory and principles of ordinal and cardinal proportionality to identify three ways in which vulnerability to serious harm may factor into sentencing.

In so doing, the Article advances the current debate about the relevance of individual suffering to retributivism and lays the theoretical groundwork for the consideration of vulnerability due to mental illness as a morally relevant element in sentencing decisions.

A moving memorial to Colorado prison chief Tom Clements from the Vera Institute of Justice

As reported in this new article, headlined "Colorado Parolee Killed in Texas Chase Likely Guilty of Slaying Prisons Chief," it looks like the person responsible for the murder of head of the Colorado prison system earlier this week may have already faced the ultimate punishment for the crime. But that reality does little to make up for the senseless loss; this new item posted at the Vera Institute of Justice blog, headed "In Memoriam: Tom Clements, Vera partner and friend," provides a sense of how great a loss this is. Here are excerpts:

The Vera Institute of Justice mourns the loss of Tom Clements, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, who was shot and killed at his home on March 19, 2013. The Vera family is shocked and saddened at this tragic news, and our hearts go out to Director Clements' family, friends, and colleagues. Many of us had the opportunity to work with Tom—some of us for many years. Most recently, he was a key leader and partner in Vera's European-American Prison Project, an initiative funded by the Prison Law Office which aims to advance an international dialogue around what works in corrections and stimulate reform efforts in the United States. Just last month, as part of this project, several Vera staff members had the privilege of spending a week travelling with Tom and the Colorado delegation, along with our other partners in the project, to tour prisons in Germany and the Netherlands.

"We are heartbroken by this news," said Michael Jacobson, president and director of Vera, who was on the European trip last month. "Tom was a thoughtful and dynamic leader, not only of his agency but as an important and influential national voice in the field of corrections. In addition, he was simply a lovely, warm, generous and thoughtful man."

Director Clements is deservedly recognized for his openness to smart and efficient corrections reform, which he brought to Colorado, where he came to help transform its system. Clearly, he was a great asset to the state. In just two years, he made significant progress in reducing the use of segregation, improving reentry, working with challenging populations such as gang members, and tackling the needs of the mentally ill and elderly incarcerated persons. After the trip to Europe, Tom and his team were eager to start planning and implementing ways to better prepare offenders to reenter the community, for instance with a mother-child unit and strategies to encourage inmate savings.

Most importantly, Tom was a deeply kind and thoughtful person whom we were fortunate to have had the opportunity to know. He will be deeply missed. According to Peggy McGarry, who directs Vera’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections, "Tom Clements was exactly the kind of gentle, kind, and good person who you want in charge of prisons. He only wanted what was best for those in his care—with no desire to control or hurt anyone. His smile was warm and reassuring, his intelligence quick and apparent. It is beyond comprehension that anyone would want to hurt this good man."

[In this post], we share some of the thoughts and remembrances of our colleagues who worked with Tom on the European-American Prison Project. We will add to this list as other colleagues contribute to it.

Talk of reforming prison realignment in California

As reported in this new AP piece, "Republican lawmakers proposed a package of bills on Tuesday intended to counter what they see as a growing threat to public safety from sending some inmates to county jails instead of state prisons."  Here is more:

The 13 bills seek to counter the effects of prison realignment in 2011 by improving supervision of parolees and increase penalties for sex offenders and those who illegally possess or sell firearms.  The measures also would send more convicts back to prison to ease the burden on local jails while protecting counties from lawsuits.

"Republicans recognize that we must close the worst realignment loopholes," said Assembly Minority Leader Connie Conway, R-Tulare.

The bills' chances are uncertain in a Legislature controlled by Democrats.  The measures were proposed nearly 18 months after Gov. Jerry Brown's prison realignment took effect, sending inmates convicted of lower-level crimes to county jails instead of state prisons....

A related bill was rejected last week on a party-line vote in the Assembly Public Safety Committee.  The bill, AB2 by Assemblyman Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga, would have sent paroled sex offenders back to state prisons, instead of county jails, if they fail to register as sex offenders.

The proposals have the backing of Diana Munoz, mother of Brandy Arreola, 21, of Stockton, who was permanently injured last year by her boyfriend, Raoul Leyva, a parole violator who had been released early from jail because of overcrowding.  Leyva, 34, was convicted last month of attempted voluntary manslaughter and injuring a spouse, with enhancements for causing brain injury and paralysis.

"If realignment didn't exist ... my daughter would be living her life normally," Munoz said as her daughter sat in a wheelchair by her side. "The state is responsible for what's happened to her. They should never have let him out."

Other bills in the Republican package would impose prison instead of jail time for criminals who remove their GPS-linked tracking devices; send all sex offenders who violate their parole back to prison' and have state parole agents, rather than county probation agencies, supervise all released sex offenders.  The proposals come amid rising concerns over the consequences of Brown's realignment law that took effect in October 2011.

The number of paroled sex offenders who are fugitives in California is 15 percent higher today than before realignment; counties are housing more than 1,100 inmates serving sentences of five years or more in jails designed for stays of a year or less; and inmate advocacy groups are beginning to sue counties over the same type of poor housing and treatment conditions that led to years of litigation and billions in additional costs for the state.

"Manhunt after head of Colorado Department of Corrections killed answering doorbell"

The title of this post is the headline of this disturbing breaking news from Colorado.  Here are the basics:

The head of the Colorado Department of Corrections was fatally shot when he answered the doorbell at his home Tuesday night, authorities say.

Sheriff's Lt. Jeff Kramer says Tom Clements was shot to death around 8:30 p.m. in the town of Monument, which is north of Colorado Springs.  It is unclear if his wife and two daughters were home at the time of the shooting and police are searching for the gunman....

In a letter to DOC employees, Governor John Hickenlooper confirmed that the 58-year-old had been killed, KDVR.com reported.  "We have no more details than that," Hickenlooper wrote.  "I am so sad. I have never worked with a better person than Tom, and I can’t imagine our team without him. … As your Executive Director, he helped change and improve DOC in two years more than most people could do in eight years."

BOP director puts numbers of federal correction costs for FY2011

Via this new Federal Register entry, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons announced the latest annual determination of the average cost of incarceration.  Here is the heart of the announcement:

28 CFR part 505 allows for assessment and collection of a fee to cover the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates.  We calculate this fee by dividing the number representing Bureau facilities’ monetary obligation (excluding activation costs) by the number of inmate-days incurred for the preceding fiscal year, and then by multiplying the quotient by 365.

Under § 505.2, the Director of the Bureau of Prisons determined that, based upon fiscal year 2011 data, the fee to cover the average cost of incarceration for Federal inmates in Fiscal Year 2011 was $28,893.40.  The average annual cost to confine an inmate in a Community Corrections Center for Fiscal Year 2011 was $26,163.

"Rethinking the Use of Community Supervision"

The title of this post is the title of this important new paper now available on SSRN and authored by Cecelia Klingele.  As practitioners and policy-makers know, the back-end of the criminal justice system and the use of alternatives to incarceration are critically important "real world" sentencing issues that only rarely get sustained attention from the legal academy.  I am so pleased that Cecelia Klingele is a leading voice help ensuring these important legal and policy issues get the scholarly attention they need and deserve.  Here is the abstract of her latest work in this regard:

Community supervision, whether in the form of probation or post-release supervision, is ordinarily framed as an alternative to incarceration.  For this reason, legal reformers intent on reducing America's disproportionately high incarceration rates often urge lawmakers to expand the use of community supervision, confident that diverting offenders to the community will significantly reduce over-reliance on incarceration.  Yet, on any given day, a significant percentage of new prisoners arrive at the prison gates not as a result of sentencing for a new crime, but because they have been revoked from probation or parole.  It is therefore fair to say that in many cases community supervision is not an alternative to imprisonment, but only a delayed form of it.

This Article examines the reasons why community supervision so often fails, and challenges popular assumptions about the role community supervision should play in efforts to reduce over-reliance on imprisonment.  While probation and post-release supervision serve important purposes in many cases, they are often imposed on the wrong people, and executed in ways that predictably lead to revocation.  To decrease the overuse of imprisonment, sentencing and correctional practices should therefore limit, rather than expand, the use of community supervision in three important ways.

First, terms of community supervision should be imposed in fewer cases, with alternatives ranging from fines to unconditional discharge to short jail terms imposed instead. Second, conditions of probation and post-release supervision should be imposed sparingly, and only when they directly correspond to a risk of re-offense.  Finally, terms of community supervision should be limited in duration, extending only long enough to facilitate a period of structured re-integration after sentencing or following a term of incarceration.

"The Conservative Case Against More Prisons"

The title of this post is the headline of this lengthy new piece authored by Vikrant Reddy and Marc Levin, senior policy advisers to the Right on Crime campaign, and now appearing in The American Conservative. Here is how it starts:

Since the 1980s, the United States has built prisons at a furious pace, and America now has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. 716 out of every 100,000 Americans are behind bars. By comparison, in England and Wales, only 149 out of every 100,000 people are incarcerated. In Australia — famously founded as a prison colony — the number is 130. In Canada, the number is 114.

Prisons, of course, are necessary.  In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne observed that “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil… as the site of a prison.”  As long as there are people, there will be conflict and crime, and there will be prisons.  Prisons, however, are not a source of pride.  An unusually high number of prison cells signals a society with too much crime, too much punishment, or both.

There are other ways to hold offenders — particularly nonviolent ones — accountable. These alternatives when properly implemented can lead to greater public safety and increase the likelihood that victims of crime will receive restitution.  The alternatives are also less costly.  Prisons are expensive (in some states, the cost of incarcerating an inmate for one year approaches $60,000), and just as policymakers should scrutinize government expenditures on social programs and demand accountability, they should do the same when it comes to prison spending.  None of this means making excuses for criminal behavior; it simply means “thinking outside the cell” when it comes to punishment and accountability.

This argument is increasingly made by prominent conservatives.  Bill Bennett, Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, Ed Meese, and Grover Norquist have all signed the Statement of Principles of Right On Crime, a campaign that advocates a position on criminal justice that is more rooted in limited-government principles.  They are joined as signatories by the conservative criminologist John Dilulio and by George Kelling, who helped usher in New York City’s successful data-driven policing efforts under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.  Some groups, like Prison Fellowship Ministries, approach the issue from a socially conservative perspective.  Others, like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the State Policy Network, have fiscal concerns top of mind.  Regardless, a sea change is underway in sentencing and corrections policy, and conservatives are leading it.

Smarter Sequestration: simple statutory ways to save prison monies (and avoid federal furloughs?)

I have been talking to a variety of federal criminal justice folks since sequestration became official on March 1, 2013, and there has been much buzz about possible furloughs.  And in his Senate testimony Wednesday, AG Eric Holder closed with this ominous comments about the impact of sequestration:

[C]uts are already having a significant negative impact not just on Department employees, but on programs that could directly impact the safety of Americans across the country. Important law enforcement and litigation programs are being disrupted.  Our capacity — to respond to crimes, investigate wrongdoing, and hold criminals accountable — has been reduced. And, despite our best efforts to limit the impact of sequestration, unless Congress quickly passes a balanced deficit reduction plan, the effects of these cuts — on our entire justice system, and on the American people — may be profound.

But, as my post title suggests, I think we could and should improve the administration of justice and save money if DOJ and BOP and others would use existing statutory mechanisms to reduce federal prison populations and costs.  FPD Steve Sady recently reminded me that, a year ago, the federal defenders, drawing from data gathered by the Government Accountability Office, provided a simple roadmap of action that could and should be taken now to reduce excessive sentencing practices which is could save hundreds of millions of dollars just by better implementing certain "smart sentencing" statutes.

The title of the federal defender report, which is available here, sets the tone: "GAO Report Reveals Multiple Ways To End The Waste Of Millions On Unnecessary Over-Incarceration." The full report is a dense account of BOP policies that lead to longer periods of incarceration than necessary to accomplish sentencing goals; the key recommendations suggest we could achieve large savings simply by providing some relief to the least dangerous and most deserving of federal prisoners. This executive summary from the report makes these essentials clear:

First, the GAO identified three statutory programs that, if fully implemented, would save taxpayer dollars that are now being wasted on unnecessary incarceration:

• The BOP underutilizes the residential drug abuse program (RDAP) incentive for nonviolent offenders. If inmates had received the full 12-month reduction from 2009 to 2011, the BOP would have saved up to $144 million. Much more would be saved if all statutorily eligible prisoners were allowed to participate.

• The BOP underutilizes available community corrections so that inmates serve an average of only 4 months of the available 12 months authorized by the Second Chance Act. Just by increasing home confinement by three months, the BOP could save up to $111.4 million each year.

• The BOP underutilizes available sentence modification authority for “extraordinary and compelling reasons,” depriving sentencing judges of the opportunity to reduce over-incarceration of deserving prisoners whose continued imprisonment involves some of the highest prison costs.

Second, the GAO confirmed that amending the good time credit statute to require that inmates serve no more than 85% of the sentence would better calibrate actual time served with the assumptions underlying the sentencing guidelines consulted at sentencing. Both the Department of Justice and the BOP favor the amendment. After the release of about 3,900 inmates in the first fiscal year, the BOP would continue to save about $40 million a year once the amendment was enacted.

Third, the GAO identifies cost savings that the BOP could realize simply by using available rules for executing and calculating sentences. For example, the BOP unilaterally abolished the shock incarceration program, spending unnecessary millions by replacing sentence reductions and increased home detention with prison time for nonviolent offenders with minimal criminal history. The BOP also fails to treat defendants’ time in immigration custody as “official detention,” an unnecessary policy that increases custody costs by creating dead time. The BOP should act immediately to end these and other unnecessary and wasteful policies.

Noting the intersection of mental illness and gender in incarceration nation

This recent article in the Denver Post, headlined "Two of three women in Colorado prisons diagnosed with psychological disorders," provides a notable window into the impact and import of issues of mental illness and gender with regard to who commits crimes and gets sent to prison for their crimes.  Here is how the piece starts:

The number of Colorado female prisoners diagnosed with psychological disorders has risen sharply to more than twice the level of male prisoners.

The women are almost without exception victims of severe sexual and physical abuse, experts say. They cycle through jail and prison, often because they don't get adequate treatment or community support.

"The trauma histories are extreme," said Theresa Stone, chief of mental health at Denver Women's Correctional Facility. "It's hard to hear what these women have been through."

While most women are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes, a certain percentage of them are committing increasingly violent acts, Stone said.

"Women are in many cases extremely violent," she said. "I think we're seeing the impact of abuse and mental illness."

The state prison system has in recent years taken great strides in diagnosing and addressing the needs of mentally ill women, Stone said. There is drug counseling, psychological treatment and group therapy. Some women live in highly structured therapeutic communities in special pods. The first step was identifying the true scope of the problem, Stone said.

In 2001, a Colorado Department of Corrections review determined that 39 percent of women incarcerated in Colorado were diagnosed with some type of mental illness. A Dec. 31 report says that 67 percent of those women are mentally ill.

That is slightly lower than the national rate of women incarcerated in prison. According to a December 2006 Department of Justice study, 73 percent of women in state prisons nationally have some type of mental disorder. Within the general population, 12 percent of women have a diagnosed mental disorder, the same report says.

The percentage of men in Colorado prisons with a diagnosed mental illness also increased dramatically in the same time frame — from 18 percent to 30 percent — but the ratio is less than half the level of female inmates.

The percentage of female prisoners suffering mental conditions, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depression, has always been high but many women hadn't been diagnosed, experts say. Many of the women also had declined to seek treatment until they were behind bars.

A notable first echo from Ohio's notable new early release law

This local AP article, headlined "Five should be freed, state prisons chief says," reaffirms my belief that Ohio is now a dynamic and important "state to watch" concerning modern sentencing law and practices. Here are the interesting details from this latest story in the important Buckeye chapter of modern sentencing reform:

Ohio’s prison chief has recommended the release of five inmates who have served 80 percent of their time. The recommendations, if approved, would mark the first use of a 2011 law meant to help reduce the state’s inmate population and save the state money.

Director Gary Mohr of the Department of Rehabilitation and Correction cited several reasons, including good behavior, for his recommendations in letters to judges, who have the final say. He also considered information from prison employees who are go-betweens with the prisons, the courts and the inmates.

The five inmates — two women and three men — are serving time mostly for low-level felonies, although one was convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide.

Prisons spokeswoman JoEllen Smith said the 80 percent release option encourages inmates to act responsibly in prison “and is significant in our effort to better communicate with courts and assist the eligible, suitable offenders in having a successful transition back into our communities.”

The 2011 law aims to save the state millions of dollars by shrinking the number of inmates and reducing the number of offenders who might return to prison as repeat offenders. By several measures, the law and other efforts are working.

Ohio’s prison population remains under 50,000 inmates, a level not seen since 2007. Also, the state reported on Feb. 22 that the number of inmates returning to Ohio prisons upon release has hit a new low, a trend officials attribute to a focus on keeping inmates in the community and the involvement of groups that work with inmates before their release.

Other factors Mohr considered in making his recommendations included little or no rule-breaking during incarceration; a history of participating in prison programs; and development of a plan for dealing with the release.

Inmate Mary Clinkscales of Summit County, sentenced to a seven-year prison term in 2007 for possession of drugs, is a prime candidate for release because of her activities in prison, according to a Feb. 15 letter from a go-between, called a justice reinvestment officer.

Clinkscales had just one rule infraction while imprisoned — wearing shorts that were not part of her state-issued clothing — said Suzanne Brooks, the agency’s Cleveland-area justice reinvestment officer.

Clinkscales has attended literacy, anger-management and family-values skills classes, worked on community service projects making hats and scarves and is not a gang member, Brooks said. All these factors, plus no previous prison sentence, make her a suitable candidate for release, Brooks said.

I am tempted at this point to jokingly suggest that it would make sense to expect that someone named "Clickscales" would at some point get sent to prison for a drug offense. But this new story about prison officials actually actively advocating for the early release of a few prisoners is too serious and important to make the basis of jokes about surnames. And speaking of serious and important, the five prisoners likely to get released first via this Ohio early release program ought to seriously understand how very important it will be for other prisoners and so many others throughout Ohio for them to fulfil the faith that Ohio's prison chief has in them.

There are lots of potential reactions and commentary justified by this story and the operationalization of the 2011 Ohio law meant to help reduce the state's inmate population and save the state money. For now, I want to focus on an important political reality in this Ohio "smart on crime" development: both houses of the Ohio General Assembly and the executive branch of Ohio were all in firm Republican control when Ohio enacted the broad-based sentencing reform that is now enabling at least five offenders to likely obtain early release from their prison sentences. For this reason (and others), I think prison reform is right now much better understood, at least at the state level, as a matter of avoiding the (budget) red rather than a matter of political debate among the blue and red sides of the aisle.

Proof of bad people or bad punishments or bad programming?

The quirky question in the title of this post is prompted by this notable local article from Pennsylvania, which is headlined "6 in 10 will re-offend: State prison study sets baseline for progress." Here are the details:

Secretary of Corrections John Wetzel on Thursday morning released what he's calling a "landmark study" into recidivism rates at Pennsylvania's state prisons, and the study is noted not for the progress shown, but rather for the lack of change demonstrated.

For more than a decade, a consistent six in ten people released from Pennsylvania state prisons were either re-arrested or put back in prison within three years. What's "landmark" about the study is in part its scope -- more than 12 years -- but largely the fact is sets a "baseline" for going forward.

Wetzel said it marks the first step toward measuring progress. "Citizens of the Commonwealth should have every expectation of a corrections system that actually helps people correct themselves; one that is based on research, not on anecdotal stories and innuendo," said Wetzel.

While population and cost "remain essential measurements" in Gov. Tom Corbett's Corrections Reform initiative, he said, "The 'new normal' is to expect and require quantifiable results."

The study, which Wetzel called "the keystone of the Corbett Corrections Reform initiative," also helps the Department of Corrections and the Board of Probation and Parole understand who is most likely to re-offend and how.  “To get a true picture of whether our state prison system is meeting its goal of reducing future crime, we need to look at more than just the reincarceration of an individual,” Wetzel said.  “We need to look at re-arrests as well to see the whole picture of how and when individuals come into contact again with the criminal justice system.”

For example, the study found that more than half of those who will return to prison within three years after release will do so within the first years, which is by far the most risky period for recidivism.  Younger offenders are more likely to recidivate than older offenders.  Individuals most likely to reoffend appear to be property offenders. Individuals least likely to reoffend are those incarcerated for driving under the influence of intoxicants, rape and arson.

The study looked prisoners' background as well and found a released inmate who has 10 or more prior arrests is greater than 6 times more likely to recidivate than a released inmate with no prior arrest history other than the arrest for the current stay in prison.

According to the study, nearly two-thirds of all reincarcerations within three years of release from prison are for technical parole violations.  Nearly three-fourths of rearrests within three years of release from prison are for less serious offenses.

The study also confirmed the damning portrait of Community Corrections Centers outlined in an earlier study performed by Dr. Edward Latessa of the University of Cincinnati.  From 2005 through 2011, inmates paroled to a Community Corrections Center were actually more likely to be back in prison within a year as inmates paroled directly home.

Wetzel said the Department of Corrections can save taxpayers $44.7 million annually by reducing the one-year reincarceration rate by 10 percentage points.

The full 45-page report referenced in this article is available at this link, and the cool infographic that explains the reports key findings comes from the PA Department of Corrections website.  One key finding reflected in the infographic is that less than one in five new arrests are for an act of violence.  The majority of rearrests are for drug or public order offenses or parole violations.

Obviously, lots of different conclusions and responses can be based in this new recidivism data.  But I think most important is to stay ever open-minded about what can be the most effective and efficient kinds of criminal justices responses.  This report apparently reveals that for some offenders in some cases recidivism may be lower in the absence of a certain kind of punishment or programming.  It is, of course, bad enough when the work of a department of corrections fails to actual help "correct" people.  But the ultimate form of government waste exists when there is evidence that the taxpayer funded work of the criminal justice system may be making people worse criminals.