Sentencing Law and Policy

Death penalty abolition, broadened gun rights, heroin surge, police (mis)conduct, reduced sentences ... so many suspects in Chicago murder spike and NYC murder decline

The headline of this post is my effort to make some sense of this past week's dueling crime news headlines coming from two of America's largest cities:

• "Chicago's grim murder trend blamed on light sentencing, misguided reforms"

• "New York City Murder Rate Drops To Historic Low"

As the title of my post is meant to suggest, I think there are so many notable legal and social developments that could be referenced in an effort to account for the increased mayhem in Chicago and the increased mildness in New York City.  Indeed, what is so remarkable is the reality that all of the high-profile developments referenced in the title of this post have occurred nearly in parallel in both jurisdictions over the last decade, and yet the potential impact of all these developments seems to be playing out so very differently.

In a number of prior posts in recent years (some of which I have linked below), I have tried to figure out what seems to be working and not working in these two big US cites and various others to reduce or increase violent crime. But, as some of the posts below suggest, it often seems that the only simple explanation for dynamic crime rate data is that they seem to defy simple explanations:

• Is there really a simple explanation for record-low homicide rate in NYC (or the increase in Chicago)?
• Do latest ugly gun crime numbers in Chicago disprove the "more guns, less crime" hypothesis?
• Notable (lack of) big crime news emerging from the Big Apple
• "Was there a Ferguson Effect on crime rates in large U.S. cities?"
• "A Most Violent Year: What left and right got wrong about crime in 2015"
• Guns, gangs, ganja, going after police ... are there obvious lessons from 2015 homicide spikes?
• FBI releases national crime data reporting 2014 continued historic crime declines
• Should we thank unleaded gas and the EPA for the great modern crime decline?

In praise of "The Record" created by The Marshall Project

Anyone and everyone who reads this blog ought by now be regularly checking out all the criminal justice reporting and referencing now done by The Marshall Project. And, wonderfully, this terrific resource is now also committed to archiving criminal justice stories through what it is calling The Record.  Via the week-ending email I get from The Marshall Project, here is what this new feature is all about:

The Record is the online library TMP staff has curated over the past two years of some of the best criminal justice reporting on the internet.  Here is a 14,000-entry collection of reporting about topics, including “sentencing reform” and “death penalty”; events like the “Charleston Church shooting,” and people, including “Kalief Browder” and our namesake, “Thurgood Marshall.” Check it out and please send us your feedback....

There are many reasons why we did this; my favorite is that by making it easier for journalists, lawyers, academics, and others to find criminal justice stories we improve the chances that those engaged in the countless debates to come will be armed with more historical context and perspective, not to mention good, old-fashioned facts. That point was emphatically made on Thursday— the very day we launched, right on cue — by Bill Clinton, whose sharp retort to "Black Lives Matter" protesters begged for a look back at the conditions and consequences of the 1994 Crime Bill (a category included in The Record). The story of that law, like every other contentious criminal justice policy, is complicated, more complicated than either the protestors or the former president have made it out to be.  If the stories contained in The Record help illustrate the contours of those complications, the nuances that get lost in the heat of the moment, the background that helps explain why some themes suddenly rush to the foreground, our work will have succeeded.

New draft article, "De-Policing," seems to provide empirical support for "Ferguson effect" claims

I just came across this notable new article on SSRN titled simply "De-Policing," which seems to provide some general empirical support for what is now being called the Ferguson Effect. The piece, authored by Stephen Rushin and Griffin Sims Edwards, seems empirically sophisticated (though I lack the talents to check the empiricism), and here is the abstract:

Critics have long claimed that when the law regulates police behavior it inadvertently reduces officer aggressiveness, thereby increasing crime.  This hypothesis has taken on new significance in recent years as prominent politicians and law enforcement leaders have argued that increased oversight of police officers in the wake of the events in Ferguson, Missouri has led to an increase in national crime rates.  Using a panel of American law enforcement agencies and difference-in-difference regression analyses, this Article tests whether the introduction of public scrutiny or external regulation is associated with changes in crime rates.

To do this, this Article relies on an original dataset of all police departments that have been subject to federally mandated reform under 42 U.S.C. § 14141 — the most invasive form of modern American police regulation.  This Article finds that the introduction of § 14141 regulation was associated with a statistically significant uptick in crime rates in affected jurisdictions. This uptick in crime was concentrated in the years immediately after federal intervention and diminished over time. This finding suggests that police departments may experience growing pains when faced with external regulation.

Latest USSC retroctivity data suggest prison savings approaching $2 billion from drugs-2 guideline amendment retroactivity

The US Sentencing Commission's website has this new document titled simply "2014 Drug Guidelines Amendment Retroactivity Data Report." This report, dated April 2016, provides "information concerning motions for a reduced sentence pursuant to the retroactive application of Amendment 782.  The data in this report reflects all motions decided through March 25, 2016 and for which court documentation was received, coded, and edited at the Commission by March 29, 2016."

The official data in the report indicate that, thanks to the USSC's decision to make its "drugs -2" guideline amendment retroactive, now 26,850 federal prisoners have had their federal drug prison sentences reduced by an average of two years.  So, using my typical (conservative) estimate of each extra year of imprisonment for federal drug offenders costing on average $35,000, the USSC's decision to make its "drugs -2" guideline amendment retroactive so far appears to be on track to save federal taxpayers around $1.9 billion dollars.  

As I have said before and will say again in this context, kudos to the US Sentencing Commission for providing at least some evidence that at least some government bureaucrats inside the Beltway will sometimes vote to reduce the size and costs of the federal government.  Perhaps more importantly, especially as federal statutory sentencing reforms remained stalled in Congress and as Prez Obama continues to be cautious in his use of his clemency power, this data provides still more evidence that the work of the US Sentencing Commission in particular and of the federal judiciary in general remains the most continuously important and consequential force influencing federal prison populations and sentencing outcomes.

Should we be linking nationwide crime spikes to heroin addiction and the black market it is driving?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by these two recent New York Times article:

• "Crime Spike in St. Louis Traced to Cheap Heroin and Mexican Cartels"

• "Heroin-Related Violence Mars a Colorado City’s Effort to Recover"

As with all short-term and long-term changes in crime rates and patterns, I am strongly disinclined to assert or even suggest that a single causal factor provides a simple account for what is transpiring.  That said, I do not think it is a mere coincidence that opioid problems and broader crime problems have been increasing together.

"Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and 'Cruel and Unusual' Punishment"

The title of this post is the title of this interesting new article by Alex Reinert now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The meaning of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause has long been hotly contested. For scholars and jurists who look to original meaning or intent, there is little direct contemporaneous evidence on which to rest any conclusion. For those who adopt a dynamic interpretive framework, the Supreme Court’s “evolving standards of decency” paradigm has surface appeal, but deep conflicts have arisen in application.  This Article offers a contextual account of the Eighth Amendment’s meaning that addresses both of these interpretive frames by situating the Amendment in eighteenth and nineteenth-century legal standards governing relationships of subordination.  In particular, I argue that the phrase “cruel and unusual punishment” was intertwined with pre- and post-Revolutionary notions of the permissible limits on the treatment of slaves.

The same standard that the Framers adopted for the treatment of prisoners in 1787 was contemporaneously emerging as the standard for holding slaveholders and others criminally and civilly liable for harsh treatment of slaves.  Indeed, by the middle of the nineteenth century, constitutional law, positive law, and common law converged to regulate the treatment of prisoners and slaves under the same “cruel and unusual” rubric.  Thus, when the Supreme Court of Virginia referred to prisoners in 1871 as “slaves of the State,” the description had more than rhetorical force.

Going beyond the superficial similarity in legal standards, examining how the “cruel and unusual” standard was explicated in the context of slavery offers important insights to current debates within the Eighth Amendment.  First, the contention by some originalists that the Punishments Clause does not encompass a proportionality principle is in tension with how courts interpreted the same language in the context of slavery. Indeed, relationships of subordination had long been formally governed by a principle of proportional and moderate “correction,” even though slavery in practice was characterized by extreme abuse.  Second, to the extent that dynamic constitutional interpretation supports limiting criminal punishment according to “evolving standards of decency,” the comparative law frame used here raises questions as to how far our standards have evolved.  This, in turn, should cause commentators and jurists to reconsider whether the twenty-first century lines we have drawn to regulate the constitutional bounds of punishment are adequate to advance the principle of basic human dignity that is thought to be at the heart of the Eighth Amendment.

Former Prez Clinton takes on protestors complaining about his tough-on-crime policies

This new Reuters article, headlined "Bill Clinton confronts protesters who say his crime reforms hurt blacks," reports on a notable exchange about crime and punishment involving former President Bill Clinton today. Here are the details:

Former President Bill Clinton faced down protesters angry at the impact his crime reforms of 20 years ago have had on black Americans and defended the record of Hillary Clinton, his wife, who is relying on the support of black voters in her quest for the presidency. The former president spent more than 10 minutes confronting the protesters at a campaign rally in Philadelphia for his wife on Thursday over criticisms that a 1994 crime bill he approved while president led to a surge in the imprisonment of black people....

In Philadelphia, several protesters heckled the former president mid-speech and held up signs, including one that read "CLINTON Crime Bill Destroyed Our Communities."

Video footage of Hillary Clinton defending the reforms in 1994 has been widely circulated during the campaign by activists in the Black Lives Matter protest movement. In the footage she calls young people in gangs "super-predators" who need to "be brought to heel." Hillary Clinton, 68, who also has faced protesters upset by her remarks, in February said she regretted her language.

Bill Clinton, 69, who was president from 1993-2001, on Thursday defended her 1994 remarks, which protesters say were racially insensitive, and suggested the protesters' anger was misplaced. "I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African-American children," he said, shaking his finger at a heckler as Clinton supporters cheered, according to video of the event. "Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She (Hillary Clinton) didn't."

"You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter," he told a protester. "Tell the truth."

Hillary Clinton promised to end "mass incarceration" in her first major speech of her campaign last year. She has won the support of the majority of black voters in every state nominating contest so far, often by a landslide....

Bill Clinton said last year that he regrets signing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law because it contributed to the country's high incarceration rate of black people for nonviolent crimes. On Thursday, he did not explicitly recant those regrets, but appeared to be angry at any suggestion the bill was wholly bad.

The legislation imposed tougher sentences, put thousands more police on the streets and helped fund the building of extra prisons. It was know for its federal "three strikes" provision that sent violent offenders to prison for life. The bill was backed by congressional Republicans and hailed at the time as a success for Clinton....

Bill Clinton's remarks on Thursday drew criticism online. Some saw him as dismissive of the Black Lives Matter movement, a national outgrowth of anger over a string of encounters in which police officers killed unarmed black people.

In praise of my Ohio State students and their research on marijuana law, policy and reform

Regular readers are familiar with my periodic collecting of posts from my Marijuana Law, Policy and Reform blog.  Today, however, I have the pleasure of collecting and praising the posts which have been done in recent weeks by my Ohio State College of Law seminar students in that space as they make class presentations on an array of fascinating topics:

• How does the legalization of marijuana in the US impact Mexican cartels?

• How will marijuana legalization affect the Fourth Amendment and the agents who utilize it?

• Looking closely at the history of marijuana propaganda

• "Big Marijuana": The Next "Big Tobacco" in 21st Century Modern Media?

• How will legalization of marijuana effect sports leagues policies regarding marijuana use?

• Examining the modern intersection of the drug war and deportations (with a special focus on marijuana)

• "District of Cannabis: Evaluating the Cannabis Legalization Regime in the Nation's Capital"

• The challenges of bankruptcy issues for marijuana businesses

New Jersey Supreme Court reverses murder sentence after trial judge says he always gives that sentence

A unanimous New Jersey Supreme Court today issued an interesting sentencing opinion today in NJ v. McFarlane, No. 075938 (April 7, 2016) (available here), which gets started this way:

Defendant chased an unarmed man, whom he was attempting to rob, and shot him in the back with a revolver.  The victim was alive and gasping for air after he fell to the ground, but defendant robbed him and left him to die.  Defendant was convicted of first-degree murder, among other things, and sentenced to sixty years in prison.

We are called upon to determine whether defendant’s sentence should be vacated and the matter remanded for resentencing before a different judge, because the trial judge remarked during a subsequent, unrelated status conference that he always gives sixty-year sentences to a defendant convicted by a jury of first-degree murder.  While we acknowledge the judge’s subsequent explanation for his remarks, preservation of the public’s confidence and trust in our system of criminal sentencing requires that the matter be remanded for resentencing by another judge of the same vicinage.

Public concerns about crime and violence increases, justifiably, along with increasing crime rates

This new report from Gallup, headlined "Americans' Concern About Crime Climbs to 15-Year High," details that it is not only politicians and researchers who have noticed that crime rates are up in recent years.  Here are the basic details:

Americans' level of concern about crime and violence is at its highest point in 15 years. Fifty-three percent of U.S. adults say they personally worry "a great deal" about crime and violence, an increase of 14 percentage points since 2014.  This figure is the highest Gallup has measured since March 2001.

Twenty-six percent of U.S. adults currently worry "a fair amount" about crime and violence, while 22% worry "only a little" or "not at all."

When Gallup first asked Americans about their level of concern regarding crime and violence in March 2001, 62% said they worried a great deal.  That figure remains the highest level of worry in Gallup's 15-year trend on this question. In the months leading up to 9/11, Americans consistently mentioned crime and violence as one of the most important problems facing the country in response to a separate Gallup question.  But after 9/11, crime and violence no longer appeared among the list of problems Americans identified as most important, with terrorism rising to the top.

In turn, the percentage saying they personally worry about crime and violence plunged to 49% by March 2002.  Crime worry remained at a lower level over the next decade, as Americans named other issues such as the situation in Iraq, terrorism, the economy, dissatisfaction with government and healthcare as the most important problems facing the country.  After falling to a record-low 39% in 2014, worry about crime and violence increased in 2015 and 2016.

The rise in Americans' level of concern about crime could reflect actual, albeit modest, increases in crime, as well as increasing media coverage of it.  The number of violent crimes reported to police across the country in the first half of 2015 was up by 1.7% compared with the same period in 2014, according to the FBI's 2015 Uniform Crime Report.  Many large U.S. cities reported spikes in their homicide rates in 2015, including Milwaukee, St. Louis, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. From a long-term perspective, though, violent crime is down significantly since the 1990s.

Disconcerting report on the (declining?) state of federal statutory sentencing reform efforts in Congress

This new New York Times report on the status and fate of federal statutory sentencing reform has me getting ever closer to asserting that the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act will not get to President Obama's desk before election day.  The piece is headlined "Garland Fight Overshadows Effort to Overhaul Sentencing Laws On Washington," and here are excerpts:

A bipartisan overhaul of criminal justice laws was supposed to be a defining issue of this Congress, a rare unifying moment for Republicans, Democrats and President Obama. Instead, the members of the Judiciary Committee who wrote the criminal justice package are at war over whether to consider Mr. Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick B. Garland.

This feud over the nomination has overshadowed the effort to reduce mandatory minimum sentences and ease the transition from prison. Now supporters of an overhaul are worried about its fate, especially with the Senate about to turn to a series of time­consuming spending bills and the electionyear calendar approaching a point where little gets done that is not absolutely necessary.

“If this is going to happen along with 12 appropriations bills, we are going to have to elbow our way into the queue,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, one of the chief Democratic authors of the bill. “The ball is now on the Republican side of the net.”

Before the death of Antonin Scalia in February created a Supreme Court vacancy, the criminal justice measure had already run into trouble from skeptical Senate Republicans, notably Tom Cotton of Arkansas. He contended that the proposed sentencing changes would result in the premature release of violent felons. And there were whispers about Willie Horton, the furloughed inmate who committed a rape while on release from a state prison in Massachusetts, a case that Republicans used in 1988 to portray Michael S. Dukakis, then the state’s governor and the Democratic nominee for president, as soft on crime.

The internal turbulence led Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, to urge Republican authors of the measure to consider changes to win over some doubters and ease party divisions. They have retooled the legislation, decreasing the chances of felons who carried guns in their crimes qualifying for lighter sentences, among other expected revisions. The changes have won the backing of at least one Republican senator, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, whose aides say will support the reworked bill.

One of its top Republican supporters says they are making progress. “We continue to do work on criminal justice reform, to try to meet some of the concerns that have been previously stated and to shore up support and show additional support both inside and outside the Capitol for those important reforms,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said Tuesday.

One problem backers of the bill have run into is that senators are questioning the political risk of supporting it when the measure might not go anywhere before the November elections. At the same time, some on the left contend that the measure has been too watered down.

Hoping to restore momentum, leaders of the U.S. Justice Action Network, a coalition of conservative and liberal groups behind the legislative effort, plan to bring leading advocates from around the country to Washington next week. They will meet with undecided senators and House members to make the case for the measure. The group has also scheduled a briefing for Senate staff members on Friday with former senior law enforcement officials to try to build support and ease doubts among Senate Republicans....Other backers of the measure, including some in the Senate, are expected to step up their push for the legislation next week as well, and new endorsements could be coming.

In the House, Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin recently reaffirmed his support for a criminal justice overhaul, calling himself a late convert to the cause and promising to move forward with legislation. “We’re going to bring criminal justice reform bills, which are now out of the Judiciary Committee, to the House floor and advance this,” he said in a recent question-­and-­answer session....

Some see a potential upside in the Supreme Court fight. Mr. McConnell could be more motivated to bring the criminal justice measure to the Senate floor to show that Republicans, who are under withering criticism from Democrats on a daily basis over the Garland nomination, can work in a bipartisan way and produce some accomplishments.

“Senator McConnell has one of the bigger incentives to work on this particular bill because it is one of the few, if not the only, things that the left and right agree on,” said Inimai M. Chettiar, director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan policy institute affiliated with the New York University School of Law.

What happens in the next few weeks will determine if the criminal justice effort has a chance this year.  Failure to find consensus would represent a major defeat not just for President Obama and congressional backers of the legislation, but also for the unusual coalition of disparate political forces that united behind it as an overdue course correction from the tough­-on-­crime approach of the 1990s.

I am starting now to worry that more than a few folks on the left may be disinclined to encourage Democratic Senators like Dick Durban to elbow the SRCA into the queue based on the hope that a big Democratic victory in November would enable a push for a more robust and far-reaching reform bill.  Moreover, as every day passes, it seem to me increasingly easy given various 2016 election timelines for any and every fence-sitting Senator to urge leadership to postpone a vote on federal sentencing reform at least until the 2016 lame duck sesssion or in the next Congress.

A few 2016 related posts:

• Politico reporting that (minor?) changes are being made to Senate's SRCA bill to appease GOP critics
• Mark Holden, GC at Koch Industries, makes "The Factual Case for Criminal Justice Reform"
• Former AG Mukasey delivers "clear" message to GOP on SRCA: "Law enforcement asks you to pass this bill."
• Is the Supreme Court fight already starting to "doom" federal statutory sentencing reform?
• Notable new comments and commitments on criminal justice reform from GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan
• Quick (inside-the-Beltway) reflections on the latest odds of those inside-the-Beltway getting federal sentencing reform done in 2016

 

UPDATE: I just came across this recent Roll Call piece striking similar themes and headlines "White House Eager to Rekindle Criminal Justice Effort: Cornyn 'optimistic' but GOP fissures, floor time posing problems."

"Normative Retroactivity"

The title of this post is the title of this timely new piece by William Berry now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

When the Court interprets the Constitution to accord a new right to criminal offenders, the question quickly becomes which prisoners might benefit from the new rule.  The current retroactivity doctrine relies on a confusing substance-procedure dichotomy.  Drawn from Teague v. Lane, this test often results in lower court splits on the retroactivity question.  Just this term, the Supreme Court has already decided the question of retroactivity in one case — Montgomery v. Louisiana, and has granted certiorari in another — Welch v. United States.

This Article rejects the substance-procedure dichotomy and offers a competing theoretical frame for considering the question of retroactivity.  Specifically, the Article develops the concept of “normative retroactivity,” arguing that retroactivity should relate directly to the normative impact of the new rule on previous guilt and sentencing determinations.  Further, the article advances a doctrinal test for assessing normative retroactivity of new rules of criminal constitutional law that combines the normative impact of the rule with a balancing test that weighs the applicable values of fundamental fairness and equality under the law against the competing values of finality, comity, and government financial burden.

Former coal exec gets maximum misdemeanor sentence for conspiracy to evade mine safety regulations

As reported in this AP piece, a federal "judge sentenced former coal executive Don Blankenship to a year in prison Wednesday for his role in the deadliest U.S. mine explosion in four decades, saying he was part of a 'dangerous conspiracy'."  Here is more on a high profile federal misdemeanor white-collar sentencing result:

One day after the sixth anniversary of the Upper Big Branch Mine explosion, which killed 29 men, U.S. District Judge Irene Berger gave the ex-Massey Energy CEO the maximum prison time and fine of $250,000. A federal jury convicted Blankenship on Dec. 3 of a misdemeanor conspiracy to violate mine safety standards at Upper Big Branch. MOBlankenship's attorneys contended he should receive probation and a fine, at most. The judge denied their motion for Blankenship to remain free as he appeals. It's not clear when he must report to prison.

As Blankenship left the courthouse, a few family members of miners who were killed started yelling at him while he and his attorneys spoke with reporters. "We buried our kid because of you," said Robert Atkins, whose son Jason died in the explosion.  "That's all I got is a goddamn tombstone."  Asked by a reporter what he had to say to the shouting family members, Blankenship said: "Well, just that the coal miners didn't cause the accident."...

U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez echoed prosecutors in saying the maximum punishment didn't fit the crime.  "This administration continues to support efforts in Congress to strengthen those penalties, and we stand ready to work with members who believe that no worker should lose their life for a paycheck," Perez said in a news release.

At Upper Big Branch, four investigations found worn and broken cutting equipment created a spark that ignited accumulations of coal dust and methane gas. Broken and clogged water sprayers then allowed what should have been a minor flare-up to become an inferno.  Blankenship disputes those reports.  He believes natural gas in the mine, and not methane gas and excess coal dust, was at the root of the explosion.

Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Moore Capito and the United Mine Workers of America spoke favorably about the decision.  The sentencing capped a wide-spanning investigation into Massey following the explosion. Four other workers in the corporate chain were convicted of crimes including faking a foreman's license, lying to federal investigators and conspiring in an illegal scheme to warn miners and other subsidiaries of surprise safety inspections.  Their sentences ranged from less than a year to more than three years in prison.

The judge described Blankenship's rise from a meager, single-mother Appalachian household to one of the wealthiest, most influential figures in the region and in the coal industry. "Instead of being to be able to tout you as a success story, we are here as a result of your part in a dangerous conspiracy," she said.

During the trial, prosecutors called Blankenship a bullish micromanager who meddled in the smallest details of Upper Big Branch.  They said Massey's safety programs were just a facade — never backed by more money to hire additional miners or take more time on safety tasks. Blankenship was acquitted of felonies that could have stretched his sentence to 30 years....

In 2011, Alpha Natural Resources, which bought Massey after the explosion, agreed to pay $210 million to compensate grieving families, bankroll cutting-edge safety improvements and pay for years of violations by Massey Energy.  Under the deal with federal prosecutors, Alpha wasn't criminally charged.  The judge already ruled that Blankenship won't have to pay $28 million in restitution to Alpha Natural Resources, helping him avoid a serious blow to his personal fortune.  Berger also ruled that Blankenship would not have to pay restitution to about 100 people, including former miners and family members.

Examining how Michigan, thanks to Montgomery, is struggling through Miller retroactivity

A couple of month ago I flagged here a press report on the legal and practical challenges unfolding in Pennsylvania after the Supreme Court's ruling in Montgomery v. Louisana forced the state to start dealing with all its now-unconstitutional mandatory juve LWOP sentences.  Now I see this similar story from Michigan headlined " Hundreds of Mich. juvenile lifer cases to be reviewed."  The lengthy and details article gets started this way:

Hundreds of killers sentenced to mandatory life without parole while in their teens could be resentenced this year, but a debate over how to process the cases has left prosecutors and lawyers in limbo. The Michigan Court of Appeals has been asked to decide whether a judge or jury should consider whether to give offenders new sentences. A hearing is anticipated, but a date to make arguments hasn’t been set.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that sentencing a person under 18 to life in prison without parole constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” The decision potentially affects 363 cases in Michigan dating to 1962.

Prosecutors have been required to provide a list to the chief judge in every county of the cases that may require resentencing. Wayne County has the most, at 152. Oakland is second with 49, followed by Genesee with 26 and Kent with 24. Macomb has 12 cases to be reconsidered for sentencing. Prosecutors will have to make legal motions to resentence those they feel still deserve life without parole. Other defendants will get a minimum of 25-40 years and a maximum of 60 years to serve before automatically being considered for parole.

Critics, including families of victims, argue mandatory resentencing may be unjust and open old wounds for victims who thought their cases were settled. Local law enforcement officials and prosecutors predict the process will be lengthy, costly and could further traumatize families.

Gov. Rick Snyder has recommended adding $1.1 million to the state budget to fund 11 full-time employees at the State Appellate Defenders Office for compliance with the Supreme Court ruling. But prosecutors, struggling with smaller staffs and tighter budgets, say they need more money too. Defense and appellate attorneys agree it’ll cost money to process the cases, but they argue it’s the right thing to do.

Many young offenders are immature, act impulsively and often are under the direction of older defendants, advocates say. Some juvenile lifers already have served beyond the minimum sentences that would have otherwise taken effect under resentencing, but for the pending hearing in the Michigan Court of Appeals.

“The bottom line is we’re not opening the doors and letting them all out — there will be a process and a hearing and some will be determined unfit for release,” said Valerie Newman, an assistant defender in the State Appellate Defenders Office. “And there will still be parole hearings.”

County prosecutors in Michigan say the process will take time, money and care to ensure that people who should be in prison stay there. St. Clair County Prosecutor Michael Wendling, who recently testified before a state Senate subcommittee on potential problems with resentencing, said: “It will tie up my staff and also challenge our resources — and I have only four cases; some counties have more than a hundred.” Wendling said after it is determined a case will be resentenced, it will mean locating victims, witnesses and experts and diverting assistant prosecutors from new cases.

Among Wendling’s old cases is one from 2010 in which Tia Skinner, then 17, plotted with a boyfriend to kill her parents after they took away her cellphone. Skinner has been resentenced twice, Wendling said. Another involves James Porter, then 17, of Yale who on one morning in 1982, balanced a .22 rifle on the handlebars of his bicycle, pedaled to the house of a friend with whom he had a dispute and fatally shot the teen and four family members. “I suspect we will be seeking the same sentences on all four of our juvenile lifers — these aren’t shoplifting cases,” Wendling said.

"How Drug Warriors Helped to Fuel the Opioid Epidemic"

The title of this post is the headline of this notable new Atlantic piece.  Here is how it starts and ends:

Despite almost 50 years of the drug war — a policy that creates black markets, enriches drug cartels, and fuels killing zones in scores of cities, even as it causes the United States to cage more human beings than any other democracy in the world — it remains extremely easy for Americans to acquire the most addictive, deadly drugs.

“Overdoses from heroin, prescription drugs, and opioid painkillers have overtaken car accidents to become the leading cause of injury-related deaths in America,” The Economist reports.  “In 2014, they were responsible for 28,647 deaths. Between 2001 and 2014, deaths from heroin overdoses alone increased six-fold, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.  On average, 125 people a day die from drug overdoses, 78 of them from heroin or painkillers. These numbers have been compared to deaths from HIV in the late 1980s and 1990s.”

Had the War on Drugs merely failed to prevent this epidemic, even as it destabilized numerous countries and undermined domestic liberties, it would be an abject failure.  But federal drug policy has actually been worse than useless in heroin’s rise.

In a saner world, American researchers and patients would’ve spent the last several decades experimenting with marijuana to maximize its potential as a pain reliever.  Pot use isn’t without health consequences, but is much less harmful than many prescription drugs.  Instead, drug warriors fought to stymie marijuana research, keep pot illegal, and stigmatize medical marijuana as a dangerous fraud, even as doctors prescribed more opioid painkillers — that is, medical heroin. Many get addicted, and when the pills run out, they seek a street substitute....

“What has made it previously difficult to emphasize treatment over criminal justice,” President Obama said last month, “is that the problem was identified as poor, minority, and as a consequence, the thinking was, it's often a character flaw in those individuals who live in those communities, and it's not our problem they're being locked up. One thing that's changed in this opioid debate is that it reaches everybody.  Because it's having an impact on so many people, we're seeing a bipartisan interest in addressing this problem … not just thinking in terms of criminalization or incarceration, which unfortunately has been our response to the disease of addiction."

But even today’s reformers are far too timid. The War on Drugs rages daily, and it is still a catastrophe.  The catastrophe is rooted in the black markets that federal policy creates.  It is exposed by the urban killing zones that those markets guarantee.  It is shown to be futile by the ease of acquiring the most addictive drugs despite prohibition. And it is exacerbated by decades of efforts to prevent milder drugs from serving as substitutes.  End it.

More reflections and criticisms of clemency work past, present and future

I reprinted here over the weekend a lovely and positive report by Lisa Rich about all the activity emerging from the White House last week on the important topic of clemency.  Thanks to Mark Osler, I have now learned that Thursday's extended "White House Briefing on Life After Clemency" can be watched in full via YouTube here. Here is how the event is described:

Building on the President's efforts to make our criminal justice system more fair by granting clemency to men and women sentenced under outdated sentencing rules, the briefing brings together academics, advocates and Administration officials seeking to remove obstacles to successful reentry. The briefing provides a collaborative environment to discuss and share ideas on the President's clemency initiative and ways to improve paths to reentry.

Critically, not everyone is having warm feelings about the work of Prez Obama and his administration's work to date in this arena.  In particular, Mark Osler followed up his participation in the White House briefing with this New York Times op-ed headlined "Obama’s Clemency Problem." Here are excerpts:

In the spring of 2014, the Obama administration announced an initiative to consider granting clemency to thousands of federal prisoners serving what Mr. Obama called “unjust” sentences for low-level drug crimes.  Federal prisoners were notified of the project, and more than 30,000 responded by submitting surveys to begin the process.

Despite the relatively high number of commutations that Mr. Obama has now granted, there are still more than 9,000 pending commutation cases, many of the sort singled out in the 2014 initiative as potentially worthy. So why has the president acted on so few?  Typically, a reluctance to exercise the pardon power is a result of political timidity.  But in this case, the Obama administration already took the political risk two years ago when it announced the clemency initiative.

The problem here is that too many cases can’t be adequately considered by the president because of a sluggish and often intransigent review process.  Clemency petitions undergo no fewer than seven levels of review, four of them within the Department of Justice.  Within the Justice Department, clemency petitions run not only through the Office of the Pardon Attorney but also through the office of the deputy attorney general.

When the pardon attorney, Deborah Leff, resigned in January, she complained in her letter of resignation that meritorious clemency cases had been thwarted by those above her. She noted in particular that some of her own recommendations had been overruled by the deputy attorney general, Sally Quillian Yates.  It is not an incidental fact that Ms. Yates is a career prosecutor.  When the Department of Justice reviews clemency cases, the opinions of prosecutors in the district of conviction are solicited and given considerable weight. But prosecutors are the wrong people for the task of vetting clemency cases.

I was a federal prosecutor for five years.  In that job, deciding someone’s fate is a necessary but difficult emotional commitment.  The prospect of being wrong — and a clemency initiative like Mr. Obama’s can feel like a judgment that prosecutors were wrong — can be a lot to bear.  We should not be surprised if, when it comes to Mr. Obama’s clemency initiative, prosecutors systematically resist what is, in effect, an indictment of their work.

President Obama can and should fix this problem with a simple executive order that places the Office of the Pardon Attorney in the White House, rather than at the bottom of the institutional structure at the Department of Justice.  An empowered pardon attorney (or perhaps a pardon board, as we find in many states) would then report directly to the president.  That would allow an independent but thorough review of clemency petitions free from the influence of career prosecutors.

And while Professor Osler is concerned about the slow and cumbersome process for considering clemency requests, this letter to AG Loretta Lynch authored by Senator Richard Shelby highlights that others are troubled by some of the few offenders who have already received sentence commutations.  Here is how Senator Shelby's letter gets started:

I am writing to you in response to yesterday’s announcement that President Barack Obama granted sentence commutations to 61 individuals. I have strong concerns that 12 of these 61 individuals were convicted of one, if not more, firearm-related offenses. These include:

• Seven convictions of possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime;
• Four convictions of possession of a firearm by a felon; and
• Two convictions of use of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking offense.

In August 2014, the Department of Justice announced its rubric for considering federal inmates for the President’s new initiative for executive clemency. Part of these criteria included: non-violent individuals who would not pose a threat to public safety if released; low-level offenders without significant ties to large-scale criminal organizations, gangs, or cartels; inmates who do not have a significant criminal history; and those who have no history of violence prior to, or during, their current term of imprisonment.

By my count, the President has commuted the sentences of over 200 of these “non-violent” federal inmates, of which 33 were convicted of firearm-related offenses.  I am troubled by the nature of the firearm-related convictions and the fact that some individuals are previously convicted felons who continued to commit crimes.  This announcement clearly demonstrates that the Administration is not following its own selection criteria.  Frankly, I am left wondering why the President and the Justice Department consider individuals who carry guns to drug deals as “non-violent”.

"Keeping Track: Surveillance, Control, and the Expansion of the Carceral State"

The title of this post is the title of this new article by Kathryne Young and Joan Petersilia which reviews a trio of criminal justice books. Here is the abstract:

This Review argues that an important root cause of our criminal justice ails can be found in the social processes that comprise the system’s daily activities and forms of control over individual Americans — processes largely taken for granted.  To explore the ground level interpersonal interactions that underpin the criminal justice system, we engage three recent books: Pulled Over: How Police Stops Define Race and Citizenship by Professors Charles Epp, Steven Maynard-Moody, and Donald Haider-Markel; On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City by Professor Alice Goffman; and The Eternal Criminal Record by Professor James Jacobs.

Substantively and methodologically, the books might first seem an odd trio.  But together, they reveal the importance of a key phenomenon: “surveillance” in the word’s broadest sense — keeping track of people’s movements, histories, relationships, homes, and activities.

Disconcerting data on racial skew in application of mandatory minimums in Iowa

This lengthy local article, headlined "Blacks hit hard by Iowa's mandatory sentences," reports on the disparity in the application of certain state sentences in the heartland. Here is how the article starts:

More than 1,190 inmates are serving time in Iowa prisons for violent crimes that, by law, require a specific number of years behind bars and at least 70 percent of the sentences be served before they're considered for parole.  And at least 35 percent of those inmates are black — in a state where 3.4 percent of the population is African-American.

If you want to know why Iowa imprisons a larger share of its black residents than almost any other state, mandatory minimum sentencing laws are one place to start, critics say.  Iowa's lopsided statistics have prompted the state’s Public Safety Advisory Board for three consecutive years to recommend that the Legislature ease sentencing mandates on two crimes — first- and second-degree robbery — that have been especially tough on African-Americans, said Thomas Walton, the board’s chairman and a Des Moines attorney.  During a four-decade period, 42 percent of Iowa inmates serving prison time for robbery were black, state data show.

A Des Moines Register review of robbery sentencing guidelines for 11 Midwestern states shows that Iowa’s are the most restrictive.  They allow the least amount of judicial discretion in determining how much time an offender will spend behind bars.  “The theory behind mandatory minimum sentences was, ‘Let’s lock them up for a longer period of time … and then we’ve avoided those re-offenses for the period of time that they’ve been incarcerated,’” Walton said. “Some of those assumptions, based on studies done by our board staff, were not necessarily correct.”

Iowa finds itself embroiled in the same debate raging nationally over the impact of mandatory minimum sentences, which were put in place during the get-tough-on-crime decades of the 1980s and '90s and have ballooned prison populations....

This year, the Iowa House, acting on part of the advisory board’s recommendation, approved a bill that includes loosening the mandatory minimum sentence for second-degree robbery.  Judges would have the discretion to say how much time an offender would serve — from three to seven years — before becoming eligible for parole on the 10-year sentence.  Now, offenders must serve at least seven years.

But Sen. Kevin Kinney, D-Oxford, filed an amendment stripping the proposal from House File 2064, which has not been voted on by the Senate.  “When there is a weapon brandished during a robbery, I have a hard time reducing the sentence,” said Kinney, a retired Johnson County sheriff’s officer.  “I just don’t want to reduce penalties for violent crimes.”

"Summary Injustice: A Look at Constitutional Deficiencies in South Carolina’s Summary Courts"

The title of this post is the title of this new report produced by National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) about low-level (in)justice in the low country. Here is a summary account via this press release of Summary Injustice:

In South Carolina, the bulk of criminal cases are low-level offenses heard in municipal and magistrate courts, collectively referred to as summary courts.  These courts often fail to inform defendants of the right to counsel, refuse to provide counsel to the poor at all stages of the criminal process, and force defendants who can’t afford to pay fines to instead serve time in jail.

“When you go to a summary court in South Carolina, you find yourself in a judicial netherworld where the police officer who made the arrest acts as the prosecutor, the judge may not have a law degree, and there are no lawyers in sight,” said Susan Dunn, legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina.  “By operating as if the Sixth Amendment doesn’t exist, these courts weigh the scales of justice so heavily against defendants that they often receive fines and jail time they don’t deserve.”

This report documents the constitutional violations observed by attorneys with NACDL and the ACLU in 27 different courts throughout the state during several weeks between December 2014 and July 2015, including multiple stories from defendants.  The U.S. Constitution guarantees that a person accused of a crime and who faces loss of life or liberty as punishment has the right to a lawyer even if he or she can’t afford one.

“Many, if not most, people will read this report and be shocked by the numerous and profound constitutional deficiencies in South Carolina’s summary courts as observed by NACDL and the ACLU since they began this research in 2014,” said longtime Rock Hill, South Carolina, criminal defense lawyer and NACDL Treasurer Chris Wellborn. “Sadly, as someone who has spent my career representing the criminally accused in South Carolina, I am only able to underscore how pervasively these courts have been disregarding the rights of the people of South Carolina, and that it’s been like this for decades.”

NACDL President E.G. “Gerry” Morris said: “While this important report, and a forthcoming second report to be released later this year, is focused on South Carolina, it is part of a larger initiative to study state level public defense delivery systems across the nation.  The ultimate goal is to identify and document weaknesses in different public defense delivery systems that must be remedied as well as to highlight strengths and successes in systems that can and should be replicated elsewhere.  More than 50 years after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, the people of America are entitled to nothing less than to have their courts respect the very rights recognized and protected by the Constitution.  NACDL will not waver in its mission to shine the light brightly on systems where that is not happening, and to offer policymakers effective solutions to what is quite clearly a widespread problem of constitutional dimensions.”

Senators Grassley and Feinstein convening hearing on whether DOJ is "Adequately Protecting the Public" from state marijuana reforms

This recent press release from US Senate's Caucus on International Narcotics Control details that this caucus has a hearing scheduled to explore how the federal government is keeping an eye on state-level marijuana reforms. (Exactly what this has to do with international control is unclear, but big-government drug warriors on both sides of the political aisle like Senators Grassley and Feinstein have never really been too keen to worry about limiting government growth in this arena.) Here are the basic details on what is prompting this hearing:

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the Caucus on International Narcotics Control, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Co-chairman of the Caucus on International Narcotics Control, will hold a hearing entitled, “Is the Department of Justice Adequately Protecting the Public from the Impact of State Recreational Marijuana Legalization?”

In August 2013, the Obama Administration decided to effectively suspend enforcement of federal law on marijuana in states that legalized it for recreational use. But to disguise its policy as prosecutorial discretion, the Administration also announced federal priorities that it claimed would guide its enforcement going forward. These priorities include preventing marijuana from being distributed to minors, stopping the diversion of marijuana into states that haven’t legalized it, and preventing adverse public health effects from marijuana use. At the time, the Justice Department warned that if state efforts weren’t enough to protect the public, then the federal government might step up its enforcement or even challenge the state laws themselves. This put the responsibility on the Department of Justice to monitor developments in these states, develop metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of its policy, and change course if developments warranted.

But a report from the Government Accountability Office that Grassley and Feinstein requested found that the Administration doesn’t have a documented plan to monitor the effects of state legalization on any of these priorities. Moreover, according to the report, officials at the Department could not even say how they make use of any information they receive related to these priorities. Grassley and Feinstein are convening this hearing to explore this problem.

What I find most notable and disconcerting about this hearing is that it claims to be exploring whether the big federal government bureaucrats inside the Beltway at DOJ who are very far removed from direct public accountability are "protecting the public" from state reforms in Alaska and Colorado and Oregon and Washington which were enacted directly by the public through voter initiatives.

Cross posted at Marijuana Law, Policy and Reform.

Lots of little SCOTUS criminal justice work to start April

April is always an exciting month for me as both a sports fan and a SCOTUS watcher: as a sports fan, I have the certain joys of the start of the MLB baseball season, the Masters, and the start of the "real" season in the NBA and NHL; as a SCOTUS watcher, I have the uncertain joys of anticipating the Justices winding down its current Term by perhaps handing down some big criminal justice opinions or cert grants.  And just as the MLB season is off to something of a cold April start — e.g., it was 39 degrees for the very first pitch yesterday in Pittsbugh, and today's Yankees game has already been postponed — so too is SCOTUS keeping it cool in the criminal justice arena at the start of April.

Specifically, the Justices kicked off one of my favorite months with three little criminal justice developments:

1. A cert grant in Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado to consider "whether a no-impeachment rule constitutionally may bar evidence of racial bias offered to prove a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to an impartial jury";

2. A per curiam opinion in Woods v. Etherton to summarily reverse on AEDPA defenence grounds a decision by the Sixth Circuit in favor of a state habeas petitioner;

3. A unanimous opinion in Nichols v. US to hold that SORNA did not require a sex offender to update his registration in Kansas once he departed the State for the Phillipines. 

If I did not have to obssess over a number of other matters this morning (including whether I managed to acquire any fantasy baseball sleepers during my draft this past weekend), I might be able to find some sleeper SCOTUS story to discuss within these developments. But absent readers helping me identify something big in these seemingly little developments, I am likely to move on to other bloggy matters (such as continuing to speculate how Justice Scalia's untimely demise has been impacting the Court's work in criminal justice cases).

"Subconstitutional Checks"

The title of this post is the title of this great-looking new paper authored by Shima Baradaran Baughman now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Constitutional checks are an important part of the American justice system.  The Constitution demands structural checks where it provides commensurate power.  The Constitution includes several explicit checks in criminal law. Criminal defendants have the right to counsel, indictment by grand jury, trial by jury, the public or executive elects or appoints prosecutors, legislatures limit actions of police and prosecutors, and courts enforce individual constitutional rights and stop executive misconduct.  However, these checks have rarely functioned as intended by the constitution and criminal law has failed to create — what I call — “subconstitutional checks” to adapt to the changes of the modern criminal state.

Subconstitutional checks are stopgaps formed in the three branches of government to effectuate the rights in the constitution when the system is stalled in dysfunction, when one branch has subjugated the others, or when two or more branches have colluded with one another.  The need for sub constitutional checks is evident in the criminal arena. In the modern criminal state, plea agreements have virtually replaced jury trials, discipline and electoral competition between prosecutors is rare, separation of powers does not serve its purpose because the interests of all branches are often aligned, and individual constitutional rights have little real power to protect defendants from the state.

As a result, the lack of structural constitutional checks in criminal law has lead to constitutional dysfunction.  Though never recognized as such, constitutional dysfunction in criminal law is evidenced by mass incarceration, wrongful convictions, overly harsh legislation, and an inability to stop prosecutor and police misconduct.  This Article sheds light on the lack of constitutional checks by performing an external constitutional critique of the criminal justice system to explore this structural gap in the three branches and concludes that creating subconstitutional checks has the potential of reducing criminal dysfunction and creating a more balanced criminal justice system.

A more positive spin on clemency developments and more positive aspects

Regular readers may grow somewhat tired of hearing me kvetch about President Obama being much more willing to talk the talk than walk the walk when it comes to criminal justice reform generally and clemency developments in particular. For that reason (and others), I invited always sunny Lisa Rich to provide for blogging her sunny perspective on clemency events that transpired at the White House last week. Here is what she was kind enough to send my way for posting:

A somewhat sentimental post by Lisa A. Rich, former director of Legislative & Public Affairs at the U.S. Sentencing Commission and current director of the Texas A&M School of Law Residency Externship Program in Public Policy:

Last Week, I had the privilege of joining not only the tireless advocates of the Justice Roundtable and White House staff but over two dozen recipients of clemency spanning four presidencies during the Justice Roundtable and White House Briefings on “Life After Clemency.”

Personally, it was a joy to see all of the people — Nkechi Taifa, Mark Osler, Cynthia Rosenberry, Jesselyn McCurdy, Julie Stewart, Margy Love, and so many others who have been working tirelessly to answer the Obama Adminstration’s call to action on clemency.  I am in awe of the ceaseless dedication these advocates demonstrate every day in their pursuit of hope and justice for those human beings who deserve a chance to be something so much more than a statistic in our cycle of mass incarceration. These advocates and those for whom they do their jobs are the role models I discuss in my classes and they are the ones who inspire me to be better.

But more than my personal connection with those I miss because I am no longer living in D.C., the events over these past three days were important for two reasons.  First, all of us, including the President and White House staff saw and heard what hope is all about.  We heard from clemency recipients about heartache, mistake, and loss being turned into determination, faith, and commitment.  We heard people who genuinely want to make their communities and their lives better, stronger, and happier.  I am delighted that policymakers inside and outside of Washington are taking the opportunity to get to know these people — as people, not numbers, not workload, not files on a desk.

Second, I was pleased that two of my students were in the audience — and in fact had been given the opportunity to be involved in preparing for these events.  As part of Texas A&M School of Law’s new externship program in public policy, these students got to see policymaking in action from start to finish; they got to see firsthand the effects of both good and bad policy decisions.  Their experiences may not seem all that different from the hundreds of law students who go to D.C. and elsewhere each semester to partake in policy but it actually was a defining moment for me and them.  These students are the future policymakers and advocates.  To me, the events of these past three days were not just about hope for those impacted by outdated laws and poor decision making, but hope that the next generation of lawyers, policymakers, and advocates being trained by the brilliant people who participated in these events will learn from our mistakes; that they will engage in sound decision making based on evidence and best practices; that they will carry on the work done so well by so many. As an advocate and a teacher that is what hope is all about.

Might the US be willing to learn from the German prison experience?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new Huffington Post commentary by Vincent Schiraldi, headlined "What we can learn from German prisons."  The commentary provides a bit of a preview of this segment to air tonight on 60 Minutes under the title "This is prison? 60 Minutes goes to Germany: Germany's prison system keeps convicts comfortable, costs less and has lower recidivism rates, but would Americans ever accept it?".  Here is the start of the Huffington Post piece:

On Sunday, April 3, 60 Minutes will air a story on several U.S. delegations to German prisons by advocates, researchers and public officials that should be mandatory viewing for anyone who works in or cares about America’s massive prison problem. In a country that has only a fraction of our incarceration rate, even Germany’s deepest-end prisons are humane and decent in ways that, at least at present, are difficult to fathom in the U.S. context.

The groups who funded or organized the trips - the Vera Institute of Justice, John Jay College of Justice, and the Prison Law Office - hope to change that. Inspired by these delegations, when I was working for Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Office of Criminal Justice, I organized a study tour to one of the prisons they had visited - the Neustrelitz Prison near Berlin, which houses adolescents and young adults.

The place couldn’t have been more different than a U.S. prison or juvenile facility. In fact, it was a bit of both, because young people are allowed to be tried in Germany’s juvenile courts up to age 21, unlike U.S. juvenile courts whose jurisdiction expires somewhere between ages 16 and 18, depending on the state.

The young people we met were all involved in programming from farming, to wood shop, to metal work, to in-depth therapy. The freedom of movement was extraordinary, with most youth sleeping in unlocked rooms at night and eventually going on home visits and transitioning out to daytime work, returning to the facility at night. Sentences were much shorter than those experienced by people locked up in the U.S., which partially explains why only 79 out of every 100,000 Germans are behind bars, compared to America’s world-leading incarceration rate of 700 per 100,000.