Sentencing Law and Policy

"Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2018"

The Prison Policy Initiative has an updated version of its terrific incarceration "pie" graphic and report now at this link. Here is part of the report's introductory text and subsequent discussion:

Can it really be true that most people in jail are being held before trial? And how much of mass incarceration is a result of the war on drugs? These questions are harder to answer than you might think, because our country’s systems of confinement are so fragmented. The various government agencies involved in the justice system collect a lot of critical data, but it is not designed to help policymakers or the public understand what’s going on. Meaningful criminal justice reform that reduces the massive scale of incarceration, however, requires that we start with the big picture.

This report offers some much needed clarity by piecing together this country’s disparate systems of confinement. The American criminal justice system holds almost 2.3 million people in 1,719 state prisons, 102 federal prisons, 1,852 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,163 local jails, and 80 Indian Country jails as well as in military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories. And we go deeper to provide further detail on why people are locked up in all of those different types of facilities.

This big-picture view allows us to focus on the most important drivers of mass incarceration and identify important, but often ignored, systems of confinement. The detailed views bring these overlooked parts of the “pie” to light, from immigration detention to civil commitment and youth confinement. In particular, local jails often receive short shrift in larger discussions about criminal justice, but they play a critical role as “incarceration’s front door” and have a far greater impact than the daily number suggests.

While this pie chart provides a comprehensive snapshot of our correctional system, the graphic does not capture the enormous churn in and out of our correctional facilities and the far larger universe of people whose lives are affected by the criminal justice system. Every year, 626,000 people walk out of prison gates, but people go to jail 10.6 million times each year. Jail churn is particularly high because most people in jails have not been convicted. Some have just been arrested and will make bail in the next few hours or days, and others are too poor to make bail and must remain behind bars until their trial. Only a small number (150,000 on any given day) have been convicted, generally serving misdemeanors sentences under a year.

With a sense of the big picture, a common follow-up question might be: how many people are locked up for a drug offense? We know that almost half a million people are locked up because of a drug offense. The data confirms that nonviolent drug convictions are a defining characteristic of the federal prison system, but play only a supporting role at the state and local levels. While most people in state and local facilities are not locked up for drug offenses, most states’ continued practice of arresting people for drug possession destabilizes individual lives and communities. Drug arrests give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, which then reduce employment prospects and increase the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses....

While this “whole pie” provides the most inclusive view of the various systems of confinement in the U.S. justice system available, these snapshots can’t capture all of the important systemic issues. Once we have wrapped our minds around the “whole pie” of mass incarceration, for example, we should zoom out and note that being locked up is just one piece of the larger pie of correctional control. There are another 840,000 people on parole and a staggering 3.7 million people on probation. Particularly given the often onerous conditions of probation, policymakers should be cautious of “alternatives to incarceration” that can easily widen the net of criminalization to people who are not a threat to public safety.

Beyond identifying the parts of the criminal justice system that impact the most people, we should also focus on who is most impacted and who is left behind by policy change. For example, people of color are dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Blacks, who make up 40% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 13% of U.S residents. Gender disparities matter too: rates of incarceration have grown even faster for women than for men. As policymakers continue to push for reforms that reduce incarceration, they should avoid changes that will widen disparities, as has happened with juvenile confinement and with women in state prisons....

[A]rmed with the big picture of how many people are locked up in the United States, where, and why, we have a better foundation for the long overdue conversation about criminal justice reform. For example, the data makes it clear that ending the War on Drugs will not alone end mass incarceration, but that the federal government and some states have effectively reduced their incarcerated populations by turning to drug policy reform. Looking at the “whole pie” also opens up other conversations about where we should focus our energies:

• What is the role of the federal government in ending mass incarceration? The federal prison system is just a small slice of the total pie, but the federal government can certainly use its financial and ideological power to incentivize and illuminate better paths forward. At the same time, how can elected sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges slow the flow of people into the criminal justice system?
• Are state officials and prosecutors willing to rethink both the War on Drugs and the reflexive policies that have served to increase both the odds of incarceration and length of stay for “violent” offenses?
• Do policymakers and the public have the focus to confront the second largest slice of the pie: the thousands of locally administered jails? And does it even make sense to arrest millions of poor people each year for minor offenses, make them post money bail, and then lock them up when they can’t afford to pay it? Will our leaders be brave enough to redirect corrections spending to smarter investments like community-based drug treatment and job training?
• Can we implement reforms that both reduce the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. and the well-known racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system?

New Philly DA puts forward new policies intended to "end mass incarceration and bring balance back to sentencing"

This Slate article, headlined "Philadelphia’s New Top Prosecutor Is Rolling Out Wild, Unprecedented Criminal Justice Reforms," reports on the remarkable new policies put forward by the former defense attorney who is the newly elected Philly DA.  Here are highlights:

On Tuesday, Krasner issued a memo to his staff making official a wave of new policies he had announced his attorneys last month. The memo starts: “These policies are an effort to end mass incarceration and bring balance back to sentencing.”

The most significant and groundbreaking reform is how he has instructed assistant district attorneys to wield their most powerful tool: plea offers. Over 90 percent of criminal cases nationwide are decided in plea bargains, a system which has been broken beyond repair by mandatory minimum sentences and standardized prosecutorial excess. In an about-face from how these transactions typically work, Krasner’s 300 lawyers are to start many plea offers at the low end of sentencing guidelines. For most nonviolent and nonsexual crimes, or economic crimes below a $50,000 threshold, Krasner’s lawyers are now to offer defendants sentences below the bottom end of the state’s guidelines. So, for example, if a person with no prior convictions is accused of breaking into a store at night and emptying the cash register, he would normally face up to 14 months in jail. Under Krasner’s paradigm, he’ll be offered probation. If prosecutors want to use their discretion to deviate from these guidelines, say if a person has a particularly troubling rap sheet, Krasner must personally sign off.

“It’s the mirror of a lot of offices saying, ‘If you don’t ask for the max you’ve got to get my permission,’ ” says David Rudovsky, a prominent Philadelphia civil rights attorney. For longtime career prosecutors, this will take some getting used to. “You want to be sure your assistants are actually doing it,” Rudovsky says.

Krasner’s lawyers are also now to decline charges for marijuana possession, no matter the weight, effectively decriminalizing possession of the drug in the city for all nonfederal cases. Sex workers will not be charged with prostitution unless they have more than two priors, in which case they’ll be diverted to a specialized court. Retail theft under $500 is no longer a misdemeanor in the eyes of Philly prosecutors, but a summary offense—the lowest possible criminal charge. And when ADAs give probation charges they are to opt for the lower end of the possible spectrum. “Criminological studies show that most violations of probation occur within the first 12 months,” the memo reads, “Assuming that a defendant is violation free for 12 months, any remaining probation is simply excess baggage requiring unnecessary expenditure of funds for supervision.” When a person does break the rules of probation, minor infractions such as missing a PO meeting are not to be punished with jail time or probation revocation, and more serious infractions are to be disciplined with no more than two years in jail.

In a move that may have less impact on the lives of defendants, but is very on-brand for Kranser, prosecutors must now calculate the amount of money a sentence would cost before recommending it to a judge, and argue why the cost is justified. He estimates that it costs $115 a day, or $42,000 a year, to incarcerate one person. So, if a prosecutor seeks a three-year sentence, she must state, on the record, that it would cost taxpayers $126,000 and explain why she thinks this cost is justified. Krasner reminds his attorneys that the cost of one year of unnecessary incarceration “is in the range of the cost of one year’s salary for a beginning teacher, police officer, fire fighter, social worker, Assistant District Attorney, or addiction counselor.”

The policies memo is available at this link, and all sentencing fans will want to check out the entire document.

The latest account of Trump Administration's latest punitive ideas for responding to drug problems

Politico has this lengthy new article reviewing the soon-to-be-released (and perhaps still in development) plan from the Trump Administration to respond to the opioid crisis and other drug problems.  The piece is headlined "Trump finalizing opioid plan that includes death penalty for dealers," and here are excerpts (with an emphasis on punishment pieces though it seems there will be important public health parts to the coming plan):

The Trump administration is finalizing a long-awaited plan that it says will solve the opioid crisis, but it also calls for law enforcement measures — like the death penalty for some drug dealers — that public health advocates and congressional Republicans warn will detract from efforts to reverse the epidemic.

The ambitious plan, which the White House has quietly been circulating among political appointees this month, could be announced as soon as Monday when President Donald Trump visits New Hampshire, a state hard hit by the epidemic. It includes a mix of prevention and treatment measures that advocates have long endorsed, as well as beefed-up enforcement in line with the president’s frequent calls for a harsh crackdown on drug traffickers and dealers.

Trump’s plan to use the death penalty in some cases found at least one fan among congressional Republicans: Rep. Chris Collins of New York, one of the president’s most consistent cheerleaders. “I’m all in on the capital punishment side for those offenses that would warrant that,” he said when asked about the plans Thursday afternoon. “Including drug cases. Yep.”

But several congressional Democrats said they were alarmed by Trump's plan to ramp up punishment. “We are still paying the costs for one failed 'war on drugs,' and now President Trump is drawing up battle plans for another," said Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts. "We will not incarcerate or execute our way out of the opioid epidemic."

The White House's most concrete proposal yet to address opioids comes after complaints from state health officials and advocates that Trump has moved too slowly to combat the epidemic after his bold campaign promises to wipe out the crisis touching all parts of the country.

However, the plan could cost billions of dollars more than Trump budgeted — and likely far more than any funding package that Congress would approve — raising questions about how much of it can actually be put into practice. Trump's emphatic embrace of the death penalty for some drug dealers has also alarmed some advocates, who say the idea has been ineffective when tried in other countries and resurrects the nation’s unsuccessful war on drugs.

Under the most recent version of the plan, which has gone through several revisions, the Trump administration proposes to change how the government pays for opioid prescriptions to limit access to powerful painkillers. It also calls on Congress to change how Medicaid pays for treatment, seeking to make it easier for patients with addictions to get inpatient care. It would also create a new Justice Department task force that more aggressively monitors internet sales....

POLITICO obtained two versions of the White House plan and spoke with four individuals who have reviewed it. The White House confirmed that a plan was in development but didn’t respond to multiple requests for further comment. Many of the measures in the plan were recommended by the president’s opioids commission last fall or discussed at a March 1 White House opioid summit. For instance, it endorses a long-promised priority: greatly expanding first responders' access to naloxone, a medication used to reverse opioid overdoses. It also calls on states to adopt a prescription drug monitoring database that health care providers can access nationwide to flag patients seeking out numerous opioid prescriptions.

On the policing side, the plan would ramp up prosecution and punishment, underscoring the tension in how public health advocates and law enforcement officials approach the crisis. Public health advocates say the nation's opioid epidemic should be treated as a disease, with emphasis on boosting underfunded treatment and prevention programs. But some law enforcement officials back tougher punishments as a deterrent, especially for drug dealers. The two camps don’t always see eye-to-eye, at times pitting HHS and DOJ officials against each other. “There is a lot of internal dissension between the health folks and the enforcement folks,” said an official involved in the crafting of the plan.

While Trump this month repeatedly suggested using the death penalty to deter drug dealers and traffickers — an idea roundly opposed by public health advocates — many lawmakers have said they weren’t sure whether to take the idea seriously. “I would have to strongly evaluate and look at any proposal like that,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) on Wednesday. “I don’t know if the president was serious or just said it off the cuff. … It’s a big issue when you decide to bring a capital case or pass a law that allows for capital punishment.”

According to language circulating this week, the Trump administration will call for the death penalty as an option in "certain cases where opioid, including Fentanyl-related, drug dealing and trafficking are directly responsible for death."

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), whose home state is one of the hardest hit by the opioid epidemic, said she doesn't support the death penalty for drug cases. “I mean, I get the message he’s delivering: We’ve got to treat it seriously,” she said. “I don’t see that that’s going to solve the problem.”

The White House plan also calls for making it easier to invoke the mandatory minimum sentence for drug traffickers who knowingly distribute illegal opioids that can be lethal, like fentanyl. It also proposes a new Justice Department task force known as “Prescription Interdiction and Litigation,” or PIL, which would be empowered to step up prosecutions of criminally negligent doctors, pharmacies and other providers.

As serious sentencing fans perhaps already realize, though any proposal for the death penalty for drug dealers is sure to garner a lot of attention, proposals to expand the reach or application of mandatory minimum sentences are sure to be far more consequential to the day-to-day operation of the federal criminal justice system.

Prior related posts:

• Trump Administration reportedly looking (seriously?) at the death penalty for serious drug dealers 
• Prez Trump reportedly "would love to have a law to execute all drug dealers here in America"
• Prez Trump talks up "very strong" criminal penalties "with respect to the pushers and to the drug dealers" 
• Notable report of AG Sessions seeking more federal death sentences, but what about carrying out those long ago imposed? 

"Mandatory Minimum Penalties for Firearms Offenses in the Federal Criminal Justice System"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new 80-page report issued today by the United States Sentencing Commission. Here is the USSC's Summary and account of Key Findings from this webpage:

This publication is the third in the Commission’s series on mandatory minimum penalties. Using fiscal year 2016 data, this publication includes analyses of the two statutes carrying a firearms mandatory minimum penalty, 18 U.S.C. § 924(c) (relating to using or possessing firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking or crimes of violence) and the Armed Career Criminal Act, 18 U.S.C. § 924(e), as well as the impact of those provisions on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) population. Where appropriate, the publication highlights changes and trends since the Commission’s 2011 Mandatory Minimum Report....

Building directly on previous reports and the analyses set forth in the 2017 Overview Publication, this publication examines the use and impact of mandatory minimum penalties for firearms offenses. As part of this analysis, the Commission makes the following key findings:

Firearms mandatory minimum penalties continue to result in long sentences although they have decreased since fiscal year 2010.

• In fiscal year 2016, offenders convicted under section 924(c) received an average sentence of over 12 years (151 months) of imprisonment, which is 13 months less than in fiscal year 2010. The average sentence length depended on the applicable mandatory minimum penalty under section 924(c), increasing from 118 months for the five-year mandatory minimum penalty to 302 months where a 30-year mandatory minimum penalty applied.
• Similarly, in fiscal year 2016, offenders convicted of an offense carrying the 15-year mandatory minimum penalty under the Armed Career Criminal Act received an average sentence of over 15 years (182 months) of imprisonment, which is nine months less than in fiscal year 2010.
• As a result of these long sentences, offenders convicted of an offense carrying a firearms mandatory minimum penalty continued to significantly contribute to the size of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ population, constituting 24,905 (14.9%) of the 166,771 offenders in federal prison as of September 30, 2016.

Offenders charged with and convicted of multiple counts under section 924(c) received exceptionally long sentences as a result of the statutory requirement that the sentence for each count be served consecutively.

• While only 156 (7.9%) of the 1,976 offenders convicted under section 924(c) in fiscal year 2016 were convicted of multiple counts under that statute, they received exceptionally long sentences. The average sentence for offenders convicted of multiple counts under section 924(c) exceeded 27 years of imprisonment (327 months), nearly two-and-a-half times the average sentence for offenders convicted of a single count under section 924(c) (136 months).
• The average sentence for offenders who remained subject to the mandatory minimum penalty required by multiple counts under section 924(c) was even longer at almost 36 years (431 months).

In addition, other charging and plea decisions also play a significant role in the application and impact of firearms mandatory minimum penalties.

• The majority of section 924(c) offenders (85.5%) were also convicted of another offense, which is consistent with the statutory requirement that an offender must have used or possessed a firearm during and in relation to, or in furtherance of, an underlying federal offense in order to be convicted under section 924(c).
• Conversely, 14.5 percent of offenders were convicted of an offense under section 924(c) alone, although those cases necessarily involved another federal offense for which they were not charged and convicted.
• Those offenders convicted of an offense under section 924(c) alone received an average sentence that was five years shorter than offenders convicted under section 924(c) and another offense (99 months compared to 159 months).

Statutory relief under 18 U.S.C. § 3553(e) for providing substantial assistance to the government plays a significant role in the application and impact of firearms mandatory minimum penalties.

• The 21.6 percent of offenders who received relief from the mandatory minimum penalty under section 924(c) for providing substantial assistance received average sentences of 95 months, compared to 166 months for offenders who remained subject to the mandatory minimum penalty at sentencing.
• The impact of receiving relief is even more pronounced for offenders convicted of multiple counts under section 924(c). Such offenders received average sentences that were less than one-third as long as offenders who remained subject to the mandatory minimum penalty required under section 924(c)—136 months compared to 431 months.
• Similarly, almost one-fifth (19.7%) of offenders convicted of an offense carrying the mandatory minimum penalty under the Armed Career Criminal Act received relief for providing substantial assistance, and their average sentence was 112 months compared to 200 months for offenders who remained subject to the mandatory minimum penalty at sentencing.

While the rate at which firearms offenders were convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum has been stable, the number of offenders convicted of offenses carrying such penalties has decreased significantly since fiscal year 2010.

• Less than one-third (30.8%) of all firearms offenders in fiscal year 2016 were convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty, which is almost identical to fiscal year 2010 (30.6%).
• However, between fiscal years 2010 and 2016, the number of offenders convicted under section 924(c) decreased from 2,360 to 1,976, a 16.2 percent decrease. The number of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty under the Armed Career Criminal Act decreased 51.4 percent from 626 to 304, which is the lowest number of such offenders since fiscal year 2002 (n=292).
• Firearms offenses accounted for 16.8 percent of all offenses carrying a mandatory minimum penalty in fiscal year 2016 compared to 14.4 percent in fiscal year 2010.

Firearms mandatory minimum penalties continue to impact Black offenders more than any other racial group.

• Black offenders were convicted of a firearms offense carrying a mandatory minimum more often than any other racial group. In fiscal year 2016, Black offenders accounted for 52.6 percent of offenders convicted under section 924(c), followed by Hispanic offenders (29.5%), White offenders (15.7%) and Other Race offenders (2.2%).
• The impact on Black offenders was even more pronounced for offenders convicted either of multiple counts under section 924(c) or offenses carrying a mandatory minimum penalty under the Armed Career Criminal Act. Black offenders accounted for more than two-thirds of such offenders (70.5% and 70.4%, respectively).
• Black offenders also generally received longer average sentences for firearms offenses carrying a mandatory minimum penalty than any other racial group. In fiscal year 2016, Black offenders convicted under section 924(c) received an average sentence of 165 months, compared to 140 months for White offenders and 130 months for Hispanic offenders. Only Other Race offenders received longer average sentences (170 months), but they accounted for only 2.2 percent of section 924(c) offenders.
• Similarly, Black offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty under the Armed Career Criminal Act received longer average sentences than any other racial group at 185 months, compared to 178 months for White offenders, 173 months for Hispanic offenders, and 147 months for Other Race offenders. 

Oklahoma embracing nitrogen gas instead of lethal drugs as method of execution

As detailed in this new CNN piece, headlined "Oklahoma plans to use new execution method," the Sooners are soon to be trying a novel execution protocol. Here are the details:

Unable to obtain drugs to use for its lethal injections, Oklahoma will use inert gas inhalation as the primary method for death penalty executions once a protocol is developed and finalized, the state's attorney general announced Wednesday. Oklahoma is the first state to adopt this method.

"As you know, in Oklahoma, a bill that was signed back in 2015 by the governor states that if lethal injection is held unconstitutional or is unavailable, an execution shall be carried out by nitrogen hypoxia," Attorney General Mike Hunter said. "We are exercising that option." Nitrogen is one of several inert gases that can cause hypoxia, an oxygen deficiency that causes death.

Oklahoma Department of Corrections Director Joe M. Allbaugh said his office will prepare the legal documents within the next 90 to 120 days and, if that's acceptable, the attorney general will move forward with the protocol. Hunter said the state is "at the very beginning of this process ... and will provide updates as they become available."

Currently, 49 people sit on death row in Oklahoma; 16 have exhausted their ability to appeal their cases, Allbaugh said. The state has struggled to find legally obtainable lethal injection drugs, he said. It previously used a three-drug combination: an anesthetic (either sodium thiopental, pentobarbital or midazolam), a paralytic agent (pancuronium bromide) and a heart-stopping agent to cause death (potassium chloride), according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center....

The bipartisan Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission issued a study of the death penalty in the state on April 25. The report concluded that the moratorium should remain in place until significant reforms to the death penalty process are made, and recommended a one-drug barbiturate execution protocol.

But Hunter said inert gas inhalation is used in countries that have legalized assisted suicide. A 2010 Journal of Medical Ethics study, based on experiments performed by Swiss organization Dignitas, found that the dying process of oxygen deprivation caused by an inert gas is "potentially quick and appears painless." "It also bypasses the prescribing role of physicians, effectively demedicalizing assisted suicide," the researchers wrote.

Hunter said that "using an (inert gas inhalation) will be effective, simple to administer, easy to obtain and requires no complex medical procedures." "Research has shown that individuals exposed to an excessive amount of inert gas experience fatigue, dizziness, perhaps a headache, loss of breath and eventual loss of consciousness," he said, citing the US Air Force Flight Surgeon's Guide, which looks at cases of pilots breathing excessive amounts of inert gas.

Hunter said that people who die by inhalation of inert gases are dead within just a few minutes. The method is "safest, best and most effective," he said.

By contrast, the American Veterinary Medical Association's Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals recommend the use of nitrogen for chickens, turkeys and pigs but say it's unacceptable for other mammals. "These gases create an anoxic environment that is distressing for some species," the authors say.

Oklahoma re-enacted the death penalty in 1973 and, since 1976, has performed 112 executions. Hunter noted that an overwhelming majority of the Oklahoma electorate voted to amend the Constitution and guarantee the state's power to impose capital punishment two years ago.

Interesting data from the US Courts on federal criminal justice caseloads in FY 2017

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts yesterday released here is Annual Report on "Judicial Business 2017" providing lots of statistics on the work of the federal Judiciary for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2017. Here are some criminal justice-related items from data pages here and here that caught my eye:

This year, filings in the U.S. courts of appeals declined 16 percent to 50,506. Total filings in the U.S. district courts decreased 7 percent to 344,787 as civil case filings dropped 8 percent to 267,769, although filings for criminal defendants remained relatively stable at 77,018....

Filings in the regional courts of appeals, which rose 15 percent the previous year, dropped 16 percent to 50,506 in 2017. Filings by pro se litigants, which accounted for 50 percent of new cases, went down 20 percent. Civil appeals grew 1 percent. Criminal appeals fell 14 percent.

Filings for criminal defendants (including those transferred from other districts) remained stable, decreasing less than 1 percent to 77,018.

The biggest numeric decline was in filings for defendants charged with property offenses, which fell 6 percent to 10,115 filings and accounted for 13 percent of total criminal filings.  Filings for defendants charged with fraud, which constituted 9 percent of total filings and 71 percent of property offense filings, dropped 5 percent to 7,165.  Fraud filings related to identification documents and information, which are often associated with immigration crimes, decreased 16 percent to 639.

Drug crimes remained the offenses prosecuted most frequently in the U.S. district courts, constituting 32 percent of all defendant filings. Filings for defendants charged with crimes related to marijuana decreased 19 percent to 4,181.  Filings for non-marijuana defendants rose 4 percent to 20,175.  Filings related to the sale, distribution, or dispensing of illegal drugs decreased 17 percent to 2,249 for marijuana and rose 1 percent to 17,560 for all other drugs.

Criminal filings for defendants charged with immigration offenses fell 2 percent to 20,438 and accounted for 27 percent of criminal filings. This was the lowest total since 2007. Defendants charged with improper reentry by an alien decreased 3 percent to 16,554, and those charged with improper entry by an alien dropped 12 percent to 172.  Immigration filings in the five southwestern border districts declined 7 percent to 15,638 and constituted 77 percent of national immigration defendant filings, compared to 81 percent in 2016.  Filings fell 32 percent in the District of New Mexico, 16 percent in the Southern District of Texas, and 5 percent in the District of Arizona, but rose 51 percent in the Southern District of California and 6 percent in the Western District of Texas.

General offense defendants declined 5 percent and amounted to 2 percent of total criminal filings. Reductions also occurred in filings related to violent offenses (down 1 percent) and sex offenses (also down 1 percent); each of these categories constituted 4 percent or less of total criminal filings.

Filings for defendants prosecuted for firearms and explosives offenses rose 11 percent to 9,672 and represented 13 percent of total criminal filings. Filings involving justice system offenses, which increased 5 percent, constituted 1 percent of total criminal filings. Defendants charged with regulatory offenses grew 3 percent and accounted for 2 percent of total criminal filings. Traffic offense filings increased 2 percent to 2,292 and accounted for 3 percent of total criminal filings.

Because FY 2017 ending in Sept 2017 really represents a big transition year at the executive branch, it is way too early to draw too much from these data concerning the patterns of prosecution we might expect during the Trump years. But these data present an interesting baseline from which to look for notable patterns that might develop in the years ahead.

"Principles of Risk Assessment: Sentencing and Policing"

The title of this post is the title of this new essay by Christopher Slobogin recently posted to SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Risk assessment — measuring an individual’s potential for offending — has long been an important aspect of criminal justice, especially in connection with sentencing, pretrial detention and police decision-making.  To aid in the risk assessment inquiry, a number of states have recently begun relying on statistically-derived algorithms called “risk assessment instruments” (RAIs).  RAIs are generally thought to be more accurate than the type of seat-of-the-pants risk assessment in which judges, parole boards and police officers have traditionally engaged.  But RAIs bring with them their own set of controversies.

In recognition of these concerns, this brief paper proposes three principles — the fit principle, the validity principle, and the fairness principle — that should govern risk assessment in criminal cases.  After providing examples of RAIs, it elaborates on how the principles would affect their use in sentencing and policing.  While space constraints preclude an analysis of pretrial detention, the discussion should make evident how the principles would work in that setting as well.

Another US Sentencing Commission public hearing on alternatives to incarceration and synthetic drugs

As noted in this prior post, last year the United States Sentencing Commission had a public hearing exploring alternatives to incarceration programs and synthetic drugs.  This webpage with the USSC hearing agenda has links to written testimony from all the scheduled witnesses at that prior 2017 heading, and this testimony provide a wealth of information and research about alternatives to incarceration and synthetic drugs.

Tomorrow, as detailed on this USSC webpage, the United States Sentencing Commission in scheduled to conduct another public hearing on these topics (in part because the USSC never formally moved forward with any guidelines amendments on these topics because of an incomplete membership). As the new hearing page details, "the purpose of the public hearing is for the Commission to receive testimony on proposed amendments to the federal sentencing guidelines related to Synthetic Drugs and First Offenders/Alternatives to Incarceration."

"A Touchy Subject: The Eleventh Circuit's Tug-of-War Over What Constitutes Violent 'Physical Force'"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new article authored by Conrad Kahn and Danli Song now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In a prosecution for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, a pivotal question is whether an individual is subject to a sentencing enhancement under the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA).  If an individual has three or more prior convictions that qualify as “violent felonies” or “serious drug offenses,” the ACCA increases his statutory range of imprisonment from zero-to-ten years to fifteen years to life.

Historically, a prior conviction could qualify as a “violent felony” if it satisfied at least one of the three “violent felony” clauses—the elements clause, the enumerated-offenses clause, or the catch-all residual clause.  But on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court invalidated the residual clause in Johnson v. United States, 135 S. Ct. 2551 (2015) (Johnson II).

Since Johnson II, substantial disagreements have emerged both within the Eleventh Circuit and among the other circuits regarding Johnson II’s reach and the proper application of the ACCA's elements clause.  This Article examines those disagreements, including three ways the Eleventh Circuit got it wrong — specifically, the court’s unusual conduct in ruling on requests to file second or successive post-conviction motions based on Johnson II and recent rulings on whether the Florida offenses of robbery and felony battery qualify as “violent felonies” under the elements clause.  This Article argues the ACCA’s elements-clause analysis should focus on the degree of force used in an act, and the Supreme Court should resolve these disagreements and provide guidance to the lower courts by reviewing whether one of these offenses satisfies the elements clause.

March madness + spring break = light blogging

A host of great distractions this Spring Break week will likely mean  more time away from the computer and thus less blogging in this space.  The Murphy’s Law of blogging would suggest that we will get a lot of blog-worthy sentencing developments while I am away, but perhaps there will be a relative calm in the sentencing waters before SCOTUS gets back in action next week.  

"More Imprisonment Does Not Reduce State Drug Problems"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new Issue Brief from Pew with a message summarized by the document's subtitle: "Data show no relationship between prison terms and drug misuse." Here is the document's overview:

Nearly 300,000 people are held in state and federal prisons in the United States for drug-law violations, up from less than 25,000 in 1980.  These offenders served more time than in the past: Those who left state prisons in 2009 had been behind bars an average of 2.2 years, a 36 percent increase over 1990, while prison terms for federal drug offenders jumped 153 percent between 1988 and 2012, from about two to roughly five years.

As the U.S. confronts a growing epidemic of opioid misuse, policymakers and public health officials need a clear understanding of whether, how, and to what degree imprisonment for drug offenses affects the nature and extent of the nation’s drug problems.  To explore this question, The Pew Charitable Trusts examined publicly available 2014 data from federal and state law enforcement, corrections, and health agencies.  The analysis found no statistically significant relationship between state drug imprisonment rates and three indicators of state drug problems: self-reported drug use, drug overdose deaths, and drug arrests.

The findings — which Pew sent to the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis in a letter dated June 19, 2017 — reinforce a large body of prior research that cast doubt on the theory that stiffer prison terms deter drug misuse, distribution, and other drug-law violations.  The evidence strongly suggests that policymakers should pursue alternative strategies that research shows work better and cost less.

"'A Day Late and a Dollar Short': President Obama's Clemency Initiative 2014"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper by Paul Larkin now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

Over his last two years in office, President Barack Obama used his Article II Pardon Clause power to commute the sentences imposed on more than 1,700 drug offenders. In a 2017 law review article, he congratulated himself for reinvigorating the federal clemency process. His clemency initiative, however, was hardly the unqualified success that he claims.

Obama waited far too long before undertaking his effort. He should have started it in 2010, rather than in 2014.  That would have allowed the thousands of clemency decisions he made to be handled at a more reasonable pace and probably more accurately.  He also should have issued a general conditional commutation order rather than undertake a case-by-case re-examination of the sentence each clemency applicant received. That would have allowed district court judges, who are far better than any president could be at making sentencing decisions, to resentence each offender.  Finally, he should have reformed the clear structural defect in the federal clemency process.  The Department of Justice controls the clemency application process even though, as the agency that prosecuted every clemency applicant, the department suffers from an actual or apparent conflict of interest.  In sum, Obama could have done far more by doing far less or by doing something far different than by acting as the Resentencer-in-Chief.