RAND Study Finds that Bronx Defenders' Holistic Defense Saved Clients 1.1 Million Days Behind Bars
"A new study released today by RAND and the University of Pennsylvania Law School finds that The Bronx Defenders’ unique model of holistic defense significantly reduces incarceration rates, sentence length, and pre-trial detention, saving taxpayer dollars, without harming public safety. In total, the study estimates that The Bronx Defenders has saved its clients 1.1 million days behind bars. 
 
The study, 'The Effects of Holistic Defense on Criminal Justice Outcomes,' to be published in the Harvard Law Review, examined over half a million cases in Bronx Criminal Court over a 10-year period.

The study found that the implementation of BxD’s holistic public defender model in the Bronx:

• helped clients avoid 1.1 million days of incarceration,
• reduced incarceration rates by 16%,
• cut pre-trial detention by 9%
• shortened sentence length by 24%, and
• saved New York taxpayers an estimated $165 million on housing costs alone.

Despite an appreciably higher release rate, those who received holistic defense services were shown to commit no more crime than those incarcerated for longer periods, in a follow-up spanning up to 10 years after case resolution. And while holistic defense does not reduce conviction rates, it does result in an increase of non-incarceratory sentences."

The Ungers, 5 Years and Counting: A Case Study in Safely Reducing Long Prison Terms and Saving Taxpayer Dollars
"A landmark court case, Unger v. Maryland, offers powerful lessons for policymakers and stakeholders interested in tackling mass incarceration. The 2012 case centered on remedying improper jury instructions and applied to a cohort of people who had been sentenced prior to 1981. The decision resulted in the potential release of 235 people from Maryland prisons who had served more than 30 years, and their release story created a natural experiment from which other states can learn. What makes the Unger decision particularly unique is that private philanthropy, through the Open Society Institute–Baltimore, provided specialized reentry programming to be made available to those individuals upon release."

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This Tool Shows Exactly how to Reduce a State's Prison Population

"In the conversation around lowering the prison population in the United States–which incarcerates people at the highest rate in the world–one solution always floats to the top: decriminalizing drugs. In the U.S., police arrest around 1.5 million people per year on drug offenses, 80% of whom are detained for possession alone. Rolling back penalties for drug-related activities would allow the money saved on incarcerating people to instead go toward rehabilitation programs and mental health assistance, which have shown to be drastically more effective at addressing root causes of drug use than putting someone in a cage.

But would drug decriminalization substantially reduce the overall prison population? The question is more complicated than it seems when accounting for the radically different ways individual states incarcerate people....

To help policymakers at the state level understand the various levers they could pull to reduce their respective prison populations–and how effective those levers would be–the Urban Institute has released the Prison Population Forecaster, an interactive tool that models how different policies would impact state prison populations up until the year 2025...."
 

Solutions: American Leaders Speak out on Criminal Justice
"Mass incarceration.  In recent years it's become clear that the size of America's prison population is unsustainable - and isn't needed to protect public safety.

In this remarkable bipartisan collaboration, the country's most prominent public figures and experts join together to propose ideas for change.  In these original essays, many authors speak out for the first time on the issue.  The vast majority agree that reducing our incarcerated population is a priority.  Marking a clear political shift on crime and punishment in America, these sentiments are a far cry from politicians racing to be the most punitive in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mass incarceration threatens American democracy.  Hiding in plain sight, it drives economic inequality, racial injustice, and poverty.  How do we achieve change?  From using federal funding to bolster police best practices to allowing for the release of low-level offenders while they wait for trial, from eliminating prison for low-level drug crimes to increasing drug and mental health treatment, the ideas in this book pave the way forward.  Solutions promises to further the intellectual and political momentum to reform our justice system."

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Shorter Sentences, Shrinking Prisons
"A new report by some of New York’s key criminal justice players recommends major changes to the state’s sentencing system. The report ... would reduce the length of prison sentences and broaden eligibility for probation and other alternatives to incarceration for about one-third of the felony convictions New York hands down each year. The report would also end the state parole board’s traditional role as the arbiter of when, exactly, prisoners go home."

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Federal Prosecutions for the 21st Century
This new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law proposes modernizing one key aspect of the criminal justice system: federal prosecutors. Prosecutors are in a uniquely powerful position to bring change, since they make decisions about when and whether to bring criminal charges, and make recommendations for sentencing. The report proposes reorienting the way prosecutors’ “success” is measured around three core goals: Reducing violent and serious crime, reducing prison populations, and reducing recidivism. The mechanism for change would be a shift in how attorneys' performance is assessed, to give prosecutors incentives to focus on how their practices reduce crime in and improve the communities they serve, instead of making their "success" simply a measure of how many individuals they convict and send to prison.

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