How the Justice System Can Reward "Going Straight"

"After punishment, is there room for society to acknowledge an offender’s efforts to turn his or her life around?

Two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Law School argue that the criminal justice system should publicly celebrate cases where those who have been convicted of a crime show remorse and atone for their behavior.

'The criminal justice system traditionally performed its public functions – condemning criminal conduct, shaming and stigmatizing violators, promoting societal norms – through the use of negative examples: convicting and punishing criminal offenders,' wrote Paul H. Robinson and Muhammad Sarahne in a research paper entitled The Opposite of Punishment: Imagining a Path to Public Redemption.

'One could imagine, however, that the same public functions could also be performed through the use of positive examples.'

Creating a path to redemption and offering uplifting examples of those who have taken this path would encourage others to do the same, the authors maintained. It would allow those who have been convicted to think of their future instead of dwelling on the past."

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National Report from Harvard Raises New Concerns About Criminal Justice Fees
"A national report from Harvard University joins a growing body of literature criticizing the way criminal justice fees and fines are implemented. The report arrives as Massachusetts lawmakers prepare to consider criminal justice reform.
The report was released by the Harvard Kennedy School's Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management, along with other research institutes. It argues that fines and fees 'can, if left unchecked, have long-term effects that significantly harm the efforts of formerly incarcerated people to rehabilitate and reintegrate.'"

View the Report
 

Resettlement Provision for Adult Offenders: Accommodation and Education, Training and Employment
A Joint Thematic Review by HM Inspectorate of Prisons, HM Inspectorate of Probation and Ofsted. 

The above report was published on 16 September 2014. The primary aim of this report is to inform the development of new services under Transforming Rehabilitation by examining the effectiveness of existing arrangements to help offenders obtain suitable and sustainable accommodation and education, training and employment (ETE) on release as part of wider resettlement provision.

The report follows a cohort of 80 offenders from prison through the gate into the community and identifies their accommodation and occupation status shortly before release and on release.

Read the Full Report

Oregon Prison Tackles Solitary Confinement With Blue Room Experiment
"Oregon's most incorrigible prisoners spend 23 hours, 20 minutes a day alone in cells deep inside a sprawling prison complex near Ontario....

Prison officials across the United States have spent the last few years debating how to help tens of thousands of prisoners cope in solitary confinement, the housing of last resort for violent, combative, or escape-prone inmates. Many human rights groups condemn the highly restrictive cells as an incubator for mental illness.

About 19 months ago, Snake River officials turned for help from an offbeat source, a globetrotting forest ecologist more familiar with the canopies of Costa Rica's rainforests than the internal struggles of prisoners kept month after month in isolated quarters.

What emerged was a one-of-a-kind sanctuary known as the Blue Room."

View the TED Talk

Prisons

New support for released prisoners in south Etobicoke http://t.co/PhFp5k54Yn via @torontostar
— Crim Library UTL (@CrimLib) August 4, 2014

Women Inmates On The Rise
The number of women in federal prisons could go up with the abolition of early parole provisions by the federal government, according to a University of Toronto criminology professor.

The number and proportion of female inmates had been increasing in both provincial and federal prisons even before the parole changes.....

And with the end of the federal accelerated parole system, the numbers could go even higher, says Kelly Hannah-Moffat, a professor and director of the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at U of T.

Beyond Youth Custody.  Resettlement Of Girls And Young Women: Research Report
This report addresses a worrying gap in the knowledge about the effective resettlement of girls and young women. Reviewing research literature in a number of relevant areas, it cross-references evidence of what works in the resettlement of young people with what we know about the wider need of girls and young women. This iterative synthesis approach thus provides a gender-sensitive approach to inform policy and practice development in resettlement for this specific group.

In New York's Largest Jail, Teens Face "Brute Force" And Intimidation That Horrifies Even Prosecutors
In the second-largest jail in the nation, teens are beaten more frequently than not. They are placed in solitary confinement for disciplinary infractions that would be considered typical adolescent behavior outside of jail. And inmates, medical staff, and even teachers, are intimidated out of reporting violence by corrections officers, according to a scathing new Department of Justice report.

Read the Dept. of Justice Report

This New Jersey Reform Stops Judges From Jailing Some Defendants Just Because They Are Poor
In New Jersey, inmates spend an average of ten months behind bars just waiting to go to trial. Many have the option to post bail. But a study last year found that some 40 percent of those in pretrial detention would have been released had they been able to afford bail.

On Monday, the New Jersey legislature passed a package of bills to remove financial need from bail determinations, with the strong support of Gov. Chris Christie (R).

Holder: Data-Driven Prison Sentencing "Unfair" To Minorities
Attorney General Eric Holder on Friday expressed concern about the fairness of judges who rely on big data to sentence criminal defendants, saying the use of such “risk assessments” in several states could exacerbate racial disparities among the prison population.

Holder, who made the comments during a Philadelphia speech to criminal defense lawyers, said the use of such data results in unfair treatment of minorities.

Ottawa axes rehabilitation program for prison ‘lifers’

Convicted murderers are among the ranks of federal workers losing their jobs through budget cuts.

The Globe and Mail has learned that one of the many federal programs that will be cut in its entirety is LifeLine, a program aimed at helping people with life sentences – or “lifers” – successfully re-integrate into society once they’ve been paroled.

At a starting salary of about $38,000, the program hires and trains successfully-paroled lifers to mentor other lifers who are still incarcerated or who have been recently released on parole.

“It’s too bad about the LifeLine. It helped me out a lot. It kept me out of prison,” said Peter Wozney, 44, who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder when he was 16 and has been successfully paroled since August of 2009.

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Prison Cowboys

Can Mustangs do for prisoners what solitary and lock-up can’t?

The term "mustang" is derived from the Spanish word mestengo, or "stray animal," and is used to describe any type of feral horse. Every year, the Bureau of Land Management rounds up thousands of "excess" mustangs across 10 Western states. At the Wyoming State Honor Farm, convicts train, or "gentle," wild horses that have been rounded up from the high Plains. If the gentling goes smoothly, a mustang will be tame enough to saddle, mount, and ride in three months. This photo essay looks at the innovative prison program designed to rehabilitate prisoners through the challenge of training the descendants of the first horses brought to North America 500 years ago.

Watch the photo essay.

D.C. wants to teach juvenile delinquents Yoga, Tai-Chi

The District's troubled juvenile justice agency is looking for a yoga teacher, or maybe a tai-chi instructor, to work with some of the city's most dangerous youths. The idea for the new Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services programming comes from interim deputy director Barry Holman. Late last month, Holman e-mailed the agency's staff to see if they have "hidden talents that might be tapped to further our work with the young people in our care." In the e-mail obtained by The Washington Examiner, Holman said his primary interest was in finding among the staff an instructor certified in yoga, tai-chi, or another "mind-body connection discipline."

The agency is coming off a controversial year during which more than a dozen of its wards were charged with murder and at least a half-dozen were killed. A heavy focus on rehabilitation programs for city youths was blamed by critics for the soaring violence. Under political pressure, former Mayor Adrian Fenty fired then DYRS interim director Marc Schindler six months after he replaced Vincent Schiraldi.

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