Felons’ Choice: Jail or Home Free With No Record

While there’s a plethora of state, county and city reentry programs aimed at cutting recidivism rates, there’s one created by the District Attorney for San Francisco that truly takes the cake for toughness, as well as effectiveness. Called “Back On Track,” this program is designed for nonviolent first-time drug offenders only. Not all [...]

Focus on Drug Treatment Expands; Recidivism Contracts

Prison reform advocates have long promoted the concept that treatment, rather than incarceration, would be a more effective and less costly alternative sentence for thousands of substance abusers comprising the majority of inmates now crowding the jails and prisons. Now a sitting judge of Harris County’s 177th Criminal District Court (TX) has added [...]

Parole Reform: It’s Here, But Will It Reduce Recidivism?

Prison reform advocates have long argued that national, state and local parole and probation systems share a significant role in producing high recidivism rates. Apparently, the legislators in one state that has the most acclaimed prison overcrowding problem have finally agreed with this premise, and done something about it. According to a recent [...]

Two Reentry Programs Prove Local Efforts Cut Recidivism

Santa Barbara County, CA
Every year 1000 to 1400 offenders are released back to Santa Barbara County from California state prisons. Most have no home, no job, and no skills, and no hope of making it. The vast majority have serious addiction problems; many are mentally ill. The state gives them a [...]

Some Actions Underway to Reduce Recidivism; Not Enough

There’s an old retort that’s sometimes used to quiet a noisy heckler: “Sir, you have a magnificent grasp of the obvious.” Unfortunately, it seems that only a few of our politicians or other governmental officials do “grasp the obvious” when it comes to initiating ways to reduce recidivism. Defined as “an ex-inmate’s return [...]

California Not Soon Likely to Free 40,000; Maybe 27,000

Despite all the hype over a federal judicial panel ruling ordering the State of California to come up with a plan to release over 40,000 inmates to slash prisons overcrowding, it’s unlikely to happen very fast, if at all. First of all, the state’s lawyers are mulling whether or not the court’s ruling to [...]

1 in 11 Inmates Are Serving Life Sentences

The Sentencing Project, a national non-profit organization engaged in research and advocacy on criminal justice policy issues, has issued a 48-page, detailed report titled: No Exit/The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America. Following are three selected key excerpts from this document, which was written by Ashley Nellis and Ryan S. King (July 2009).
The report’s [...]

Why Tolerate Prisons That Produce 70% Recidivism?

Our ‘tough on crime’ approach lets both government and criminals ‘off the hook,’ says legal expert Jonathan Simon
As originally published by the UC Berkeley NewsCenter
By Cathy Cockrell
In Part 1 of this two-part Q&A, UC Berkeley Law Professor Jonathan Simon talked about criminal sentencing and parole as practiced today in California. He concludes here by discussing [...]

Release Geriatric Prisoners to Save Money?

From change.org 6/17/2009, The Aging Prison Population

While some proponents of prison-budget trimming have recently suggested early release of long-incarcerated inmates that have only one year remaining in their sentence, other lawmakers are looking at a cost-cutting approach attained through the early release of elderly inmates.
According to a blog article “The Aging Prison [...]

Budget Fiasco Means Higher Recidivism

Editors note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. Following is an excerpt from his recent comments in the San Fransisco Bay Guardian Online “Politics” Blog .

By Just A Guy
The tides have turned and the language is changing as politicos try to salvage their political futures via a different spin [...]