SCRAM: Drink and Go to Jail; Resist and Start a New Life

An alcohol detection anklet that’s been around for only a few years has this year been finally adopted by courts in 48 of our 50 states as a tool for remotely monitoring released offenders who are not a community threat when sober. As little as five years ago, only 19 states had approved [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]