The criminal justice reform debate currently on Capitol Hill has some ironic reminders of the debate over climate change – for a significant number of legislators, the facts don’t need to get in the way of ideology. The Hill. So Sen. Lee of Utah, who voted to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gasses, had this to say about the opposition to the current criminal justice reform bill:

“When politicians argue among themselves, as we so often do about public policy questions, it can be hard to know which side is right, especially when some making arguments are not exactly wedded to the facts.”

Researchers at Stanford Medical School recently published the results of a large (2,000,000 hospitalizations) study of health issues for incarcerated juveniles in California. The researchers found a remarkable confirmation of the extent to which mental health issues drive juvenile incarceration: “We know young people in the juvenile justice system have a disproportionate burden of mental illness, but I was really surprised by the magnitude of the problem, because hospitalizations typically occur for very severe illness,” said the study’s lead author, Arash Anoshiravani, MD, clinical assistant professor of adolescent medicine. Stanford Medicine The study found that mental health diagnoses were responsible for 63 percent of hospital stays by young people in the juvenile justice system, compared to 19 percent for those not in the system.

The California Department of Health Care Services has agreed that county Mental Health Plans are obligated to provide Intensive Care Coordination (ICC) and Intensive Home Based Services (IHBS) (also known as “Katie A. services”) to all full scope Medi-Cal beneficiaries under the age of 21 that meet medical necessity. ICC and IHBS are intensive home and community-based mental health services that aim to reduce institutionalization of youth with mental health needs and allow them to remain in their own homes and communities. For more, see Young Minds Advocacy Project

The National Registry of Exonerations has released its 2015 report– required reading for those interested in criminal justice reform. The report details 149 total exonerations, including a remarkable 65 following guilty pleas, another indictment of the over criminalization in the justice system. As the report asks, “…[w]hat about innocent defendants who plead guilty to other misdemeanors and low-level felonies…in order to avoid pretrial detention and the risk of long terms of imprisonment after trial?”

The persistent theme of prosecutorial misconduct, especially in cases of withheld evidence, is the lack of personal accountability. It is possible for a conviction to be overturned in a case where evidence inconsistent with guilt has been withheld, though it is not a certainty, but even in cases where evidence has been tampered with or destroyed (as in the case of Kevin Cooper, who has exhausted his appeals and awaits execution on death row in California – NBC News), there is no real personal consequence for the attorney responsible. In the absence of professional or criminal consequence, relying entirely on the good conscience and moral character of prosecuting attorneys, in a profession and a culture that places value on “wins” and “toughness” is unlikely to change or reduce the rate of wrongful convictions inherent in the system.