The Brennan Center for Justice has released a report on “How Many American Are Unnecessarily Incarcerated?” Based on  3 years of research by criminologists, criminal justice lawyers, and statisticians, covering the the convictions and sentences of the nationwide prison population (1.46 million prisoners serving time for 370 different crime categories), the report concludes that 39% are currently incarcerated without a sufficient public safety rationale. The report suggests that alternatives to incarceration are more effective penalties for many lower-level crimes, and proposes that prison sentences can safely be shortened for a number of more serious crimes.

The recommendations:

• Those persons incarcerated with little public safety rationale could be more appropriately sentenced to an alternative to prison or a shorter prison stay. If these prisoners were released, it would result in cost savings of nearly $20 billion per year, and almost $200 billion over 10 years. Treatment, community service, or probation are demonstrably more effective for rehabilitate and reducing recidivism.
• Change sentencing laws to mandate alternatives to prison as the default sentences for certain lower-level crimes. These include drug possession, lesser burglary, minor drug trafficking, minor fraud or forgery, minor theft, and simple assault — offenses that now account for 25 percent of the prison population. Alternative sanctions — such as community service, electronic monitoring, probation, restitution, or treatment — should be the default for such crimes instead.
• Reduce the current minimums and maximums prison stays set by laws, or guidelines. These ranges should be proportional to the crimes committed, with judges retaining discretion to depart when appropriate.
• Current inmates should be permitted to petition judges for retroactive application of the two reforms above, on a case-by-case basis. This would allow for safe release of prisoners whose sentences no longer serve a justifiable public safety purpose.

On Dec 7, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which included provisions for spending on drug treatment and prevention, as well as drug courts. The president-elect has said he would expand access to treatment and provide incentives for states to use drug courts and mandatory treatment programs. Here are some drug court facts and figures:

• At latest count there are more than 3,400 drug courts in the US, serving at least 55,000 defendants annually, according to a recent report from the surgeon general.
• They were a significant part of the Obama administration’s drug control policy, receiving nearly $100 million in annual funding for the last eight years.
• Numerous studies show court-ordered addiction treatment reduces relapse and recidivism rates. Inmates receiving treatment are less likely to exhibit conduct problems, and they’re more likely to pursue education or employment after leaving incarceration.
• Drug courts can be an effective forum for communication because they rely on partnerships between community health care providers, law enforcement agencies and social service programs. The effectiveness of the programs varies by state and county because they’re administered locally.
• In 2014, the Los Angeles Times reported that many drug courts were overwhelmed with defendants facing marijuana charges. One consequence of this, the Times reported, was that expensive treatment designed for people with severe substance use disorders was administered to individuals arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana.
• the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) statistics show 75 percent of drug-court graduates don’t get arrested within two years of graduation. The same statistics suggest drug courts save taxpayers more than $3 in criminal justice costs for every $1 invested.
• the Office of National Drug Control Policy found drug courts reduced crime by between 8 and 26 percentage points. The most effective drug courts reduced crime by up to 35 percent compared to traditional criminal justice efforts.
• Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s recent report on alcohol, drugs and health said DUI courts reduced recidivism at rates similar to adult drug courts. It also found that nonviolent offenders were the most likely to avoid incarceration after being accepted into a drug court.

A number of California legislators are pushing for bail reform as part of the next legislative session. According to the LA Times , Assemblyman Rob Bonta and Sen. Bob Hertzberg plan to introduce bills to reduce the number of people detained before trial and address the racial and economic disparities in the bail process.

The details of upcoming legislation are still unspecified, but Bonta and Hertzberg said there is a bi-partisan coalition of organizations and lawmakers interested in addressing the issue this year.

Bail reform bills have consistently failed in California in the past, although California relies on pretrial detention at much higher rates than other states. About 63% of people in state jails, or 46,000 inmates, had not been sentenced in 2015, according to the Board of State and Community Corrections.

Formerly incarcerated undergraduates at UC Berkeley formed a support group called the Underground Scholars Initiative, as this article in the New Yorker explains. The founders of the group, Steven Czifra and Danny Murillo, have been named 2016 Soros Justice Fellows by the Open Society Foundation, which sponsors fellows to challenge problems with the U.S. criminal justice system and push for change.

‘Steven Czifra will help formerly incarcerated community college students reach their full academic and professional potential by creating a pathway for admission to the University of California, Berkeley.’

‘Danny Murillo will work to empower formerly incarcerated students by creating a network of people throughout California who have successfully made the transition from incarceration to higher education.’

More information is available at the USI website, http://www.undergroundscholars.org/

James Austin and Gregory Squires in The Crime Report examine the  “almost perfect” correlation (.77, with 1.00 being a perfect correlation) between the rise and fall of interest rates and crime rates in the US since 1953:

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The authors link interest rates to economic stress on families and individuals, and link this to findings by criminologists Arnold Linsky and Murray Strauss that states with higher homicide and suicide rates had higher levels of social stress, as measured by such factors as business failures, personal bankruptcies, and unemployment claims.

If the analysis holds, current economic trends suggesting no long-term increases in interest rates would suggest that crime rates will continue to remain at historically low numbers. On the other hand, if interest rates in the U.S. are starting to rise, and if the national debt expands quickly under the new administration, the consequences of cutting taxes without an associated increase in economic growth could also result in higher crime rates.

In a recent three-part series by Jessica Da Silva , Bloomberg News covers three different aspects of juvenile justice reform efforts in the US:

First “Clarity, Creativity Combat Ills of Juvenile Fines, Fees” looks at the negative impact of fines and fees on juvenile offenders and their families, focussing on Georgia as an example.

Second, “Educating Juveniles Stymied by Punishment-First Approach” examines the tension between rehabilitation and punishment in the juvenile justice system, using educational opportunity as a case study.

Third, “Advocates Want Juvenile Justice Overhaul, Clash Over Direction” analyzes some of the issues in a major reform effort in Virginia that invested in community-based alternative programming such as alternative placements, treatment for disabilities or substance abuse, and support for reentering communities after incarceration, rather than the historical focus on youth prisons.

In oral argument this past week, in Moore v. Texas, the Supreme Court considered how states can properly define intellectual disability for purposes of capital punishment – a nagging question left hanging by Atkins v. Virginia, the 2002 case that held the 8th Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of the intellectually disabled. Later, in 2014’s Hall v. Florida, the court held the determination of who is mentally disabled should be “informed by the medical community’s diagnostic framework.” In finding Bobbie Moore, whose IQ has been measured in the low 70’s, to be eligible for the death penalty, Texas courts used a framework that relied (among other things) on standards for intellectual disability that date back to 1992, as outlined in a 2004 decision by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Per Amy Hall of SCOTUSblog, the argument seemed to go well for Mr. Moore’s case, with essentially the same 5 justices who decided Hall v Florida – Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan – appearing to be critical of the Texas rule. Unclear is  what effect the court’s ruling might have on other Texas inmates, and on inmates on death row in other states.

Good survey of recent research on the effects of bilingual education in this article, “Six Benefits of Bilingual Education.” The six are:

1. Attention

It turns out that, in many ways, the real trick to speaking two languages consists in managing not to speak one of those languages at a given moment — which is fundamentally a feat of paying attention.

People who speak two languages often outperform monolinguals on general measures of executive function. “[Bilinguals] can pay focused attention without being distracted and also improve in the ability to switch from one task to another,” says Sorace.

2. Empathy

Young children being raised bilingual have to follow social cues to figure out which language to use with which person and in what setting. As a result, says Sorace, bilingual children as young as age 3 have demonstrated a head start on tests of perspective-taking and theory of mind — both of which are fundamental social and emotional skills.

3. Reading (English)

4. School performance and engagement.

Compared with students in English-only classrooms or in one-way immersion, dual-language students have somewhat higher test scores and also seem to be happier in school. Attendance is better, behavioral problems fewer, parent involvement higher.

5. Diversity and integration.

6. Protection against cognitive decline and dementia.

File this away as a very, very long-range payoff. Researchers have found that actively using two languages seems to have a protective effect against age-related dementia — perhaps relating to the changes in brain structure we talked about earlier.

The California Court of Appeal has affirmed the recusal of the Orange County DA’s office from a high-profile murder case, upholding the trial court’s finding that the office had a conflict of interest so severe it was unlikely the defendant would receive a fair trial. The court also noted that the OCDA’s “substantial” failures in turning over evidence showed that it “cannot be relied upon to comply” with its obligations in the case moving forward.

The case involves a decades-long jail informant program run by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Scott Sanders, the public defender in the DeKraai case that uncovered the program, says that in many Orange County cases, informants held recorded and unrecorded conversations with inmates who were represented by lawyers. This would be a violation of an inmate’s right to counsel. Prosecutors are accused of taking damning evidence gathered by the informants and presenting it in court, while withholding evidence that could benefit the defense.

Next Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Moore v. Texas. Bobby Moore is a person with intellectual disabilities sentenced to death in Texas; his story is neatly summarized by Tim Shriver in a recent Time magazine editorial:

“When Bobby Moore, a person with an intellectual disability, was 14-years old, his father became enraged that Moore couldn’t read and threw him out on the street. As a teen, Bobby did not understand the days of the week, how to tell time, and other basic information and skills.

Bobby ate out of trash cans, mowed lawns for money, and eventually lived in the back of a pool hall where he sometimes played pool. Like every person, including those with intellectual disability, Bobby was better at some things than others. With the help of others, he managed to survive.

But at the age of 20, Bobby was involved in a bungled robbery with two other people in which an employee was tragically shot and killed. He was convicted and sentenced to death. After a lower court found that Bobby had an intellectual disability and was therefore exempt from execution, Texas’s highest criminal court ruled that Bobby’s ability to play pool and mow lawns proved he never had an intellectual disability and could therefore be executed.”

Shriver argues that the standard applied by the Texas Supreme Court is incorrect and dangerous:

“The inaccurate Texas standard reinforces one of the most damaging stereotypes about people with intellectual disability—that they can’t be “good” at anything. The reasoning is dangerous and flawed: if you can mow a lawn, you can’t have an intellectual disability. If you have an intellectual disability, therefore, you can’t do anything. Both are wrong—dangerously wrong.”