A report by Dan Kopf of the website Priceonomics shows mixed results, with incarceration actually rising rather than declining in almost half the states. More than half the total decline in prison population in the US was the result of California’s response to Brown v Plata, the 2011 court case that ruled conditions in California prisons to be unconstitutional and forced a release program.The report quotes John Pfaff of Fordham Law:

“While federal reforms—such as the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which decreased the punitiveness of some drug sentences and the elimination of private federal prisons—receive a great deal of media attention, Pfaff argues that they have a limited impact on incarceration. Of the nearly 1.6 million Americans incarcerated in prisons, only about 200,000 are in federal prisons. “If we freed every single federal prisoner today,” says Pfaff, “we would still have the highest incarceration rate in the world.”

Pfaff’s research on the causes of mass incarceration shows that decisions made by local prosecutors and police are the most important drivers of the increase in country prison population. Specifically, prosecutors are much more aggressive in charging individuals with felonies today than they were thirty years ago—even for the same crime.

“I feel like the most important way to reduce incarceration would be to restrict the ability of prosecutors to file felony charges,” Pfaff said. “We need legally binding charging and plea bargaining guidelines like the ones judges operate under.”

The San Francisco Police Dept. has implemented a new policy, forming a five-member mental health team that would join police officers on calls involving people who they suspect may be mentally ill or under the influence of drugs.

Officials said the idea was to let highly trained clinicians try to pacify troubled individuals, and hopefully avoid the sorts of deadly police confrontations that have recently set off protests around the country. Barbara Garcia, the director of the Department of Public Health, said the collaboration of agencies would allow mental health professionals to spot opportunities for interventions that the police might otherwise miss.

The LA Times endorses Prop 57 as a “much-needed check on prosecutorial power.”

The Times calls Prop 57 “Governor Jerry Brown’s effort to recalibrate California’s criminal justice system by returning to judges, parole boards, and prison officials some of the power that craven lawmakers and frightened voters have, over the years, unwisely transferred to prosecutors. It’s a welcome and needed measure, although less simple than the brevity of its language or various assertions on both sides would suggest. The Times urges voters to read it, understand it, and vote “yes.”

That’s the Sentencing Project’s estimate of state-level felony disenfranchisement. Read the study here:

“A record 6.1 million Americans are forbidden to vote because of felony disenfranchisement, or laws restricting voting rights for those convicted of felony-level crimes. The number of disenfranchised individuals has increased dramatically along with the rise in criminal justice populations in recent decades, rising from an estimated 1.17 million in 1976 to 6.1 million today.”

A new law signed last week restores voting rights to felons in county jail in California. The law was authored by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (D-San Diego), who said it would reduce the likelihood of convicts committing new crimes.

“Civic participation can be a critical component of re-entry and has been linked to reduced recidivism,” Weber said when the bill was introduced.

On Wednesday, Weber said California is setting an example at a time when other state’s are trying to limit voting rights.

“I wrote AB 2466 because I want to send a message to the nation that California will not stand for discrimination in voting,” Weber said Wednesday after the bill was signed.

From the NY Times, Adam Liptak discusses studies showing that judges facing re-election are more likely to impose harsh criminal sentences, including death sentences.

“Proximity to re-election makes judges more punitive — more likely to impose longer sentences, affirm death sentences and even override life sentences to impose death,” a report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law concluded last year.

One study released last week found that elected judges are less likely to support gay rights than are appointed ones. The effect was most pronounced in cases decided by judges who ran in partisan elections.

Under a new law signed by Governor Brown Friday,  AB 1909, California prosecutors who knowingly withhold or falsify evidence can now be charged with a felony and go to prison.

In California, there often have been no consequences for prosecutors who have been caught cheating the system. According to a 2010 study from criminal justice reform group the Northern California Innocence Project, there were more than 700 California cases of prosecutorial misconduct from 1997 to 2009 ― and only six prosecutors in those cases were ever disciplined. Here’s what the Huffington Post had to say:

“While the law doesn’t create any new legal obligations for prosecutors, it does create new sanctions for those willing to violate the law, which is “desirable,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine, told The Huffington Post in an email.

“Hopefully, this will provide an additional deterrent against prosecutorial misconduct,” Chemerinsky said.

Ben Feuer, chairman of the California Appellate Law Group and a former clerk on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, told HuffPost the law is “a good step in the right direction” and that the law may have a significant effect on disincentivizing prosecutorial misconduct.

Where a state prosecutor in the past may have willfully withheld evidence in order to boost convictions to advance his or her career, Feuer explained, now a prosecutor has to at least weigh that theoretical benefit against committing an actual felony that could land the prosecutor in jail.

“That may give folks thinking of bending the rules a lot more pause before doing so ― ideally, enough pause to make the right decision,” Feuer said.

Prosecutors are the most powerful government agents in the American criminal justice system. They have complete and unrivaled access to evidence that can determine a person’s guilt or innocence.”

From the Marshall Project: “How Can a Criminal Record Haunt You for the Rest of Your Life?”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that criminal defendants have the right to sue  a county  to prove a that public defender’s office isn’t adequately funded to provide the constitutional right to an attorney. The actual decision is here:

“We recognize for the first time in Pennsylvania a prospective cause of action enabling indigent criminal defendants to prove that the level of funding provided by a county to operate a public defender’s office has left that office incapable of complying with Gideon, creating the likelihood of a systematic, widespread constructive denial of counsel in contravention of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

From the Marshall Project:

“For some proponents of justice reform, the failure this year was actually a relief. They escaped what some had feared as the worst outcome: Congress enacting a diluted reform bill, declaring mission accomplished, and dropping the subject for years. Another consolation is the prospect that Hillary Clinton, who has vowed to “reform our criminal justice system from end to end,” wins, gets a somewhat less conservative Congress, and keeps her promise.”