Latest criminal justice news and commentary

Top reads:  Variety Magazine reviewed the San Quentin film festival; Riverside County jail was the deadliest in America in 2022. Here’s why; private prison healthcare companies are collapsing. 

Media

• Wrongful convictions are terribly common in America, as John Grisham writes about in his new book, Framed. Indeed, wrongfully convicted people were recently exonerated in Detroit, Brooklyn, New York, and Los Angeles.   

• John Oliver broke down the facts on traffic stops on his show Last Week Tonight.  

• The New York Times produced a video project illustrating how incredibly difficult it is to move past a conviction when saddled with a ton of fines and fees, which happens often.  

• Seloma Hailu wrote a beautiful review of the San Quentin film festival produced by Rahsaan Thomas, who is currently incarcerated. I really recommend reading the whole thing - it’s a deeply humane piece that is also a great guide to a bunch of films worth seeing. 

Elections

• Bolts magazine has a thorough and helpful rundown of all the prosecutor and sheriff elections to watch on election day. You can check for the outcomes of all these races – and many more up and down the ballot! – on his cheat sheet (scroll down for the dropdown menus of races), which Bolts will update as election returns come in. And I encourage you to follow Daniel Nichanian, the founder of Bolts, for up-to-the-minute election night results. 

• FWD.us recently did a poll finding that criminal justice reform is a winning issue. Indeed, 55% of people said that they would be more likely to vote for a pro-reform candidate, and 35% said it would not affect their vote. Read more details in this feature in Newsweek.

  

• In a NY poll by the Legal Action Center, 83% of respondents said that the high incarceration rate is a problem, 60% said they’d be more likely to vote for a candidate who promised to double funding to alternatives and triple funding to reentry, and 80% said substance use needs to be a health issue and not a criminal issue. 

• After spending millions of dollars in August on TV ads on crime and her credibility as a prosecutor, the Harris campaign shifted dramatically in September and August and basically stopped talking about crime in TV ads. I’m very curious what their internals said!

• Harris’s background as a prosecutor opens the door for the Trump campaign and other republicans to message directly impacted people on this and try to sow distrust. To counter this, groups have been working to remind these voters that Trump is likely to enact terrible policies like stop and frisk nationwide and ramped up executions on death row. Much more work needs to be done in this area, both to update the Democratic party on how to talk about this and how to work in partnership with reform leaders, and to educate voters on where the parties stand on this issue. 

• One key advocate on this is Saleem Holbrook, a leader from Pennsylvania, formerly incarcerated, and founder of Straight Ahead and the Abolitionist Law Center. He has been working hard to get the word out to the formerly incarcerated community that Donald Trump and Project 2025 would be disastrous for criminal justice reform, battling concerns that Harris’s work as a prosecutor makes her a threat to reform. His team produced the digital image pictured here. 

  

• Reenfranchising people with felony convictions only works if the state agencies actually implement that law, as would-be voters in New Mexico discovered.    

• The amount of cash from police flowing to the republican candidate for District Attorney in Los Angeles is stunning - over $10million so far. Sitting DA Gascón raised $17million in 2020, but only $1.2million this year. The most likely outcome is that this dooms him in the election. 

Solutions and Wins

• Jeff Asher reports that murder is declining at the fastest rate ever recorded in the U.S., and violent and property crime are also going down. This reflects what localities are seeing. Check out the local press on dropping crime rates in Wichita, KS, Columbus, OH, Memphis, TN, Wilmington, NC, and Akron, OH.  

• A year ago Salt Lake City launched a new court tailored toward people struggling with mental health, addiction or homelessness who had been arrested dozens or sometimes over 100 times, which was traumatic for them and a huge system drag. The new approach is having a dramatic positive effect.     

• Paying community members to intervene in violence (especially gun violence) before it happens, known as “violence interruption,” is continuing to attract major funding after showing strong results in reducing crime and violence. See recent stories out of Oakland ($2mil fed grant); Aurora ($2mil fed grant); Knoxville ($450k city grant); Cincinnati ($275k city grant); plus a multi-city effort by Everytown, which will give $2mil to groups in 27 cities. 

• The Community Based Public Safety Collective and the Alliance for Safety and Justice were named 2024 TED Audacious Project Winners for their “Scaling Safety” initiative. 

• New York state is closing Great Meadow prison, which has been called the worst prison in NY, known for extremely high rates of suicide and staff violence (even though there are more guards than prisoners there). This was made possible by years of dogged organizing and advocacy work to pass laws and change practices to cut the prison population in NY by 50%.

Reports and Research

• The Brennan Center compared crime rates in cities with progressive prosecutors to other cities, and found no significant differences between the trends. Indeed, for several trends, progressive prosecutors showed lower crime than comparison cities, with the gap starting when the new DA came into office. Their report has a ton of great charts showing this; here is one, featuring Austin (dark blue line), which elected a progressive DA, compared to other cities: 

• A new RAND report finds that the Los Angeles Rapid Diversion Program for people with mental health challenges has shown very impressive results.  

• The Prison Policy Initiative did a troubling report on rising jail numbers on tribal land, including a significant increase of women and older people.

• Human Rights for Kids has published its annual state ratings on the treatment of children in the criminal justice system, and whether their human rights are being respected. 

• A new study finds that Measure 110, the law decriminalizing drugs in Oregon, had nothing to do with a spike in fentanyl deaths. Instead, it was just terrible timing; fentanyl arrived in the state just as the law was going into effect. Partly because of the spike, voters then repealed the law, which will lead to a lot more misery as people are needlessly sent to prison.

Wall of Shame

• There were 19 deaths in Riverside Council jail in 2022, making it the deadliest jail in the country. The LA Times published a deeply reported investigation. I think we will start seeing more coverage of deaths in custody in the coming months, as attention is ticking up on that issue, and in November there will be a national gathering on the topic. 

• Prisoners in the path of hurricane Milton were abandoned as people evacuated. This is horrifically common.  

• DC’s city council is holding hearings on whether pregnant women should be treated like human beings while giving birth, instead of being shackled and observed by corrections officers. The DC Justice Lab has the background. 

• The Atlanta Police Department conspired to bring baseless charges against cop city protestors, and it was caught on video. Here’s a short thread breaking it down, with a link to the video.