Latest criminal justice news, updates and commentary 9.9.24

Top reads/views: the role of architecture firms in pushing bigger jail construction; get smart on the criminalization of pregnancy; Blake Strode writes about The Future Before Us, reflecting on 10 years since Ferguson. 

Solutions and Wins

• The number of women in California prisons has plummeted by 70% since 2010. That is truly incredible progress! 

• Nika Soon-Shiong writes for the Appeal on how cash assistance to Section 8 renters can cut homelessness far better than policing and sweeping encampments. She details a new pilot that she’s running at the Fund for Guaranteed Income in partnership with HUD. 

• The latest edition of “Defend Justice,” a regular newsletter from Zoë Towns at FWD.us, profiles multiple popular criminal justice policies championed by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. This helpful roundup is a great review for anyone trying to orient themselves to the federal justice policy climate right now, and it’s inspiring too! 

• Udi Ofer cataloged a range of criminal justice reform wins, arguing that while the pace of change has slowed since 2020 and the reforms are modest, there is a lot of progress. Here’s an excerpt: 

  • So far this year, deep-red Oklahoma passed a second-look law (legislation focused on allowing judges to review long sentences) permitting resentencing if domestic violence was a mitigating factor in a crime [Nevada and Michigan are looking at similar proposals]; Mississippi extended its parole-eligibility law; Nebraska passed an alternative-to-incarceration program for military veterans; Kansas unanimously passed civil-asset-forfeiture reform; New Hampshire passed a law prohibiting racial profiling by the police; Colorado and Tennessee passed occupational-licensing reform, allowing more formerly incarcerated people to obtain better-paying jobs; Arizona unanimously passed probation reform; Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order to support successful reentry into society for formerly incarcerated people; New Jersey changed its “use of force” policy in an effort to resolve mental-health crises without violence; and more.

• San Diego’s Mobile Crisis Response Team has helped nearly 8,000 people. Over 98% of these calls were diverted from police.  

• In California, major policy reforms to reduce incarceration (such as prop 47 and prop 57) were associated with lower rates of violent crime and property crime—a recent report shows. So why is governor Newsom aggressively meddling in local crime policy with militaristic and punitive interventions that won’t work, but will cause a lot of harm? It’s very 90s and grotesque. 

• A citizen-led group called Charleston Can’t Wait proposed and passed marijuana reform, removing fines and jail time for first time use. I am a big fan of this type of really local organizing. 

• For people worried that bipartisan criminal justice reform is a thing of the past, take a look at Glenn Youngkin, the ultra conservative governor of Virginia, who proudly unveiled a state initiative to help people reenter society after prison. That this stance has become so commonplace is a testament to many years of good organizing and advocacy in the criminal justice reform field. 

• Here’s a cool compilation of solutions-oriented research: 100 ways to reduce crime in cities.  

Commentary and Analysis

• The Prison Policy Initiative compiled a list of ways that mass incarceration makes people economically far worse off. The three broad categories are: mass incarceration drives poverty, weakens worker power, and weakens movements for economic justice. 

• John Pfaff urges the Harriz/Walz campaign to talk more about the incredible drops in crime that we are seeing after the COVID spike. Lots of good data in this one.

• Paul and Mark Engler wrote a lengthy piece for movement activists on how to ensure that a disruptive protest will help the cause rather than hurt it. 

• John Roman argues that the COVID crime spike and subsequent plummeting of crime rates in 2023 and continuing now tracked the fall and then rise again of government infrastructure to support people. It’s a good reminder that the massive 2023 crime decline begs for an explanation.  

• Inquest magazine hosted a round table about whether prosecutors can help end mass incarceration, given that they are responsible for so much of it.   

Reports and Research

• According to a new and very compelling Human Rights Watch report about people without housing in L.A., there are 46,000 people in the city of Los Angeles without housing, or about 1.2% of the population (out of 3.82 million). However, from 2016 through 2022, 38% of all LAPD arrests and citations combined were of unhoused people.  

• The first nationwide study of the causal effects of bail reform on crime trends definitively discredits the narrative that limiting cash bail leads to spikes in the crime rate.

• The Ohio Juvenile Justice Working Group released a report with findings and recommendations for making changes in youth incarceration in the state. Every report I’ve seen like this looks the same, with recommendations that were obvious 20 years ago. Better late than never I suppose. 

• The Real Time Crime Index just launched, which allowed the public to access information about crime trends without having to wait a year for data to be published. 

• Interrupting Criminalization released their Semester Two Independent Study Curriculum, which guides users through toolkits, reports, media, and technical assistance resources to build the capacity of local campaigns and abolitionist projects.

• The Mapping Police Violence group just released a new data platform documenting over 1,000,000 cases of police use of force. This is the largest public database of its kind. You can explore the data here, and read Sam Sinyangwe’s detailed and informative thread about it here. 

Wall of Shame

• The so-called ‘troubled teen’ industry, which includes locked residential facilities where kids are sent for ‘treatment’ or ‘discipline’, is being exposed for seriously abusing children. This is a private industry, so we don’t usually think of it as incarceration, but we should.   

• No one knows how many people die in custody; data is urgently needed. However, this horror is so prevalent that three $1million+ lawsuits have settled over the past week after a loved one died in jail: Dallas, San Diego, and Greenville County. 

• Chicago police are making hundreds of thousands of secret traffic stops, even though the law requires them to report these stops. The percentage of stops going unreported has gone way up under the new police superintendent. 

• Hundreds of people at Dauphin County prison in PA got outside time over Labor Day weekend; for some, it was their first time being outside and feeling the sun in years.

• The MacArthur foundation withheld a $625,000 grant from the SF DA’s office. The funding was part of a multi-year project to reduce jail sizes. But the current SF DA has no interest in that.