JPI News Digest 6/15/12
Published: June 15, 2012
NY: Sensible Sentences for Nonviolent Offenders (NY Times)
The enormous strain prison costs put on state budgets has led some conservatives and liberals to do something sensible together. Democrats and Republicans in several states are pushing to reform criminal justice policies based on strong evidence that imprisoning nonviolent offenders for ever longer terms adds huge costs with little benefit to public safety.
FL: Florida lawmakers could OK prison health privatization (News Press)
With a judge still deciding whether the plan is constitutional, a legislative budget panel this month is expected to consider moving forward with the privatization of prison health services. The Department of Corrections has requested that the Legislative Budget Commission, a joint panel of House and Senate members, take up the privatization issue June 26 and allow signing contracts with firms that would manage inmate health care.
WA: Washington Schools Can't Spread Information on Student Sex Crimes (Digital Journal)
Schools are prohibited by law from taking on a law enforcement role by publically pointing out juvenile sex offenders among the student body. Increasingly, sex offenders are being stripped of even the slightest semblance of privacy rights. But, in Washington State, the school remains one of the last bastions of discretion for minors convicted of a sex offense.
MS: MDOC Sticks with Private Prisons (Jackson Free Press)
Sometime between the 8:45 p.m. and the 9:15 p.m. staff shift change on July 30, 2010, Tracy Alan Province, John Charles McCluskey and Daniel Kelly Renwick escaped from Arizona State Prison-Kingman. Just after 10 p.m., perimeter-patrol officers discovered a 30-by-22-inch hole in the fence. Two hours after the prison determined the inmates had escaped, Arizona Department of Corrections assumed command and the U.S. Marshals Service launched a manhunt.
UK: Restorative Justice Backed by 95% of Crime Victims (Derbyshire)
MORE than nine out of ten crime victims who saw offenders punished by restorative justice have been left satisfied by the outcome, say police. A survey by Derbyshire Constabulary, showed 94.8% of those questioned were either fairly or very satisfied with the experience, a figure the force described as "phenomenally high" and an increase on last year's 90.8%.
Posted in Criminal Justice News