JPI Daily News Digest 6/28/12
Published: June 28, 2012
NY: Supreme Court ruling may set juvenile offenders free (New York Daily News)
The Supreme Court ruling that banned states from imposing mandatory life sentences on juveniles offers an unexpected chance at freedom to more than 2,000 inmates who have never been able to seek release and had virtually no hope that their prospects would change.
PA: Secret grand juries coming back to county courts (The Times-Tribune)
Prosecutors may expand use of grand juries. Two pillars of Pennsylvania's criminal justice system - the right to a preliminary hearing and access to online court records - are undergoing a substantial makeover. The state Supreme Court is allowing county prosecutors the option of using secret grand juries to determine whether a person accused of a crime should go to trial rather than holding a preliminary hearing before a magisterial district judge.
MN: Transgender in the Prison System (Minnesota Daily)
A few weeks ago, Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald, a Minnesota college student, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for second-degree manslaughter. McDonald is a 23-year-old African-American transgender woman. Though McDonald identifies as a female, her sentence entailed living in a male prison.
VA: Private prison company hopes to manage Virginia’s sex offender detention facility (American Independent)
The nation’s second-largest private prison company says it expects Virginia to make a decision by next month on its bid to expand and operate the state’s detention facility for sexually violent predators who have completed their prison terms.
IA: Iowa report says number of juvenile arrests falls (San Francisco Chronicle)
The number of minors getting arrested in Iowa has dropped, and officials credit a new philosophy of keeping juveniles out of the justice system as long as possible and programs such as family therapy, according to a state report. Juvenile arrests fell 20 percent from 2007 to 2010, a reversal from the previous three years when juvenile arrests rose by almost 14 percent between 2004 and 2007, The Des Moines Register reported Tuesday.
UK: Sex In Prison: Howard League Launching First Study Into Issues (Huffington Post)
Prison reform body the Howard League is launching the first ever study of sex in prison, it was announced on Wednesday. The two-year study will look into consensual sex in prison, rape in prison and sexual development in young people who are imprisoned. Currently little is known about the amount of sex in prison, both consensual and non-consensual, and conjugal visits are banned in prisons in the UK.
Posted in Criminal Justice News