Fewer Americans Behind Bars, BJS Reports

For the third straight year, fewer Americans were under "correctional supervision"--a catch-all description that includes prisons, jails, probation, and parole--in 2011.

That was the major finding of a U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report released today.  Read more...

Convicted look to the state for forgiveness

Lovett, a convicted robber and drug dealer from Atlanta, said he needs a job; Adcock, a convicted drunken driver from Cartersville, wants to carry a gun.

Theirs are among the 2,067 pardon and restoration-of-rights applications pending before the state Board of Pardons and Paroles. Both men say they’ve been good for a good long time.

They have a decent chance of getting what they want.  Read More...

Correctional Populations in the United States, 2009

Presents summary data on the number of adults under some form of correctional supervision in the United States at yearend 2009. Correctional supervision includes adults supervised in the community on probation or parole and those incarcerated in prison or local jails. The report provides a comparison between the change in the correctional population observed since 2000 and the changes observed during the 1980s and 1990s, which illustrates the slowing of growth in the population during each decade. It also includes the number of men and women under each correctional status and trend analysis of men and women under correctional supervision since 1990.  Read More...

Governor OKs medical parole for incapacitated inmates

Schwarzenegger signs 21 bills, including one allowing the state to parole comatose and physically incapacitated inmates and another restricting motorcycle modifications. He vetoes 14 bills.

Reporting from Sacramento — State prisons can release comatose and physically incapacitated inmates on medical parole under a measure approved Tuesday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that is expected to save California at least $46 million annually.
 
The legislation was one of 21 bills the governor signed, including a ban on modifying motorcycles to make them more noisy, a scale-back of an early release program at county jails and a 5-year extension allowing shoemakers to import kangaroo parts to California.  Read More...

New Survey Says Public Favorable To Cutting Prison Populations

A new public opinion survey on crime and sentencing issues gives policymakers some breathing room on moves to reduce prison populations during this time of budget crises in states. Most registered voters believe that about one fifth of inmates could be released and not pose a threat to public safety, said the survey sponsored by the Pew Center on the States’ Public Safety Performance Project.

The survey found vast majorities (nearly 90%) favoring the concept of fewer low-risk and non-violent offenders behind bars to keep more violent offenders imprisoned, and to reinvest any money saved in probation and parole improvements. About 2/3 of Democrats and about half of Republicans ”strongly” favor” such changes, meaning that they have reasonably strong bipartisan backing.  Read More...

Governor signs law named after Chelsea King: Measure sets longer prison sentences, tougher parole conditions and targeted treatment for sex offenders

When Doug Lambell remembers searching for Chelsea King six months ago, he feels anew the sad invigoration of a community coming together to stop a family from falling apart.

The 49-year-old banker and father of two from Scripps Ranch remembers showing up in Rancho Bernardo to search for a teenager he didn’t know. He remembers seeing more than 1,000 people standing in the rain and being bowled over by the shared purpose of wanting to bring Chelsea home.

He still cries about it.  Read More...

Murderer Freed on Probation Fails to Comply With Terms

On a humid Houston morning, Carolyn Hardin sits on a white marble bench near her youngest son’s grave. More than a decade after a Houston firefighter killed him, Carolyn’s oversized glasses slide down her nose on a stream of tears. “He was a good kid,” she sobs. “He did not deserve to die over a parking space.”

Steven Hardin, a tow truck driver, died in April 1998 when Houston firefighter Barry Crawford shot him in the chest during a towing dispute. In a high-profile trial with a shocking outcome, a jury found Crawford guilty of first-degree murder but sentenced him to only probation. Harris County District Judge Ted Poe, now a Republican U.S. congressman, imposed numerous and strict terms on Crawford’s 10-year probation sentence. He was supposed to help support Steven’s two children, to carry a photo of the 26-year-old in his wallet, to complete 1,000 hours of community service and to pay thousands of dollars to the family in restitution.  Read More...

Prison Without Walls

Incarceration in America is a failure by almost any measure. But what if the prisons could be turned inside out, with convicts released into society under constant electronic surveillance? Radical though it may seem, early experiments suggest that such a science-fiction scenario might cut crime, reduce costs, and even prove more just.

One snowy night last winter, I walked into a pizzeria in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, with my right pant leg hiked up my shin. A pager-size black box was strapped to my sockless ankle, and another, somewhat larger unit dangled in a holster on my belt. Together, the two items make up a tracking device called the BI ExacuTrack AT: the former is designed to be tamper-resistant, and the latter broadcasts the wearer’s location to a monitoring company via GPS. The device is commonly associated with paroled sex offenders, who wear it so authorities can keep an eye on their movements. Thus my experiment: an online guide had specified that the restaurant I was visiting was a “family” joint. Would the moms and dads, confronted with my anklet, identify me as a possible predator and hustle their kids back out into the cold?  Read More...

Serious Flaws in IL Prisoner Release Program

Criminal justice expert David Erickson released his review of the Illinois Department of Corrections’ Meritorious Good Time Push program Friday, reporting a number of serious flaws in the program, which was terminated in December 2009, and offering detailed recommendations to reform the prison system’s parole procedures.

After an accelerated prisoner release plan last year was found to include some prisoners who had committed violent crimes, Governor Pat Quinn suspended, then terminated the program. He named Erickson, a retired criminal trial judge and Appellate Court Justice, to head a three-person panel to review all Department of Corrections’ Meritorious Good Time (MGT) programs and make recommendations on how the programs should be overhauled.  Read More...

Parole program shifts resources to serious offenders

Police are closely monitoring a new group of parolees on Morgan Hill's streets who can't be carted off to jail as easily as traditional parolees.

The new state parole program that allows certain criminals to be unsupervised when they get out of prison - known as non-revocable parole - is supposed to let authorities keep a closer eye on violent felons, but local police say the policy will result in more violence, drug trafficking and theft.

"It's completely predictable," Morgan Hill police chief Bruce Cumming said. "These people, when they get out of prison they go back to doing exactly what they went to prison for. They go back to their same neighborhood, same crowd, back to drugs, back to robbing people and breaking into houses and stealing cars."  Read More...

Software Predicts Criminal Behavior

New crime prediction software being rolled out in the nation's capital should reduce not only the murder rate, but the rate of many other crimes as well.

Developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered.

In his latest version, the one being implemented in D.C., Berk goes even further, identifying the individuals most likely to commit crimes other than murder.  Read More...

Probation-Parole Agents Say They Are Starved For Resources

As pressures build to reduce the “mass incarceration” in the United States, more attention should be paid to “starved probation and parole resources,” contends William Burrell, former New Jersey probation and parole official. Speaking yesterday to an American Probation and Parole Association conference in Washington, D.C., Burrell said that about 70 percent of government spending on corrections and only about 12 percent to probation and parole even though probation and parole agents handle high caseloads. The probation staff in Sacramento County, Ca., is facing a 50 percent cutback.  Read More...

Electronic bracelets to track gun-toting Memphis juveniles

Memphis police want to stop gun-toting teens in their tracks -- literally.

Police Director Larry Godwin is teaming with Memphis Mayor A C Wharton to develop a pilot program that monitors the steps of troubled teens through advanced electronic tracking bracelets.

It's part of a $2 million, federally funded program to curtail crime using tracking equipment that can pinpoint a detainee's exact location.

More than 150 minors were arrested with guns last year, police said. And the arrests haven't slowed this year.  Read More...

GPS anklets keep paroled gang members in check

A self-described former gang member in a silver and black Bo Jackson Raiders jersey and Nike high tops strutted into an Oakland parole office Thursday morning to get a new GPS unit strapped around his ankle.

Sergio, 43, said he wasn't happy to represent one of the new frontiers of state corrections. The anklet he has worn 24 hours a day for the past two months, he said, made him feel like a dog on a leash.  Read more...