Cautionary notes on last week's sentencing reforms

While some are heralding last week's federal sentencing reforms as the biggest civil rights development since Brown v. Board of Education back in 1954, others are less sanguine. The excellent Sentencing Law & Policy blog summarizes two cautionary opinion pieces, one by James Oliphant of the Chicago Tribune and the other by Adam Liptak of the New York Times.

Oliphant's piece, "New drug rules won't crack many jail doors," starts out:

When the U.S. Sentencing Commission last week reduced sentences for imprisoned crack cocaine offenders -- reversing years of policy that treated crack far differently from powder cocaine -- the Justice Department and police groups bitterly criticized the action, warning of a flood of criminals rushing out onto America's streets....

But many experts say the reality is not so dramatic. Fewer than 3,000 prisoners nationwide will be immediately eligible for the relief. All have already served considerable time. Each eligible prisoner will have to petition the court for freedom -- and the Justice Department can oppose those petitions. Few offenders with violent histories are likely to be released.

Adam Liptak's column, "Whittling Away, but Leaving a Gap," begins:

There was an avalanche of sentencing news last week. The Supreme Court gave trial judges more power to show mercy, the United States Sentencing Commission gave almost 20,000 prisoners doing time on crack cocaine charges a good shot at early release, and even President Bush commuted a crack sentence.

The net effect: tinkering. The United States justice system remains, by international standards at least, exceptionally punitive. And nothing that happened last week will change that.

Top criminologists take public policy stances

In a special "gala" issue of Criminology & Public Policy, 27 of the most influential criminologists alive take policy policy stances on issues ranging from juvenile curfews and the death penalty to sex offender residency restrictions and police gang units. The goal of each invited essay was to suggest that enough empirical evidence exists on the topic to support one specific recommendation, and to provide a summary of that evidence. Unfortunately, the essays are not available online, but I'm sure that if you are interested in a topic you can Google the author and obtain a reprint.

The recommendations include:

IMPOSE AN IMMEDIATE MORATORIUM ON EXECUTIONS
JAMES R. ACKER

ABOLISH JUVENILE CURFEWS
KENNETH ADAMS

ABOLISH LIFETIME BANS FOR EX-FELONS
SHAWN D. BUSHWAY & GARY SWEETEN

ABANDON FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT POLICIES
ROBERT D. CRUTCHFIELD

MAKE REHABILITATION CORRECTIONS' GUIDING PARADIGM
FRANCIS T. CULLEN

EXPAND THE USE OF POLICE GANG UNITS
SCOTT H. DECKER

END NATURAL LIFE SENTENCES FOR JUVENILES
JEFFREY FAGAN

MAKE POLICE OVERSIGHT INDEPENDENT AND TRANSPARENT
JACK R. GREENE

BAN THE BOX TO PROMOTE EX-OFFENDER EMPLOYMENT
JESSICA S. HENRY, JAMES B. JACOBS

TARGET JUVENILE NEEDS TO REDUCE DELINQUENCY
PETER R. JONES, BRIAN R. WYANT

COLLECT AND RELEASE DATA ON COERCIVE POLICE ACTIONS
ROBERT J. KANE

MANDATE THE ELECTRONIC RECORDING OF POLICE INTERROGATIONS
RICHARD A. LEO, KIMBERLY D. RICHMAN

IMPLEMENT AND USE COURT PERFORMANCE MEASURES
BRIAN J. OSTROM, ROGER A. HANSON

JUST SAY NO TO D.A.R.E.
DENNIS P. ROSENBAUM
(One of my personal favoritess; it's high time to abolish harmful "Just Say No" messages targeting children.)

TRANSFER THE UNIFORM CRIME REPORTING PROGRAM FROM THE FBI TO THE BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS
RICHARD ROSENFELD

USE PROBATION TO PREVENT MURDER
LAWRENCE W. SHERMAN
(This is a provocative essay on forecasting homicide.)

REVISE POLICIES MANDATING OFFENDER DNA COLLECTION
RALPH B. TAYLOR, JOHN S. GOLDKAMP, DORIS WEILAND, CLAIRISSA BREEN, R. MARIE GARCIA, LAWRENCE A. PRESLEY, BRIAN R. WYANT

ELIMINATE RESIDENCY RESTRICTIONS FOR SEX OFFENDERS
JEFFERY T. WALKER

PROTECT INDIVIDUAL PUNISHMENT DECISIONS FROM MANDATORY PENALTIES
FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING

Blanket ban on alcohol verboten, court rules

For those of you who are involved with parolees and probationers: How many times have you seen a blanket prohibition on alcohol consumption as a condition of someone's supervised release? Do you ever see the prohibition imposed on people who have no documented history of alcohol abuse, with random urinalyses to ensure compliance? I see it quite often.

Such blanket prohibitions will be a thing of the past if the courts follow the law as dictated today by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Perhaps emboldened by the Supreme Court's dramatic rulings earlier this week on individualized sentencing (which some are calling as monumental to civil rights as was Brown v. Board of Education a half-century ago), the Ninth Circuit today extended the logic of individualized sentencing to alcohol bans.

The case of U.S. v. Betts involves white-collar criminal Marcus Betts, who accepted bribes to increase people's credit ratings while he worked for the TransUnion credit agency.

The judge imposed as a condition of his probation that he abstain from alcohol, despite acknowledging on the record that there was no evidence that Betts had a liquor problem.

Explaining its logic, the appellate court wrote:

"[There is nothing] wrong generally with supervised release conditions requiring abstention from alcohol. Many people commit crimes when they drink too much and such conditions are often necessary to protect the public and provide correctional treatment. We have upheld abstention conditions where there is some indication in the record of a problem of abuse…. But the decision has to be individualized, not a matter of policy application without regard to the individual defendant."

Those of you who read my blog regularly will recall that only three months ago, the Ninth Circuit held that parolees cannot be required to attend 12-step treatment programs. More on that ruling is here.

The Appellate Law & Practice and Sentencing Law & Policy blogs both have posts on today's ruling, which is also available online. An interesting Newsweek magazine story on the import of this week's U.S. Supreme Court's sentencing rulings is here.

Helping prisoners get disability funds

The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs has issued a report on correctional programs that help prisoners apply for federal disability payments so that their treatment services will not be interrupted upon their release from custody.

The report, "Helping Inmates Obtain Federal Disability Benefits," examines programs in Texas and New York state prisons and a county jail in Philadelphia. All three programs help severely ill offenders qualify and apply for federal benefits that, in turn, enable them to get necessary treatment in their local communities upon release.

The report provides practical information for mental health and medical staff in correctional settings as well as prison counselors, correctional administrators, and probation and parole officers.

It is available online.

Exiles in the promised land

Sex offenders living as trolls under Miami bridge

The New Times of Miami has an amazing update on the exile colony of sex offenders living under the Julia Tuttle freeway in Miami (a community I blogged about back in April); there's a companion slide show that is worth checking out. The story begins like this:

Another one showed up last night. Around 10 — just before curfew — a car rolled in under the bridge and the newcomer got out with his wife. She hugged and kissed him goodbye, pulled the car out along the road, and disappeared into a sea of headlights. . . . Until last week, "Big Man" was serving a four-year sentence for cocaine possession. . . . He was looking forward to leaving prison and reuniting with his wife, until he got the news: Instead of going home, he'd be living under a bridge, a parole commission officer told him. That's because 23 years ago, when he was 19 years old, Big Man was charged with sexual assault on a minor. (He claims the victim was his girlfriend and that it was consensual.)

The story continues here. The companion slide show is here. Also see my September post on how this relates to the history of banishment in Western culture.

California Supreme Court to hear Jessica's Law challenge

In the wake of recent court rulings overturning residency restrictions for sex offenders in Georgia and in one Florida city, the California Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to review the contentious topic as well.

I've blogged previously about this case, in which four registered sex offenders argue that it is irrational and illegal to apply residency restrictions to ex-convicts like themselves, whose sex crimes did not involve children. Three were convicted of rape and the fourth was convicted of indecent exposure.

Jessica's Law makes most urban areas off limits to sex offenders paroled from prison since the law's enactment on Nov. 7, 2006. Opponents say this is forcing ex-offenders to abandon their homes and families, and to choose between prison and homelessness.

In response to the law, about half of those covered by it have declared themselves transients, claiming either that they are homeless or that they change residences frequently. Although self-identified transients must report to their parole officers each day, it becomes harder to monitor them and to provide them with necessary treatment.

"We could potentially be making the world more dangerous rather than less dangerous," said Gerry Blasingame, a therapist and former chair of the California Coalition on Sexual Offending.

Because of the potential danger in encouraging sex offenders to disappear, prosecutors in Iowa have been lobbying for the repeal of that state's similar residency restrictions law. "Most legislators know in their hearts that the law is no good and a waste of time, but they’re afraid of the politics of it," said a spokesman for the Iowa prosecutors' association.

"It defies common sense to argue that public safety is somehow served by forcing sex offender registrants into homelessness - to sleep in cars, in parks, near schools and on the streets - disconnected from their support networks," said Ernest Galvan, a lawyer for the four men contesting the California law, in recently filed court papers.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more coverage of the case (titled E.J. on Habeas Corpus, S156933) here. More on the problem of sex offenders declaring transiency is here. The Sentencing Law & Policy blog has additional coverage and links here.