Criminal Justice

This session explored how the faith community has made a difference in criminal justice and policing reform, but also pointed out how it could do better to affect change. Allison DeFoor, canon to the ordinary in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida, was unequivocal in his disapproval of the current criminal justice system: “This system is wrong. […]

Kevin Boyd, writing for Rare, covered Stand Together Trust’s criminal justice reform summit Advancing Justice. Boyd focused on one panel in particular, “Striking the Balance: Sentencing and Public Safety in America,” which featured Stephen Walker, the director of government relations for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association.  As Boyd writes:    “Walker, who himself is a former […]

Delaware is among the states that have confronted issues with their criminal justice system in recent years. As he entered office in 2009, Governor Jack Markell faced the problem of serious prison overcrowding in the state, but he did not think that constructing more prisons was the answer. In response to this issue and others, Markell […]

This panel discussed how advocates with diverse perspectives and experiences can create more concerted efforts for reform. Ana Yáñez-Correa, executive director of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, began by explaining the importance of selecting allies strategically and referenced her work with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Mark Levin. For Yáñez-Correa, forming an eventual partnership is first about […]

Moderator JaKathryn Ross, senior director of community affairs at Georgia Pacific, began the panel by asking Leroy Perry, re-entry coordinator at New Orleans Mission, about the challenges that restored citizens face as they re-enter society. Oftentimes, difficulty finding employment contributes to recidivism; however, Perry challenged this idea, pointing out that many people who are employed […]

Though we may have arrived at our current criminal justice system through the actions of many well-meaning individuals, far too many of its features run counter to the basic principles of a free society. The United States currently incarcerates 2.2 million people, at a rate of over 700 for every 100,000 residents. Somewhere between 70 […]

Ford Foundation program officer Kirsten Levingston moderated this panel and opened the session by challenging the panelists to describe the purpose of police. Anne Milgram, vice president of criminal justice at the Arnold Foundation, argued that policing should be geared toward building safe communities where people have opportunities to succeed. But, she said, policing has moved […]

This panel highlighted the issue of overcriminalization—the use of criminal rather than civil or administrative law to punish behavior that historically would not have been punished criminally. The trend toward overcriminalization is yielding dangerous consequences for the rule of law. Louisiana State University professor emeritus of law John Baker began by noting the troubling fact that we […]

In 2011, fisherman John Yates was convicted of a felony under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s “anti-document-shredding” provision, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. What did Yates do to earn a conviction under a law intended to prevent white-collar criminals from defrauding investors and the public? He allegedly threw 3 of 72 fish he had […]

Criminal sentencing laws in America are in need of reform. This is especially true for mandatory minimum sentencing laws, which remove a judge’s discretion and require that defendants convicted of certain crimes be sentenced to prison terms of a minimum length. At the federal level, according to Arizona State University Law professor Erik Luna, “Federal […]