By Marie Manikis

Censure, blame and harms are central concepts in sentencing that have evolved over the years to take into account social context and experiential knowledge. Flexibility, however, remains limited as the current analysis in sentencing focuses on the offender while failing to engage with the state's contribution in creating wrongs and harms. This risks giving rise to defective practices of responsibility since the state can also contribute to their production. The following article presents a complementary and additional framework within sentencing to account for state censure, blame and harms. The framework is rooted in communicative theories of punishment that integrate a responsive understanding of censure and a relational account of responsibility.

The Cambridge Law Journal , Volume 81 , Issue 2 , July 2022 , pp. 294 - 322

by Lois M. Davis, Louis T. Mariano, Melissa M. Labriola, Susan Turner, Matt Strawn

he California County Resentencing Pilot Program was established to support and evaluate a collaborative approach to exercising prosecutorial resentencing discretion. The first of three reports, this evaluation seeks to determine how the pilot program is implemented in each of the nine participating counties and what the characteristics are of a possible candidate for resentencing.

This report describes the pilot, evaluation methods, initial findings based on stakeholder interviews, and analysis of pilot data. Qualitative interviews reveal key strengths and challenges of the pilot in its implementation. Analyses of quantitative data describe the population of individuals considered for resentencing. Together, these findings shed light on the early experiences of the nine counties implementing this important pilot program.

Key Findings

• Implementation challenges include developing eligibility criteria, acquiring and analyzing data from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to identify individuals who met eligibility criteria, working with the individuals to facilitate preparation of their application and supporting documents, identifying and hiring community-based organizations (CBO)s, and working with the courts to develop processes and procedures for making referrals to the courts.

• Except for a few counties, most of the DA and PD offices did not have a history of working closely together and are still developing that collaboration.

• Across the nine pilot counties, the initial cases reviewed tended to involve individuals who were over the age of 50. The controlling offense most often involved a crime against persons. Nearly half of the cases reviewed involved third-strike sentences, and nearly three-fourths of reviewed cases had a sentence enhancement present.

SANTA MONICA, CA: RAND, 2022. 77P.

by Lois M. Davis, Louis T. Mariano, Melissa M. Labriola, Susan Turner, Andy Bogart, Matt Strawn, Lynn A. Karoly

he California County Resentencing Pilot Program was established to support and evaluate a collaborative approach to exercising prosecutorial discretion in resentencing eligible incarcerated individuals. Nine California counties were selected and were provided funding to implement the three-year pilot program. Participants in the pilot include a county district attorney (DA) office and a county public defender (PD) office and may include a community-based organization in each county pilot site. The evaluation seeks to determine how the pilot is implemented in individual counties, whether the pilot is effective in reducing criminal justice involvement (e.g., time spent in incarceration and recidivism), and whether it is cost-effective.

This report documents evaluation results, focusing on the implementation of the program from September 2022 through July 2023 — the second year of the pilot program. In addition to providing a review of the pilot program and evaluation methods, the authors describe year 2 findings based on stakeholder interviews and analysis of pilot data. Qualitative interviews revealed key strengths and challenges of the pilot in its implementation. Analyses of quantitative data describe the population of individuals considered for resentencing and document the flow of cases from initial consideration through resentencing. These findings shed light on the experiences of the nine counties in implementing the pilot program during year 2.

Key Findings

• Interviews with DA and PD offices indicated overall support for the program but faced key challenges

• The PDs tended to want to play a more proactive role in defining eligibility criteria, identifying cases for consideration, and making recommendations to the courts than what the DAs envisioned.

• Personnel shortages were mentioned by multiple offices as a continuing challenge.

• Only four of the counties were working with a community-based organization.

  The pilot counties each developed their own criteria for identifying cases eligible for resentencing consideration

• Although the inclusion criteria varied somewhat across the pilot counties, overall the criteria focused on such factors as the age of the incarcerated individual, the crime committed, and the length and other details of the sentence.

• Counties indicated use of less strict criteria in this second year of implementation and were embracing flexibility in the cases they were reviewing.

  Analysis of case-level data covering the first 18 months of pilot implementation revealed important data points

• Among the 684 case reviews initiated during the reporting period, 105 cases had been referred to the court for resentencing, the DA offices had decided not to refer 321, and 258 were still under DA review.

• Of 94 cases for which courts have ruled on a resentencing motion, 91 cases have resulted in resentencing. Of the 91 resentenced individuals, 63 have been released from prison.

• Among those cases awaiting a DA decision on whether to proceed with resentencing, 72 percent have been under review more than six months.

Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2023. 95p.

By Liz Komar, et al.

Through the lens of the successes and challenges of New York’s DVSJA, this guide explores the need for similar bills across the country (referred to as DVSJA legislation, DVSJA laws or DVSJA relief) and offers recommendations for advocates and legislators developing and implementing those laws in their own jurisdictions. Drawing from case law and the guidance of survivors, advocates, and litigators, the guide offers a model bill, which can be adapted to fit any locality. Woven throughout are the experiences of those who have applied for DVSJA relief in New York or those who would benefit from such a law should it be enacted in their state.

Specifically, the guide recommends that states enact sentencing laws for domestic violence survivors that:

1. Create broad and trauma-informed eligibility criteria

2. Develop a legal process accessible to survivors

3. Craft a trauma-informed and realistic legal standard

4. Maximize sentence reductions

The ultimate goal of these recommendations is to allow advocates to draw on lessons learned from New York’s DVSJA to strengthen efforts for survivor sentencing legislation already gaining ground across the United States.

Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project and Survivors Justice Project, 2023. 33p.

By Mugambi Jouet

The role of systemic racism in criminal justice is a growing matter of debate in modern Western democracies. The United States’ situation has garnered the most attention given the salience of its racial issues and the disproportionate attention that American society garners around the world. This has obscured major developments in Canadiansociety with great relevance to increasingly diverse Western democracies where minorities are highly over-incarcerated. In recent years, the landmark Anderson and Morris decisions recognized that the systemic racism that Black people face in Canada should be considered as mitigation at sentencing. These historic cases partly stem from the recognition of social-context evidence as mitigation for Indigenous defendants under a groundbreaking 1996 legislative reform that remains little known outside Canada’s borders. While Australia and New Zealand have also recognized certain mitigation principles for Indigenous defendants, Canada is arguably the country that is now making the most concerted effort to tackle systemic racism in criminal punishment.

Conversely, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected this approach in McCleskey v. Kemp, an influential 1987 precedent holding that statistical proof of systemic racism in sentencing is essentially irrelevant. The situation might someday change in America, as suggested by the Washington State Supreme Court’s 2018 abolition of the death penalty in State v. Gregory, which deviated from McCleskey in accepting evidence of systemic racism. However, Gregory was only decided under state law and it is too early to tell whether more American states will inch toward the developments occurring in Canada.

These ongoing shifts should be situated in a wider historical context, as they do not merely reflect modern debates about systemic racism or Canada-specific matters. This Article captures how they are the next step in the long-term, incremental evolution of criminal punishment in the Western world since the Enlightenment. For generations, the principles of individualization and proportionality have enabled judges to assess mitigation by considering a defendant’s social circumstances. Considering evidence of systemic racism or social inequality as mitigation at sentencing is a logical extension of these principles. The age-old aspiration toward humanity in criminal justice may prove a stepping stone toward tackling the over-incarceration of minorities in modern Western democracies.

New York University Review of Law & Social Change, forthcoming 2023. 60p.

By Bugmy Bar Book Committee

Launched in 2019, the Bugmy Bar Book is a free, evidence-based resource hosted on the website of the NSW Public Defenders.

The project publishes accessible summaries of key research on the impacts of the experience of disadvantage and strengths-based rehabilitation. It provides objective research across several areas of disadvantage, to support both the application and decision-making processes, when subjective information is unable to be obtained.

The project is directed by a Committee comprised of representatives of key stakeholders in the criminal justice system (including the NSW Public Defenders, NSW Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT) Limited and Legal Aid NSW), the judiciary (including the Supreme Court of NSW, District Court of NSW, Local Court of NSW, ACT Magistrates Court and NSW Judicial Commission), legal academics (including senior academics from UNSW, ANU and UTS) and members of the private legal profession. Although the project originated and is based in NSW, the resources are designed for use across all Australian jurisdictions and the committee engages with stakeholders Australia-wide.

Who is the Bugmy Bar Book For?

It aims to promote greater understanding of the impacts within the legal profession and judiciary, with the key function being to assist in the preparation and presentation of evidence to establish the application of the sentencing principles in Bugmy v The Queen (2013) 249 CLR 571.

The application of the materials in the Bugmy Bar Book can also be used in other contexts, including bail and mental health diversionary applications, various civil practice areas, coronial inquests and other inquisitorial jurisdictions.

By Chad M. Topaz, Shaoyang Ning, Maria-Veronica Ciocanel & Shawn Bushway

Race-based inequity in federal criminal sentencing is widely acknowledged, and yet our understanding of it is far from complete. Inequity may arise from several sources, including direct bias of courtroom actors and structural bias that produces racially disparate impacts. Irrespective of these sources, inequity may also originate from different loci within the federal system. We bring together the questions of the sources and loci of inequity. The purpose of our study is to quantify race-based disparate impact and differential treatment at the national level and at the level of individual federal judicial districts. We analyze over one-half million sentencing records publicly available from the United States Sentencing Commission database, spanning the years 2006 to 2020. At the system-wide level, Black and Hispanic defendants receive average sentences that are approximately 19 months longer and 5 months longer, respectively. Demographic factors and sentencing guideline elements account for nearly 17 of the 19 months for Black defendants and all five of the months for Hispanic defendants, demonstrating the disparate impact of the system at the national level. At the individual district level, even after controlling for each district’s unique demographics and implementation of sentencing factors, 14 districts show significant differences for minoritized defendants as compared to white ones. These unexplained differences are evidence of possible differential treatment by judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys.

Published in: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Volume 10, Article Number 366 (2023). doi: 10.1057/s41599-023-018By Bugmy 9-5.

By Heather Harris and Stephanie Barton

Adopting untested policies helped California courts resolve criminal charges safely amid a public health crisis. Of the main policies, only remote hearings have endured—and their future is uncertain. Assembly Bill 199 allows California courts to conduct most criminal hearings remotely only through 2023.

This report chronicles how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the courts in 2020, describes policy responses, and assesses the impact of remote hearing policies on conviction and sentencing outcomes within six months of arrest.

Pandemic conditions challenged the courts’ capacity to resolve cases. An estimated 55,000 criminal cases that would have completed within six months remained unresolved at the end of 2020.→

Courts acted swiftly to adapt to pandemic conditions. Three main strategies included modifying pretrial release to reduce jail populations, permitting remote hearings, and extending case timelines.→

Uneven adoption of policies, coupled with geographic differences in where people live, meant that Black and Latino defendants had greater potential than people of other races to experience pandemic policies.→

Remote hearing policies reinforced pandemic trends for lower conviction rates, but counteracted trends in sentencing. When remote hearing policies were in place, rates of conviction within six months of arrest fell, with outcomes for white, Latino, and Black people driving this result. Misdemeanor convictions were less likely to lead to jail and more likely to receive noncustodial sentences such as probation and money sanctions, mainly for white, Latino, and Black people. Felony convictions were less likely to result in prison and more likely to lead to jail, and outcomes for Black people dominated this result.→

Remote hearing policies contributed to racial differences in criminal case outcomes. Inequity in conviction and jail sentence rates narrowed between white and Latino defendants and between white and Black defendants. By contrast, racial inequity widened in the likelihood of being sentenced to money sanctions and probation.→

Arguably, whether a criminal proceeding is conducted virtually or in person should not influence whether a person is convicted or how they are sentenced; yet remote hearing policies have affected both. Before Assembly Bill 199 expires, policymakers will need to determine whether these outcomes are desirable and how to factor them into decisions about whether to allow criminal cases to proceed remotely.

San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California, 2023. 42p.

By Frances Osborne, Sarah Castell, Rebekah McCabe & Louise MacAllister

This report covers the findings of an online public dialogue held in Spring 2023 to provide evidence for the Justice Committee’s inquiry on Public Opinion and Understanding of Sentencing. The dialogue responded to two key questions:  What do you think the aims of sentencing should be?  What should the government’s priorities be when setting sentencing policy? 25 people were chosen to reflect the general public, screening out those with particular or emotionally significant lived experience of the justice system. Participants engaged in three half-day sessions to learn more about the issue, deliberate together and answer the two questions above. Participants were given different ways to consider the aims of sentencing and deliberate between themselves, while also asking questions of experts. At the beginning Sir Bob Neill, from the Justice Select committee, and Jack Simson Caird, a member of the Committee’s secretariat, introduced the role of the select committee and of the wider inquiry. This was followed by a presentation from Ruth Pope from the Sentencing Council about the aims of sentencing, and participants had a Q&A session with all the presenters. In the later workshops, presentations were given on the problems and challenges in current sentencing policy from different perspectives, including those of victims and prisoners. These were given by Gavin Dingwall, from the Sentencing Academy, and Mark Day, Joint Secretary to the Independent Commission into the Experience of Victims & Long-term Prisoners. At the final meeting, there was a discussion of the ways sentencing is discussed in the wider social media context; and a ‘You be The Judge’ case study exercise where participants considered how general principles might play out when applied to individual cases. The findings in this report have been arrived at through qualitative thematic analysis of the dialogue as a whole. It is accompanied by findings from a survey participants completed before and after the dialogue.

London: UK Parliament, 2023. 67p.

By Richard L. Vining Jr. and Teena Wilhelm

Administering Justice examines the leadership role of chief justices in the American states, including how those duties require chief justices to be part of the broader state political environment. Vining and Wilhelm focus extensively on the power of chief justices as public spokespersons, legislative liaisons, and reform leaders. In contrast to much existing research on chief justices in the states, this study weighs their extrajudicial responsibilities rather than intracourt leadership. By assessing the content of State of the Judiciary remarks delivered over a period of sixty years, Vining and Wilhelm are able to analyze the reform agendas advanced by chief justices and determine what factors influence the likelihood of success. These analyses confirm that chief justices engage with state politics in meaningful ways and that reactions to their proposals are influenced by ideological congruence with other political elites and the scope of their requests. Administering Justice also examines the chief justice position as an institution, provides a collective profile of its occupants, and surveys growing diversity among court leaders.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2023. 189p.

Edited by Olaf Halvorsen Rønning and Ole Hammerslev

his edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the differences and similarities between civil legal aid schemes in the Nordic countries whilst outlining recent legal aid transformations in their respective welfare states. Based on in-depth studies of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, the authors compare these cases with legal aid in Europe and the US to examine whether a single, unique Nordic model exists. Contextualizing Nordic legal aid in relation to welfare ideology and human rights, Hammerslev and Halvorsen Rønning consider whether flaws in the welfare state exist, and how legal aid affects disadvantaged citizens. Concluding that the five countries all have very different legal aid schemes, the authors explore an important general trend: welfare states increasingly outsourcing legal aid to the market and the third sector through both membership organizations and smaller voluntary organizations. A methodical and compas sionate text, this book will be of special interest to scholars and students of the criminal justice, the welfare state, and the legal aid system.

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 345p.

By Catrina Denvir, Jacqueline Kinghan, Jessica Mant, Daniel Newman

Legal aid lawyers provide a critical function in supporting individuals to address a range of problems. These are problems that commonly intersect with issues of social justice, including crime, homelessness, domestic violence, family breakdown and educational exclusion. However, the past few decades have seen a clear retreat from the tenets of the welfare state, including, as part of this, the reduced availability of legal aid. This book examines the impact of austerity and related policies on those at the coalface of the legal profession. It documents the current state of the sector as well as the social and economic factors that make working in the legal aid profession more challenging than ever before.

Through data collected via the Legal Aid Census 2021, the book is underpinned by the accounts of over 1000 current and former legal aid lawyers. These accounts offer a detailed demography and insight into the financial, cultural and other pressures forcing lawyers to give up publicly funded work. This book combines a mixture of quantitative and qualitative analysis, allowing readers a broad appreciation of trends in the legal aid profession.

This book will equip readers with a thorough knowledge of legal aid lawyers in England and Wales, and aims to stimulate debate as to the fate of access to justice and legal aid in the future.

London: Bloomsbury Academic/Hart, 2023. 304p.

By Conor Casey

This report considers the constitutional role of the Law Officers and defends the institutional status quo. The current configuration of the Attorney General (and Solicitor General), as a law officer with legal and political dimensions, works well. Moving to an alternative (apolitical, technocratic) model of Attorney General would risk excessive legalisation of policy and would reduce political accountability.

London: Policy Exchange, 2023. 29p.

Edited by Diane Kirkby

This collection brings methods and questions from humanities, law and social sciences disciplines to examine different instances of lawmaking. Contributors explore the problematic of past law in present historical analysis across indigenous Australia and New Zealand, from post-Franco Spain to current international law and maritime regulation, from settler colonial humanitarian debates to efforts to end cruelty to children and animals. They highlight problems both national and international in their implication. From different disciplines and theoretical positions, they illustrate the diverse and complex study of law’s history.

Canberra: Australian National University, 2011. 236p.

Edited by Gunnar Duttge and Won Sang Lee

The information and risk society poses a new challenge for the law in all its fragments. Modern media communication and technologies increase people’s prosperity while stating new risks with not uncommonly devastating crisis-potential: The banking crisis, the safety net for the euro zone and the nuclear incident in Fukushima are only the latest forms of those specific modern common dangers which the law is facing – in many cases due to it’s domestically limited validity - not or not sufficiently prepared. In order to promote the international dialog within the jurisprudence there was a conference in October 2010 held by the faculty of law of the Georg-August-Universität, supported by the chair of GAU, together with the faculty of Seoul National University School of Law discussing main issues of law in a modern information and risk society. With this volume the results of this convention shall be made accessible to everybody interested. Thereby it illustrates not only the variety of new issues and aspects, but also reveals that this can only be the beginning on the way to a deeper understanding of the complex correlations. Volume 10 in the series „Göttinger Juristische Schriften“ The series is published by the Faculty of Law of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen und makes events at the faculty publicly available.

The information and risk society poses a new challenge for the law in all its fragments. Modern media communication and technologies increase people’s prosperity while stating new risks with not uncommonly devastating crisis-potential: The banking crisis, the safety net for the euro zone and the nuclear incident in Fukushima are only the latest forms of those specific modern common dangers which the law is facing – in many cases due to it’s domestically limited validity - not or not sufficiently prepared. In order to promote the international dialog within the jurisprudence there was a conference in October 2010 held by the faculty of law of the Georg-August-Universität, supported by the chair of GAU, together with the faculty of Seoul National University School of Law discussing main issues of law in a modern information and risk society. With this volume the results of this convention shall be made accessible to everybody interested. Thereby it illustrates not only the variety of new issues and aspects, but also reveals that this can only be the beginning on the way to a deeper understanding of the complex correlations. Volume 10 in the series „Göttinger Juristische Schriften“ The series is published by the Faculty of Law of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen und makes events at the faculty publicly available.

Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2011. 181p.

By Michael J. Z. Mannheimer

Police are required to obey the law. While that seems obvious, courts have lost track of that requirement due to misinterpreting the two constitutional provisions governing police conduct: the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Fourth Amendment forbids ""unreasonable searches and seizures"" and is the source of most constitutional constraints on policing. Although that provision technically applies only to the federal government, the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in the wake of the Civil War, has been deemed to apply the Fourth Amendment to the States. This book contends that the courts’ misinterpretation of these provisions has led them to hold federal and state law enforcement mistakenly to the same constitutional standards. The Fourth Amendment was originally understood as a federalism, or “states’ rights,” provision that, in effect, required federal agents to adhere to state law when searching or seizing. Thus, applying the same constraint to the States is impossible. Instead, the Fourteenth Amendment was originally understood in part as requiring that state officials (1) adhere to state law, (2) not discriminate, and (3) not be granted excessive discretion by legislators. These principles should guide judicial review of modern policing. Instead, constitutional constraints on policing are too strict and too forgiving at the same time. In this book, Michael J.Z. Mannheimer calls for a reimagination of what modern policing could look like based on the original understandings of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2023. 431p.

By Maisie Karam, Jennifer Lukassen, Zoran Miladinovic, and Marnie Wallace

The efficiency and effectiveness of the Canadian criminal justice system has been a key focus of national discussion in recent years. Despite recent declines in the crime rate and a decreasing number of completed court cases nationally, charges in Canadian criminal courts have been taking longer to complete over the past decade (Miladinovic 2019b). This apparent disconnect has resulted not only in the Supreme Court of Canada’s R. v. Jordan decision (see Text Box 2) which imposed a presumptive ceiling for completing criminal court cases beyond which the delay is considered unreasonable, but has also sparked renewed interest in improving and measuring the efficiency of the current criminal justice system.

The Department of Justice Canada undertook a criminal justice system review starting in 2015 and spanning a three-year period, in which stakeholders, partners and Canadians were consulted on their ideas regarding how to strengthen and modernize the criminal justice system (Department of Justice Canada 2019a). Throughout this review, participants highlighted a number of key concerns, including lengthy delays for a case to get to trial, long case processing times, and a court system that is overly occupied with relatively minor administration of justice offences.

Around the same time, the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs was mandated to review the roles of the Government of Canada and Parliament in addressing court delays. In addition to releasing 50 recommendations, the final report, Delaying Justice is Denying Justice: an Urgent Need to Address Lengthy Court Delays in Canada (2017), identified a number of factors contributing to lengthy delays including a lack of robust case management, a shortage of judges, prosecutors and courtrooms, as well as the increasing complexity of criminal trials.

Lengthy trials and other delays in court case processing have a significant impact on both accused persons and victims, as the stress of waiting for a resolution is made worse by each adjournment. Further, lengthy and delayed criminal proceedings have an impact on the quality and reliability of evidence (Senate Canada 2017). Ongoing and repeated delays in the court system can also diminish public confidence in the criminal justice system, which is fundamental to its operation.

Recent attempts have been made to address the inefficiencies that have been identified, including the introduction of former Bill C-75 (An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts),Note which is intended to modernize the criminal justice system and reduce delays (Department of Justice Canada 2019b).

Historically, data from the Integrated Criminal Court Survey (ICCS) has focused on completed cases, allowing for a retrospective look at the work that has been completed by the courts. The national conversation on court efficiency, however, now requires the ability to analyze the full scope of work going on in the court system, including ongoing or active cases. The full extent of the challenges faced by the Canadian criminal justice system, as well as any future progress, can only be known through the ongoing measurement of various aspects of court workload and case processing.

This report introduces a series of new criminal court workload and case processing indicators (see Text Box 1) based on open cases in order to add to the ongoing conversation about the efficiency of criminal courts in Canada. The development of these new indicators was made possible because of strong collaborative partnerships with key stakeholders. The Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics (CCJCSS) at Statistics Canada would like to acknowledge those who shared in the growing interest to expand the standard ICCS indicators in order to address existing data gaps, in particular, the Sub-Committee on Court Statistics (CSI) for the Steering Committee on Justice Efficiencies and Access to the Justice System and the Heads of Court Administration, Court Statistics and Information Sub-Committee (HoCA CSI).

The analysis in this Juristat is divided into seven sections. The first looks at the inventory of open cases and addresses such questions as: how many court cases start in a given year, and how many are open at a given time? What do open cases look like? The second section begins to analyze the age of open cases. The third section focuses on at-risk cases, specifically how many are potentially at risk of being stayed due to unreasonable delays. The fourth section examines completion rates. An analysis of case processing times makes up the fifth section of the report. The sixth section focuses on court workload and attempts to answer questions concerning how much overall work goes into closing cases. The final section addresses court backlog and analyzes the courts’ ability to meet the demands of incoming cases. Throughout the report, trends are presented for the last 10-years, as well as by offence, province and territory, and court level where relevant.

Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2020. 31p.

By Steering Committee on Justice Efficiencies and Access to the Justice System

A sub-committee of the Steering Committee on Justice Efficiencies and Access to the Criminal Justice System was formed to examine therapeutic courts in Canada, ascertain how well they were functioning, and identify best practices. A plan was formed to conduct a jurisdictional scan focused on mental health and drug treatment courts. (Other therapeutic courts, such as domestic violence courts and “Gladue” courts for Indigenous offenders, were outside the scope of the scan due to the constraints of time and the need to focus the inquiries.) Group interviews were arranged with judges, lawyers, and treatment providers from across Canada who work in these courts. The general topics that were covered in the interviews were: 1) Barriers to access and success; 2) Best practices; and 3) Evaluation methods. The authors of this report hope that this report can, in some way, serve to support, enhance, and contribute to the extensive body of knowledge held by the dedicated professionals who serve in these courts and who are passionately committed to improving the well-being of their communities.

Vancouver, BC: ICCLR, 2021. 142p.

By Mari McGilton; William Adams; Julie Samuels; Jessica Kelly; aND Mark A. Motivans

This report provides details on the sentences of persons in federal prison at fiscal yearends 2013–2018. Since 2012, federal policy changes related to both U.S. sentencing guidelines and the use of mandatory minimum penalties have affected persons held in Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities for drug offenses. The report describes four policies that are particularly relevant to this population: Smart on Crime, Drugs Minus Two, the Clemency Initiative, and the First Step Act. Findings in this report are based on fiscal yearend 2013–2018 prison records from the BOP that were linked to fiscal years 1994–2018 sentencing records from the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Highlights:

• At fiscal yearend 2018, about 47% (71,555) of persons in Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody were sentenced for drug offenses.

• The number of people in federal prison for drug offenses decreased 24% during the 5-year period from fiscal yearend 2013 to fiscal yearend 2018.

• The number of people in BOP custody decreased from fiscal yearend 2013 to fiscal yearend 2018 for marijuana (down 61%), crack cocaine (down 45%), powder cocaine (down 35%), and opioids (down 4%), while there were increases for heroin (up 13%) and methamphetamine (up 12%).

• The number of people in federal prison for drug offenses who were eligible for mandatory minimum penalties declined 33% during the 5-year period, as did the number who ultimately received penalties (down 26%) and received relief from penalties (down 52%).

  Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2023. 28p.

By John W. Wertheimer

This first title in the “Law, Literature & Culture” series uses six legal disputes from the South Carolina courts to illuminate the complex legal history of race in the U.S. South from slavery through Jim Crow. The first two cases—one criminal, one civil—both illuminate the extreme oppressiveness of slavery. The third explores labor relations between newly emancipated Black agricultural workers and white landowners during Reconstruction. The remaining cases investigate three prominent features of the Jim Crow system: segregated schools, racially biased juries, and lynching, respectively. Throughout the century under consideration, South Carolina’s legal system obsessively drew racial lines, always to the detriment of non-white people, but it occasionally provided a public forum within which racial oppression could be challenged. The book emphasizes how dramatically the degree of legal oppressiveness experienced by Black South Carolinians varied during the century under study, based largely on the degree of Black access to political and legal power.

Amherst College Press, 2023.