Excellent reminder from @PrisonPolicy today that while everyone has been yelling about the fairly-defunct 94 Crime Bill, the far more consequential Prison Litigation Reform Act has been quietly eviscerating prisoners' rights for 25 years now.

prisonpolicy.org/reports/PLRA_2…
The 94 Act is an easy target: more cash for prisons = more prisoners.

The PLRA did the same thing... just more quietly and more effectively. Make it impossible for prisoners to complain about bad conditions, and prisons become cheaper to run.

A subsidy built on cruelty.
And unlike the 94 Crime Bill, the PLRA's rules are a lot harder to get upset about.

"They paid states cash to build prisons! That's immoral!"

That's a lot easier to rally around than:

"Prisoners have to exhaust all available state remedies before they have standing in Fed Ct!"
But its legalistic technicality exactly what makes the PLRA so deadly and effective.

Exhaustion and standing sound... too lawlike.

But CA almost won at SCOTUS (4-5) arguing the PLRA shielded them from fed litigation over conditions that were killing one person every ~10 days.
It's critical to put that CA number in perspective.

At a time when all death rows nationwide executed ~35-40 ppl total, the abhorrent conditions in CA were killing 60.

The biggest death row in the US was CA's gen pop.

And four justices thought: no grounds to sue, due to PLRA.
This is one reason why I find the 94 Crime Bill debate SO infuriating.

There ARE ways the Feds matter. But not the cash part of the 94 Bill (no, really: that money did almost nothing)--it's things like fed oversight of awful prisons.

It's time to repeal the PLRA (but we won't).

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More from @JohnFPfaff

28 Apr
Alabama held off resentencing Miller—whose SPECIFIC sentence SCOTUS declared unconstitutional in Miller v AL in 2012—until this week, almost a decade later.

And mere days after SCOTUS made it easier to sentence kids to life without parole.

Which AL did.

al.com/news/2021/04/e…
The judge noted growth, but then expressed his own scientific sense that he was “unsure” if Miller could function outside controlled settings.

And based on his gut instinct, declared no one should ever be able to reevaluate his decision ever again, until Miller dies in prison. Image
The arrogance of the judges, the arrogance of the SCOTUS justices who perpetuate this, the arrogance of the legislatures who authorize this and the prosecutors who impose and defend these sentences.

And the cold indifference to the struggles of struggling children.
Read 8 tweets
28 Apr
“Ready for the pop?” the officer says, rewatching video of him throwing a 73 yr old woman w dementia to the ground and dislocating her shoulder.

“I love it” he says.

Abt dislocating the shoulder of an old woman w dementia. Over an alleged $13 shoplifting issue (see: dementia).
Thinking more, maybe this is worse:

“I hate this,” says one officer in the video (of the other guy reveling in his abuse).

Then:

Chief says the dept didn’t hear abt the abuse until the victim filed her lawsuit.

If that’s true… what does that say abt the “hate this” officer?
This is what lays bare the “bad apples” take.

If the “good apples” stay quiet, are they really good?

Or how about the departments that FIRE good apples for good apple-ing (like Buffalo, or the WV one)?

It’s systemic and structural and cultural.
Read 4 tweets
27 Apr
As SCOTUS readies itself to gut urban gun control laws, I can’t help but recall the single greatest swing and miss in data visualization.

The impact of stand your ground on murder in FL. It… is not saying what it looks like. It isn’t.

Looks pro-SYG.

It’s not. It’s really not. Image
Look at that y-axis.

Look at it again. Your eyes aren’t messing with you.

It’s upside down.

But this is Reuters, not the NRA. What happened?!

A lesson that subtle changes can do… a lot. Image
The Reuters graph was an allusion to this striking one from The NY Times on the toll of the Iraq War.

Here, the inverted y axis is immediately clear: it’s blood running down a wall. We get it instantly.

For Reuters? It’s that black line. ImageImage
Read 4 tweets
27 Apr
So… Congress isn’t going to repeal the PLRA, not any time soon. It doesn’t face popular anger, and letting ppl in prison back into court isn’t getting 60 votes in the Senate, maybe not 50.

But! There are things we can do—just indirectly.
A student of mine, for ex, has a note coming out in the Fordham L Rev this fall arguing, among other things, for pushing states to streamline (and even make electronic) their grievance processes: make it easier to satisfy exhaustion.
The PLRA—or, really, the fed courts’ strange read of the PLRA—caps lawyer fees. So states could fund indigent counsel to handle those sorts of cases.

None might be as good as a full repeal, but that seems utterly unlikely. Seemed unlikely in 2015. So in 2021?
Read 4 tweets
23 Apr
On Thursday, all nine Justices tinkered with the machinery of locking children up forever.

To even entertain the debate is to get the issue wrong. Morally and policy-wise, locking children in prison forever is horrific.

My latest in @PostEverything:

washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0…
It’s hard to overstate how regressive we are in how we treat children.

The only reason we aren’t the ONLY country willing to arrest children of any age, or the last one to abolish executing children is bc of places like Cuba, Iran, and Saudi Arabia.

Those are our peers here.
That SCOTUS, in its earlier Miller op, upheld the possibility of life without parole for children found to be “irredeemable” is... TERRIBLE... on the facts and morally.

That SCOTUS decided judges can throw away a kid’s life without even finding “irredeemability” is... vomitous.
Read 4 tweets
22 Apr
The Supreme Court decided today that judges do not even have to determine if a child "incorrigible" before imposing a life without parole sentence on that child.

Before looking at what is wrong with that opinion, it may help to see what other countries allow this.

None.
The core problem with the opinion is that the question it's asking should not even be asked.

The question: do judges need to make a formal finding of "incorrigibility" before sentencing a child to die in prison.

But that question... defies asking.
The Court ITSELF admits we can't really answer it. That we simply lack the ability to predict whether a child is beyond hope at the time of sentencing that child.

The solution, then, is... to make it EASIER for judges to do... what we know... they can't do well?

Mind-boggling.
Read 10 tweets

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