As the folks at the @SaferPrisons campaign have been warning, things seem to be coming to a head in prisons around the country. Yesterday, correctional officers in New York began an illegal strike... news10.com/news/ny-news/c…

THREAD: Do you remember the #KeepThemHome campaign? 2 years ago, thousands of ppl sent to federal home confinement during the pandemic were faced with prospect of being returned to prison, despite fact that they were thriving at home and were never told they might have to go back If you don’t know or remember, you can get the background here:

https://twitter.com/KevinARing/status/1419118091032793091

First chapter in this interesting new book is about criminal punishment. Some highlights: "Studies show that without a threshold level of certainty, punishment will simply not deter. Criminologists have found that crime increases in places that have lower than a 30 percent arrest rate, and it decreases in places with arrest rates higher than 30 percent...

When the GOP takes over the House (and maybe the Senate) in November, and the talk of how much this development will hurt justice reform efforts, remember this moment. Pending in Congress is a bill - the EQUAL Act - that would reduce unnecessary prison sentences by 67,00 years. The bill was approved by the House with 361 votes. If brought to the floor of the Senate tomorrow, it surely would receive more than 60 votes. It is the only decarceration measure that has broad support from law enforcement organizations, like @ndaajustice,

Buckle up for a longer #KeepThemHome update:
In AG Garland’s announcement that DOJ would not require people on CARES Act home confinement to return en masse at the end of the pandemic, he said DOJ would begin a rule-making process. The process is to determine who BOP should bring back to prison. FAMM and others have been arguing no one should be sent back unless they broke the rules. BOP in a memo repeated its view people with lengthy sentences remaining should be brought back to prison for programming.

#KeepThemHome update: Some folks are getting scared that a recent BOP memo means that certain people on CARES Act home confinement are going to have to go back to prison when the pandemic ends. While that has always been a possibility, I want to share why it's not time to panic. The original OLC memo was in response to a BOP request for clarification that BOP could bring some people on CARES Act HC back to prison if they thought they would benefit from additional programming, etc. OLC shocked the world in Jan '21 by saying you have to bring everyone back

The New York Times story last week has generated a lot of buzz about the home confinement issue. For newcomers, here is a get-you-up-to-speed thread. nytimes.com/2021/07/19/us/… In March 2020, Congress passed the CARES Act to expand BOP’s discretion to give home confinement in order to combat the spread of Covid. This was smart. Typically, BOP is only authorized to send ppl to home confinement for a bit of their sentence – 6 mos or 10%, whichever is less

The Biden administration last week sent a 76-year-old cancer survivor back to federal prison because she went to a computer class without prior written approval. You read that right. #KeepThemHome / 1 washingtonpost.com/local/public-s… The fact that Gwen is sitting in DC jail right now is infuriating. She had been on home confinement for a year under the CARES Act & was helping us push the Biden admin to keep the 4,000 people like her home. She had become the face of this effort./2
nbcnews.com/now/video/fede…

I’m not a Deep State conspiracy guy, but how in the world is the National Association of Assistant US Attorneys a thing? If they simply fought for higher pay and less accountability, which they do, that would be one thing. But they take positions on national policy. In fact, today, their testimony on the crack disparity begins by saying we don’t take positions on legislation and then proceeds to state all of the reasons they oppose the EQUAL Act.

For the past 15 years, no one - NO ONE - has suggested that federal powder cocaine mandatory minimums are too light. Now that legislation has been introduced to make crack sentences equal to powder sentences, some are suggesting the powder thresholds should be lowered. What?!?! Keep in mind that when the drug safety valve was expanded in the First Step Act just 3 years ago, no one expressed any concern that this would allow more powder defendants to get shorter sentences. (We did hear that about fentanyl.) Most people who support reform acknowledge...

Women whose husbands were serving time with "Big John" Jackson started to hear things and worry. John's wife Kesha was already worried because she knew John had suffered from blood clots in his leg and now was in the hole, so she had no way to communicate with him. One of the wives finally reached Kesha. She told her that some of the guys were in the visiting room and saw a man being taken out on gurney. They said it was Big John. Kesha spent the rest of the night frantically calling the prison. No one took her call or gave her information.

One last kick in the groin from the Trump Justice Department: while the White House was deciding on which 70+ sentences to commute, its DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel put out a memo which could force BOP to bring thousands of people on home confinement back to prison. This should be stopped and I think it will be. The Biden DOJ can and should rescind the OLC opinion and if necessary Congress could pass a legislative fix. But the OLC memo, dated 1/15/2021, is a poorly reasoned piece of cruelty that could make families worry unnecessarily.

@lfrenchnews, this is awful fear mongering. Seriously. I am glad you allowed people opposed to mandatory minimum to state their case, but no one will be able to consider the arguments when you lead with such an emotional crime.
wtvr.com/news/problem-s… Unless I am missing something, of all the mandatory minimum sentences the legislature is considering repealing, none would have applied in the case you spotlight. The man could have received the same sentence today. Your viewers should be made aware of that.

I saw an article that expressed skepticism about the First Step Act and success of recent federal reforms. I know being angry about everything is in fashion and that progress is considered problematic in case it breeds complacency, but let's run through some numbers... The federal prison system is the biggest in the country. In 2013, year 5 of the Obama admin, the fed system ballooned to 219,298 people. Awful. Then, it finally started to fall. Today, the population is down to 155,530 people, a drop of nearly 64,000, which is 29 percent.

Today we wanted to reframe our core work to better advance the values we care about, including fairness, rehabilitation, and community safety.

Some thoughts...

link.medium.com/sTwhuw2Uq9 The feds and state govts are very good at locking people up. We have plenty of laws, especially mandatory sentencing laws and enhancements, to ensure that people spends lots of time in prison, especially when they have the temerity to exercise their right to trial.

She’s the one who made me a #girldad. She’s the one who cried when I left for work in the morning and the one who would have a dance party with me when I came home. She’s the one who could read books when she was so young and then remember every detail when you asked about them.

The federal government is letting relatively young women die from neglect in its prisons. We saw it with Andrea High Bear, of course. Yesterday, a 44-year-old woman died at Carswell. Today, a 34-year-old at Coleman. Repeat, just 34 years old. Her name was Saferia Johnson. She has two children under the age of 7. Ms. Johnson was sentenced two years ago to 6 years in prison for identity theft and tax fraud. She and her co-defendants stole $2 million from the government.

I am tired of the weird dynamic among many supporters of criminal justice reform that makes us quiet when things like this happen. Like what? Like a bunch of teenagers and kids, mostly kids of color, getting shot and killed. It’s as if we say anything... nytimes.com/2020/07/27/nyr… We think we are calling attention to something that will make passing reforms more difficult. Or that we are contributing to the inevitable overreaction by the media. But I don’t buy it. I don’t care to defend the current system. These killings don’t undermine the reforms I seek

FDC has clear authority but claims it does not. In addition to completely misreading the clear language of the law, FDC is ignoring how others - namely, the BOP - are using their furlough authority. Consider:

https://twitter.com/samanthajgross/status/1287918637937045512

The federal BOP furlough regulations says wardens “may authorize a furlough, for 30 calendar days or less, for an inmate to, among other reasons
· Transfer to a medical center
· “Be present during a crisis in the immediate family, or in other urgent situations”...

We had been hearing what a hellhole FCI Terre Haute was, and yet families were scared to speak out. Now word is getting out in the form of a new court filing. In the case of Robert Lattas, sentenced to 63 months for bank fraud, Judge Durkin had already twice urged BOP to consider Lattas’s high risk of severe illness from COVID and send him home on a furlough and shift him to home confinement.

I am convinced that working with people who don’t think like you makes you smarter. This is true whether you lean right or left. If everyone on your team agrees with you, how do you ever find out where you’re wrong? (Or do you just think you’re always right?) It also teaches you how to disagree respectfully. If the colleagues you love and respect hold different views, you are less likely to attribute bad motives to strangers who hold different views. Projecting bad motives on our adversaries is a self-serving tactic.