3. July 2009 by Rev Young.

 have many articles from other sources to post.  I have gotten a little behind.  We attended a NJJN (National Juvenile Justice Network) Conference last week in Washington D we have been very busy preparing and then attending this convening of advocates.  More about that later. 

In this article the spotlight is given to Senator Webb and the hearing that was held at the beginning of June to give testimony concerning the Senator’s bill that was introduced in the senate calling for a thorough evaluation of our “Criminal Injustice” system.  Read on……

Jim Webb Moves Forward To Fix Bloated Incarceration System by Focusing on Violent and Not Minor Offenders

Submitted by christine on Fri, 06/12/2009 - 11:19am. 

·                                 Alerts

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
by Christine Bowman

America’s prisons, recently deemed by frightened citizens and vocal politicians to benot up to the job of housing Gitmo detainees, truly do warrant a fresh look. That’s exactly what prisons and the process that feeds people into the “corrections” world will get, too, if Senator Jim Webb (D/VA) succeeds in building support for comprehensive reform of the US criminal justice system.

Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs heard testimony on a bill introduced by Webb in March to form a blue-panel commission to evaluate and recommend changes to correct systemic flaws in America’s criminal justice system. The presidential level bipartisan team would be empowered to conduct “an 18-month, top-to-bottom review.”

Although still in the early stages of the legislative process, the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009 appears to be attracting the interest of a broad range of groups. If they prove themselves able to work together, this may be the right bill at the right time to address an immense array of interlocking issues.

Initial testimony to the committee came from Webb, the LAPD police chief, Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree and representatives from the conservative Heritage Foundation and the Prison Fellowship — the Christian prison ministry founded by Watergate ex-con Chuck Colson.

The proposed commission would be charged with reshaping America’s entire criminal justice system by making policy recommendations to:

• re-focus incarceration policies on criminal activities that threaten public safety; 
• lower the incarceration rate, prioritizing public safety, crime reduction, and fairness; 
• decrease prison violence; 
• improve prison administration; 
• establish meaningful re-entry programs for former offenders; 
• reform drug laws; 
• improve treatment of the mentally ill; 
• improve responses to international & domestic criminal activity by gangs & cartels; 
• and reform any other aspect of the criminal justice system the Commission determines necessary.

http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony…

Bill Sizemore of The Virginian-Pilot gathered these highlights from the hearing:

“We call it a correctional system, but we all know it doesn’t correct,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and drugs.

The most impassioned testimony came from someone with firsthand experience: Pat Nolan, vice president of Prison Fellowship, a former California state legislator who spent 29 months in federal prison after getting caught in an FBI sting for campaign finance violations.

“What I saw inside prison really troubled me,” Nolan said, describing widespread rape, disease and overcrowding. Most inmates are simply being warehoused, he said. There is little training or treatment, making it hard for them to find a job when they get out and raising the chances that they will return to prison.

The cost to taxpayers is staggering, Nolan said: $68 billion and rising.

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said communities need to focus on preventing crime, not just responding to it. “There are too many people in prison who don’t need to be there,” he said, citing the mentally ill as an example.

The time is ripe for reform, said Charles Ogletree, a professor at Harvard Law School. “You can be smart on crime and save a lot of money,” he said.

Webb’s bent on correcting broken corrections system

Decades of supposedly tough-on-crime legislation has resulted in a prison system that is overstretched, expensive, an often unjust. Four times as many people with mental health problems are in jail than are in psychiatric hospitals. Decades of the “war on drugs” has pushed addicts and casual users into prisons while cartels and street gangs have grown by leaps and bounds. Drug policy reform advocates are heartened, as are fiscal conservatives and rights advocates. Which is to say, it’s a big tent coalition seeking big reforms.

As Webb wrote in a commentary at Huffington Post:

The National Criminal Justice Commission Act has already garnered wide support from across the political and philosophical spectrum, including 29 sponsors in the Senate, among them many senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. My staff and I have engaged with more than 100 organizations and associations, representing the entire gamut of prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers, former offenders, advocacy groups, think tanks, victims rights organizations, academics, prisoners, and law enforcement on the street. This engagement is ongoing, and support continues to grow. My goal, shared by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, is to pass this legislation soon and to enact it into law this year.

Building broad-based support for far-reaching reform “is an immodest goal for a freshman senator” — but an encouraging one.

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