Mr. Jack Donson, Executive Director of the Federal Prison Education and Reform Alliance, along with moderator, Patricia Cresta-Savage, Chair of the Corrections Committee, discuss the recent updates to the "How to Navigate the Prison System Guide." Mr. Donson discusses navigating the BOP from pre-trial to sentencing classification and post-conviction. He reviews the updated Guide to include the links to documents, references, policies and procedures for incarcerated individuals, practitioners, and their families.

Prison Reform: Learning from AMEND’s Research and Reform Approaches. Presented by David Cloud, AMEND at UCSF, San Francisco, CA and Jerry Buting, moderator, Buting, Williams & Stilling, S.C., Brookfield, WI

Memo prepared for the webinar "Everything You Wanted To Know About Federal Compassionate Release (But Didn’t Know To Ask)."

Navigating the federal criminal justice system’s policies, procedures, and practices can feel insurmountable. From pre-trial through post-sentencing and on to pre-release, a web of “program statements” and institutional practices guide the Federal Bureau of Prisons in making decisions relating to confinement and release. This guide is designed to help ease some of those challenges. Each section highlights obstacles confinement poses and offers resources and strategies to overcome these barriers. Prepared by the NACDL Corrections Committee. [Released Mar 2021; updated Nov 2023]

22^nd Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference
August 16-17, 2023 | Held Virtually

2023 marks the 50^th year since the U.S. prison population began its extraordinary surge. As advocates mark 50 years of mass incarceration, what is needed to meaningfully decarcerate our nation’s jails and prisons?

Back on November 4, 2022, NACDL’s then President Nellie L. King wrote to Director Peters to amplify the association’s call for (1) permitting privileged and unmonitored email communications between attorneys and clients in both pretrial and post-conviction settings and (2) for a “help desk” to facilitate scheduling of privileged attorney-client telephone calls.

We have seen the DOJ Advisory Group’s July 20, 2023, Report and Recommendations... In general, we think many of the recommendations are sensible. But some of them are troubling.

Co-Sponsored by Georgetown University Law Center’s American Criminal Law Review

The landscape of sentencing policy has shifted in recent years, with federal and state lawmakers advocating fewer draconian penalties and beginning to scale back certain sentences. It is clear that the United States stands at a critical juncture for sentencing reform. This symposium is designed to equip practitioners and policy advocates with the latest strategies and research to seize the moment and foster more rational and humane policies.

What measures can the United States take to reduce mass incarceration while maintaining a criminal “justice” system that functions effectively? This issue was curated by NACDL’s Decarceration Committee and includes feature articles and book reviews by members of the committee.

The brother of NACDL member JoEllyn Jones was murdered in 1998. Ryan Young was released from prison in 2013, and she ran into him at a restaurant. This was her chance. For years, she rehearsed everything she wanted to say, imagining that she would curse him and tell him that he had torn her family apart. At that moment, however, something inside her shifted. JoEllyn asked Ryan if they could work together – and the healing began.

This month Robert Sanger reviews Mass Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How It Can Recover by Jeffrey Bellin.

This month Sonya Pfeiffer reviews Prisoner of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration by Rachel Elise Barkow.

To achieve a meaningful decarceration (i.e., reducing the number of people in correctional facilities), policymakers must reduce prison admissions and scale back sentence lengths – both for those entering prisons and those already there. The growing movement to take a “second look” at unjust and excessive prison terms is a necessary first step. As the country grapples with an uptick in certain crimes, ending mass incarceration requires accelerating recent reforms and making effective investments in public safety.

Norway stands out as an innovator in corrections reform. The Scandinavian country is increasingly being studied for its success not only in improving living and working conditions for both individuals in custody and staff, but also because of its significantly lower recidivism rates. In Norway, life in prison resembles life outside as closely as possible. People in custody often wear their own clothes, cook in communal kitchens, and live in spaces that look more like dorm rooms than prison cells. Could this work in the United States?

How Holding Space, Education, Empowerment, and Speaking Truth to Power Can Deconstruct a Racist System

The United States incarcerates the most people of any country in the history of the world – and it has chosen whom to incarcerate, starting with people of color first. Oregon defense attorney Justin Rosas writes that any effort at creating a just society is going to involve decarcerating our society, accepting the invitation to truly hear one another, and speaking truth to power about the racial injustice the system was designed to inflict on communities.

Some people believe that mass incarceration is not a bad thing. It is. Mass incarceration is a public health hazard, promotes racism, increases the wealth gap, strains the economy, and increases crime and violence. It is unjustly meted out according to wealth and privilege, and often is most harshly used against the most vulnerable. How can the United States overcome its addiction to incarceration?