So what should the reforms be?
The Judiciary Committee’s public hearing on the 14 legislative proposals to reform CT’s criminal justice system is less than a week away. I covered the co-chair’s proposal here and the rest are available here.
As has been discussed ad nauseam, the most popular proposals include a three strikes law, making “home invasion” a violent offense, GPS monitoring, abolishing parole, building more prisons and perhaps higher sentences.
Yet, a Quinnipiac poll last month showed that CT voters are more nuanced than that. Recently, the JFA institute released a report [pdf] entitled “Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population”. It is a very interesting report and is a must read. Hopefully the legislators like Mike Lawlor and Andrew McDonald will take a look at it before the hearing next week. If offers up the following six recommendations:
- Reduce time served in prison
- Eliminate the use of prison for parole or probation technical violators
- Reduce the length of parole and probation supervision periods
- Decriminalize “victimless” crimes, particularly those related to drug use and abuse
- Improve conditions of imprisonment
- Restore ex-prisoner voting and other rights
So, with the holiday coming up and blogging being light, let’s have a poll. What do you think the most effective reform to CT’s criminal justice system would be?
| Print article | This entry was posted by Gideon on November 21, 2007 at 7:46 am, and is filed under cheshire, ct legal news, ct state law, prison overcrowding, proposed legislation. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
about 4 years ago
Any reforms should ensure that Connecticut does not have nonsense like this happen.
http://www.julescrittenden.com/2007/11/21/mass-stupidity/
But you feel worse for some 20 year old kid who committed some crime and is going away.
about 4 years ago
One of my votes was for “Building more prisons”, because I believe that there needs to be a special facility that handles:
1. Sex offenders that have difficulty in finding residence.
2. Offenders that are nearing completion of their sentence, but need to be closely reintegrated into the community.
3. Prisoners that have mental/medical issues that need to be addressed before release.
Such a facility would be located close to the community which would allow offenders a chance to progress to full-release status slowly and gradually by holding them accountable to leading a law abiding life. The offender would need to find treatment and work in the community before being released.
That way we don’t just dump an ex-con onto the street, unmonitored, and with no supervision. There will be complaints of “I don’t want it in my community” and “it’ll cost too much”, but we need a new approach.
about 4 years ago
Also on the table for the November 27th public hearing is the proposal described below:
AN ACT CONCERNING THE JUSTIFIABLE USE OF DEADLY FORCE IN DEFENSE OF PREMISES
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2007/rpt/2007-R-0650.htm
SUMMARY
“You asked us to summarize Proposal 14 (LCO 9957): AAC The Justifiable Use of Deadly Force in Defense of Premises for the Judiciary Committee public hearing scheduled for November 27, 2007.”
“This bill expands the circumstances under which a person is justified in using deadly physical force in defense of property. It also makes a person who justifiably uses deadly physical force in these circumstances immune from criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits for money damages.”
Any comments from anyone on the above?
about 4 years ago
AntonK said:
AN ACT CONCERNING THE JUSTIFIABLE USE OF DEADLY FORCE IN DEFENSE OF PREMISES
In a perfect world a law like this would work.
However, if we have a rush of Jerry Springer, American Idol-watching, Prozac and Paxil popping, Butweiser-drinking, semi-literate, and uninformed bozos (i.e. the so-called average American) amassing firearms and arming their ADD suffering, Ritalin-taking “precious snowflake” children and empowering them to make life-or-death decisions, I feel a wave of tragedy coming on.
Anyway, I’m drinking, it’s 4AM, and that’s my rant
about 4 years ago
About a year ago, I had problems with this sort of legislation. I, too, feared the obvious repercussions. Now I’m ambivalent. I could be convinced either way.
I don’t like the presumption bit of it, though. I should, being a crim defense lawyer, but I don’t.
about 4 years ago
Over the past few years, a number of jurisdictions around the country have adopted these so-called “Castle Doctrine” laws. I don’t have the stats and analysis at hand, but I’ve read many by-the-by over time, and I don’t think a single jurisdiction has reported that people started shooting others at an increased rate. Which of course makes obvious, instinctual sense. Good people don’t kill other people, regardless of what the “law” tells them one way or the other.
I do approve of people not being subjected to civil suit after justified self-defense. And yes, of course, the self-defense aspect of the incident must be shown to have been justifiable.