Possibility of Parole, SCOTUS on Civil Asset Forfeiture & More

"We’ve learned a lot since the 1990s. One of the important lessons is that incentives matter. The possibility of parole—and the powerful incentive it provides—dramatically improves outcomes."
 
Regardless of the length of an individual's sentence, the policies that dictate when and how they may be released from prison can significantly impact not just their chances at successful re-entry but also the ways they interact with others while behind bars. A recent look back at Arizona's 1994 Truth-In-Sentencing (TIS) law found that people sentenced under TIS racked up more violent disciplinary infractions, engaged in fewer programs while incarcerated, were much more likely to reoffend, and were 23% more likely to return to prison within three years. 

"Perhaps government agencies' increasing dependence on forfeiture as a source of revenue is an important piece of the puzzle."
 
A 6-3 Thursday morning decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Culley v. Marshall did not put strong due process guardrails around forfeiture proceedings, siding with Alabama's process for taking property suspected of involvement in a crime. Advocates and experts have long held that the way governments are seizing property is an infringement on fundamental constitutional protections, disproportionately impacting the poor. However, a concurring opinion in the case suggested the need for a broader legal analysis of forfeiture incentives. 

"The vast majority of business leaders agree that their justice-impacted employees are as good or better than traditional employees."
 
Despite tremendous progress in modernizing Oklahoma's criminal justice system over the past five years — reclassifying certain low-level drug offenses to misdemeanors instead of felonies, raising the age of adult prosecution, requiring the department to provide identification upon release from prison, and passing one of the first Clean Slate expungement laws in the nation — returning citizens in Oklahoma continue to face numerous barriers to employment upon release, writes Oklahoma Secretary of Public Safety Tricia Everest in an op-ed this week. The solution, she argues, is for business leaders to increase hiring of people with criminal records, filling the labor shortage backlog with an under-tapped pool of workers who are eager to find meaningful work. 
 
“Do we morally think that it is good to have people spend their dying years behind bars, especially for drug crimes from the ’80s and ’90s?”
 
As the US prison population continues to age, individuals aged 55 and older now comprise 15% of incarcerated people, up from just 3% in 1991. Not only is the result financially unsustainable, but as health care costs balloon in both federal and state institutions as a result of greater health care needs for elderly incarcerated people, inadequate healthcare behind bars is leading to preventable deaths. Advocates have long argued that compassionate release of elderly prisoners with long sentences could ease the burden on correctional facilities, but an uptick in arrests of older people is now highlighting the need for system-wide reform. 
 
“Really what the agencies are doing here is flouting the will of the Legislature and by extension flouting the will of the people.”
 
During any given month from May 2022 to April of this year, more than a quarter of the incarcerated individuals in solitary confinement had a diagnosed mental illness, according to a lawsuit from the Legal Aid Society in New York. The allegations come just a few years after advocates there finally notched a long-sought legislative win that was supposed to end the practice of confining people with mental illness in solitary conditions for long periods of time. Prior to the 2021 passage of that law facilities reportedly confined incarcerated people for up to 22 or 23 hours per day. The new suit alleges that the practice is still taking place for 17 hours or more.