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News Article The Crime Report April 17, 2013

Critics Say Justice Reinvestment Sidesteps Minority Communities

A group of the nation's leading criminal justice advocates and researchers have charged that the much-lauded "justice reinvestment" strategy has failed to divert meaningful funds to minority communities who have been the most deeply affected by high levels of incarceration.

In a report issued today, the advocates are sharply critical of how the six-year-old strategy--warmly endorsed by the Department of Justice only last week---has evolved in many states.

JS Publication April 16, 2013

Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting a New Justice Reinvestment

Justice Strategies Director, Judith Greene, has co-authored Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting A New Justice Reinvestment, with Vanita Gupta and Kara Dansky of the American Civil Liberties Union, Malcolm Young of Northwestern University Law School's Bluhm Legal Clinic, James Austin of the JFA Institute, Eric Cadora of the Justice Mapping Center, Todd Clear of Rutgers University, Marc Mauer and Nicole Porter of The Sentencing Project, and Susan Tucker, the former Director of The After Prison Initiative at the Open Society Foundations. Read more »

News Article HISPANTV September 14, 2012

Negocio de cárceles privadas, el más próspero en EEUU

In a news feature entitled, "Private prison business, the most prosperous in the U.S." HISPANTV's Spanish-language Washington Correspondent, Alfredo Miranda, covers the Sep. 13, 2012 hearing held, by Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, on the role of private prisons in the incarceration of immigrants and their treatment in those facilities, funded by contracts with the federal Bureau of Prisons. Read more »

News Article The Crime Report September 13, 2012

Report Cites 'Problem-Plagued, Second-Class' Prisons for Border Crossers

Thirteen privately operated, federally funded prisons housing 23,000 alleged illegal immigrants represent an "extremely expensive and problem-plagued, second-class penal system," contends a report presented today at a briefing on Capitol Hill. Read more »

News Article Mississippi Public Broadcasting September 13, 2012

Prison Reform Groups Call For End Of Federally funded Private Prisons

Prison reform advocates are calling for an end to private prisons that mainly hold illegal immigrants, including a Mississippi facility that erupted in a deadly riot this spring. MPB's Jeffrey Hess reports the groups claim the prisons create the conditions that contributed to the May riot that left one guard dead.

There are 13 federally funded private prisons intended mainly to hold illegal immigrations nationwide.

One is the the Adams County Correctional Facility where a May prisoner riot left a guard dead. Read more »

News Article Colorlines September 14, 2012

Advocates Want Halt to Expansion Of Private Prisons For Non-Citizens

When Angelica Moreno’s brother died of cancer after nearly three years locked in a private prison in Mississippi, she vowed to fight so that he’d be the last to suffer such a fate. “I want to fight for every other person inside that jail,” she told me in July, weeks after her brother died. On Wednesday, Moreno joined a group of human rights and criminal justice advocates and a member of Congress for a briefing on Capitol Hill to halt the expansion of private federal prisons like the one that Moreno says killed her brother. “No other family should have to go through this.” Read more »

News Article The Texas Tribune September 13, 2012

Advocacy Groups Target Private Prisons for Immigrants

The unnecessary prosecution of nonviolent illegal immigrants is sending ever larger numbers to poorly managed private prisons, a coalition of advocacy groups said in a report released Thursday, calling on Congress to reject the appropriation of $25,865,000 for 1,000 new private prison beds. Read more »

JS Publication September 13, 2012

Privately Operated Federal Prisons for Immigrants: Expensive. Unsafe. Unnecessary

Presented before a House of Representatives briefing sponsored by Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado on September 13, 2012, Privately Operated Federal Prisons for Immigrants: Expensive, Unsafe, Unnecessary chronicles the May 2012 Adams County Correctional Center uprising in Natchez, Mississippi, a private for-profit facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America, under contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Read more »

News Article Los Angeles Times August 25, 2012

Sheriff Baca may defy proposed law easing immigration enforcement

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is among the California law enforcement officials who may defy a proposed state law and continue to detain arrestees who are illegal immigrants when asked to do so by federal authorities.

The Trust Act, which cleared the state Legislature on Friday, is the latest measure nationwide to push back against federal immigration policy, either by reducing or increasing enforcement. The law would prohibit local authorities from complying with federal detention requests except when a suspect has been charged with a serious or violent crime.

News Article Huffington Post August 23, 2012

Secure Communities Costs Los Angeles County More Than $26 Million A Year: Report

WASHINGTON -- Los Angeles County is spending more than $26 million a year to hold undocumented immigrants under a federal immigration enforcement initiative, individuals it would otherwise release, according to a report on Thursday. Critics say that demonstrates the high cost of the program, in which some local governments would rather not participate. Read more »