Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Jails: Recommendations for Local Practice

People of color are overrepresented in our criminal justice system. One in three African American men born today will be incarcerated in his lifetime. In some cities, African Americans are ten times more likely to be arrested when stopped by police. With the national debate national focused on race, crime, and punishment, criminal justice experts are examining how to reduce racial disparities in our prisons and jails, which often serve as initial entry points for those who become entangled in the criminal justice system.This report, which relies on input from 25 criminal justice leaders, pinpoints the drivers of racial disparities in our jails, lays out common sense reforms to reduce this disparity, including increasing public defense representation for misdemeanor offenses, encouraging prosecutors to prioritize serious and violent offenses, limiting the use of pretrial detention, and requiring training to reduce racial bias for all those involved in running our justice system

Constructing Recidivism Risk

Courts increasingly use actuarial—meaning statistically derived—information about a defendant’s likelihood of engaging in criminal behavior in the future at sentencing. This Article examines how developers construct the tools that predict recidivism risk. It exposes the numerous choices that developers make during tool construction with serious consequences to sentencing law and policy. These design decisions require normative judgments concerning accuracy, equality, and the purpose of punishment. Whether and how to address these concerns reflects societal values about the administration of criminal justice more broadly. Currently, developers make these choices in the absence of law, even as they face distinct interests that diverge from the public. As a result, the information produced by these tools threatens core values at sentencing. This Article calls for accountability measures at various stages in the development process to ensure that the resulting risk estimates reflect the values of the jurisdictions where the tools will be applied at sentencing

Effective CTE Program Administration: Assumed or Developed?

The recognition of the potentially transformative effects of having a quality career and technical education program has grown exponentially over the past two decades in the United States. As such, it is paramount that those serving as administrators of this co-curricular content area be prepared, trained, and developed to effectively lead these important programs at the campus level. This qualitative action research is a case study, using two types of interviews of 38 specific personnel within the career and technical education departments and leadership in that district to determine whether effective career and technical education administration is assumed or developed in that school district. The study found that, in the district studied, it was the prevailing sentiment by those vested in the career and technical education program that effective administration was assumed, not developed. Key conclusions reached in this study included that the role of program administrator could be potentially impactful to the success of the career and technical education program, and, by extension, to the success of the program’s students within this school district. As such, this study also concluded that it is incumbent upon this school district to be more intentional about the preparation, training, and development of those that are positioned to lead this department at the campus level across the school district. Finally, the study concluded that, while the district studied did possess quality administrators for its career and technical education program, this was not the byproduct of the recruiting, training, or development systems and processes the district enacted to prepare and support those placed in this critical role. Keywords: career and technical education (CTE), program administrato

Lightweight portable training device to simulate kayaking

Methods and devices for kayak training and/or exercising. One embodiment can use two PVC type pipes (one shorter than the other) in a parallel configuration. A flexible bungee type stretchable cord can be passed through the small pipe and have ends that are each attempted to opposite ends of the larger pipe. Ends of another stretchable cord are each fixable attached to ends of the small pipe with a mid portion of the second bungee cord attached to a fixably nonmoveable member such as a door knob and the like. A user sitting down can grip the larger pipe with both hands spread apart and creating a rowing action with the device so that stretched cords simulate rowing actions such as those used with a kayak. The device can also be used as an exercise device and method to tone muscles such as arm and stomach and side muscles of the user. Another embodiment slidably passes the cord through dual through-holes in the ends of the smaller pipe member, and another embodiment substitutes a stret

When Critical Race Theory Enters the Law & Technology Frame

Jessica Eaglin intertwines the social construction of race, law and technology. This piece highlights how the approach to use technology as precise tools for criminal administration or objective solutions to societal issues often fails to consider how laws and technologies are created in our racialized society. If we do not consider how race and technology are co-productive, we will fail to reach substantive justice and instead reinforce existing racial hierarchies legitimated by laws

Against Neorehabilitation

In the face of severe budget constraints, bipartisan calls for reform, dropping crime rates, and judicial intervention, states are seriously considering and implementing criminal justice reform to manage prison populations for the first time in three decades. Scholars agree that states need a guiding theory to transform emergency and short-term reforms into a long-term shift in policy and practice away from mass incarceration. Numerous scholars advocate for a return to an improved theory of rehabilitation to guide the states in implementing such reform. This return-through neorehabilitation, or the rehabilitation of rehabilitation-centers on the use of evidence-based programming and predictive tools to create a rehabilitative model that works. Despite the intriguing nature of this new rehabilitative model, this Article challenges this general shift in scholarly and practical reform. It argues that the problem of mass incarceration cannot be resolved through a return to this particular form of rehabilitation, no matter how improved it may be. To that end, this Article demonstrates that current rehabilitation-guided sentencing reforms-with their emphasis on evidence-based programming and the use of predictive tools-have several inherent flaws that will limit the efforts to downsize prison populations beyond mere budget-cut crises. Specifically, the neorehabilitative model stands to institutionalize a focus on the wrong offenders, exacerbate racial disparities, and distort our perception of justice. Moreover, this new rehabilitation model fails to provide a sufficiently different theory of reform from total incapacitation, which grew out of the desire to improve rehabilitation. For these reasons, this Article argues that the neorehabilitative model is a dangerous theory of reform as states shift towards broader and long-term sentencing policies