Decarceration strategies: How 5 states achieved substantial prison population reductions

From 1980 until its peak in 2009, the total federal and state prison population of the United States climbed from about 330,000 to more than 1.6 million - a nearly 400% increase - while the total general population of the country grew by only 36%, and the crime rate fell by 42%. The catalyst of this prison expansion was policy changes that prioritized “getting tough” on crime. The national prison population began a gradual descent after 2009, lessening by nearly 113,000 (6%) from 2009 through 2016. Several factors contributed to this decline: ongoing decreases in crime rates leading to fewer felony convictions; scaling back “war on drugs” policies; increased interest in evidence-based approaches to sentencing and reentry; and growing concerns about the fiscal cost of corrections and its impact on other state priorities. The state of California alone was responsible for 36% of the overall population decline, a function of a 2011 U.S. Supreme Court ruling declaring its overcrowded prison system to be unconstitutional and subsequent legislative responses to reduce the use of state incarceration. Despite the decline, the overall pace of change is quite modest. A recent analysis documents that at the rate of change from 2009 to 2016 it will take 75 years to reduce the prison population by half. And while 42 states have experienced declines from their peak prison populations, 20 of these declines are less than 5%, while 8 states are still experiencing rising populations. To aid policymakers and criminal justice officials in achieving substantial prison population reductions, this report examines the experience of five states – Connecticut, Michigan, Mississippi, Rhode Island, and South Carolina – that have achieved prison population reductions of 14-25%. This produced a cumulative total of 23,646 fewer people in prison with no adverse effects on public safety. (While a handful of other states have also experienced significant population reductions –including California, New York, and New Jersey – these have been examined in other publications, and so are not addressed here. The five states highlighted in this report are geographically and politically diverse and have all enacted a range of shifts in policy and practice to produce these outcomes. All five were engaged in the Justice Reinvestment Initiative process, spearheaded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Council on State Governments, which was designed to work with stakeholders to respond to the driving forces of prison expansion in each state and to develop strategies for change in policy and practice. This report seeks to inform stakeholders in other states of the range of policy options available to them for significantly reducing their prison population. While we provide some assessment of the political environment which contributed to these changes, we do not go into great detail in this area since stakeholders will need to make their own determinations of strategy based on the particularities of their state. We note, though, that the leaders of reform varied among states, and emerged among governors, legislators, criminal justice officials, and advocacy organizations, often benefiting from media coverage and editorial support

Contributions of North American endophytes to the phylogeny, ecology, and taxonomy of Xylariaceae (Sordariomycetes, Ascomycota).

The Xylariaceae (Sordariomycetes) comprise one of the largest and most diverse families of Ascomycota, with at least 85 accepted genera and ca. 1343 accepted species. In addition to their frequent occurrence as saprotrophs, members of the family often are found as endophytes in living tissues of phylogenetically diverse plants and lichens. Many of these endophytes remain sterile in culture, precluding identification based on morphological characters. Previous studies indicate that endophytes are highly diverse and represent many xylariaceous genera; however, phylogenetic analyses at the family level generally have not included endophytes, such that their contributions to understanding phylogenetic relationships of Xylariaceae are not well known. Here we use a multi-locus, cumulative supermatrix approach to integrate 92 putative species of fungi isolated from plants and lichens into a phylogenetic framework for Xylariaceae. Our collection spans 1933 isolates from living and senescent tissues in five biomes across the continental United States, and here is analyzed in the context of previously published sequence data from described species and additional taxon sampling of type specimens from culture collections. We found that the majority of strains obtained in our surveys can be classified in the hypoxyloid and xylaroid subfamilies, although many also were found outside of these lineages (as currently circumscribed). Many endophytes were placed in lineages previously not known for endophytism. Most endophytes appear to represent novel species, but inferences are limited by potential gaps in public databases. By linking our data, publicly available sequence data, and records of ascomata, we identify many geographically widespread, host-generalist clades capable of symbiotic associations with diverse photosynthetic partners. Concomitant with such cosmopolitan host use and distributions, many xylariaceous endophytes appear to inhabit both living and non-living plant tissues, with potentially important roles as saprotrophs. Overall, our study reveals major gaps in the availability of multi-locus datasets and metadata for this iconic family, and provides new hypotheses regarding the ecology and evolution of endophytism and other trophic modes across the family Xylariaceae