By Mani Dabiri | Published March 23, 2018 | Posted in Federal and State Criminal Defense, Government Subpoenas and Investigations, Post-Conviction Defense and Appeals, White-Collar and Regulatory Defense | Tagged Tags: cannabis, overcriminalization, paroleandprobation, pleabargaining, punishment, rehabilitation, sentencingalternatives, sexoffenses, smartoncrime, theftlarcenyrobbery |
They May Be Intelligent, But Are They Wise?
Speaking of fair shakes, here is a wise word of caution about the emerging, expanding use of computer programs to evaluate people in the justice system, whether at bail hearings, sentencings, or elsewhere. The author is a former software engineer at Facebook who’s now studying law at Harvard. Her point isn’t that we shouldn’t use or consult these programs, but Read More
Read MoreThe Lowdown on California’s Proposition 57
Last week it was Proposition 64; this week, it’s Prop 57. Voters approved it by a wide margin, but what does it do? Two things for now. First, it amended the California Constitution to ensure parole eligibility for people who have been convicted of a nonviolent felony, once they have served the full term for their primary offense. In layman’s terms, Read More
Read MoreIf Prison Walls Could Talk
Here’s an interesting story about a just-released report on prison reform, with a kick: it’s written by the prisoners. The authors are five inmates, all first-time offenders, who have spent a combined 95 years in the Texas prison system. They write from their own experiences and those of others, but many of their observations apply across Read More
Read MoreWhy Soak the Rich When We Can Punk the Poor?
Speaking of probation, it’s supposed to be that you don’t go to jail for being poor. Thirty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a court couldn’t revoke your probation and imprison you for not paying a fine or restitution unless the court found, after inquiry, that you somehow could pay the fine or restitution, or even Read More
Read MoreOut of the Mouths (or Lives) of Babes
If you’re on probation, can the court require you to surrender your passwords to your electronic devices and social-media accounts, so they can be searched at any time? California has been weighing that question lately, and one month ago, the Court of Appeal issued decisions in two separate juvenile cases—one with a girl and one with a boy—that help Read More
Read MoreParole and Realignment in California
Want to know about parole in California? Well, it’s complicated because the law changes all the time in all kinds of ways, and it recently changed in a big way on October 1, 2011 when the Criminal Justice Realignment Act went into effect. Actually, the new law kind of changed everything. The purpose was to reduce Read More
Read MoreThe Power, Politics, and Problems of Parole
Here again from the nonprofit Marshall Project is this balanced, sobering look at our nation’s parole boards, part of its months-long investigation into our modern use and disuse of parole, especially in cases of a life sentence with the possibility of parole. We may define parole in that context as the provisional release of a prisoner before the end of his maximum sentence based on Read More
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