A judge at one of Justice Fellowship’s national conferences expressed the frustrations of many who work in the juvenile justice system when he told us, “I can either lock them up or let them go to the beach!” He pleaded for alternatives somewhere between incarceration and doing nothing.
“Creating A Responsible Thinker” is a program designed to fill this gap. It is a free six-week course to keep teens from entering the juvenile system.
We also feature links to the Family and Corrections Network which offers several excellent resources including a Children of Prisoners Library and interactive audio conferences aimed at assisting families during incarceration. We also link to Angel Tree, the ministry of Prison Fellowship that brings the love of Christ to children of prisoners through Angel Tree Christmas, Angel Tree Camping, and Angel Tree Mentoring. Keeping families intact during incarceration is one of the most important, and difficult, issues affecting prisoner reentry. If the Church doesn’t provide loving assistance to these wounded families, who will?
A recent study of Three-Strikes laws by the Justice Policy Institute contained some very interesting findings. While supporters of the law in California point to the drop in crime rates since it became law, the study found that states that did not have three-strikes laws had lower average rates of violent crime — and larger average drops in violent crime — than the states with the tough sentencing law. For example, New York, which does not have a three-strikes law, had much larger drops in total crime and violent crime than California.
California’s Three-Strikes law is by far the most severe in the nation because it calls for sentences of 25 years to life for a third strike, even if it is for a minor, non-violent crime. This provision had resulted in some bizarre effects. The JPI study found that 672 third-strikers are serving 25 years to life in prison for drug possession — more than the combined total of third-strikers doing time for second-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and rape!
The legislature knew that this was a bad provision, because it would fill expensive prison beds with non-violent offenders. There was an effort to amend the law so that all three strikes had to be serious or violent offenses. However, in the end the sponsors of the law refused to budge, and the majority of the legislature (which at the time included me as a California legislator), didn’t have the guts to vote against it. I have since learned the truism that, “prisons are for people we are afraid of, not just mad at.” I learned too late to help the people of California.
Several readers of the Justice eReport have mentioned that they would like a short synopsis of the stories we include. In order to keep the email short, we only list the headlines.
However, if you click on the eReport itself you will find summaries of each story. Some readers have also told me that it is not clear how to link to the stories I mention in my letter each week. Just glide your mouse over any topic sections of the Justice eReport listed to the right of the email. Click on any that are of interest and you will be taken to that section. You can then scroll up and down within the eReport from there. Constraints on our information technology team preclude linking to each story individually. I hope you will continue to let me know how we can make the Justice eReport more useful to you.
In His service,
Pat Nolan, President
Justice Fellowship |
