As a matter of recent history in this country, we’re at quite an important moment, where the conversation and political attitudes towards criminal justice policy and sentencing policy seem to be shifting quite dramatically. Members of Congress and policy makers, law makers in state systems are talking a lot about the problems we have created through mass incarceration and mass punitiveness in other respects. This moment in history, I think is particularly fortunate and fortuitous for the Model Penal Code because we are arriving at the point of completion just as this new or changed national debate is occurring. – Kevin Reitz, Project Reporter
Reporters
Kevin Reitz
Reporter, Model Penal Code: Sentencing
Kevin Reitz is the James Annenberg La Vea Land Grant Chair in Criminal Procedure Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. In 1993, he organized the pilot meeting of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions, which has gone on to become a nationwide resource for states contemplating or undertaking the process of sentencing reform. He continues to work with NASC and with state sentencing commissions nationwide.
Cecelia M. Klingele
Associate Reporter, Model Penal Code: Sentencing
Cecelia M. Klingele is an Assistant Professor at The University of Wisconsin Law School. Her academic research focuses on criminal justice administration, with an emphasis on community supervision of those on conditional release. She serves as a faculty associate of the Frank J. Remington Center and the Institute for Research on Poverty, and a research affiliate of the University of Minnesota Robina Institute’s Sentencing Law & Policy Program.
Julia O'Donoghue | November 21, 2017 | Children and the Law, Sentencing
New hearings for five prisoners sentenced for murder as juveniles could be so expensive for the Jefferson Parish Public Defenders Office that the agency could end up laying off attorneys. A state law that went into effect this year makes juveniles given life sentences...
Maureen Washburn | November 10, 2017 | Children and the Law, Sentencing
This month marks one year since the passage of Proposition 57, a California ballot measure that prohibited district attorneys from filing charges against youth as young as 14 directly in adult criminal court through a practice known as “direct file.” The initiative...
Nick Cahill | October 13, 2017 | Sentencing
Governor Jerry Brown on Wednesday signed a criminal justice reform package focused on reducing juvenile sentences and recidivism in California, drawing applause from civil rights groups and celebrity activists. The measures require juvenile suspects younger than 15 to...
Taylor Carroll | September 28, 2017 | Sentencing
The Hill reports that a House Democrat has introduced a bill in the House as a means to reduce the nation’s rate of mass incarceration. The Reverse Mass Incarceration Act was introduced on Wednesday by Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) and Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and...
Stephen E. Henderson | September 22, 2017 | Data Privacy, Policing, Sentencing
As with most new things, the big data revolution in criminal justice has historic antecedents—indeed, a 1965 Presidential Commission called for some of the same data analysis that police departments and courts are today developing and implementing. But there is no...
Taylor Carroll | September 21, 2017 | Sentencing
The Hill reports that Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) will reintroduce the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act. The bill, originally introduced in 2015, would reduce mandatory minimum sentences for certain drug offenses and armed career...
