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.
Christopher Slobogin | August 14, 2020 | Sentencing
ABSTRACTThis article proposes the establishment of a federal criminal court system, comprised of separate criminal trial courts, circuit courts of appeal and a National Court of Criminal Appeals, with discretionary review by the Supreme Court. Compared to the 1970s,...
Lauren Klosinski | June 8, 2020 | Sentencing
The article “Mo. Exoneration Bid Tests Limits Of Prosecutorial Power” tells the story of Lamar Johnson, who was convicted of murder in Missouri in 1995. However, both Johnson and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner agree he did not actually commit the...
Lauren Klosinski | March 30, 2020 | Children and the Law, Sentencing
The article “Justices Put Juvenile Sentencing Back On The Front Burner” from Law360 discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case Jones v. Mississippi, which features a petition asking whether the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual...
Lauren Klosinski | March 11, 2020 | Sentencing
Members of the judiciary recently shared their thoughts on the challenge of sentencing in an article for The National Law Journal.The piece, “The Hardest Thing About Being a Judge? What Courts Say About Sentencing,” provides insight into what it’s like to pass...
Brandon Garrett | February 19, 2020 | Sentencing
This article was originally published in Vol. 41, Issue 1 of the Cardozo Law Review. Risk assessments are a common feature of federal decisionmaking across a wide variety of areas of regulation. Perhaps the most widely used definition describes risk assessment as “the...
Andrew Sheeler | February 4, 2020 | Children and the Law, Sentencing
This article was originally published by The Sacramento Bee on Jan. 28, 2020. The following is an excerpt. A California lawmaker argues that 18- and 19-year-olds aren’t mature enough to do prison time if they break the law, and so she has submitted a bill that would...
