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.
Robert Alt | August 8, 2019 | Sentencing
This article was originally published by The Federalist Society. The following is an excerpt. Access the full article here. State legislatures across the country made significant strides in reforming their criminal justice regimes throughout 2018. States revised their...
Darryl K. Brown | August 6, 2019 | Sentencing
On July 15, a Virginia judge sentenced James Fields Jr. to a life sentence, plus 419 years, for killing Heather Heyer at the 2017 Charlottesville white nationalist rally by ramming his car into a crowd.Some may wonder about the point of a centuries-long sentence – far...
Lauren Klosinski | July 30, 2019 | Sentencing
On July 25, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a press release announcing that Attorney General William P. Barr has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons to adopt an addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol and schedule the executions of five death-row inmates...
Kevin Reitz | July 23, 2019 | Sentencing
INTRODUCTION (citations omitted)Incarceration rates (numbers of prisoners per capita) are a basic indicator of how government’s use of the prison sanction permeates into the population as a whole—a concept I will call carceral intensity. If we view incarceration as a...
Margaret Love | July 12, 2019 | Sentencing
For the past several years, the Collateral Consequences Resource Center has been documenting an extraordinary legislative trend aimed at helping individuals overcome the collateral consequences of arrest and conviction. It appears that lawmakers in many states are...
Pauline Toboulidis | July 9, 2019 | Sentencing
An article from Law360 Access to Justice breaks down a recent appellate decision on the interpretation of federal sentencing guidelines which could have a major impact on people with prior criminal records who are being sentenced for new crimes. The article details...
