Category: Uncategorized (Page 6 of 6)

A December 11th New York Times article shared the story of Stephanie George, who is is serving a life sentence after an ex-boyfriend hid cocaine in her attic. Click here to learn more about Stephanie.

A third-year student at the University of Wisconsin Law School wrote a response letter to the editor regarding the article in the previous post: “How to Cut Prison Costs” (editorial, Nov. 10).

Thanks to everyone who joined us for PLAP’s 40th anniversary celebration in April of 2012.

Information about the events is below.

Click here to see a video of the panel.

Please click here to see the official poster!

Click here for information about the panelists.

PLAP’s 40th Anniversary Celebration
Open House & Reception in WCC, Suite 5107 (5th floor clinical wing of the new building)
6pm, Friday April 20, 2012

PLAP 40th Anniversary Panel
2:15-3:30pm, Saturday April 21, 2012
Austin Hall, Ames Courtroom

Panelists:

• Bill Leahy, Director of the Office of Indigent Legal Services for New York State, Class of ‘74
• Greg Bialecki, Massachusetts Secretary of Housing and Economic Development, Class of ‘85
• Sandra D. Grannum, Esq., Managing Partner of Davidson & Grannum, LLP, Class of ‘86
• Joel Thompson, Staff Attorney, Prisoners’ Legal Services , Class of ’97
• Sharon Dolovich, Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and  Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law, Class of ‘98
• Kristina Jones, Associate at Rogers & Hardin LLP, Class of ’99
• Benjamin Holtzman, Current PLAP Co-executive Director, Class of ’12

In a recent feature by WBUR, Harvard Law professor and retired U.S. District Court judge Nancy Gertner points out many of the flaws of Massachusetts’s proposed “Three Strikes” legislation.  She points out that the legislation would be far harsher on criminal defendants than it would need to be to accomplish its aims, would increase prison overcrowding and overincarceration, and is unnecessary at a time when Massachusetts crime rates are declining.

Importantly, Gertner notes that with this increased emphasis on mandatory sentencing the public is “trading judicial discretion for prosecutorial discretion. The prosecutor chooses what the category of crime is, and therefore whether someone is going away for a long time. In a mandatory minimum situation, the judge is a bystander, and you know, there are wonderful prosecutors in this state but I would rather have a judge exercising discretion, subject to appeal and accountability, in a transparent way, rather than a prosecutor deciding that this is a three strikes case.”

Read or listen further here:  http://radioboston.wbur.org/2012/03/21/three-strikes-gertner

No one in PLAP today would be surprised to know that the organization has been full of fun people for decades. This posting by the Office of Clinical and Pro Bono Programs simply confirms our long history of good humor and great priorities.  Thirty years of foraging and counting!

The dramatic increase in prison population in the U.S. over the past few decades means that there is now an unprecedentedly large geriatric prison population for which prisons do not have the resources to care. Last week, Human Rights Watch released a report on this issue using data from nine states and twenty prisons; you can access the full report and the press release here. Colorlines also comments and provides some useful infographics.

Right after I posted on Adam Gopnik’s piece in the New Yorker, I ran across this sharp and excellent criticism of it by Lisa Guenther, who calls Gopnik out for failing to interrogate the racially determined– or let’s just say racist– claim that crime in the U.S. has decreased since the 1980s, which he takes primarily from Berkeley criminologist Franklin Zimring’s book about New York. You can almost hear Guenther’s weariness as she obligatorily reminds us to ask whether New York or the country is “safer” for the young black men who, like Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell and countless others, are routinely targeted and lose their lives as a result of the “stop and frisk” programs that Zimring praises and tries to distinguish from racial profiling.

At the same time, by addressing Gopnik’s perspective– and exclusion of the perspectives of people and communities most affected by mass incarceration and associated police practices– Guenther raises the traps of the question of platform, writing,  “To be sure, poor people do not often publish books with Oxford University Press, nor publish articles in The New Yorker.  This is part of the problem.”

What kind of ideas can or could not make it into the New Yorker or any major press? What do those limits have to do with the positions that we embrace, endorse? How do our adjusted expectations contribute to a status quo? Many thanks to Guenther for prompting these questions, and her tempering with realism my excitement about the fact the New Yorker is willing to publish a long piece advocating sentencing reform and to offer the U.S. racial caste system as an explanation for mass incarceration. Please don’t miss her piece, especially if you’ve read the Gopnik. I’ll give her the last words here:

“Those of us who are privileged enough to enter these sites of power have an obligation to push beyond what seems like “common sense” to us – especially when we are addressing issues that directly affects those who do not share this privilege.  This obligation is both political and epistemic; we simply cannot get a sense of what the world is like by remaining entrenched in our privilege, and we certainly can’t change the world from this position.”