after years of fits and starts, prisoner reentry programs are now blooming like tulips in springtime. i’m regularly getting calls and emails such as the one i’ve anonymized below, but i rarely have good advice to offer.

5. the urban institute’s Justice impressive reentry research and roundtable discussions.

perhaps others might offer additional sites or ideas for starting reentry projects.

adam liptak contributes another fine criminal Justice piece to today’s times, this time on the felony murder doctrine. felony murder rules treat any death occurring during the course of a felony as a first degree murder, with all participants in said felony subject to murder charges.

the story details the case of ryan holle, who is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole. mr. holle lent his car to a friend who killed a young woman while attempting to steal a safe. mr. liptak’s article touches on several themes that might make for a productive discussion in a crim course: u.s. legal exceptionalism, life sentences for young people, the culpability of accomplices, general v. specific deterrence…

the washington post and other media have publicized a new CDC panel report published in morbidity and mortality weekly. after comparing recidivism rates in six strong studies of youth transferred to the adult system with those of youth who stayed in the juvenile system, the authors conclude the following:

well, that’s a good start, i suppose. what were the results? of the six studies of transfer to the adult system, one found a deterrent effect, one found no effect, and four found widely varying estimates of increased violence or general crime. the cdc report did not discuss the suspected mechanisms for the deleterious effects of adult transfer, though i believe that the literature typically offers some variant of a brutalization hypothesis.

my sense is that transfer to the adult system probably does indeed increase recidivism and compromise public safety. that said, the specific selection criterion to get into the treatment group in these studies (predicted dangerousness) is uncomfortably close to the substantive outcome measure used to assess their effectiveness (violent recidivism). that’s why i’m not sure that the evidence is strong enough here to warrant definitive causal claims. perhaps it is safer to state the conclusion in the negative: after examining the best available studies on the subject, there is almost no evidence suggesting that adult transfer provisions reduce subsequent crime.

we were blessed with perfect minnesota weather for saturday’s running of the santas. via the pi press:

For the second year, a pack of Santas went for a run on Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis as part of the Santa Run to Benefit Legal Aid. You didn’t need connections to Mr. Claus to participate – a $10 registration fee and a minimum $100 sponsorship got Santa wannabes entered in the 1¼-mile run and a Santa suit, hat and white beard; kids just got Santa hats.

“They got two paths cleared down the mall in time for the Santas to run back and forth,” said Bruce Adelsman, who photographed the event for skinnyski.com. “It’s fun to see the reaction of people who are downtown shopping and don’t know the event is going on – at first they see one or two Santas, followed by a wave of Santas, and they stop and stare.”

mid-minnesota legal assistance is a terrific cause, worthy of year-round non-santa-specific support:

Mid-Minnesota Legal Assistance (MMLA) is the primary provider of general civil legal services to low-income and elderly people in 20 central Minnesota counties. It also provides legal services to elderly persons in two additional counties. MMLA provides these services through its three member corporations: the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis (LASM), St. Cloud Area Legal Services, and Western Minnesota Legal Services. This structure allows MMLA to staff three offices in Minneapolis, as well as offices in St. Cloud, Cambridge and Willmar. The oldest corporate component of MMLA —the Legal Aid Society of Minneapolis— was founded in 1913. LASM is also the state-designated Protection and Advocacy agency for persons in Minnesota with developmental disabilities, mental illness and other disabilities. And it is the state Client Assistance Program that protects the rights of those seeking services from the vocational rehabilitation system.

apart from the year-round needs, a seasonal nicollet mall santa run seems like a really cool way to raise both cash and consciousness. here’s a li’l video from last year’s (snowless) event.

long live john augustus! here’s a boston globe story on volunteers in reintegration:

Vermonters Help Ease Life on the Outside: Towns Trying to Keep Ex-Cons on Right Path

By Jenna Russell of the Globe Staff / November 24, 2007

BARRE, Vt. – Vermont corrections officials are trying a radical new strategy to reintegrate the state’s worst offenders into society: Team them up with groups of students, parents, businesspeople, and retirees in the towns they return to after prison, and let these surrogate families and friends show them how they can fit in again…

susan tucker of soros writes that their after prison initiative is seeking a new program associate.

The Program Associate will work closely with the Director and Program Officer in all programmatic and administrative and aspects relating to The After Prison Initiative grantmaking and program development work.

i’ve written before about life sentences for juvenile offenders. according to a new study by michelle leighton and connie de la vega of the university of san francisco, the u.s. and israel are the only nations in the world that mete out life sentences without the possibility of parole or release to children. an estimated total of 2,381 juvenile lifers reside in the united states, relative to 7 in israel. the report offers a useful, if sobering, state-by-state appendix for those teaching juvenile Justice or juvenile delinquency classes.

today’s new york times offers an impressive set of articles and multimedia features on 115 former prisoners who were exonerated by dna evidence.

Most of the 137 exonerated inmates researched by The Times entered prison in their teens or 20s, and they stayed there while some of their peers on the outside settled on careers, married, started families, bought homes and began saving for retirement. They emerged many years behind, and it has been difficult to catch up.

in addition to the in-depth interviews, photographs, and video, there’s even a decent methods section.

a new report on reducing america’s prison population came out this week, co-authored by some of my favorite criminologists: james austin, todd clear, troy duster, david greenberg, john irwin, candace mccoy, alan mobley, barbara owen, and joshua page.

Unlocking America: Why and How to Reduce America’s Prison Population documents the rise in incarceration and makes some concrete recommendations for stemming the tide (e.g., reducing the length of prison stays and eliminating prison time for technical parole violations).

via alec.

according to bbc news, a vietnamese woman convicted of dealing heroin and ecstasy has become pregnant while being held on death row:

The woman, a 39-year-old convicted heroin trafficker, was being held on death row when she became pregnant.

Police say the father of the child is a fellow prisoner who delivered food to the prisoners on death row.

Under Vietnamese law, death sentences for pregnant women must be converted to life in prison.

criminal punishment is often a good measure of societal definitions of barbarism. in vietnam, it is apparently considered barbaric to execute a pregnant woman by firing squad, but not barbaric to execute a woman who had given birth prior to her incarceration. at least such a policy spares us the tortuous logic needed to justify the alternative — sparing the woman’s life until after she had given birth, then spiriting the baby away and lining the mother up before the firing squad in a bloody hospital gown. of course, the economists might argue that such a policy creates perverse incentives, giving female death row inmates great incentives to conceive with guards or inmates.

i haven’t heard of such cases in the states, but plenty of american women give birth in prison every year. for example, the birth attendants run a prison doula project, providing pregnancy, labor, and post-partum doula services and childbirth education classes to women incarcerated in washington state. a noble human rights effort, i’d say, and worthy of our support and emulation.