This study examines the response of the Colorado Board of Parole to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To mitigate the spread of the virus within correctional facilities, it increased the parole grant rate, expedited case review, and utilized special…
This report examines the challenges and opportunities that states faced in deciding whether to release people from prison during the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on the legal mechanisms available to jurisdictions and the factors that…
Out next month through the University of California Press' Federal Sentencing Reporter 35 (3), "Reassessing, Rethinking, Revising: The Essential Work of Sentencing Commissions," is an article adapted from the speech given by Robina…
In response to the global pandemic in 2020, states and the federal government began to make non-routine releases from prison in order to reduce prison populations to allow for social distancing in prison facilities. This report is aimed at…
The Community Corrections Fines and Fees Study team has released a study examining the fines and fees attributed to four similar cases in the same Indiana county. The costs imposed at the time of conviction were comparable in three of the…
For most individuals who receive a prison sentence, the amount of time they will serve in prison is somewhat unpredictable because of officials’ discretionary capacity to exercise “back-end” release decisions, including parole release…
“Indeterminacy” is the product of uncertainty, after a judge has pronounced a prison sentence, about later official decisions that will influence the actual time served by the defendant. The uncertainty extends over many future decisions,…
Though there are multiple jurisdictions with sentencing guidelines, each exists on what we refer to as the advisory to mandatory continuum, referring to the degree to which the guidelines are enforced within each jurisdiction and,…
Jurisdictions across the United States take varied approaches to figuring out appropriate sentences in criminal cases. Some jurisdictions have sentencing commissions to help guide policy decisions in these areas. And some also have…
Indeterminacy in prison sentences refers to the unpredictability of the actual length of time that will be served in prison compared to the length of the sentence pronounced by the judge. It reflects the degree to which back-end…
