NEWSBYCOLIN ASHER

With less than a year in office, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams is using all the clout he has to revamp the way his office pursues convictions.

Starting next week, crimes in Philly will be handled by prosecutors assigned to geographic areas that correspond to the city's six detective divisions. Rather than picking up cases when they arrive in court, prosecutors will be assigned to them from star. The new DA is hoping that the combination of geographic proximity to crimes and start to finish contact with cases will instill in his prosecutors a sense of connection to the community.

The strategy is not new, but it is new to Philly. It's also of note that a former DA attempted a similar reorganization, but was blocked by the courts. That Williams received leeway his predecessor was not afforded seems like a sign that he has the clout to pull off the reorganization.

One of the biggest developments in the criminal justice system this decade has been the emergence of community mental health courts, where people accused of crimes related to their mental illness are offered treatment instead of incarceration.

In 1997 you could count the number of them on one hand. Now there are at least 250 nationwide.

There has long been support for these courts in a smattering of states (California, for instance, has 41 of them in 29 counties), but they have yet to become a nationwide phenomenon. That may change over the next decade, though, because more evidence of their efficacy is coming in.

The Archives of General Psychiatry just published a comprehensive study of four community mental health courts, one each in, San Francisco and Santa Clara Counties in California, Hennepin County in Minnesota, and Marion County in Indiana. Entitled “Effect of Mental Health Courts on Arrests and Jail Days,” the study concludes:

“Mental health courts meet the public safety objectives of lowering posttreatment arrest rates and days of incarceration. Both clinical and criminal justice factors are associated with better public safety outcomes for MHC participants.”

The Los Angeles Times ran a nice feature that puts a face on the people cycling through these courts. The article's author profiles a gentleman named Milton Conley who is involved with the mental health court in San Francisco. He has been abused, addicted to crack cocaine and sent to prison four times. He's also schizophrenic. In his own words: “It's been a terrible life, but it's getting better, as long as I stay off drugs and alcohol and take my medication.” Conley has been in and out of grace with the court, and slipped more than once. In short: He's exactly the type community mental health courts were designed for.

New York is about to wheel out a new pilot project meant to keep incarcerated heroin addicts from returning to the needle after they are released. The program couldn't have a more staid name (Medication Support Recovery Project), but it's goal is laudable and unique. It is set to begin soon in a single upstate prison, and participants will be volunteers. Once an addict becomes part of the program, they will receive daily doses of Suboxone, a semi-synthetic opiate that blocks cravings for heroin without making the person who ingested it feel high.

Once released, inmates who are part of the program will be given renewable 30 day prescriptions. The hope being that with a head start on their Suboxone regiment, most users won't start shooting heroin again after their release.

You ask me, I say it's a win-win. Addicts struggling with their sobriety get a new tool to help them stay on the straight and narrow, and society pays for fewer return trips upstate because newly released inmates will not be violating their parole to get high.

That said, there are problems with Suboxone. It is addictive and, being an opiate derivative, teetotalers shy away from it. And for those reasons it's a good thing the pilot program is voluntary. It's not a wonder drug, just a useful one. And there's a good discussion to be had about the relative merits of the program -- which makes it all the more bizarre that resistance to the idea has entrenched itself around the fact that Suboxone has a street resale value.

Incarcerated mothers often receive no prenatal care, they can be shackled while delivering their children, and once their children are born it's unlikely there will be a nursery available for them. And too few states allow non-violent offenders with children the option of being sentenced to family-based treatment programs.

Those findings just skim the surface of a new report, "Mothers Behind Bars," written by the Rebecca Project For Human Rights and the National Women's Law Center. Among the reports findings:

Prenatal care: Forty-three states do not even require medical examinations as part of prenatal care. Forty-eight states do not offer pregnant women HIV testing. And 41 states neither provide adequate nutrition to pregnant women or counseling about proper prenatal nutrition.

The snowball Adrian Schoolcraft rolled down the side of the hill that is the NYPD is still going, and picking up steam.

As we've been reporting, Schoolcraft accused the NYPD of pushing quotas on officers, and fudging crime stats by downgrading crime reports. Specifically, he took aim at his bosses, the command staff at New York's 81st and last week his allegations finally brought some results.

Deputy Inspector Steven Mauriello, who Schoolcraft accused specifically, has been charged with failing to report a grand larceny complaint and impeding a departmental investigation. Four other officers -- two patrol officers, two sergeants, all unnamed -- from the 81st have been charged with failing to report a robbery complaint. The charges being brought against all five are the result of an investigation started in response to Schoolcraft's allegations.

All of the charges are being brought by the NYPD and will be handled internally, none of the five face any criminal penalties and the potential punishments are pretty minor. If convicted they could face firing, or even a slap as slight as loss of pay or sick days.

Even still, the department's move is the first real vindication for Schoolcraft, who first made his accusations in 2008. After nothing resulted from his initial complaints, he went to the press in February 2010. So, for him, these measly little charges have been a long time coming. Which is not to say that he's satisfied. After the charges were announced, Schoolcraft's lawyer told The New York Times: “this is a very small step. This is a citywide problem; it is not limited to the 81st Precinct. It needs to be addressed by the NYPD as a citywide problem.”

And that seems to be the real take home lesson here. Sure, it's great that there's gonna be a little accountability in these five cases, but we're kidding ourselves if we pretend this is anything more significant or true justice. Let's just hope the continued media attention will shame the department into imposing some real penalties if these officers are found guilty, and that the investigation doesn't stall here.

Photo credit: Mindsay Mohan

In 2000, Massachusetts stripped convicted felons of the right to vote. In response, a small group of inmates filed suit against the state, claiming that the new law was a violation of the Voting Rights Act. That case swam about in the waters of the court system for years, until this week when the U.S Supreme Court declined to hear the case and effectively killed it.

It's a sad turn of events, though not entirely unexpected. Federal appeals courts are currently split on the issue of whether the Voting Rights Act can be applied to felon disenfranchisement, but that conflict has not been simmering overly long so it's no great surprise that the high court chose to leave it on the flame a bit longer. When they do take up the issue, we'll revisit.

But in the meantime, I'd like to touch on this case's back story.

It all started in the late nineties. Massachusetts was one of only three states to allow incarcerated felons to vote (the other two were Maine and Vermont) and politically active prisoners decided to take advantage of that right. They formed a Political Action Committee, and set their minds to using the electoral system to reform the criminal justice system.

It was a fascinating turn of events and a laudable commitment to the political system as far as I'm concerned, but the commonwealth's non-incarcerated citizens did not agree. Rather than congratulating the inmates for their civic mindedness, the state held a referendum to strip them of their voting rights. It passed with an overwhelming majority. Thus was born the lawsuit that just died.

We tend to think of the movement to strike felon disenfranchisement laws as a progressive one, a bold strike to carve out new rights for the currently or formerly incarcerated. But in this case the lawsuit in question was a conservative move, a holding action, an attempt to keep things as they were. And it makes opponents to felon enfranchisement in Massachusetts seem that much more unreasonable. After all, opposing a conservative measure requires answering the question, "What's wrong with the way things are?" And it's hard to claim with a straight that Massachusetts' prisons were disrupting the political system before they lost the right to vote only a decade ago.

Photo Credit: A. Strakey

There are 11 states that do not reinstate the voting rights of convicted felons who have served their time. Each needs to pass new laws mandating automatic reinstatement of voting rights. (Or, better yet, pass laws that get rid of disenfranchisement all together.)

Without automatic reinstatement, people are left wondering whether the political winds will blow their way. Will the next governor be inclined to approve applications for reinstatement, or inclined to deny them? And how long will the process take? It is unfair to leave people guessing about the state of their rights like that, and too often they end up waiting for a disappointment.

That's why it's so pleasant to hear that Robert McDonnell, Virginia's Republican governor, is -- to the surprise of almost everyone -- approving 88 percent of the applications he has received from former inmates hoping to have their rights restored. And he's doing it efficiently, within 60 days for the most part. (Read more after the jump.)

For years we have suffered the consequences of criminal justice policies enacted in the 1980s and 1990s.

We have paid billions to incarcerate people sentenced under "tough on crime" laws that ballooned our prison populations. And that says nothing of the moral cost we will all have to pay for looking on as hundreds of thousands of people were deprived of their liberty for offenses whose severity was at times trivial.

But now there is some evidence to suggest the next generation will not have to pay the same costs. We have been reporting for some time that states -- faced with deficits and massive criminal justice budgets -- have enacted smart criminal justice reforms. Among others, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina have enacted reforms, and the idea of a data-driven justice policy has entered the mainstream of political discourse. (Read more after the jump.)

What should it cost a person convicted of a crime? Time, lost behind bars? The respect of friends and family? Social standing? Should it be costly in terms of future earnings, and continue to affect a person long after their incarceration? Are we comfortable with that: transforming the phrase "paying your debt to society" from metaphor to literal fact?

Comfortable with it or not, that transformation has taken place.

In a new study, Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility, the Pew Center has quantified the costs facing someone who has been incarcerated -- and found that those costs are imposed long after sentences have been completed. (Read more after the jump.)

In South Carolina, HIV positive inmates -- no matter the crime they were convicted of -- are housed in a maximum security facility. The badges male prisoners wear are marked with a blue dot; female prisoners have the name of a dorm reserved for inmates with HIV on their uniforms. And, because they are in a maximum security facility, neither group is eligible to participate in re-entry or early release programs.

Those facts came to light in April, when Human Rights Watch and the ACLU released a joint report entitled, "Sentenced to Stigma - Segregation of HIV-Positive Prisoners in Alabama and South Carolina." The report suggested that both states should allow HIV positive inmates to enter the general prison population and be given supplies to reduce the risk that they spread infections.

The DOJ seemed to agree, giving South Carolina 90 days to change their policies. That clock ran down this week -- but the Palmetto State has no intention of complying. (Read more after the jump.)