California Programs Helps People On Parole To Function In Society
Heard on Morning Edition by Elissa Nadworny
May 2, 2019  

A re-entry program in San Bernardino, Calif., for released offenders is like a bridge between the world of corrections and the world of social services. The program helps people on parole transition.

The United States has the largest prison population in the world, and a big part of that is re-offenders. One way to get those numbers down is to give people on parole the tools they need to function in society. In San Bernardino, Calif., there is a promising effort to do just that. Here's NPR's Elissa Nadworny.

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New Report Names Nearly 4,000 Companies Profiting Off of Private Prison Industry​
Common Dreams by Eoin Higgins
4/30/19

A new report provides information on which corporations are profiting from the private prison industry. 

The report (pdf), which was released by criminal justice advocacy group Worth Rises, is based on a database run by the organization that lists a total 3,900 companies in 12 sectors that make money off of the prison industrial complex. 
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The scope of the income taken in by these companies, the report says, is in the tens of billions. 

"Today, more than half of the $80 billion spent annually on incarceration by government agencies is used to pay the thousands of vendors that serve the criminal legal system. They are healthcare providers, food suppliers, and commissary merchants, among others. And many have devised strategies to extract billions more from the directly impacted communities supporting their incarcerated loved ones."

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Supporting the Coalition to End Money Bond and Chicago Community Bond Fund
​On April 10, 2019, the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Pretrial Practices announced it will be hosting three listening sessions on pretrial justice and accepting written comments through June 30th of this year. This is a direct result of the Coalition to End Money Bond and our allies’ demands for a process for public input into this important conversation. Over the last several months, we collected nearly 1,000 signatures in support of a public hearing and sent in hundreds of postcards from individual supporters calling on the commission to hear the voices of impacted communities. Thank you for your part in making this happen! 

The currently scheduled hearings are:

• Urbana: Monday, May 6, 2019, 11:30am-1pm at the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board Training Center, 1701 E. Main Street, Urbana, IL 61802; and
• Chicago: Monday, June 17, 2019, 12-1:30pm at the Michael A. Bilandic Building, 5th Floor, Room C-500, 160 N. LaSalle Street, Chicago, IL 60601.

If you are interested in a deeper dive into the Coalition to End Money Bond's statewide campaign and the Supreme Court Commission on Pretrial Practices, you can join us 
Tuesday May 7th for a teach-in at
Grace Place (637 S Dearborn) from 6-8pm! 
More details are on the facebook event page.​

Currently, the best way to support our work is sharing this petition calling on the Illinois Supreme Court Commission on Pretrial Practices to hold a public hearing. You can also share this facebook post and twitter post that promote the petition with the video produced by Tom Callahan. There is also a video explaining a bill we are supporting, the Equal Justice for All Act, which was created by Danbee Kim. You can share using this twitter post and this facebook post. 

United States Still Has Highest Incarceration Rate in the World
Equal Justice Initiative
4/26/2019

New prison and jail population data released this week by the United States Department of Justice shows the United States still incarcerates its citizens at a rate 5 to 10 times higher than other industrialized countries. Some 2.27 million people were incarcerated in jails and prisons across the country in 2017 —a 500% increase over the last 40 years.

The Sentencing Project analyzed the data, which is current through the end of 2017. It shows that the prison population nationwide declined by 7.3 percent since its highest level in 2009, but the decrease is primarily attributable to reforms in six states that have reduced their prison populations by at least 30 percent in the past 20 years:  Alaska, Connecticut, California, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 1,489,363 people were incarcerated in state or federal prisons at year-end 2017. At the current rate of decline, it will take 75 years to cut the prison population by half, the Sentencing Project reports.

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