A new report outlines ways that states like Virginia could rethink long prison sentences and how to use them more sparingly.

The Council on Criminal Justice Task Force on Long Sentences makes a series of policy recommendations for more judicial discretion in sentencing, and for promoting more individual accountability.

They focus on allocating more resources to rehabilitation, through behavioral healthcare or trauma services.

Virginia is among the states where more people serve long sentences, and John Maki - the director of the task force - described what's causing the uptick, nationwide.

"What we're seeing is that the nation's overall share of people serving long sentences is growing," said Maki. "And that's not primarily because the nation is increasing its use of long sentences - but rather, we're slightly decreasing our use of shorter sentences. And people serving longer sentences are stacking up."

He added that it's an important point because the perceived public safety advantages of longer prison terms diminish, as people tend to "age out" of criminal behavior.

A bill this year in the Virginia General Assembly would have allowed eligible people who've served at least 15 years to petition a court for a second look at their sentence. But it failed to advance out of committee.

While these recommendations are designed to make better use of long sentences, Maki noted that they are a framework for policymakers. He said more could be done to ensure that long sentences are only used when necessary.

"Ultimately," said Maki, "this is on legislators, governors, to take a look at their long-sentence populations - to ask themselves, 'Are our laws and policies calibrated to achieve the best outcome that all people want, which are safe communities?'"

Upon release, the report says people serving longer sentences often have different needs that can be challenging - from aging to having been separated from family for so long.

While there are numerous prison programs, few target this group of people.




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By Weihua Li and Jamiles Lartey for The Marshall Project.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Marshall Project-Public News Service Collaboration

Two key crime reports released by the Justice Department this fall reveal a changing crime landscape, even when they diverge on year-over-year trends. Property crime rose in significant ways for the first time in years. Violent crime against young people doubled. As usual, most crimes go unreported. And as a major election season looms in 2024, the deviation between the reports on recent trends in violent crime could be read selectively to score political points.

The FBI's crime reporting program and the Bureau of Justice Statistics' crime victimization survey are generally seen as the Justice Department's two major pillars of national crime statistics. While the FBI tries to collect crime data directly from more than 18,000 police agencies through its Uniform Crime Reporting program, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) interviews 150,000 families across the country. The NCVS asks questions that capture crimes that were not reported to police as well as ones that were, which are then weighted in order to estimate crime victimization for more than 120 million U.S. households.

Federal reports show similar long-term trends in violent crime, but diverge significantly on year-over-year changes

Both reports show a return to pre-pandemic levels of violent crime since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out three years prior, and a similar pattern: The violent crime rate exhibited significant fluctuations during the pandemic, but by 2022, it had returned to pre-pandemic levels.

During the pandemic, the country saw a significant uptick in homicides, shootings and aggravated assaults, which likely contributed to the increase seen in data reported by law enforcement. At the same time, violent crime victimizations - which included less acute forms of violent crime, such as assaults without weapons that did not lead to serious injuries - dipped. These violent crime victimizations mostly went unreported.

Murders are a good measurement for the most serious violent crimes, partially because they are almost always reported to police. According to the FBI's crime statistics, the number of murders dropped by 6.1% from 2021 to 2022, but is still higher than where it was prior to the pandemic.

For some observers, the jump in serious violent crime was always bound to stabilize, as the shock from the early pandemic wore off. "Violent crime rates had been trending down for at least a decade. And when the pandemic hit, unsurprisingly, with this once-in-a-century event, you saw things shift," said Kim Foxx, state's attorney for Cook County, Illinois. "As we are coming out of the pandemic, the fact that we are now seeing those numbers trend downward again is not surprising to me."

Despite the long-term trends, the two reports differ more than ever before on the year-over-year change in violent crime.

Since the methodologies for these two reports are different, it's not unusual for them to show different trends on a particular year, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri, who recently wrote about this divergence for the Council on Criminal Justice. Over the past 30 years, these two reports' difference in year-over-year violence trends has never been as big as it was last year.

In 2021, the FBI changed how it collects data from police departments, and as a result, that year's crime data missed nearly 40% of police agencies. Bureau analysts estimated the missing data with statistical modeling, but the change led to the most incomplete picture of national crime since the FBI began collecting data in the 1930s, which created confusion on how crime trends changed. Last year, the FBI reversed the change and revived the previously-retired data collection system. They also gave agencies that didn't submit data for 2021 a chance to submit their data retrospectively. Nearly 2,500 agencies took the FBI's offer and submitted crime data through the old system for 2022, but it's unclear how many did for 2021.

Experts said the lingering effect of that transition could be why the 2021-2022 trend is unreliable: If the 2021 crime data remains incomplete, it is difficult to compare it with the 2022 data.

These data gaps and disagreements create more space for politicians to spin unsubstantiated, murky narratives. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his run for president, for example, he touted that Florida's crime rate has reached a record-low under his administration. But he failed to mention that he relied on a crime rate estimation that was missing data from about half of the state's law enforcement agencies, which policed 40% of the state's population.

The FBI said it cannot address the difference between its crime data and the BJS' victimization survey because it "cannot comment on another agency's report."

In an interview, BJS statisticians said there's no single factor that can neatly explain the divergence - the victimization survey and police statistics are designed to complement each other, and often reflect different aspects of criminal justice and victim's issues.

"It would be nice to know what's happening with violent crime rates," said Richard Rosenfeld. "But having two contrasting reports both coming out of the Justice Department enables politicians, or anyone else who has a horse in the race, to just cherry-pick the estimate that fits best with their [priorities] and ignore the other."

Property crime went up in 2022

While the Justice Department's two reports diverged on recent violent crime trends, both showed an uptick in property crime from 2021 to 2022: The FBI's crime data showed a 7.1% increase in property crime, while the victimization survey showed a 14.5% jump.

In both reports, a sharp increase in motor vehicle theft and larceny were the main drivers for the increase in property crime. The former, criminologists said, can be partially attributed to the "Kia Boyz," whose videos on how to steal Hyundai and Kia vehicles went viral on social media platforms.

In Chicago, the number of stolen Kia and Hyundais jumped 35 times over a couple of months - from 45 cars stolen in May 2022 to more than 1,400 cars stolen that October, according to data compiled by Vice. Data from other major cities, like Los Angeles, Denver and Milwaukee, showed similar trends.

Relentless inflation can also lead to more property crimes like theft and larceny, Rosenfeld said. Last summer, the inflation rate reached 9.1% - the highest in decades - which led many people to trade down on where they shop, and some traded down to purchasing stolen goods. While the inflation rate has since dropped, the 2022 crime data doesn't reflect its effect yet.

One undeniable trend: Violent crimes against young people doubled

Another trend that both Justice Department reports show is that young people experienced more violence in 2022.

The FBI's crime data shows that while fatal and non-fatal gun violence against adults declined in 2022, both increased by more than 10% for young people who are under the age of 18. Similarly, the crime victimization survey shows that the violent victimization rate for people between the ages of 12 and 17 doubled last year - from 13 to 27 violent crimes per 1,000 youth, representing the age group that saw the biggest increase in violent victimization.

Researchers have theories on why violence against young people jumped, but caution that little is definitive. Kim Smith, the Director of Programs at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, points to school enrollment as a factor that might be one piece of the puzzle. Nationwide, school enrollment rates fell during the pandemic and are still yet to recover. The Crime Lab has found that in Chicago, a startling 90% of youth shooting victims were not active or enrolled at school at the time they were shot. "Education is the most protective factor against future violence involvement," Smith said.

Other analysts have pointed to the increase in gun purchases since the beginning of the pandemic, and the sense of danger that many young people feel in their neighborhoods. "We had an influx of guns during the COVID shutdown, and an enormous amount of guns that entered the country and ended up on the streets," said Jamila Hodge, executive director of the national violence prevention group Equal Justice USA. "That influx is reflected in the numbers of rising violence against young people - it's access to guns."

Still, most crimes are not reported to the police

While the FBI continues trying to improve the national crime statistics, most property and violent crimes are not reported to the police, the victimization survey shows.

The survey asks victims if they reported crimes they experienced to the police. About 41% of violent crime victims said they reported the incident to the police. But the actual number of violent crimes police recorded is much lower.

While the BJS estimated more than 6 million violent crime victimizations, and estimated more than 2 million of those incidents were reported to the police, the FBI's crime statistics only recorded 1.2 million incidents. In some incidents, a reported crime is not recorded by the police.


Weihua Li and Jamiles Lartey wrote this article for The Marshall Project.




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An Alabama bookstore is working to make sure people in prison have access to books.

The Burdock Book Collective in Birmingham is on a mission to bridge connections and shatter stereotypes within the prison system.

Teaming up with the Alabama Books to Prison Project, they are providing books and pen pals to help people combat the isolation of prison life and expand their access to educational resources.

For collective co-founder Katie Willis - who is also a volunteer with the project - the act of sending books fosters connections and helps bring humanity to people serving time.

"Also the relationships that are built by sending books to people - and feeling cared for, feeling connected to somebody else," said Willis. "Because a lot of the folks that we are in contact with, they have no one else in the world. And so, it's been really meaningful for them in that way."

Since joining the books to prison program, she said the bookstore has delivered 400 books to about 200 recipients in recent years. According to data from the Prison Policy Initiative, about 43,000 people are incarcerated in Alabama.

Meagan Lyle, also a co-founder of collective and a volunteer with the project, explains that getting the books isn't always a straightforward process.

Someone at the prison - perhaps the warden or another designated person - determines which titles are allowed, so restrictions vary depending on the facility.

Lyle said the lack of clear-cut rules can make it difficult for those behind bars to get some of the reading material they seek.

"Sometimes, prisons have just been completely rejecting books from us," said Lyle. "So, there are a few prisons - including Tutwiler and the Montgomery Women's Facility - that haven't accepted books. And they cite the reasons are, like, contraband."

Willis and Lyle said they're working to forge connections with jails and prisons statewide to grow their efforts.

And they firmly believe the simple gesture of providing reading materials can bring about change, even in a system plagued by low parole rates and overcrowding.

Lyle said she hopes this work can also serve as a way to initiate discussions on restorative justice.

"I think you can come to this project thinking, 'Oh yeah, anybody deserves a book,'" said Lyle. "But you may not totally recognize the humanity in people that are incarcerated until you start building relationships with them. I hope that is something that's coming out of this, for folks on the outside."

According to the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, there can be significant negative economic and social impacts when incarcerated people don't have access to education, that can affect them after their release.




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A Mississippi-based organization is providing free books to incarcerated individuals to promote literacy and pave the way for prison reform.

Prison book programs have been distributing free books to inmates in the United States since the early 1970s.

Miranda Vaughn, program assistant for the nonprofit Big House Books, said they have been sending books to incarcerated individuals throughout the state since 2014. She explained they collect book donations from the community and supply them to incarcerated individuals upon request. Inmates can request specific titles, authors or literary genres through letters.

"Every person who writes to us gets three books, regardless of whether they ask for 20 or they asked for one," Vaughn noted. "We just send them all three books. They have to be paperback only, and we always ask that they're in good condition. Any time we can send them new books, obviously, we try to do that as well."

Vaughn emphasized they operate mainly on the generosity of individual donors and volunteers. While the organization sometimes receives small grants, its primary source of funding is individual contributions, typically ranging from $5 to $20 per month.

Vaughn added they have not run into any issues so far with the book bans in Mississippi prisons, but some city and county jails throughout the state are a little stricter about what they will accept.

"We are written into the Department of Corrections policy as a book vendor. They have to accept our books," Vaughn stressed. "But some of the local jails and stuff that aren't really under that jurisdiction can pretty much have whatever restrictions they want, and we really can't do anything about it."

Vaughn said this GivingTuesday, they are asking the public to donate more books to help them send 1,000 packages to incarcerated Mississippians. They have a financial goal of $5,000 and she added each package contains three books to educate and transform an incarcerated person in Mississippi.


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