2017-18 Budget News
SENATE BUDGET COMMITTEE HEARING

The Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee held a hearing this week on correctional spending and population trends, recent reforms, and benefits of prison rehabilitative programming. The agenda for the hearing – The State of Corrections: An Update on Recent Trends – and background materials prepared by committee staff are available here. At the outset of the hearing, Senator Jim Nielsen, the committee’s vice chair, raised concerns that the hearing did not feature the perspectives of police chiefs, sheriffs, district attorneys, or victims.

Why the U.S. Is Right to Move Away from Private Prisons

The MARSHALL PROJECT: Nonprofit journalism about criminal justice

Don’t overlook local jails.

As the national spotlight burns bright on criminal justice reform, policymakers and the public are closely watching the data for signs that we’ve turned the page on mass incarceration. Indeed, a recent report from the Brennan Center for Justice noted that 28 states have decreased imprisonment over the last ten years. However, this analysis of state incarceration trends, like every similar one before it, is subject to an important limitation: It excludes individuals in local jails.

In California, sentencing reforms have reduced incarceration rates in state prisons, but not so much in county jails.

National Institute of Justice Report hot off the press! 

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How the medical profession can solve the opioid crisis ROBERT PEARL, MD | MEDS | APRIL 14, 2016

“A blueprint toward an answer

The opioid and heroin epidemics will require a combination of solutions. Legislative and regulatory reform, such as the FDA’s recently announced plan to review its process for approval of increasingly powerful opioid painkillers, will be important. So will intensified enforcement measures against “pill mills” and the few physicians engaged in reckless and excessive prescribing. Broad educational initiatives for physicians and public service announcements for consumers can help everyone understand the risks from opioids. And expanded use of alternative methods of pain control for chronic, non-cancer discomfort will allow patients to address their pain needs in safer ways.

In the future, all physicians will need to query patients about past or current drug and alcohol use before prescribing opioid medication, and when appropriate check state prescription drug monitoring programs. And when they prescribe an opioid, it should be at the lowest effective dose, and only be for the quantity likely to be required.

Across the nation, we will need physicians to refer patients with substance-abuse disorders to effective substance-abuse treatment services. And in conjunction, patients currently addicted to opioid painkillers or heroin should use FDA-approved alternatives such as methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone.

We can reverse this opioid crisis. But the time for us to take action is now, before thousands more die unnecessarily. Maybe next year, for starters, our televisions could show a different kind of Super Bowl commercial about opioids. A public-service ad could warn about the serious risks of chronic, high-dose opioid use, and alert Americans to the alternatives available. In trying to stop this epidemic, that would truly get us all closer to crossing the goal line.””