“Health Net has partnered with the state and CDCR since 2010 to provide cost-efficient access to quality health care services for the state’s 35 prison institutions and two youth facilities” read more here
What we can learn about criminal justice from our wounded warriors
“One of the least obvious disabilities is trauma. Justice for Vets cites research that one in five veterans from our most recent conflicts have a mental health disorder or cognitive impairment, including post-traumatic stress disorder. One in six has a drug or alcohol issue. As a result of our wars, we’ve learned a lot about psychological trauma. We know it has a range of destructive symptoms, and many believe that it has played a major role in the disproportionate number of veterans in the criminal justice system. Some who have encountered the criminal justice system are now being treated in Veterans Courts. With respect to trauma, Veterans Courts are a relatively recent innovation, but early outcomes and reviews from veterans have been largely favorable. Veterans Courts are one of many specialized courts that focus on underlying disorders that lead to criminal offending. Crime has declined rapidly in the US over the past generation, and in 2013 violent crime had declined more than 50 percent from 1991. The idea of introducing therapeutic processes into criminal case processing has been an important part of systems reform, and it seems to be working…”
sentencing reform?
For much of the twentieth century, if you committed a serious crime in California, a judge would sentence you to an ambiguous-sounding prison term—say, five years to life. While you were serving your sentence, a parole board would review your record and decide how long the rest of the sentence should be, based on factors such as your behavior and your participation in prison rehabilitation programs. The idea was to take the specifics of the crime into account in the original sentencing, and then to reward those who seemed to be taking steps toward genuine rehabilitation. read more…
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State and county leaders depend on each other to make the criminal justice system work. That’s why we are writing jointly, highlighting new efforts our two organizations, the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, are undertaking together.
State officials write the criminal code, decide when prison beds are available for those sentenced to prison, and determine when and how someone will be released to the community. But only a small fraction of people charged with a crime ever become the responsibility of a state department of corrections. It’s in county courts and jails where people charged with crimes are processed. More than 220,000 adults are booked into local jails each week in the United States. (State prisons, by comparison, admit just over 10,000 adults each week.) County administrators see as much as 20–50 percent of their budget funneled to the justice system, far exceeding the share of the state budget dedicated to criminal justice. Who holds the upper hand in this complex relationship? That’s a moot question. The fact is county and state leaders need one another, and no one disagrees that more can be done to support local officials faced with bulging dockets, overwhelmed treatment services, and antiquated jail facilities and management information systems.
