The title of this post is the title of this new book review authored by one of my Ohio State colleagues, Grace Li, now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract: Tommie Shelby’s 2022 book The Idea of Prison Abolition sets out to compile and rearticulate the arguments for and against prison abolition — using Angela Davis’s works as the sole source texts.  In considering the arguments, he concludes that it is not necessary to abolish prisons and instead endorses reform. In this book review, I argue that Shelby’s most helpful contribution in the book is not his analysis of whether prisons sh ..read more

The US Sentencing Commission yesterday released this new compassionate release data report, which includes data on “the compassionate release motions filed with the courts and decided during the first quarter of fiscal year 2024.”  (For the USSC, the first quarter of FY 2024 is actually the last three months of 2023.)   I noticed some interesting data points in this report comparing the sentence reduction grants and grant rates of the last three months of 2023 to prior months in 2023 and even earlier years. Specifically, the months of October and December 2023 saw the highest gr ..read more

As reported in this local piece from Tennessee, a “controversial bill that would allow the state to seek the death penalty for those convicted of rape of a child passed the House of Representatives Monday, clearing the final legislative hurdle before becoming law in Tennessee.”  Here are the basics: HB1663, by House Majority Leader William Lamberth (R-Portland), would allow for those convicted of rape or especially aggravated rape of a child in Tennessee to be sentenced to death. The move received considerable pushback from Democrats, who argued the General Assembly was passing a blatant ..read more

As reported here, last week the the US Sentencing Commission voted unanimous to promulgate a number of notable new guideline amendments, including most notably an amendment to preclude the use of acquitted conduct in guideline calculations.  (The promulgated amendments passed by the Commission are posted here).  Perhaps because acquitted conduct sentencing reform is something I consider symbolically meaningful (and overdue), I view this unanimous guideline amendment to be a pretty big deal.  But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the USSC’s vote has garnered only modest press coverage to ..read more

The title of this post is the title of this new article authored by Sam Merchant which now has an abstract available up on SSRN.  I typically will not link to an SSRN posting unless and until the full draft article is available for download.  But this article’s findings seem especially timely and notable; so here is its abstract: Many observers claim that judges are imposing disproportionately lenient sentences on January 6, 2021, “Capitol Breach” offenders.  Some have even suggested a racial or political motivation for lighter sentences.  Comparative data on these sentenc ..read more

In this prior post last month, I set out the full call for papers for a forthcoming issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter in which we plans to note (and celebrate? criticize?) the federal sentencing system’s 20 years of functioning under the rules created in Booker.  I previously threatened to repost this call every few weeks until the deadline thoward the end of May, and this week’s interesting guideline amendment actions by the US Sentencing Commission (basics here) has me eager to do so.  For this post, I will not give all the background about Booker and be content wi ..read more

I tend to find extreme affinity for 420 as a kind of marijuana holiday to be a bit silly.  But I am not so much of a scrooge that I will eschew a marijuana-themed post on this day.  Inspired in part by a great new paper from researchers at the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (the listed first below), I figured I woud round up an array of pieces from SSRN focused on the intersection of marijuana reform and record relief.  I have only collected pieces on was able to find quickly on SSRN, so what is linked here is surely just an abridged accounting of work in this space: &n ..read more

The title of this post is the title of this new paper authored by Benjamin Lu and available via SSRN. Here is its abstract: Until recently, studies have consistently found that judges sentence more harshly under electoral pressure.  We add to growing evidence complicating that account.  We analyze an open dataset of felony cases prosecuted in Cook County, the second-most populous county in the United States, between 2011 and 2018 and an original dataset of county judges’ electoral histories.  Unlike previous work in this area, we leverage the fact that some cases in the county ..read more

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