The U.S. is facing a dire shortage of affordable and timely addiction treatment centers for adolescents amidst a worrying uptick in overdose deaths within this age group, according to a study led by Oregon Health & Science University. With nearly half of the facilities requiring upfront costs of about $26,000 for a one-month stay, and wait times averaging nearly a month, vulnerable youth are left without accessible care.

In one of the few major cities in the nation experiencing an uptick in violent crime, Washington, D.C. leaders are split on the policy changes that could address the nation's fourth highest homicide rate as well as a spate of car jackings that have left residents unnerved. For some, the progressive policing changes that saw significant support in D.C. in the past are no longer an option, and Mayor Bowser says the pendulum is swinging back to a bipartisan middle.

This year proved to be a rollercoaster year for advocates concerned with preserving CARES Act home confinement, and the thousands who have been safely living in their communities since they were released during the pandemic. Following a major spring win with a final rule from the DOJ allowing those placed in the program during the COVID pandemic to serve the remainder of their sentences on home confinement, Sen. Marsha Blackburn recently introduced a Senate resolution that threatens to send them all back to prison despite the program's overwhelming levels of success, and quickly approached the required 30 Senate co-sponsors to bring the effort straight to the floor. 

Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the first automatic “Clean Slate” expungement law in the nation, enacted legislation this week to expand eligibility for Clean Slate to low-level felonies. Governor Shapiro promptly signed the bill on Thursday, delivering a years-long goal of bipartisan sponsors, Representatives Jordan Harris (D) and Sheryl Delozier (R), and a gift to the people of Pennsylvania who will have better access to jobs and housing in the new year as a result of the law. 

The Pennsylvania General Assembly passed House Bill 689, a bill allowing the sealing of low-level, nonviolent felonies, sponsored by Representatives Jordan Harris (D-Phila.) and Sheryl Delozier (R-Cumberland), and led by Senators Lisa Baker and Anthony Williams in the Senate. The effort builds on Pennsylvania’s 2018 framework to expand automated expungements to more Pennsylvanians who have proven they can remain crime free. After a 47-3 vote in the Senate and 153-50 concurrence vote in the House, the bill now heads to Governor Shapiro’s desk for his signature.

For a dozen years, Missouri Governor Mike Parson was a rural sheriff whose job was catching and locking up citizens who broke the law. Now, Governor Parsons is the face of a slightly different sort of justice and an example for a nation grappling with a fine line between cracking down on crime and offering second chances through redemption and restoration for victims and offenders alike.

In July, the Alabama parole board voted against releasing 96% of eligible applicants. One of them was Richard Kinder, who amassed a stellar record during his roughly 40 years in prison.

Ohio lawmakers are considering a bill that would end the practice of suspending a person’s driver’s license for non-driving, non-public safety related reasons, such as unpaid parking tickets. Over 60% of the 3 million license suspensions that occur in Ohio each year are for debt-based reasons. Advocates (myself included) emphasize the bill's potential to address the disproportionate impact of license suspensions on those with financial challenges and minor infractions unrelated to dangerous driving.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed the state's Clean Slate Act into law this week, making New York the 12th state to enact automatic expungement legislation in recent years. The bill is projected to benefit as many as two million individuals convicted of crimes in New York State.

A Senate resolution introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn is threatening to send thousands of individuals who have been living in their communities for three years back to federal prison. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 13,000 individuals were released from federal prisons to home confinement under the federal CARES Act, and the U.S. Justice Department affirmed this year that this population could remain on home confinement following the expiration of the covered emergency period.

Hosted by local business owner Steve Conway of Pyramid Construction Services, the press conference included comments by representatives of the nation’s largest bipartisan criminal justice and public safety advocacy organization, Justice Action Network; Americans for Prosperity-Pennsylvania; Associated Builders & Contractors Keystone Chapter; and Community Legal Services; along with those who have been impacted by Pennsylvania’s record sealing policies.

The Denver police have achieved remarkable success in increasing clearance rates of nonfatal shootings following the creation of a dedicated police unit to investigate such cases, known as the Firearm Assault Shoot Team (FAST). This approach has led to the clearance of a significant number of nonfatal shootings, addressing the gap between police resources dedicated to solving shootings that result in homicides versus nonfatal shootings.

Introduced in September by the bipartisan duo of Congressman Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) and Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN), the Prohibiting Punishment of Acquitted Conduct Act of 2023 redefines "acquitted conduct" to include acts for which a person was criminally charged and adjudicated not guilty after trial in a Federal, State, Tribal, or Juvenile court, or acts underlying a criminal charge or juvenile information dismissed upon a motion for acquittal, and precludes a court from considering those acts in sentencing unless it’s for the intention of mitigating the sentence. 

After 18 years of struggling with employment due to her criminal record, Vickie Rice learned she was eligible for a pardon in her home state of Pennsylvania at a screening of the documentary ‘Pardon Me’ by the Pardon Project of York County and York County Bar Association. Pardons have quietly become a leading method of criminal justice reform in Pennsylvania, offering hope to millions of individuals with criminal records.

The FBI released its annual crime report this week, which shows that murder rates in the United States dropped by over 6% in 2022. Overall, the data presents a mixed picture for politicians who have sought to make crime a central election issue. 

A North Carolina teenager was hoping to get her life back on track after a state judge ordered a man who sexually abused her to pay her $69,000. Instead, police seized that money through asset forfeiture and the victim was left with nothing.

New data from Minnesota shows that the state has seen a significant decline in asset forfeitures by law enforcement agencies, with a 35% drop over the last five years and a 15% decrease since 2021. This comes after legislation was passed in 2021 to limit police from seizing cash amounts less than $1,500 and making certain vehicle forfeitures without a criminal conviction.

A court case involving language in the nation's most prominent federal bipartisan criminal justice reform will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court this fall, and the dispute at hand involves how to interpret the word 'and' in the law. The issue in the case, Pulsifer v. United States, is how to determine ineligibility for the sentencing safety valve—or departure from a mandatory minimum sentence—and whether meeting of any the three criteria is enough to disqualify someone from the safety valve, or if they must meet all three criteria to be ineligible. 

new task force on violent crime met for the first time this month in Louisiana, giving a preview of what many advocates and insiders in the state expect to be a tough-on-crime legislative session next year. Created by legislative resolution, the group has taken aim at reforms passed as a part of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative in 2017, a package of legislative accomplishments advocates point out were focused on diverting nonviolent and low-level drug offenders from prison and not intended to deal with violent crime, which is the task force's main focus. 

The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on prison oversight this week where they questioned Bureau of Prisons Director Collette Peters on whether she's adequately delivering on promises to turn the BOP around and expressed discontent with the timeliness of responses to requests for information. The hearing came amid widespread scrutiny over prison conditions covered in previous Five Things emails, including sexual misconduct by corrections officers at numerous federal facilities, and a desire for change represents an area of strong bipartisan agreement.