In the News

The House and Senate are moving toward passing a bill that would change the guidelines for mandatory minimum sentencing and solitary confinement of juveniles. The effort is the product of a growing consensus that decades of "tough on crime" policies – including mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders – filled prisons across the country to the breaking point. The bill could reach President Obama’s desk this year, and he has said he will sign it, leading to celebrations of actual bipartisanship.

A bipartisan group of United States senators announced Oct. 1 legislation that would overhaul the country’s criminal justice system, giving judges more leeway in sentencing and reducing sentences for some nonviolent offenders.

Rebecca Ginsburg defined the role that universities could play in helping former prisoners stay out of prison in the kickoff lecture of the 2015 Smart Decarceration Conference.

St. Louis, Mo.— "There is not a criminal justice system in this country," Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm told a group of about 150 social workers, researchers, criminal justice professionals and people affected by mass incarceration gathered for a national conference. "There are 3,100 criminal justice systems, each of them run by an elected official." 

Imagine investing $50 billion a year in a program that only has a 50 percent success rate. That’s the annual tab in the U.S. to hold more than 2 million people in jails and prisons on any given day. Experts say half of them wind up back behind bars within three years of being released from custody. And yet, academics and criminal justice professionals who gathered here Friday for a conference at Washington University came with fresh optimism about a trend that over the past 40 years has led the U.S. to have the largest incarcerated population in the world.

While hundreds of journalists, social workers, formerly incarcerated individuals and policy makers will convene at Washington University over the weekend to rethink and transform nationwide criminal justice, another group of the University’s professors has been focusing their efforts on a continuing education program for local prison inmates.

More than 150 people are gathering today at Washington University in St. Louis to ponder a radical remake of the way incarceration is used in the U.S., reports St. Louis Public Radio. The conference is the first major undertaking for the Smart Decarceration Initiative. Carrie Pettus-Davis of the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University is one of the organizers.

The keynote event for the Brown School’s Smart Decarceration Initiative will feature two individuals who are making a positive impact on prison reform.

Pope Francis is widely expected to address a range of issues when he visits the United States Sept. 22-27, including the crisis of mass incarceration in the U.S. criminal justice system. The attention is needed and welcome, said a criminal justice reform expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

For Danny Ludeman, God’s call came in the form of a letter. In the fall of 2013, Ludeman, then 56, announced he would step down after 15 years as CEO of St. Louis–based Wells Fargo Advisors. In a subsequent interview with the local press, he mentioned that after leaving Wells, he wanted to spend 100% of his time “helping other people,” perhaps by running a nonprofit organization. As you might expect, his mailbox was flooded with offers. But one in particular caught his eye.