A new executive order calls on the Department of Justice to not renew contracts with privately operated criminal detention centers. There are currently more than 14,000 incarcerated individuals housed in privately-operated facilities in the US.
In a huge win for racial justice, the state of Illinois is on the verge of becoming the first state to end wealth-based pre-trial detention.
The lifted ban is part of the $1.4 trillion government pandemic stimulus package for 2021 and reflects a long push for prison reform which encourages rehabilitation and lowered incarceration rates.
Called the Pitzer Inside-Out Pathway-to-BA, the program uses virtual learning to welcome incarcerated individuals into the classroom with other university students.
50,000 more Californians were welcomed back into the democratic process this election as the state celebrates the passing of Prop 17. The proposition, which passed with support from 59 percent of voters, will allow paroled citizens convicted of felonies to vote.
Voters have approved ballot measures to legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona and New Jersey, and both recreational and medical use in in South Dakota. Results have not yet been determined for Montana’s ballot questions on recreational marijuana and Mississippi’s medical marijuana measure.
Campaigners celebrated the first “dramatic” results from Middlesbrough’s scheme, which found a vast reduction in re-offending rates and use of street drugs, and significant improvements in participants’ health and quality of life, including seeing those homeless at the outset placed in accommodation.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam signed legislation on Thursday that decriminalizes marijuana possession, joining a majority of states that have ceased treating the drug as a criminal offense.
The nation’s imprisonment rate is at its lowest level in more than two decades. The greatest decline has come among black Americans, whose imprisonment rate has decreased 34% since 2006.
Cannabis has long been illegally farmed in the fertile Bekaa Valley and government now hopes to turn it into a legal billion-dollar trade
