Friends of Justice

“There will always be cases where circumstances call for, if not practically compel, sentences which exceed the standard guideline recommendations,” Judge Bender wrote, noting that trial judges have wide discretion. “However, we expect that sentencing courts understand that a standard range sentence is the norm and, consequently, that sentences which exceed (or fall below) the standard recommendation should be relatively infrequent by comparison.

“The appearance of bias, and doubt regarding a court’s commitment to individualized sentencing, both rationally emerge when such a pattern of routine deviation from sentencing norms is demonstrated by adequate evidence.

Read the article by Paula Reed Ward in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

‘Prescott told Quartz those findings shouldn’t be surprising. Policies like alerting people to the presence of sex offenders or restricting where they live would intuitively seem to decrease risk. But that’s a static way of looking at the problem, he says—those policies themselves can make returning to prison look more desirable since ex-offenders find it hard to get housing, find a job, and form social bonds. “We have an anti-reentry policy for sex offenders,” Prescott says.’

Read the article by Steven Yoder in Quartz.

los angeles times

“Who wouldn’t want to ban creepy activity or creepy people from playgrounds? But what O’Farrell is proposing goes far beyond targeting worrisome activities that, in most cases, are already outlawed. It would bar any adult from sitting on a bench, exercising or otherwise enjoying public space near playground unless he or she brought a child along. Is this really necessary?”

Read the editorial in the Los Angeles Times.

Photo: Matt McClain/The Washington Post

“Pizzagate shares much of its content with an outbreak of collective hysteria over imaginary occult pedophile rings three decades ago, which can now summed up in three words: satanic-ritual abuse. At the beginning of the 1980s, it seemed eminently plausible to many people that an extensive underground network of sadistic devil worshipers was sexually torturing large numbers of children in preschools and day-care centers across the country — and that these activities had somehow gone undetected for years, if not decades.”

Read the article by NCRJ Board Member Roger Lancaster in the Washington Post.