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News Article Colorlines September 12, 2013

LA County Sheriff Helps Deport Record Numbers of Immigrants

The work of handing over arrestees to immigration authorities under the controversial Secure Communities, or S-Comm, program is largely done by local county sheriffs. And, in terms of sheer numbers, no county has cooperated more fully than Los Angeles, where undocumented immigrants, authorized residents, and even U.S.-born citizens have been turned over for deportation. In fact, nearly 11 percent of all immigration detainers under S-Comm have originated in Los Angeles County—with Sheriff Lee Baca’s blessing.

News Article Huffington Post August 23, 2013

War On Undocumented Immigrants Threatens To Swell U.S. Prison Population

Justice Strategies Director, Judith Greene is quoted on the front page of the Huffington Post's business section in an article focused on the ever increasing cost of the federal government's policy to incarcerate immigrants in mass, a failed tactic borrowed from the nation's "War on Drugs."
JS Publication July 20, 2013

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same

In this excerpted chapter from a forthcoming Justice Strategies' report on strategies for police accountability, Research Consultant Patricia Allard and Director Judith Greene review policing practices, policies, and reform efforts in the City of Los Angeles, over several decades.
News Article Los Angeles Times July 8, 2013

Border 'surge' plan would be financial bonanza for private firms

Los Angeles Times quotes Justice Strategies' Director Judith Greene on the financial boom to private prison companies that would result from passage of certain provisions of the Senate's Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill.

News Article Politic365 May 30, 2013

Private Prisons Equal Big Business

Justice Strategies' Director, Judith Greene, is quoted in an article entitled Private Prisons Equal Big Business by Stacy Brown of the Washington Informer, posted May 30th, 2013 on Politics 365. The article discusses the billions of dollars in annual revenues being taken in, and the $45 million spent annually to lobby lawmakers for tougher and longer sentences, by the for profit prison industry, among other financial benefits going to these private corporations.

News Article The Crime Report April 17, 2013

Critics Say Justice Reinvestment Sidesteps Minority Communities

A group of the nation's leading criminal justice advocates and researchers have charged that the much-lauded "justice reinvestment" strategy has failed to divert meaningful funds to minority communities who have been the most deeply affected by high levels of incarceration.

In a report issued today, the advocates are sharply critical of how the six-year-old strategy--warmly endorsed by the Department of Justice only last week---has evolved in many states.

JS Publication April 16, 2013

Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting a New Justice Reinvestment

Justice Strategies Director, Judith Greene, has co-authored Ending Mass Incarceration: Charting A New Justice Reinvestment, with Vanita Gupta and Kara Dansky of the American Civil Liberties Union, Malcolm Young of Northwestern University Law School's Bluhm Legal Clinic, James Austin of the JFA Institute, Eric Cadora of the Justice Mapping Center, Todd Clear of Rutgers University, Marc Mauer and Nicole Porter of The Sentencing Project, and Susan Tucker, the former Director of The After Prison Initiative at the Open Society Foundations.

The paper traces the history and examines the impact of Justice Reinvestment (JR) since its inception a decade ago to its current incarnation as a national initiative.

The primary conclusion is that while JR has served to soften the ground for criminal justice reform, it has not achieved significant reductions in the correctional populations or costs in most of the states in which it has been conducted. This is in contrast to its original intent: to reduce corrections populations and budgets and reinvest in high incarceration communities to make them safer, stronger, and more equitable. Read more »

News Article HISPANTV September 14, 2012

Negocio de cárceles privadas, el más próspero en EEUU

In a news feature entitled, "Private prison business, the most prosperous in the U.S." HISPANTV's Spanish-language Washington Correspondent, Alfredo Miranda, covers the Sep. 13, 2012 hearing held, by Rep. Jared Polis of Colorado, on the role of private prisons in the incarceration of immigrants and their treatment in those facilities, funded by contracts with the federal Bureau of Prisons. Miranda interviews: Angelica Morena, sister of Juan Villanueva, who states her brother's death from cancer while in the custody of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) was preventable; Judith Greene, Director, and Alexis Mazón, Research Associate, of Justice Strategies calling for an end to the funding of private prisons; and others. HISPANTV's Miranda states that in 2011, CCA and the GEO Group reported revenue of $3.3 billion, lobbying expenses of $20 million, and political contributions of $5 million.

News Article The Crime Report September 13, 2012

Report Cites 'Problem-Plagued, Second-Class' Prisons for Border Crossers

Thirteen privately operated, federally funded prisons housing 23,000 alleged illegal immigrants represent an "extremely expensive and problem-plagued, second-class penal system," contends a report presented today at a briefing on Capitol Hill. The report by the New York City-based Justice Strategies contends that the facilities are unnecessary, existing mostly because of "harsh policies" by federal immigration officials "to prosecute border-crossers as criminals, rather than using the civil enforcement provisions already available under the federal immigration laws." The issue is being discussed at a briefing sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.).

News Article Mississippi Public Broadcasting September 13, 2012

Prison Reform Groups Call For End Of Federally funded Private Prisons

Prison reform advocates are calling for an end to private prisons that mainly hold illegal immigrants, including a Mississippi facility that erupted in a deadly riot this spring. MPB's Jeffrey Hess reports the groups claim the prisons create the conditions that contributed to the May riot that left one guard dead.

There are 13 federally funded private prisons intended mainly to hold illegal immigrations nationwide.

One is the the Adams County Correctional Facility where a May prisoner riot left a guard dead.

Judy Green with the prison reform group Justice Strategies is calling for an end to these prisons saying they are over-crowded, have poor medical care and mistreat prisoners. "Compared with low security prisons that the bureau itself runs, these low security contract prisons have higher rates of mistakes. Higher rates of disturbances. And higher rates on contraband," Green said...