Cornell professor Joseph Margulies comments on the recent news, reported by the Sentencing Project, that between 2000 (the peak year) and 2020, the number of children detained by the criminal legal system experienced a 77% decline; indeed, the number fell every year between 2000 and 2020. Professor Margulies points out that even while we inevitably construct social meaning from crimes in general, we should celebrate the bare fact of this reduction in juvenile incarceration.
Cornell professor Joseph Margulies argues that the only condition that justifies a prison sentence longer than 20 years is an ongoing threat to public safety, to be determined after that sentence has been served. Professor Margulies points out that, contrary to what many people think, individuals convicted of some of the most serious offenses, and who have already served exceptionally long terms, are often the people who are most apt to be valuable and contributing members of society, and who are best prepared for freedom.
Cornell professor of government Joseph Margulies describes the conundrum of reconciling the fact that prison sentences over 20 years are generally pointlessly cruel and unjust with the fury we feel against those who commit senseless mass murders. In particular Professor Margulies points to a new report by The Sentencing Project in support of their longstanding campaign to reduce the maximum prison sentence in the United States to 20 years, released on the same day that Erie County, New York, Judge Susan Eagan sentenced Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron to ten concurrent life sentences plus an additional 25 years to be served consecutively.
Cornell Law professor Joseph Margulies describes the work of the Cornell University Parole Initiative (CUPI), which works with incarcerated persons serving life sentences in New York prisons. Professor Margulies describes the work of CUPI student volunteers and argues that anyone who perceives today’s young people as entitled “snowflakes” should look more closely at what young people are doing and get out of the way for them to fix what older generations have broken.
Amherst professor Austin Sarat describes how courts in Europe, when faced with the question whether to extradite an escaped convict to the United States, have expressed greater concern about the conditions of American prisons than do American courts or legislatures. Professor Sarat argues that it is time for American courts to redress prison conditions and ensure that when we send someone to prison, we respect and protect their constitutional rights.
Cornell Law professor Joseph Margulies explains why stories of people who serve extensive sentences in prison and then turn around to do wonderful things set an impossible standard for others who equally deserve freedom yet cannot demonstrate such achievements. Professor Margulies argues that hundreds of thousands of men and women are serving impossibly long terms, and they, too, deserve to be free by virtue of the change they have inevitably undergone through their years behind bars.
Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—discusses the crisis the COVID-19 pandemic is having on America’s jails and prisons. Sarat argues that early release is a good start, but it cannot be the only solution, because all people, in and out of prisons, deserve to be treated with dignity.
Cornell University law professor Joseph Margulies describes the changes in the use of solitary confinement in Colorado—known there as administrative segregation. Margulies relates accounts of both inmates and prison officials.
