Tag: crime bills
Posted on Wed May 06, 2015 at 06:17:59 PM EST
Tags: Bill Clinton, crime bills, Joe Biden (all tags)
Bill Clinton makes it official in an interview with Christine Amanpour: The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act went too far and locked up too many people.
"The problem is the way it was written and implemented. We have too wide a net. We have too many people in prison. And we wound up spending - putting so many people in prison that there wasn’t enough money left to educate them, train them for new jobs and increase the chances when they came out that they could live productive lives," he said, according to a CNN transcript of the interview.
He approves of Hillary's recent commitment to back off from that stance. [More...]
(48 comments, 1050 words in story) There's More :: Permalink :: Comments
Posted on Sun Nov 09, 2008 at 01:23:00 AM EST
Tags: indigent defense, crime bills (all tags)
The New York Times reports that public defenders in seven states are refusing to accept new cases or have filed lawsuits due to overburdened case loads which prevent them from providing effective assistance of counsel.
Public defenders are notoriously overworked, and their turnover is high and their pay low. But now, in the most open revolt by public defenders in memory, many of the government-appointed lawyers say that state budget cuts and rising caseloads have pushed them to the breaking point.
The caseload in Miami-Dade, Florida:
Over the last three years, the average number of felony cases handled by each lawyer in a year has climbed to close to 500, from 367, officials said, and caseloads for lawyers assigned to misdemeanor cases have risen to 2,225, from 1,380.
More...
(6 comments, 1024 words in story) There's More :: Permalink :: Comments
