“The Smart On Crime Coalition” produces mega-report urging criminal justice reforms

Via numerous e-mails, I have learned that The Smart on Crime Coalition, which describes itself as “a diverse coalition of the nation’s leading criminal justice reform organizations” has today released Smart on Crime: Recommendations for the Administration and Congress.  The group describes this new report as “among the most comprehensive reports ever published to address the problems confronting America’s criminal justice system.” Here is more about the report from some of the e-mails I received:

In its review of virtually every major criminal justice issue — from overcriminalization to forensic science — from juvenile justice to the death penalty — and from indigent defense to executive clemency — the report serves as both a source of information and a spur to action for the Administration and Congress….

Virginia Sloan, President of The Constitution Project, said about Smart on Crime, “The criminal justice system is supposed to be about justice — for victims, for those rightly and wrongly accused and convicted of crimes, and for all of us.  But a system that costs too much and makes so many mistakes provides justice for no one.  Smart on Crime contains an ever-increasing and bipartisan consensus on how to fix the problems that have for too long plagued the system.”

In addition to its recommendation that a National Criminal Justice Commission be formed, the report — developed and published by the Smart on Crime Coalition, a group of more than 40 bipartisan organizations and individuals — offers nearly 100 detailed policy recommendations across 16 criminal justice areas.  While contributors do not necessarily have positions on each issue addressed, there was universal agreement that the current system — with its rampant cost, inefficiency, and injustices — is in urgent need of reform.

Because the full report runs nearly 300 pages and has so many policy recommendations covering so many areas, I fear that the report may be a little too much of a good thing.   I suspect that everyone will be able to find stuff they like a lot in this report; I also suspect that everyone will be able to find stuff that they do not like much at all.

Interestingly, a brief review of the recommendations on the federal sentencing system dodges some of the biggest cutting-edge issues concerning the modern federal sentencing system.  For example, through drug sentence gets lots of attention, the recent exponential growth of child porn and immigration caseloads, as well as concerns about increasing disparities in the wake of Booker, do not get any mention.  Similarly, the death penalty sectionis focused on (dated?) recommendations for federal habeas corpus reform and for greater funding for capital counsel without any apparent attention given to the costly reality of such reforms or to now-pervasive new problems with lethal injection protocols.

I do not mean or want to give this mega-report too much fly-speck criticism.  The group who put together the report, the report itself, and the website supporting the reportare all very impressive and make an important contributions to on-going discussions of criminal justice reform.  But because a lot of the substantive suggestions in the report appear familiar, and because many of the report’s good ideas have gotten so little political traction in the recent past, I am not yet optimistic that this report will significantly move the needle in many of the areas it seeks to impact.  Justified(?) pessimism notwithstanding, I do sincerely hope that a significant number of the “nearly 100 detailed policy recommendations across 16 criminal justice areas” become a reality.