Week ending round-up of recent headlines and commentary on criminal justice issues

Busy days on various fronts (and great distractions) has again meant I have lacked the  time blog at length about a number of noteworthy recent news pieces and commentaries.  So I will again seek to make up for limited time with an end-of-week round-up of headlines and links:

• From CBS News, “Colin Kaepernick calls for abolishing police and prisons in new essay“

• From FiveThirtyEight, “Trump Doesn’t Know Why Crime Rises or Falls. Neither Does Biden. Or Any Other Politician.“

• From The HIll, “What the REFORM Alliance’s victory means for criminal justice reform“

• From Law360, “A Smarter Approach To Measuring Prosecutorial Success“

• From MLive, “What pending changes to expungement laws mean for setting aside criminal records in Michigan“

• From the New York Times, “Pointers From Portugal on Addiction and the Drug War“

• From the New York Times, “The Pandemic Has Hindered Many of the Best Ideas for Reducing Violence“

• From ProPublica, “Maine Hires Lawyers With Criminal Records to Defend Its Poorest Residents“

• From Reuters, “Weed stocks surge as Kamala Harris vows to decriminalize pot in debate“

• From USA Today, “Former attorneys general: Criminal justice reform vital to slow spread of COVID-19“

• From Yahoo News, “‘A worrisome trend’: Rising murder rate is a national problem, data shows“