Federal Reading List for Week of June 24, 2023

This is the Federal Reading List, a group of odds and ends that we want to at least let the public know about.

Fact Sheet on President Biden’s Safer America Plan

President Biden has published a fact sheet on his Safer America Plan. Here is the introduction:

President Biden knows what works to make our communities safer: investing in community policing andcrime prevention. We need to fund police who walk the beat, know the neighborhood, are accountable to those they are sworn to serve, and build community trust and safety. We need to invest in mental health and substance use treatment services, crisis responders, and social workers to reduce the burden on police officers, connect people with community resources, and prevent violent crime. We need to expand community violence interventions – led by trusted messengers breaking the cycle of violence and trauma. We need to enforce our commonsense gun laws, require background checks for all gun sales in order to keep firearms out of the hands of felons and domestic abusers, and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines – weapons of war that have no place in our communities.

President Biden has taken action to make our communities safer during his first 18 months in office. He has funded the police and issued an Executive Order to improve police accountability. President Biden has taken more executive action to tackle gun violence than any other president at this point in their Administration, including by reining in the proliferation of ghost guns and cracking down on gun traffickers and rogue gun dealers. President Biden is the first president in nearly 30 years to bring together Members of Congress from both parties to take action on gun violence, signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. The President also secured Senate confirmation of career prosecutor Steve Dettelbach to serve as Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), empowering this law enforcement agency with its first confirmed leader since 2015. And, the President has made unprecedented investments in community-led crime prevention and intervention.

The President believes we can and must do more to reduce crime and save lives. On July 21, President Biden announced his Safer America Plan to build on the progress he has made to reduce gun violence.

Today, the President is providing greater details regarding the Safer America Plan. President Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget requests a fully paid-for new investment of approximately $35 billion to support law enforcement and crime prevention – in addition to the President’s $2 billion discretionary request for these same programs. The Safer America Plan details how this $37 billion will be used to save lives and make communities safer.

TypeInvestigations: Democrats Got Tough on Crime. Now There’s a Crisis of Aging Behind Bars.

States like California and Nevada cracked down on crime in the past. Now those states have an aging population in prison. A possible allegory of what is to come in the United States Federal System.

Bureau of Prisons and National Institute of Justice Present Joint Statement of Work Regarding Restrictive Housing

(BOP/NIJ) - The U.S. Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and National Institute of Justice (NIJ) have partnered on a priority initiative to examine all facets of the use of restrictive housing in federal facilities. NIJ, a component of the Office of Justice Programs, has released a Request for Quotes to conduct essential research to discern why and for how long people are placed in restrictive housing in BOP facilities; the degree to which decisions for restrictive housing placement comport with BOP policies and evidence-based practices; the impact of the experience of restrictive housing on access to programmatic, treatment, educational, and visitation opportunities; and recommendations for reforms to reduce its use.

Our decades-long experience as a correctional leader and policy researcher have made us keenly aware of the harms that restrictive housing may cause to a person's mental, emotional, and physical well-being. NIJ-sponsored research on restrictive housing has found that it is not an effective deterrent, with studies yielding mixed results on its impact on misconduct and recidivism and generally finding that it does not reduce institutional-level misconduct or violence. ^[i] In fact, two studies sponsored by NIJ found evidence of an increased likelihood of recidivism after release from incarceration that involved restrictive housing compared to those who did not experience restrictive housing. ^[ii]

We view this investment in research to inform the reduction in reliance on restrictive housing in BOP's correctional institutions as a fundamental and crucial step in efforts to create more humane correctional environments that are conducive to self-betterment for people confined in them.