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May 26, 2009
Reps. Kenyatta Johnson and Ronald Waters Call for Review of Criminal Justice System in PA
Pa. lawmakers want to examine criminal-justice from all angles
By DANA DiFILIPPO
Philadelphia Daily News
May 23, 2009
Two months after federal lawmakers announced plans for a top-to-bottom study of the nation's criminal-justice system, two state lawmakers from Philadelphia yesterday called for a similar reform-minded review of Pennsylvania's system.
Reps. Kenyatta Johnson and Ronald Waters detailed legislation they recently introduced - now in the Senate Judiciary Committee - during a news conference yesterday outside the Criminal Justice Center in Center City.
"Pennsylvania's criminal justice system is in much need of repair," said Johnson, D-Phila. "Prisons are overcrowded, sentencing policies are uneven and often unfair, ex-convicts are poorly integrated into society, and the growing problem of gang and street violence has not received the attention it deserves."
The lawmakers have ambitious plans for the study, saying it should address the costs of incarceration; crime and gang activity in and out of prison; prison health care; mentally ill inmates; reintegration programs for ex-offenders; jail overcrowding, infrastructure and living conditions; the overrepresentation of minorities in prison; and other issues.
The state remains too focused on housing its swelling population of inmates rather than proactively addressing the problems that landed them behind bars, Waters said. Plans to build four new prisons are under way in a state that already has 26.
"We are preparing for more people to become victims of crime," Waters said. "Taxpayers should be outraged at the amount being spent on corrections, and they still can't feel safe walking down the street. There's something wrong with the way we are responding to crime, and we need to fix it."
The study would be conducted by the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, Johnson said.
Bill DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, applauded the plan.
"During the past two to three decades, Pennsylvania's population has remained pretty steady, yet the growth in our prison population has almost quadrupled," DiMascio said. "It's not because our people are getting more lawless. It really is an issue of our criminal justice policies."
The federal plan, introduced in March by Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and Jim Webb, D-Va., would create a commission charged with conducting an 18-month comprehensive review of the nation's criminal justice system and offering recommendations for reform. *
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/45901367.html
Posted by lois at May 26, 2009 01:34 PM