News and Blogs Together, Wednesday, April 18, 2007

• Corey Rayburn Yung at Sex Crimes Blog has been running an interesting series of posts on cases under the Adam Walsh Act. Much to learn there.
• Pam Clifton at Think Outside the Cage catches this note on CO's gov getting most of his "recidivism reduction" appropriations request, good news all the way around, and this NY Times story on "frequent fliers," NY drug users who get rehabbed behind bars and then sent back out with no support where they, surprise, recidivate. Maybe Pam can the CO gov to send a note to NY's.
• Real Cost of Prisons finds that CA policymakers have gotten serious enough about alternatives to prison to reject a proposal to add 4500 new beds at female facilities. Every long journey, you know. And NV's making it clear that it will at least plot the ground before it embarks on the journey that CA's been on. One NV rep frames it precisely: "It's going to cost money to do what you want to do," said Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas. "I guess all of us members are going to have to consider that. Do we want to protect our neighborhoods, or protect our wallets?"
• Another "N" state (again, why are so many states "M"s or "N"s? seriously, there's money in this for a good answer), NY has been forced by a fed court to give more treatment to mentally ill inmates and to stop some really loathsome punishments.
• I can't help feeling there's a good alternative to the pros and cons on felony expungement that Prevention Works considers in this post. Is there some way we could keep the record but certify the atonement? PW has some really good minds. I'll sic them on it.
• Psychology and Crime blog has some good links to sex crime research, including sexual assault of males, consequences of sex registry on college students, and sexual assault during and after separation/divorce.
• Finally, a couple of drug stories that hit themes we harp and harp on here. This one details the research showing that marijuana can cut lung cancer tumor growth in half. And this one has AZ picking up the ad campaigns to get teens away from meth that have been pioneered in MT and adopted in ID. Actually, here's the part we keep harping on: "Melissa says her path may have been different if she had known about the effects of meth six years ago. "I went through D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education program). I knew drugs were bad for you, but I didn't think it would be me," she said. "The ads are so blunt, and they're just out there and really hard to ignore." It's nice to have that young lady cleaning up her meth act, but, as a poster child for how DARE doesn't work in its main goals, don't you think you'd be one of the first to say, "shouldn't we wait and get some evidence before we start assuming success?"? We do such a poor job requiring evidence for our beliefs. No wonder our policymakers don't feel much pressure to do so, either.