The federal First Step Act was passed in late 2018 in an effort to reverse course on some overly harsh sentences that had been passed down over the last several decades. It also allowed for the early release of terminally ill people and passed a variety of reforms to...
Month: January 2020
Marijuana still the drug involved in 40% of all US drug arrests
According to data collected by the FBI, law enforcement officers in the U.S. arrested approximately 663,000 people for marijuana-related offenses in 2018, the latest year for which data is available. It's still the most commonly charged drug in the U.S., despite the...
What are the punishments for marijuana possession?
Both the legal attitudes and public perceptions of marijuana have changed. What was once a taboo substance has become more accepted than ever nationwide and in the Midwest.While marijuana has gained greater acceptance and legalization across the country and as close...
Plea bargaining is not a level playing field
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court said that "plea bargaining . . . is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system."Over 95% of all criminal charges in the U.S. are resolved via plea bargain. That's not simply because bringing all...
Study: Iowa’s incarceration rate has jumped over the past 40 years
How much has the mass incarceration trend affected Iowa? More than you might think.The independent public policy research group Vera Institute of Justice has assembled data from state and local correctional authorities and the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics in...
