Fifty years ago, the United States embarked on a path of mass incarceration that has led to a staggering increase in the correctional population. Today, nearly two million people - disproportionately Black Americans - are living in prisons and jails instead of their communities. In the early 1970s this count was 360,000.

Families of suspect, victim meet to reach settlement

https://www.wmur.com/article/hit-and-run-sentence-restorative-justice/42399541

NASHUA, N.H. —

A man who crashed into a person on the side of a New Hampshire highway who was helping victims of a car crash was given a suspended sentence Wednesday after taking part in a restorative justice process.

Claims of "frightening and high" recidivism rates, endorsed by the Supreme Court, have no basis in fact.

A New York Times "op-doc" posted this week zeroes in on a persistent myth that has helped inspire and sustain harsh policies aimed at sex offenders: the idea that their recidivism rate is "frightening and high," as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy put it in a pair of cases decided a decade and a half ago. David Feige, a former public defender who directed Untouchable, a 2016 documentary about sex offenders, shows how an uncorroborated assertion in a 1986 Psychology Today article continues to influence the politicians who pass laws and the judges who uphold them.