Sentencing Project - Accomplishments

Accomplishments

Training and Program Development The Sentencing Project provided technical assistance in program development and skills training for hundreds of staff engaged in defense-based sentencing advocacy for a period of 15 years beginning in 1986. This included annual conferences on sentencing advocacy beginning in 1989 and the formation of the National Association of Sentencing Advocates (NASA) in 1992. NASA functioned under the auspices of The Sentencing Project and served as a professional leadership and development association of staff engaged in sentencing advocacy and death penalty mitigation programs.

Research and Public Education The Sentencing Project has produced a broad range of policy reports that have documented issues and trends in the U.S. justice system, and which have helped to shape public policy debate on key issues. These have included:

• Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System: A Growing National Problem (1990) – a report that documented that nearly one in four African American males in the age group 20-29 was under some form of criminal justice supervision
• Americans Behind Bars: A Comparison of International Rates of Incarceration (1991) – a report that showed that the United States had become the world leader in its use of incarceration
• Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later (1995) – a report demonstrating that the proportion of African American males ages 20-29 under criminal justice supervision was approaching one in three
• Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States (with Human Rights Watch, 1998) – a national assessment finding that four million Americans were prohibited from voting due to a current or previous felony conviction
• Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers – a guide to analyzing and responding to racial disparities at each stage of the criminal justice process
• Distorted Priorities: Drug Offenders in State Prisons (2002) – an analysis demonstrating that a majority of drug offenders in state prisons had no history of violence and were not high-level players in the drug trade
• No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America (2009) – a report finding that one of every eleven persons in prison was serving a life sentence, more than 140,000 individuals
• The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey (2012) – the first national survey of such persons, documenting high rates of social disadvantage and racial disparities in the imposition of these punishments

The Sentencing Project also produces a range of briefing papers, fact sheets, and policy analyses on a regular basis. An annual report, The State of Sentencing, provides an overview of legislative measures adopted around the nation, and staff frequently contribute to academic and professional journals as well.

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, has published two books. Race to Incarcerate, first published in 1999, traces the evolution of the explosion in the prison population in recent decades, and was a semi-finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. A second edition was published in 2006, and a graphic novel version will be published in 2013. With co-editor Meda Chesney-Lind, Mauer also published Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment (2002), a collection of essays that examine the effects of imprisonment on families and communities.

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of The Sentencing Project in 2011, the organization published a collection of essays, To Build a Better Criminal Justice System: 25 Experts Envision the Next 25 Years of Reform. The publication features contributions from leading scholars, practitioners, and reform advocates.