California Parole May Be Broken, But Federal Courts Cannot Fix It

By some curious coincidence, at about the same time that Jonathan Simon was explaining in his Barrock Lecture yesterday that parole has effectively become unavailable in California in homicide cases, the United States Supreme Court was overturning a pair of Ninth Circuit decisions that would have established a basis for federal-court review of parole denials.

The California parole statute indicates that the state Board of Prison Terms “shall set a release date unless it determines that . . . consideration of the public safety requires a more lengthy period of incarceration.”  According to the California Supreme Court, the statute requires that there be ”some evidence ” in support of a conclusion “that the inmate is unsuitable for parole because he or she currently is dangerous.”  As Simon discussed, this requirement of some evidence of current dangerousness has been applied by the state courts such that the state can justify a parole denial in nearly any case. 

The two cases decided by the Court yesterday in Swarthout v. Cooke (No. 10-333) nicely illustrate Simon’s point. 

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Murder Sentences Becoming “Too Flat and Too Severe,” Barrock Lecturer Says

A reactor or a radiator?

A radiator performs service by dissipating heat. A reactor generates increasingly intense heat, presenting difficult challenges for how to contain that heat.

Punishment for murder in the United States increasingly resembles a reactor more than a radiator, Prof. Jonathan Simon at Boalt Hall, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, said in a lecture at Marquette University Law School Monday. And like a reactor, the trends in murder sentences are building up heat that presents increasing challenges.

Continue ReadingMurder Sentences Becoming “Too Flat and Too Severe,” Barrock Lecturer Says

And What Should We Do About Third-Graders’ Reading Proficiency?

Gov. Scott Walker told school leaders from Wisconsin in a speech last week that he wants all children to read at grade level when they finish third grade. Conquering the basics of reading by that point is widely held by educators to be a key to long-term success for students.  Walker used the phrases used by some educators, saying that, through third grade, children learn to read, but from fourth grade on, they read to learn. So a kid who isn’t reading well in later grades will be a kid who isn’t learning well. “I just think that’s imperative,” Walker said, to make proficient reading a benchmark for every child before fourth grade starts.

I agree with that. You agree with that. We all agree with that. So what do we do about it?

Walker didn’t spell out what kind of action he would put behind the idea.

Does he favor ending the practice called social promotion?

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