{"id":48,"date":"2020-08-11T18:59:08","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T18:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/?p=48"},"modified":"2020-08-11T18:59:09","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T18:59:09","slug":"strengthening-the-justice-system-through-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/2020\/08\/11\/strengthening-the-justice-system-through-lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Strengthening the Justice System through Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recapping the CSG West Virtual Annual Meeting<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Blair Hess, The Council of State Governments<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Long before Tarra Simmons was ever a defendant, she was a survivor of crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe must treat the root causes,\u201d Simmons, an attorney and the director of the Civil Survival Project at the Public Defender Association in Seattle, said. \u201cWe must fix what causes young people to commit crimes and prevent incarceration.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simmons was the first to speak during The Council of State Governments (CSG) West Annual Conference held virtually at the end of July. She shared her own story with the country\u2019s juvenile justice system in the session, \u201cStrengthening the Justice System through Lessons Learned.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incarcerated as a youth, Simmons now works to improve the juvenile justice center to get young kids exposed to crimes at an early age the mental and social help they need to avoid their own criminal record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a stigma that comes with a criminal record that will follow you your whole life. How do we make a way back for people?\u201d Simmons said. \u201cWe have to change how we are treating people from the very beginning. I am committed to working so that my kids have a better chance than I had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the outbreak of COVID-19 continues to worsen across the country, many states are seeing mounting cases of the virus among incarcerated people. Stephanie Duriez with the CSG Justice Center said the Western states are experiencing varying levels of COVID-19 in their state prisons. Idaho and New Mexico have higher percentages of positive cases and higher rates per 100,000 than neighboring states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To combat these outbreaks, states are reducing prison populations where possible. Nine Western states \u2014 Utah, Colorado, Washington, Hawaii, California, Montana, Arizona, Oregon and Nevada \u2014 have together reported a decrease of over 16,753 people in their prisons since March 2020, Duriez reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelly Howell, special assistant to the commissioner for the Alaska Department of Corrections, reported its criminal justice facilities are working on preventing the further spread of COVID-19 through strenuous cleaning procedures and reduced visitation.  The Alaska DOC prevention measures include increased and enhanced cleaning, disinfection and hygiene practices, installation of hand sanitizing stations and free soap to inmates, entry point screenings for anyone entering a facility, COVID-19 testing for all new remands and transfers, no visitation, no non-essential contract services and group activities, modified social distancing practices within facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur inmates socialize, eat and recreate only with those in their housing units,\u201d Howell said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alaska inmates are also working to help clean their facilities and sew face masks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recapping the CSG West Virtual Annual Meeting By Blair Hess, The Council of State Governments Long before Tarra Simmons was ever a defendant, she was a survivor of crime. \u201cWe must treat the root causes,\u201d Simmons, an attorney and the director of the Civil Survival Project at the Public Defender Association in Seattle, said. \u201cWe… Read More »Strengthening the Justice System through Lessons Learned<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":49,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5],"tags":[16,9,10,8,7],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covid-19","category-csg-justice-center","tag-covid19","tag-criminaljustice","tag-criminaljusticereform","tag-csgjusticecenter","tag-csgwest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}