In a new publication of The Sentencing Project 25 leading scholars and practitioners have contributed essays on their strategic vision for the next 25 years of criminal justice reform. Issues addressed in the collection include racial justice strategies, linking public health and criminal justice reform, challenging the war on drugs, and the viability of fiscal pressures as a focus for reform.

To Build a Better Criminal Justice System: 25 Experts Envision the Next 25 Years can be viewed here. 

A new report chronicles the systematic disadvantages facing Michigan juveniles sentenced to life without parole in the adult criminal justice system.

Johna Haynes, 31, is finally getting the education he never got in the brutal, impoverished world where he grew up. He’s paying for it with life without parole.

A guard at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility "endorsed" a fight that left a dozen young men hospitalized and one nearly beaten to death. The melee at the youth prison -- one run for profit by the nation's second-largest prison corporation –highlighted a system completely out of control.

A federal investigation and a lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) uncovered what U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves called in a March 26 court order a "cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions" that had been allowed to fester under the management of GEO Group Inc.

At 24, Clarence Aaron, was sentenced to three life terms for his role in a cocaine deal, even though it was his first criminal offense and he was not the buyer, seller or supplier of the drugs.

He seemed especially deserving of a federal commutation-- an immediate release from prison granted by the president of the United States—because his release was championed by lawmakers, civil rights activists, the media, the prosecutor’s office and sentencing judge.

But Ronald Rodgers, head of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, left out the prosecutor and sentencing judge’s opinion in recommending that the George W. Bush White House deny Aaron’s application.

The Sentencing Project's Marc Mauer writes in The Huffington Post, that "Among the many reasons why we have such a high prison population in the United States is the way in which people in prison are portrayed in popular media. His commentary, “Prison Break Lemonade,” looks at a new advertising campaign for lemonade that will feature "a 'prison break' along with portrayals of hardened looking 'convicts.'"

In 1976, 14-year-old Trina Garnett was arrested and charged with homicide, arson, conspiracy and burglary. Abused and neglected, Trina was sentenced as an adult and given a mandatory life sentence. In prison, she was raped by a guard, became pregnant and gave birth to a child.

Today, she is one of approximately 470 prisoners in Pennsylvania serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. Over the last 35-years, the state has gone from holding a small handful of juvenile lifers to incarcerating the highest number in the country.

Mark P. Fancher, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan Racial Justice Project, argues in a guest column in the Detroit Free Press that stand-your-ground laws are colored by racial attitudes in the United States—attitudes that have led to the over incarceration of African Americans.

Research: Historic Ruling in North Carolina Racial Justice Act Case

Research: Blacks Underrepresented on Detroit Juries

Collateral Consequences: Employers may not Deny Employment Based on a Conviction

Legislation: Federal "End Racial Profiling Act" Introduced

Legislation: CT Senate Passes Bill Strengthening State’s Racial Profiling Law

Legislation: Missouri Passes Bill Reducing Disparity Between Sentences for Crack Cocaine and Powdered Cocaine

Juvenile Justice: Debate Over Racial Disparities in Memphis Juvenile Justice

Penitentiaries have become a niche market for sweatshop labor. The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation of a small army of workers too coerced and right-less to complain.