But this being the holiday season and all, let’s not dwell on the bad news for too long. We also made some great progress in criminal justice reform, both here in Maine and around the country. The ACLU devotes a great amount of our time and resources to these issues, so it's nice to see our hard work paying off. Among some of the biggest accomplishments:
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Maine makes big cuts to solitary confinement: Here in Maine, we became a national leader in prison reform by treating prisoners like human beings and adopting the most progressive solitary confinement policy in the country. This year alone, the number of inmates in solitary has dropped by more than 60%.
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Overall prison population falls for the first time in decades: A new report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics this month revealed that the U.S. prison population fell by 0.6 percent in 2010, the first decline in the total prison population in nearly four decades. 10,881 fewer people were in state prisons in 2010 – the largest yearly decrease since 1977.
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Death penalty on the decline: Only 78 new death sentences were handed down in the past year - the first time in the modern era of capital punishment that the number dropped below 100. That number is still 78 too high, but with public support at an all-time low, and more states banning the death penalty outright, it’s clear that use of the death penalty is officially on the decline.
- Progress on sentencing reform: The United States Sentencing Commission took another step toward creating fairness in federal sentencing by voting to retroactively apply the new Fair Sentencing Act (FSA) guidelines to individuals sentenced before the law was enacted. This decision will help ensure that over 12,000 people — 85 percent of whom are African-Americans — will have the opportunity to have their sentences for crack cocaine offenses reviewed by a federal judge and possibly reduced.
