By Anna Chalton, Dugan Dallimore and Paul McGorrery

Threat Offences in Victoria examines sentencing outcomes from 2015 to 2019 for five types of threat offences: threat to kill, threat to inflict serious injury, threat to destroy or damage property, threat to commit a sexual offence and threat to assault an emergency worker. It considers the offences co-sentenced alongside threat offences and the prior and subsequent offending rates for people sentenced for threat offending.

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2021. 76p.

By Anna Chalton, Paul McGorrery, Zsombor Bathy, Dugan Dallimore, Paul Schollum and Octavian Simu

This report provides an in-depth analysis of how Victorian courts sentence stalking offences contrary to section 21A of the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic). It considers the demographics of stalkers, the relationship between stalking offenders and victims, the sorts of stalking behaviours sentenced in Victorian courts and the sentencing outcomes for stalking offences. It also explores the link between stalking and family violence, the rate of reoffending among stalking offenders and the prevalence of stalking offences in rural and regional Victoria

Melbourne: Sentencing Advisory Council (VIC), 2022. 104p.

By The Center for Human Rights

The COVID-19 pandemic has spurred urgent and growing concerns about the health of immigrants held in detention centers in the United States. In fact, awareness of the problem is not new: in 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspector general raised deep questions about the agency’s preparedness for a possible pandemic event,[1] concerns that were reiterated last December when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denounced DHS for having medical infrastructure it described as “not sufficient to assure rapid and adequate infection control measures.”[2]

Here in Washington, over the course of recent years, increasing activism by people detained at the Northwest Detention Center[3] (NWDC) and community supporters has spurred pointed criticism by elected officials at the local, state, and national level of conditions within the facility. Sustained media attention and multiple lawsuits have also forced the facility to defend its practices. In March 2020, the Washington State Legislature passed HB 2576, a law mandating inquiries into state and local oversight mechanisms regarding conditions in the NWDC, further underscoring the perceived need to address gaps in understanding regarding the health and welfare of those housed within the facility.

In this context, the UW Center for Human Rights (UWCHR) considers it important to make our ongoing research on conditions within the NWDC available to the public. As part of our longstanding effort to examine the human rights implications of federal immigration enforcement in our state, UWCHR has sought, since 2017, to obtain information about conditions of detention in public and private detention facilities where immigrants are housed in Washington state.[4] While our efforts to obtain information about conditions within the NWDC have been only partially successful due to the lack of transparency surrounding the facility, the information we have obtained is sufficiently concerning, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, that we are choosing to share our initial findings with the public even as our collection and analysis of further data continues.

This report will be published as a series discussing areas of human rights concern at the facility, including background, methodology, and relevant human rights standards; sanitation of food and laundry; allegations of medical neglect; use of solitary confinement; COVID-19 and health standards; reporting of sexual assault and abuse; and uses of force and chemical agents. The report includes research updates covering concerns about cleanliness at the detention center going unanswered and a look at the context for Charles Leo Daniel’s death at the NWDC.

The Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

By Vera Institute of Justice

Postsecondary education in prison has positive effects for students who are incarcerated, their families and communities, public safety, and safety inside prisons. Research has demonstrated that postsecondary education reduces incarceration, makes prisons safer places to live and work, and improves employment and wages. Nationally, taxpayers also see major benefits, with every dollar invested in prison-based education yielding more than four dollars in taxpayer savings from reduced incarceration costs. Most people in prison are both interested in and academically qualified for postsecondary education (64 percent), yet only a tiny fraction of people in prison completes a credential while incarcerated (9 percent). This gap between educational aspirations and participation is driven largely by a lack of capacity due to limited funding.

New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2023. 3p.

By The Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3)

   The Reducing Reoffending Third Sector Advisory Group (RR3) provides the key interface between the voluntary sector, and the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS), in order to increase mutual understanding and build a strong and effective partnership. The group is made up of senior leaders from the voluntary sector and meets quarterly with civil servants to provide guidance and feedback on MoJ policy developments. The RR3 convenes Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to advise on specific areas of policy and practice as the need arises. This Employment SIG has focused on the barriers to employment faced by people, both in prison and on their release into the community. This focus has been caveated with the acknowledgement that there are many people in prison who require additional, pre-employment support in order that they can gain the skills and the confidence that they need to secure employment at an appropriate juncture. For this group, the focus has been not on the immediate steps needed to secure employment, either in prison or in the community, but on addressing more complex needs that present obstacles to gaining employment in the future. Following an introduction into the current employment situation faced by people leaving prison and recent initiatives implemented in prisons to boost employment outcomes, the paper focuses on the following areas: 1) Prison workshops 2) The financial security of people in prison 3) Employer and training provider engagement 4) Addressing complex needs 5) Service coordination

Suffolk, UK: Clinks. 2024, 17pg