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President Donald Trump on Thursday appointed Alice Marie Johnson, a woman he pardoned during his first term, as "pardon czar." The announcement came during a Black History Month event at the White House. The "pardon czar" will be responsible for making recommendations about who should be granted clemency. Johnson was convicted of nonviolent drug trafficking in Memphis, Tennessee, and after serving 21 years, her life sentence was commuted by Trump. Reality television star Kim Kardashian West met with Trump at the White House a week prior to her release to discuss the great-grandmother's case. While Johnson claims she never "touched,...

Jarad Nava, now 28, works as an assistant in the Department of Public Safety and is an advocate of prison reform. He was featured in a Los Angeles Times profile Thursday and credits California's Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom for his early release. In 2012, while drunk and high, he shot into a car carrying the relatives of a rival gang member. One of the victims was 16-year-old Yesenia Castro, who was shot in the back. The bullet severed her spinal chord and she was paralyzed from the waist down. Nava, who was 17 at the time, rejected a plea deal...

I had an interesting experience at the car repair shop this weekend. Nothing big; it was just due for an oil change... but I was able to include one of the services I can't usually use: the free tire rotation. (I usually buy tires one at a time, thanks to potholes and nails, but for once, I actually replaced them as a set, so they could be rotated). No such luck. I couldn't get the rotation this time, because we appear to have lost the wheel lock key. That's not such a big deal in itself; I can do without...

Back in 2014, the political leadership of California became alarmed at the rapidly rising prison population in the state. The state was also under court order to reduce the overcrowding in state prisons. The people of California set a grand objective to reduce the number of convicts in the state. Fewer people going to prison has to be a good thing -- right? The first thing they did was pass Proposition 47 -- the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. That sounds like something everyone would want. 58% of Californians voted in favor of the measure. There was just one problem....

The Radical Left is exploiting the legitimate outrage of many Americans over the brutal killing of George Floyd on May 25th by Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who has been charged with murder. George Floyd’s murder was shocking enough to millions of Americans to become the spark leftist revolutionaries were looking for to mobilize the masses. As Trevor Loudon, who has researched the radical left for more than 30 years, wrote on June 10th: The killing of George Floyd was a gift to the communists. It was so egregious and so public that it was bound to provoke outrage. The...

On the campaign trail, President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have repeatedly highlighted their efforts to reform the broken criminal justice system. President Trump and Vice President Pence have rightly touted the First Step Act of 2018, which expanded options for inmates looking to get back on the right side of the law. Meanwhile, Joe Biden has advocated for job training for incarcerated individuals, as well as utilizing alternatives to prison, such as rehabilitation facilities.  While these proposals are wholly reasonable, Biden has unfortunately muddied the conversation on criminal justice reform by vilifying private prisons. These non-government institutions...

Activists gathered outside dozens of California detention centers and called for Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to grant mass clemency to inmates in response to surging rates of COVID-19 infections in prisons around the country. A press release from the California Liberation Collective indicated that protesters gathered in 30 separate locations outside of various state detention facilities including California State Prison Solano and San Quentin State Prison, where activists displayed banners referring to the facilities as Newsom's "COVID death camp[s]." SNIP "He was told he would be released and he signed parole papers to be released in July due to COVID,...

The coronavirus infection spreading across the United States prison system is throwing Ross Ulbricht’s confinement into sharp relief. Found guilty of seven charges including money laundering, conspiracy to traffic narcotics and computer hacking, the controversial founder of the Silk Road is currently serving a double life sentence plus 40 years, without the possibility of parole. As the pandemic worsens conditions for the nation’s large prison population, Ross spends 22 hours a day behind bars in Tucson, Ariz., where he’s currently being held. Outside visits are stopped so Ross’s mother, Lyn, and other loved ones, who work tirelessly for his release,...

...More than 25 years later, as Mr. Biden makes his third run for the White House in a crowded field of Democrats — many calling for ambitious criminal justice reform — he must answer for his role in legislation that criminal justice experts and his critics say helped lay the groundwork for the mass incarceration that has devastated America’s black communities. That he worked with segregationists to write the bills — an issue that recently dominated the political news and seems likely to resurface in Mr. Biden’s first debate on Thursday — has only added to his challenge. So has...

CNN’s Van Jones was not impressed by Donald Trump’s latest speech from the White House, but he did give the president credit for the substance of his executive order on police reform. Jones joined his colleagues on Tuesday to discuss Trump’s address, which was laden with several of the president’s usual talking points and attacks against his political enemies. For the most part, Jones pushed Trump’s remarks to the side and called the order a positive development for future reforms. “There is movement in the direction of a database for bad cops. We have never had a federal database for...

President Trump spoke at an unusual graduation ceremony on Thursday and inspired the class of graduates, all former prisoners. HOPE for Prisoners assists formerly incarcerated people with reentry into society by providing long-term support and services. Founder Jon Ponder experienced significant challenges on his release from prison and noted the lack of resources for others in his situation. He started HOPE for Prisoners to help others.Trump has often expressed his support for criminal justice reform, signing into law several acts that reduced sentencing, shortened jail terms, and stopped the chaining of women in prison as they give birth. His...

Police say radical activist stole prison blueprints, stashed guns and ammo in facility A former adviser on criminal justice issues to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) was plotting a violent prison escape, stashing guns and ammunition inside a soon-to-be-opened prison, authorities said this week. Nashville police said Wednesday that Alex Friedmann, a prison reform advocate who helped shape the Vermont senator's criminal justice agenda, spent months plotting an escape for inmates of the city's detention center. Sanders worked with Friedmann to develop positions on criminal justice in the lead up to his 2016 presidential campaign—positions Sanders still touts.

President Donald Trump aired a campaign ad during the Super Bowl on Sunday featuring Alice Johnson, whose life sentence for nonviolent drug offenses was commuted by Trump in June 2018. In the ad, Trump touted his criminal justice reform record and featured footage from the emotional moments when Johnson was released from prison and reunited with her family.

As New York City police commissioner, Bernard Kerik was ultimately responsible for the incarceration of many criminals. Now that he has seen the prison system from the inside, having served three years behind bars, he has a new appraisal of the U.S. penal system: "insane." In his first interview since his release from prison, where he served time for tax evasion and lying to federal authorities, Kerik told NBC’s Matt Lauer on the Today show Friday: "No one in the history of our country has ever been in the system with my background.

President Donald Trump has achieved more concrete progress for blacks, gays, and Jews than any other American president.That claim is sure to be disputed, if not mocked, by those for whom grievance and identity politics are a profession or a psychological crutch.Yet it remains true — and was thrown into sharp relief this week, as the Jussie Smollett case turned from one of the most horrific attacks in recent memory to the worst hate crime hoax in history.There are two reasons the media, Hollywood, and the Democratic political elite believed Smollett’s claims.First, he belongs to several victim categories: black, gay,...

Five Pennsylvania parolees have been charged in six homicides over the past two months, spurring the Department of Corrections to investigate whether anything should have been done differently. The accused killers’ supervision levels ranged from minimum to maximum, and they had been out from between three months and two years. Some had already violated the terms of their parole by the time they were arrested, and some had a history of violence.

After a week of backlash for his comments about four minority Congresswomen that many called "racist," as well as chants targeting one of those congresswomen at his rally, President Donald Trump privately met with former NFL player and conservative commentator Jack Brewer at his Bedminster Golf Course to talk about "black America," Brewer told ABC News. President Trump made the unusual move of intervening in the case of black rapper A$AP Rocky, who is currently being detained in Sweden for an alleged assault. After telling reporters that Rocky "has tremendous support from the African American community," Trump held a 20...

Michelle Malkin is angry about this, as all conservatives should be. Malkin points out, Jones has been trying to stop conservatives from speaking for years. The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) allowed America-hating admitted communist Van Jones to speak on the main stage two days ago on Feb. 28, 2019. To allow this disgusting, unreformed, black-nationalist Maoist to speak at CPAC, an annual event many movement conservatives considered to be their sanctum sanctorum, is truly disturbing. He was there for an on-stage chat with ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp about the conservative contribution to emptying the prisons, or as the Koch...

CNN analyst Van Jones credited the conservative movement with galvanizing support for criminal-justice reform during a Thursday appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)….(snip) ...“The conservative movement in this country, unfortunately from my point of view, is now the leader on this issue of reform,” Jones said.... . . What you’re seeing now is Republican governors being tough on the dollars. Tough on crime and shrinking the prison population.”

Senators linked arms and voted Monday to advance a new bill combining sentencing and prison reforms, setting up final passage later this week and creating the groundwork for a major bipartisan compromise. President Trump had urged GOP Senate leaders to drop their longstanding objections and allow the bipartisan bill to reach the floor, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell finally agreed, after the bill was changed a final time to win over some additional conservatives. With those changes in hand, the measure cleared a potential filibuster on a 82-12 vote, far more than the 60 votes needed. The Senate will now...