You can attend a panel discussion, Prison Policy: A Crime Against Our Community, Wednesday, Dec. 10, 6 to 8 p.m., YWCA Frances McClelland Center, 525 N. Bonita Ave.

Join us for a panel discussion on the history of incarceration policies in the US and Arizona. Learn how current policies impact and oppress our community and what might be done to bring positive change.

Panel Presenters:
Caroline Isaacs, MSW. Program Director of Arizona American Friends Service Committee.

Tom Litwicki, M.Ed. CEO Old Pueblo Community Services. Retired, Regional Administrator, Arizona Department of Corrections.

A few facts to carry with you to the discussion, from a recent Capitol Times article:

Arizona’s sentencing laws became tougher in 1978, and prisoner population grew from about 3,000 then to more than 42,000 today. The state adopted a “presumptive” sentencing system that requires a judge to sentence someone to a set term and add or subtract time based on findings.

[snip]

The Arizona Department of Corrections, which has a nearly $1 billion budget, recently notified the Governor’s Office it will need $26 million more in fiscal year 2016 for increased expenses, including health care, to cover the current and anticipated growth.

This article appears in Dec 4-10, 2014.

5 replies on “Prison Policy: A Crime Against Our Community. Panel Discussion Wednesday, 6pm”

  1. And yet we still have “three strike” criminals on the street committing crimes. That’s no good for the rest of us.

  2. Arizona’s sentencing laws became tougher in 1978, and prisoner population grew from about 3,000 then to more than 42,000 today. What a bunch of crock. Tucson is notorious for giving probation to criminals. Its a business to Tucson not justice. You can’t pay off those fines in jail so they give them probation. Example what about the 8 correctional officers who beat up a innocent man and the dad and 17 year old son that tried to rescue them? Probation. Or the northside bar where 7 or 8 men and women beat up a mother and her son? All got probation.

  3. If they enforced sentencing laws we would have 100,000 in prison.

    We used to call them criminals. many of them have become politicians.

  4. America incarcerates in good company with other pillars of the world Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea!

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