Web resources: Give a hearty "Sooie" for Arkansas de-incarceration reforms

The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has mercifully created a new, much more navigable website that's packed with information which may interest Grits readers. Some readers may be interested their recent budget-related testimony (pdf) regarding the Texas Juvenile Justice Department and also testimony (pdf) related to administrative segregation ("ad seg"), or solitary confinement

And here's the latest Right on Crime newsletter, where we find that former TDCJ counsel and Officer of Court Administrations Chief Carl Reynolds has been encouraging stronger community supervision as a remedy to overincarceration in West Virginia on behalf of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative. (See the Right on Crime blog.) Grits was also pleased to find coverage of Arkansas' de-incarceration reforms, which adjusted property crime thresholds upward, notched certain drug sentencing categories downward, and strengthened probation while providing early release for successful probationers to give incentives for good behavior. (For more detail, see this summary [pdf] of the legislation.) According to this local editorialist, "Preliminary studies show that legislation enacted last year has freed up prison space for dangerous offenders by shifting more non-violent offenders into probation."