New Jersey

New Jersey's levels of racial disparity in imprisonment are among the nation's highest, and the state devotes a larger share of prison beds to people convicted of drug offenses than any other. Justice Strategies has documented the impact of New Jersey's drug-free zone laws and the pioneering efforts of the state's sentencing commission to "right-size" the zones since 2005.
News Article Philadelphia Inquirer March 25, 2010

Shrinking Pa.'s Prison Population

A new report by the Pew Center on the States shows that while the national prison population declined last year for the first time in 38 years, Pennsylvania's number of inmates increased more than any other state's. Read more »

JS Publication March 3, 2010

Downscaling Prisons: Lessons from Four States

Downsizing Prisons is a collaborative research effort between Justice Strategies and The Sentencing Project that examines four states – Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York -- that have moved against the growth trend in state prison populations of 12% since 2000. These states achieved significant declines in prison populations and offer lessons to policymakers in other states. Read more »

JS Publication September 10, 2009

Strategies for Engaging Suburban and Rural Communities in New Jersey

This memo is designed to assist the New Jersey Second Chance coalition in their efforts to educate legislators that represent rural and suburban towns about areas of common ground they share with urban communities seeking criminal justice reform. Serving as a best practices document rooted in experiences pushing for criminal justice reforms in Connecticut, strategies from this memo are designed to help New Jersey advocates engage non-traditional allies in rural and suburban New Jersey on the need to reform New Jersey’s criminal justice system.

News Article The Press of Atlantic City March 24, 2006

Study Concludes Drug-free Zones Not Protecting Children (NJ)

Drug-free zones not only don't protect children, but instead have put a disproportionate number of minorities in jail, according to experts who have been studying the policy.

A national study — spawned by a New Jersey commission's findings — was released Thursday. In it, the Justice Policy Institute found that the zones are too large and therefore do not deter drug sales within school zones and other protected areas. Read more »

News Article

New Jersey drug-free zone laws produce "devastating" disparity, no deterrence

New Jersey's drug-free zone laws have no deterrent effect on drug sales near schools but instead fuel racial disparity in imprisonment according to New Jersey's Commission to Review Criminal Sentencing and a new report coauthored by policy analysts with Justice Strategies and Justice Policy Institute. Since the state's "school-zone" law took effect, the proportion of blacks admitted to prison for drug convictions has risen four times faster than the proportion of whites. Read more »

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