American Civil Liberties Union

As America’s prison population has grown to unprecedented levels and imposed record-high costs on taxpayers, it is time to evaluate what we hope to achieve through incarceration: is it revenge, or safety? The two values appear to be in conflict as objectives of our criminal justice system. After decades of tough-on-crime policies, we have experienced little return on our investment— as rates of incarceration have continued to rise, rates of recidivism have increased since the early 1980s, remaining relatively unchanged from the mid-1990s through the present.

We believe that America’s criminal justice system should keep communities safe, treat people fairly, and use fiscal resources wisely. But more Americans are deprived of their liberty than ever before - unfairly and unnecessarily, with no benefit to public safety. It’s a problem that affects people of color most of all. In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik tackles the subject of mass incarceration in America, and takes on questions many of us in the criminal justice world as every day: how did we get here, and where do we go now?

Tamms was sold to the public as necessary to control the “worst of the worst” prisoners in Illinois. Yet when it opened in 1998, the majority of prisoners had virtually no disciplinary history at all.

Connecticut has finally wiped its hands of that messy and sorrowful task of killing its own citizens. Today, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed legislation to repeal the death penalty that was passed by the state legislature earlier this month.

After a series of starts, stops, hurry up and wait, promises, threats, votes and vetoes over recent years, Connecticut stepped surely onto the abolition train and prospectively repealed the death penalty once and for all. The 11 men on death row before the bill's passage will remain there and continue to face execution, but thankfully no one else will. We applaud the brave legislators who heard the pleas of scores of Connecticut murder victim families who called for repeal and nonviolent healing, of law enforcement officials who recognize the death penalty is the least effective tool against violence, of conservatives and progressives alike who have concern about its discriminatory use and huge expense, and of religious leaders of all faiths who insist state-sponsored murder cannot be justified.