11. In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report on Race and the Death Penalty. What was the report about? Provide a summary 12. Discuss how the 2006 report by a New York State Judicial Commission highlights the problem of Blacks and legal representation within the riminal justice system. 13. What is Plea Bargaining? And how does that impact Blacks as they face the Criminal Justice System 14. Is privatization of the Prison system a solution to the problem of Blacks and Mass Incarceration? 15. Discuss the intent of the Innocence Project as it seeks to reform the Criminal Justice System relation to Blacks. Death Penalty Sentencing: Research Indicates Pattern of Racial Disparities In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report on race and the death penalty entitled Death Penalty Sentencing: Research Indicates Pattern of Racial Disparities." What the GAO found was that not only did victim race matter in sentencing outcomes, but defendant race mattered as well in over half of the studies it evaluated for its report (pp. 5-6). The GAO reported that over 75 percent of the studies on defendants sentencing "found that black defendants were more likely to receive the death penalty" (p. 6). Once again, the credibility and racial neutrality of the death penalty must be seriously questioned. A basic problem is the lack of adequate counsel for the poor. Wealthy defendants can afford the best attorneys and get what they pay for: excellent legal defense. An oft-cited example here is O. J. Simpson, the former football star and television and film celebrity who was arrested and tried during the mid-1990s for allegedly killing his ex-wife and one of her friends (Barkan, 1996). Simpson hired a "dream team" of nationally famous attorneys and other experts, including private investigators, to defend him at an eventual cost of some $10 million. Ajury acquitted him, but a poor defendant in similar circumstances almost undoubtedly would have been found guilty and perhaps received a death sentence. the weo venom Activate Use free at Office.com Almost all Black criminal defendants are poor or near poo Although they enjoy the right to free legal counsel, in practice they receive ineffective counsel or virtually no counsel at all. The poor are defended by public defenders or by court-appointed private counsel. Either type of attorney simply has far too many cases in any time period to handle such cases adequately. Many poor defendants see their attorneys for the first time just moments before a hearing before the judge. Because of their heavy caseloads, the defense attorneys do not have the time to consider the complexities of any one case, and most defendants end up pleading guilty. A 2006 report by a New York state judicial commission reflected these problems (Hakim, 2006, p. B1). The report concluded that "local governments were falling well short of constitutional requirements in providing legal representation to the poor. Some New York attorneys, the report found, had an average yearly caseload of 1,000 misdemeanors and 175 felonies. The report also found that many poor defendants in 1,300 towns and villages throughout the state received no legal representation at all. The judge who headed the commission called the situation "a serious crisis." Update now Use free at Office.com Because your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version. Activate Another problem is plea bargaining! Another problem is plea bargaining, in which defendant agrees to plead guilty, usually in return for a reduced sentence. Under the current system of justice, criminal defendants are entitled to a trial by jury if they want one. In reality, however, most defendants plead guilty, and criminal trials are very rare: Fewer than 3 percent of felony cases go to trial. Olfice product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Use free at Office.com Prosecutors favor plea bargains because they help ensure convictions while saving the time and expense of jury trials, while defendants favor plea bargains because they help ensure a lower sentence than they might receive if they exercised their right to have a jury trial and then were found guilty However, this practice in effect means that defendants are punished if they do exercise their right to have a trial Critics of this aspect say that defendants are being coerced into pleading guilty even when they have a good chance of winning a not guilty verdict if their case went to trial (Oppel, 2011). product is inacte. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version, Activate Use free at Office.com Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System. Unce.com A recent report by the Leadership Conference on vil Rights entitled, Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the merican Criminal Justice System, shows that racial disparities may have increased rather than subsided over the past few years. The report concludes that, while in the past half century the United States has made significant overall progress toward the objective of ensuring equal treatment under the law for all citizens, in the critical area of criminal justice, racial inequality appears to be growing, not receding, and oury criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased, The manifestation of a criminal justice system that de facto distrutes separate, unequal standards of justice for whites and African Americans and the minorities has created a mushrooming prison population that is overwhelming black and Hispanic. Three out of every ten African American males born in the United States will serve time in prison. Nationally, 1.4 million black men have lost the right toote as a result of felony convictions; approximately two million Americans-two-thirds of them black or Hispanic-are in prison or a jail cell. Unfortunately, many politicians and policy makers have the perception that lawlessness is a "colored" problem, and that the disproportionate treatment of blacks and Hispanics within the criminal justice system is a rational response to a statistical imperative. It is well established that the majority of crimes are not committed by minorities, and most minorities are not criminals -indeed, less than 10 percent of all black Americans are even arrested in a given year. Yet the unequal targeting and treatment of minorities at every stage of the crimal proces- from arrest to sentencing-reinforces the perception that drives the inequality in first plice, with the unfairness at every successive stage of the process compounding the effects orier irjustices. The result is a vicious cycle that has evolved into a self-fulfilling prophecy. More marity arrests and convictions perpetuate the belief that minorities commit more crimes, which in turn leads to racial profiling and more minority arrests. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a May 1999 statement reported in The Washington Post commented on the ABA survey that most blacks believe they receive worse treatment in the courtsan da other people. Justice O'Connor noted that an ABA survey also found that a significant percentage of whites also believe that African Americans are not equally treated in the justice system. "Clearly this is a problem that has to be addressed," Justice O'Connor said. "Concrete action must be taken to erase racial bias. Justice O'Connor also appealed for better legal representation minorities, poor people and others who flounder in the justice system. The racial disparities that exist in the criminal justice system deeply affect juveniles and cause African American and other minority youth to be over-represented at every stage of the juvenilo justice system The Leadership Conference Report correctly points out that racially skewed juvenile justice outcomes have dire implications, because the whole point of the juvenile justice system is to head off adult criminality. The report observes that the segregation of children from adult prisoners is an important aspect of the juvenile justice system and that placing more black and Hispanic teenagers in adult prisons where they will come into contact with career criminals serves to incubate another generation of black and Hispanic criminals. Use free at Office.com cuse your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Statistics on racial disparities in the Virginia Criminal Justice System appear to be even greater than in her sister states. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on June 8, 2000, that black males in Virginia were imprisoned for drug offenses in 1996 at a rate 21 times higher than that for white males and at a rate 13 time higher than white males nationally. The Richmond Times. Dispatch reported on September 13, 2000, that a recent Justice Department report found that 80% of the defendants sentenced to death in the federal courts were minorities, and the largest number of death cases was from Virginia. Unequal treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system undermines the rule of law. Michelle Alexander (2010): Mass incarceration as a caste system Activate se your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Use free at Office.com Michelle Alexander (2010): Characterizes mass incarceration as a caste systen much like the Jim Crow laws (1876-1965) that defined permanent second- class status for Black Americans. Specifically, the War on Drugs served as a form of legalized discrimination, entrapping African Americans in the criminal justice system. African Americans and Latinos have been arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses far out of proportion to their actual use of illegal drugs. The harm to individuals and families only intensifies when prisoners are released. She explains: They enter a separate society, a world hidden from public view, governed by a set of oppressive and discriminatory rules and laws that do not apply to everyone else. They become members of an undercaste-an enormous population of predominately black and brown people who, because of the drug war, are denied basic rights and privileges of American citizenship and are permanently relegated to an inferior status. (Alexander 2010:181-82) Te.com The Problem of Prisons The United States now houses more than 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons and more than 750,000 in local jails. This total of about 2.3million people behind bars is about double the 1990 number and yields an incarceration rate that is by far the highest rate of any Western democracy. This high rate is troubling, and so is the racial composition of American prisoners. More than 60 percent of all state and federal prisoners are African Americano Latino, even though these two groups comprise only about 30 percent of the national population The corrections system costs the nation more than $75 billion annually. What does the expenditure of this huge sum accomplish? It would be reassuring to know that the high US incarceration rate keeps the nation safe and even help reduce the crime rate, and it is certainly true that the crime rate would be much higher if we had no prisons at all. However, many criminologists think the surge in imprisonment during the last few decades has not helped reduce the crime rate at all or at least in a cost-efficient manner (Durlauf & Nagin, 2011). Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Use free at Office.com Greater crime declines would be produced, many criminologists say, if equivalent funds were instead spent on crime prevention programs instead of on incarceration. Criminologists also worry that prison may be a breeding ground for crime because rehabilitation programs such as vocational training and drug and alcohol counseling are lacking and because prison conditions are substandard. They note that more than 700,000 inmates are released from prison every year and come back into their communities ill equipped to resume a normal life. There, they face a lack of job opportunities (how many employers want to hire an ex-con?) and a lack of friendships with law-abiding individuals. It is conceivable that for these reasons, imprisonment ironically may increase the likelihood of future offending (Durlauf & Nagin, 2011). secause you Privatization of the prison system. On the contrary what we see is the desire for the privatization of the prison system. In an effort to reduce the costs of incarceration to state and federal correctional agencies, the idea of private correctional institutions has gained momentum. The perception that public prisons were deteriorating and overcrowded helped to encourage the growth of private prisons in the 1980s (Pratt and Maahs 1999). Private prisons incarcerate about 7% of the sentenced adult population, usually housing low-risk offenders. Globally, Australia has the highest proportion (17%) of prisoners in private prisons, followed by the United Kingdom (10%) (L. Roth 2004). It has been argued that private correctional institutions save taxpayers money, providing more services with fewer resources; studies reveala slight advantage to private prisons and demonstrate a reduction in per inmate cost over time (Larason Schneider 1999). State correction officials are also responding to the problem of chronic prison overcrowding. For example, one third of Hawaii's 6,000 state inmates are jailed in private prisons in Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma because Hawaii does not have enough room in its own state facility (S. Moore 2007). Studies have indicated that the savings from private prisons are likely to come from lower wages and benefits, fewer staff, more efficient uses of staff, or a combination of these factors (Camp and Gaes 2002). Scott Camp and Gerald Gaes (2002) found that private prisons did not perform better than public ones and in some cases did worse. According to the researchers, one of the most reliable indicator of prison operations is the rate at which inmates test positive for use of drugs or alcohol. If substance abuse is high, it indicates a pattern of poor ecurity practices. For the private institutions, tests showed no drug use in 34% of the acilities and low to high drug use in 66% of the facilities. Nearly 62% of public prisons showed no evidence of drug use. In their analysis of another important performance measure, William & les et al. (2005) found no significant difference in recidivism rates between public and private prisoner offenders. There were no significant differences among three groups in their study: adult males, adult females, and youth offender males. weer version. Activate Use free at Office.com Prison Advocacy and Death Penalty Reform Several national, state, and local organizations are committed to reforming our prison system and advocating prisoners' right Most of their work comes in the form of advocacy, educational campaigns, and litigation. In the early 2000s, a network of student and community activists mobilized to end the use of prisons for profit. The group, Not With Our Money, successfully mobilized against Sodexho Marriott, a food service provider that owned more than % of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of the largest owners and operators of U.S. private prisons. aur Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Use free at Office.com Efforts to pressure university administrators to end their food service contracts with Sodexho Marriott were success ul at several colleges and universities. Since protests against Sodexho Marriott began, its parent company, Sodexho Alliance, divested all its interest in CCA (Bigda 2001). State and local grassroots organizations, such as Coloradans Against the Death Penalty, Mississippians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, support prisoners' rights and legislation to abolish the death penalty in their states. One organization that has accepted the mission of correcting wrongful convictions is the Innocence Project. Established in 1992 by attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the Innocence Project is a nonprofit legal clinic at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York. The clinic is dedicated to "exonerating the innocent through past conviction DNA testing" (Innocence Project 2007). As of December 2014, the project had exonerated 325 individuals These cases highlight the problems of misidentification, corrupt scientists and police, overzealous prosecutors, inept defense attorneys, and the influence of poverty and race in the criminal justice system. Activate Use free at Office.com ur Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version The Innocence Project is currently working to establish the innocence Network, a group of law and journalism schools and public defender offices that assist inmates trying to prove their innocence, even if their cases do not involve biological or DNA evidence. Several states have established their own innocence or justice projects. The Innocence Project and similar organizations consistently draw the public's attention when an innocent inmate is released. In 1993, Darryl Howard was convicted of the 1991 murder of a mother and her daughter in North Carolina. He was released in 2014 base on new DNA evidence and charges of prosecutorial misconduct uncovered by the Innocence Project. DNA evidence excluded Howard, but identified another suspect. Howard was released after serving nearly 20 years of his sentence. 11. In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report on Race and the Death Penalty. What was the report about? Provide a summary 12. Discuss how the 2006 report by a New York State Judicial Commission highlights the problem of Blacks and legal representation within the riminal justice system. 13. What is Plea Bargaining? And how does that impact Blacks as they face the Criminal Justice System 14. Is privatization of the Prison system a solution to the problem of Blacks and Mass Incarceration? 15. Discuss the intent of the Innocence Project as it seeks to reform the Criminal Justice System relation to Blacks. Death Penalty Sentencing: Research Indicates Pattern of Racial Disparities In 1990, the U.S. General Accounting Office released a report on race and the death penalty entitled Death Penalty Sentencing: Research Indicates Pattern of Racial Disparities." What the GAO found was that not only did victim race matter in sentencing outcomes, but defendant race mattered as well in over half of the studies it evaluated for its report (pp. 5-6). The GAO reported that over 75 percent of the studies on defendants sentencing "found that black defendants were more likely to receive the death penalty" (p. 6). Once again, the credibility and racial neutrality of the death penalty must be seriously questioned. A basic problem is the lack of adequate counsel for the poor. Wealthy defendants can afford the best attorneys and get what they pay for: excellent legal defense. An oft-cited example here is O. J. Simpson, the former football star and television and film celebrity who was arrested and tried during the mid-1990s for allegedly killing his ex-wife and one of her friends (Barkan, 1996). Simpson hired a "dream team" of nationally famous attorneys and other experts, including private investigators, to defend him at an eventual cost of some $10 million. Ajury acquitted him, but a poor defendant in similar circumstances almost undoubtedly would have been found guilty and perhaps received a death sentence. the weo venom Activate Use free at Office.com Almost all Black criminal defendants are poor or near poo Although they enjoy the right to free legal counsel, in practice they receive ineffective counsel or virtually no counsel at all. The poor are defended by public defenders or by court-appointed private counsel. Either type of attorney simply has far too many cases in any time period to handle such cases adequately. Many poor defendants see their attorneys for the first time just moments before a hearing before the judge. Because of their heavy caseloads, the defense attorneys do not have the time to consider the complexities of any one case, and most defendants end up pleading guilty. A 2006 report by a New York state judicial commission reflected these problems (Hakim, 2006, p. B1). The report concluded that "local governments were falling well short of constitutional requirements in providing legal representation to the poor. Some New York attorneys, the report found, had an average yearly caseload of 1,000 misdemeanors and 175 felonies. The report also found that many poor defendants in 1,300 towns and villages throughout the state received no legal representation at all. The judge who headed the commission called the situation "a serious crisis." Update now Use free at Office.com Because your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version. Activate Another problem is plea bargaining! Another problem is plea bargaining, in which defendant agrees to plead guilty, usually in return for a reduced sentence. Under the current system of justice, criminal defendants are entitled to a trial by jury if they want one. In reality, however, most defendants plead guilty, and criminal trials are very rare: Fewer than 3 percent of felony cases go to trial. Olfice product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Use free at Office.com Prosecutors favor plea bargains because they help ensure convictions while saving the time and expense of jury trials, while defendants favor plea bargains because they help ensure a lower sentence than they might receive if they exercised their right to have a jury trial and then were found guilty However, this practice in effect means that defendants are punished if they do exercise their right to have a trial Critics of this aspect say that defendants are being coerced into pleading guilty even when they have a good chance of winning a not guilty verdict if their case went to trial (Oppel, 2011). product is inacte. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version, Activate Use free at Office.com Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System. Unce.com A recent report by the Leadership Conference on vil Rights entitled, Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the merican Criminal Justice System, shows that racial disparities may have increased rather than subsided over the past few years. The report concludes that, while in the past half century the United States has made significant overall progress toward the objective of ensuring equal treatment under the law for all citizens, in the critical area of criminal justice, racial inequality appears to be growing, not receding, and oury criminal laws, while facially neutral, are enforced in a manner that is massively and pervasively biased, The manifestation of a criminal justice system that de facto distrutes separate, unequal standards of justice for whites and African Americans and the minorities has created a mushrooming prison population that is overwhelming black and Hispanic. Three out of every ten African American males born in the United States will serve time in prison. Nationally, 1.4 million black men have lost the right toote as a result of felony convictions; approximately two million Americans-two-thirds of them black or Hispanic-are in prison or a jail cell. Unfortunately, many politicians and policy makers have the perception that lawlessness is a "colored" problem, and that the disproportionate treatment of blacks and Hispanics within the criminal justice system is a rational response to a statistical imperative. It is well established that the majority of crimes are not committed by minorities, and most minorities are not criminals -indeed, less than 10 percent of all black Americans are even arrested in a given year. Yet the unequal targeting and treatment of minorities at every stage of the crimal proces- from arrest to sentencing-reinforces the perception that drives the inequality in first plice, with the unfairness at every successive stage of the process compounding the effects orier irjustices. The result is a vicious cycle that has evolved into a self-fulfilling prophecy. More marity arrests and convictions perpetuate the belief that minorities commit more crimes, which in turn leads to racial profiling and more minority arrests. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in a May 1999 statement reported in The Washington Post commented on the ABA survey that most blacks believe they receive worse treatment in the courtsan da other people. Justice O'Connor noted that an ABA survey also found that a significant percentage of whites also believe that African Americans are not equally treated in the justice system. "Clearly this is a problem that has to be addressed," Justice O'Connor said. "Concrete action must be taken to erase racial bias. Justice O'Connor also appealed for better legal representation minorities, poor people and others who flounder in the justice system. The racial disparities that exist in the criminal justice system deeply affect juveniles and cause African American and other minority youth to be over-represented at every stage of the juvenilo justice system The Leadership Conference Report correctly points out that racially skewed juvenile justice outcomes have dire implications, because the whole point of the juvenile justice system is to head off adult criminality. The report observes that the segregation of children from adult prisoners is an important aspect of the juvenile justice system and that placing more black and Hispanic teenagers in adult prisons where they will come into contact with career criminals serves to incubate another generation of black and Hispanic criminals. Use free at Office.com cuse your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Statistics on racial disparities in the Virginia Criminal Justice System appear to be even greater than in her sister states. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on June 8, 2000, that black males in Virginia were imprisoned for drug offenses in 1996 at a rate 21 times higher than that for white males and at a rate 13 time higher than white males nationally. The Richmond Times. Dispatch reported on September 13, 2000, that a recent Justice Department report found that 80% of the defendants sentenced to death in the federal courts were minorities, and the largest number of death cases was from Virginia. Unequal treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system undermines the rule of law. Michelle Alexander (2010): Mass incarceration as a caste system Activate se your Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Use free at Office.com Michelle Alexander (2010): Characterizes mass incarceration as a caste systen much like the Jim Crow laws (1876-1965) that defined permanent second- class status for Black Americans. Specifically, the War on Drugs served as a form of legalized discrimination, entrapping African Americans in the criminal justice system. African Americans and Latinos have been arrested and imprisoned for drug offenses far out of proportion to their actual use of illegal drugs. The harm to individuals and families only intensifies when prisoners are released. She explains: They enter a separate society, a world hidden from public view, governed by a set of oppressive and discriminatory rules and laws that do not apply to everyone else. They become members of an undercaste-an enormous population of predominately black and brown people who, because of the drug war, are denied basic rights and privileges of American citizenship and are permanently relegated to an inferior status. (Alexander 2010:181-82) Te.com The Problem of Prisons The United States now houses more than 1.5 million people in state and federal prisons and more than 750,000 in local jails. This total of about 2.3million people behind bars is about double the 1990 number and yields an incarceration rate that is by far the highest rate of any Western democracy. This high rate is troubling, and so is the racial composition of American prisoners. More than 60 percent of all state and federal prisoners are African Americano Latino, even though these two groups comprise only about 30 percent of the national population The corrections system costs the nation more than $75 billion annually. What does the expenditure of this huge sum accomplish? It would be reassuring to know that the high US incarceration rate keeps the nation safe and even help reduce the crime rate, and it is certainly true that the crime rate would be much higher if we had no prisons at all. However, many criminologists think the surge in imprisonment during the last few decades has not helped reduce the crime rate at all or at least in a cost-efficient manner (Durlauf & Nagin, 2011). Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Use free at Office.com Greater crime declines would be produced, many criminologists say, if equivalent funds were instead spent on crime prevention programs instead of on incarceration. Criminologists also worry that prison may be a breeding ground for crime because rehabilitation programs such as vocational training and drug and alcohol counseling are lacking and because prison conditions are substandard. They note that more than 700,000 inmates are released from prison every year and come back into their communities ill equipped to resume a normal life. There, they face a lack of job opportunities (how many employers want to hire an ex-con?) and a lack of friendships with law-abiding individuals. It is conceivable that for these reasons, imprisonment ironically may increase the likelihood of future offending (Durlauf & Nagin, 2011). secause you Privatization of the prison system. On the contrary what we see is the desire for the privatization of the prison system. In an effort to reduce the costs of incarceration to state and federal correctional agencies, the idea of private correctional institutions has gained momentum. The perception that public prisons were deteriorating and overcrowded helped to encourage the growth of private prisons in the 1980s (Pratt and Maahs 1999). Private prisons incarcerate about 7% of the sentenced adult population, usually housing low-risk offenders. Globally, Australia has the highest proportion (17%) of prisoners in private prisons, followed by the United Kingdom (10%) (L. Roth 2004). It has been argued that private correctional institutions save taxpayers money, providing more services with fewer resources; studies reveala slight advantage to private prisons and demonstrate a reduction in per inmate cost over time (Larason Schneider 1999). State correction officials are also responding to the problem of chronic prison overcrowding. For example, one third of Hawaii's 6,000 state inmates are jailed in private prisons in Arizona, Kentucky, Mississippi and Oklahoma because Hawaii does not have enough room in its own state facility (S. Moore 2007). Studies have indicated that the savings from private prisons are likely to come from lower wages and benefits, fewer staff, more efficient uses of staff, or a combination of these factors (Camp and Gaes 2002). Scott Camp and Gerald Gaes (2002) found that private prisons did not perform better than public ones and in some cases did worse. According to the researchers, one of the most reliable indicator of prison operations is the rate at which inmates test positive for use of drugs or alcohol. If substance abuse is high, it indicates a pattern of poor ecurity practices. For the private institutions, tests showed no drug use in 34% of the acilities and low to high drug use in 66% of the facilities. Nearly 62% of public prisons showed no evidence of drug use. In their analysis of another important performance measure, William & les et al. (2005) found no significant difference in recidivism rates between public and private prisoner offenders. There were no significant differences among three groups in their study: adult males, adult females, and youth offender males. weer version. Activate Use free at Office.com Prison Advocacy and Death Penalty Reform Several national, state, and local organizations are committed to reforming our prison system and advocating prisoners' right Most of their work comes in the form of advocacy, educational campaigns, and litigation. In the early 2000s, a network of student and community activists mobilized to end the use of prisons for profit. The group, Not With Our Money, successfully mobilized against Sodexho Marriott, a food service provider that owned more than % of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of the largest owners and operators of U.S. private prisons. aur Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version Activate Use free at Office.com Efforts to pressure university administrators to end their food service contracts with Sodexho Marriott were success ul at several colleges and universities. Since protests against Sodexho Marriott began, its parent company, Sodexho Alliance, divested all its interest in CCA (Bigda 2001). State and local grassroots organizations, such as Coloradans Against the Death Penalty, Mississippians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, support prisoners' rights and legislation to abolish the death penalty in their states. One organization that has accepted the mission of correcting wrongful convictions is the Innocence Project. Established in 1992 by attorneys Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the Innocence Project is a nonprofit legal clinic at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York. The clinic is dedicated to "exonerating the innocent through past conviction DNA testing" (Innocence Project 2007). As of December 2014, the project had exonerated 325 individuals These cases highlight the problems of misidentification, corrupt scientists and police, overzealous prosecutors, inept defense attorneys, and the influence of poverty and race in the criminal justice system. Activate Use free at Office.com ur Office product is inactive. To use for free, sign in and use the Web version The Innocence Project is currently working to establish the innocence Network, a group of law and journalism schools and public defender offices that assist inmates trying to prove their innocence, even if their cases do not involve biological or DNA evidence. Several states have established their own innocence or justice projects. The Innocence Project and similar organizations consistently draw the public's attention when an innocent inmate is released. In 1993, Darryl Howard was convicted of the 1991 murder of a mother and her daughter in North Carolina. He was released in 2014 base on new DNA evidence and charges of prosecutorial misconduct uncovered by the Innocence Project. DNA evidence excluded Howard, but identified another suspect. Howard was released after serving nearly 20 years of his sentence