Jesse Krohn will serve as a Skadden Fellow at Philadelphia Legal Assistance. She will be providing direct representation to indigent teen parents on matters of child support and custody, protection from abuse, and Jesse Krohn
access to public benefits, in order to enable them to
reach their educational and professional goals. Krohn participated in the Teach for America program in Philadelphia. Krohn was also a Toll Public Interest Scholar. Kristin Bochicchio L’12 will serve as the BP/Arnold &
Porter
Equal
Justice
Works Fellow at the Tahirih Justice Center in Houston, Texas. She will be providing representation and outreach to Kristin Bochicchio
African
and
Middle
Easter women and girls fleeing gender-based violence.
While in law school, she worked as co-director of Penn Law’s Students Against Gender-Based Exploitation pro bono project.
“In the prison system, and in the financial and judicial systems, our methods of doing things are in extremis,” Sessions said. “We make mistake after mistake.” “The legislature writes the law and judges are bound by the law. But what the legislature is doing is temporary and transitory,” he said.
So what’s the key to long-term reform?
Sessions offered a simple-sounding solution: “Let’s write the laws better.” Easier said than done. During a panel on the politics of sentencing, Sessions and other notable speakers pointed out that when it comes to incarceration, politics, not common sense, is winning out.
“I’ve been in the legislature a long time, and I’ve learned that
in crime policy you have a choice: try to reduce crime or try to get elected, which means being tough on crime,” said U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who serves on the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. As of 2009, U.S. prison population rates were 743 per
Politics Gets in Way of Sentencing Reform, Says Congressman
100,000 people. Excessive incarceration is costly to taxpayers
Incarceration rates in the U.S. are the highest in the
based strategies and programs to prevent juvenile crime, argued
and takes resources from prevention or rehabilitation — and it winds up being counterproductive, Scott said: “You’re injecting more social pathology into society, not curing anything.” Scott, who sponsored the Youth PROMISE Act, designed to provide resources to state and local governments for evidence-
world, and sentences are the longest. And that’s not changing
for a more cost-effective, evidence-based approach to reducing
any time soon.
crime and reducing sentences.
The problem is we’re running bankrupt trying to build and
Panelist Stewart Greenleaf, a Pennsylvania state senator,
maintain prisons, instead of searching for alternatives, the Hon.
agreed, naming early childhood education as the single reform
William Sessions, former director of the FBI, said during the
that could make the biggest difference.
Penn Law Review symposium on sentencing in October.
Education for prisoners is a crucial component of reform,
“In the prison system, and in the financial and judicial sys-
too. “When people are locked up for a certain number of years,
tems, our methods of doing things are in extremis,” Sessions
they come out as dumb and untrained as when they went in.
said. “We make mistake after mistake.”
A better use of money would be to spend more on job training
Sessions referred to the mistake of implementing mandatory
and education over a shorter period of time in jail,” Scott said.
minimum sentences, which takes power away from judges and
A judge could sentence someone to, say, three years instead
stems from the social pressure the legislature feels to be tough on
of four, and put the money that would have been spent on that
crime — whether or not it makes sense in individual cases.
fourth year towards education, which would reduce the likeliP E N N L A W J O U R N A L S u m m e r 2 0 12 5