The Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics is sponsoring a free conference from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday at the University School of Law. The conference, which is open to the public, will cover prison growth and the political, economic and social issues associated with it.
The conference will feature three keynote speakers: Marc Mauer, author of several books pertaining to the criminal justice system and assistant director for The Sentencing Project, which is a national not-for-profit concerned with criminal justice; Jeremy Travis, senior fellow at the Urban Institute and author of “Prison to Home: The Dimensions and Consequences of Prisoner Re-entry”; and Frank Zimring, a national expert on criminal justice and sentencing policy and a professor of law at University of California at Berkeley.
Speakers will discuss budgeting for prisons, the consequences of prison growth on society and the effects of releasing inmates who have served mandatory minimum sentences.
“We’ve been focusing on the theme ‘criminal justice’ for the last two years,” said Cheri Brooks, communication coordinator for the Wayne Morse Center. “The focus this year has been looking at solutions in criminal justice. With prison growth, we are looking at the economic and social costs both to the public and the community.”
University Law School Associate Dean Margie Paris said she believes that understanding the criminal justice system is important to social order.
“It is really something that affects the states, and affects Oregon, so much … it is really an important issue,” she said.
According to the Oregon Student Association’s 2002 Fact Sheet, titled Education Not Incarceration, corrections cost counties, states and federal government nearly $40 billion last year, compared with $5 billion in 1978. These amounts relate to the higher costs connected with housing more prisoners in correction facilities.
The November 1994 passage of Measure 11, which applied mandatory minimum prison sentences to certain crimes with no possibility for reduction in sentence, is responsible for 43 percent of state prisons’ population growth, according to the Oregon Department of Administrative Services.
“What Oregon is going through is similar to what many states are going through,” said Marc Mauer, one of the keynote speakers for the conference. “Now that money is tight, the state is forced to make some really tough choices.”
The conference will take place in Room 175 of the Knight Law Center.
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