Carissa Hessick

An op-ed by Associate Professor Carissa Byrne Hessick titled, “Ariz. sentencing laws should be reformed,” appears in today’s Arizona Republic.

The op-ed is based on a report recently released by Hessick and several students through the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law’s Public Policy Incubator Program.

“Arizona will spend nearly a billion dollars on imprisonment this coming year. Recent projections from the Auditor General's Office show that the state's prison population - which has grown more than 1,000 percent over the past 30 years - will continue to increase, requiring the construction of new prison facilities over the next seven years. That construction is estimated to cost $975 million,” Hessick wrote.

“Although (Arizona) has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country, Arizona also has one of the highest rates of serious crime,” Hessick wrote. “Not only is the state's current sentencing policy costing a lot of money, it isn't making the state particularly safe.”

Read more here.

Read the report here.