During the most recent meeting of the Juvenile Justice Oversight Council, a group to watch over the implementation of SB200 and to study and debate additional juvenile justice policies, we were shown some jarring numbers from DJJ....
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Judiciary
After many years of effort, and several weeks of intense policy work and educating, the State Senate made history by hearing a felony expungement bill for the first time on the Senate floor, and passed it 33-5. House Bill 40 is now heading back to the House for concurrence, which we expect to happen immediately. Governor Bevin has already committed to....
A few weeks ago I wrote about the broader policy work on felony expungement. That work has continued to develop over the course of the 2016 session and reached a fever pitch on March 17th when, for the first time, such a bill was heard before a Senate committee....
During the course of the session there are bills that cover different topics that orbit around us. Some of these bills orbit at different speeds and some have more gravitational pull than others, drawing more support from legislators or conversely drawing additional ire from them.
Much has been written about the compromise heroin legislation passed by the General Assembly during this year's session (SB192), but I wanted to highlight two parts of it in particular. But first, as a primer, the bill has a handful of goals. SB192 is intended to (1) strengthen penalties and sentences for those who traffic in heroin, (2) increase access to substance abuse care for those addicted to heroin, (3) increase access to naloxone, which blocks the receptors in the nervous system that are affected by heroin (stops an overdose), and (4) creates a good samaritan provision so that people who call for help aren't punished (lots of people have died from a heroin overdose because their friends feared calling law enforcement).