A Quaker organization claims to have bipartisan support for a bill that would upend Arizona’s truth-in-sentencing laws, which requires Arizona inmates to serve at least 85 percent of their court-imposed sentences.

At a meeting with a group of African Americans last month, Rep. David Stringer didn’t exactly apologize for his remarks that immigration is “an existential threat” to the United States.

A lingering “tough-on-crime” mentality in Arizona is hampering efforts to reconstruct the state’s criminal justice system.

Gov. Doug Ducey wants to expand employment centers for soon-to-be-released prisoners and give them identification cards before they leave state custody.

Democratic lawmakers from south Phoenix are siding with their voters in a fight against two proposed programs aimed at helping prisoners re-enter society, a long held constituency of theirs that doesn’t vote.

The Arizona Department of Corrections wants 102 new positions and more than $13 million to fuel re-entry and recidivism reduction programs, but prisoner rights advocates aren’t convinced the request signals a turn in the department’s philosophy.

The Ducey administration is considering a “ban the box” policy for state agencies that would delay the process of asking prospective employees for arrest or conviction information until later in the hiring process.

Not only has American society come a long way since the so-called war on drugs began during the Reagan administration, but our attitudes toward drugs have changed as well. When harsher enforcement and penalties began during the 1980s, “opioid epidemic” had not entered our lexicon and prescription drug abuse was nascent.

The latest update to the Prisoners in Arizona report, produced by the Arizona Prosecuting Attorneys’ Advisory Council, or APAAC, is scheduled to be finished this fall, and it promises to be more controversial than ever thanks to the man hired to update it, John Lott.

After spending 25 years in law enforcement as a sheriff’s deputy, a sergeant, and a federal security adviser, reading the new American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) report on Arizona drug sentences brought some painful memories back.