National Association of Sentencing Commissions Conference

The Conference is in Oklahoma City and I don't know if anyone from Colorado went to draw from the wealth of knowledge that must be in those rooms. Lessons learned, what could be done differently, smarter, faster, more thoughtfully. Discussions today included a plenary on what will really work with parole. I will try to find out more as the conference goes on. Doug Berman from Sentencing Law and Policy as well as our fav Michael Connelly from Corrections Sentencing will hopefully be blogging from the site.

OKLAHOMA CITY

Officials from 27 states - including lawmakers, attorneys, judges, professors, researchers and corrections officials - began meeting Monday to discuss sentencing policies as part of the annual conference of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions.

Among the topics during the two-day conference - which has the theme "New Frontiers in Sentencing" - are costs and benefits in corrections and sentencing, how communities monitor sex offenders, risk assessment in sentencing guidelines, theories of sentencing and how to best communicate research to state policymakers.

The national association began in 1994 and representatives of nine states attended its first meeting, said NASC President Jack O'Connell, the director of the Delaware Statistical Analysis Center, which provides research support for that state's sentencing commission.

The association's annual meeting has evolved into a forum for officials from across the nation to compare notes about what works and what doesn't when it comes to sentencing policy.

"A lot of states do understand that they face common issues, even if their solutions aren't the same," said University of Minnesota law professor Kevin Reitz, who led a discussion at the conference on evolving sentencing guidelines throughout the nation. "An awful lot of states borrow from one another."

AP Report