Featuring NACDL's Task Force on Criminal Court Reopening: Nina Ginsberg, Stephen Ross Johnson, Todd Pugh, and Martín Sabelli

A key pillar of the First Step Act, a bipartisan federal criminal reform bill signed into law in December 2018, was the creation of a risk and needs assessment tool for federal prisoners.  In July 2019, the Department of Justice first published this tool, the Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs (“PATTERN”) and began using it to place prisoners in recidivism reduction programming and award certain benefits. This webinar discusses the origins of PATTERN as well as the many questions that remain about its design and implementation, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Updates and information about applying for compassionate release for your client. Topic-specific segments are listed below. Presented by Mira Baylson, member, Cozen O'Connor; Elizabeth Blackwood, Counsel & Project Director, First Step Act Resource Center, NACDL; Justine Harris, partner, Sher Tremonte; Lisa Mathewson, Law Offices of Lisa A. Mathewson; JaneAnne Murray, Professor of Practice, University of Minnesota Law School; Shazzie Naseem, partner, Berkowitz Oliver; Avery Pollard, associate, Zuckerman Spaeder; Marjorie Peerce, partner, Ballard Spahr; and Mary Price, General Counsel, FAMM.

Because the full implications of First Step Act measures may not be immediately apparent, NACDL hosted a live webinar on January 29, 2019. Sentencing expert Amy Baron-Evans discussed the ins and outs of the new law, with emphasis on potentially overlooked aspects of the most significant provisions. Amy is the Sentencing Resource Counsel for the Federal Public and Community Defenders, and the go-to lawyer among federal defenders for difficult sentencing questions.

Long underused and unfairly applied by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, federal compassionate release is seeing a revival under the First Step Act. That law not only corrected many of the flaws in the way the BOP handled compassionate release requests, but allows prisoners direct access to the courts. The new law clarifies the broad range of circumstances related to age, illness, and family circumstances that might trigger eligibility for relief and further opens up exciting new opportunities to seek reconsideration of sentences that are no longer appropriate for a variety of other reasons.

Presented by: Ariel Simms, Criminal Justice Attorney Fellow, National Center on Criminal Justice and Disability (NCCJD), The Arc

Walk through the recommendations from NACDL's Policing Body Cameras report and learn about how to negotiate stronger body camera policies in your jurisdiction, the technical aspects of body cameras, and strategies and tactics for defending clients in body camera jurisdictions.

Presented by: Brian Pori, Assistant Federal Public Defender, New Mexico; and Sarah St. Vincent, Researcher/Advocate, US Program, Human Rights Watch

Presented by: Esha Bhandari, Staff Attorney, Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, American Civil Liberties Union

Presented by: Daniel Arshack, criminal defense attorney, New York, NY; Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director, National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW); and Nancy Rosenbloom, Director of Legal Advocacy, NAPW

Presented by: Detective James Trainum (ret.), Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department; and Deja Vishny, Homicide Practice Group Coordinator and Deputy Training Director, Wisconsin State Public Defender

Presented by: Marsha Levick, Co-Founder, Deputy Director, Chief Counsel, Juvenile Law Center; and Dr. Jennifer Woolard, Associate Professor of Psychology, Georgetown University and Research Fellow, Center for Social Justice

Presented by Raj Jayadev, founder and director of Silicon Valley De-Bug

Presented by: Clare Garvie, Sr. Associate, Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology; Kaitlin Jackson, Attorney, Bronx Defenders; and Joshua Kroll, PhD, computer scientist, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, School of Information, University of California at Berkeley

This webinar was supported by Grant No. 2013-MU-BX-K014 awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Presented by Matt Mitchell, hacker, civil rights advocate, and Director of Digital Safety & Privacy, at Tactical Tech (also known as the Tactical Technology Collective)