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This R&D provides resources on criminal justice reform in the United States. Over the last year, both parties have sought to work together on Capitol Hill to make significant reforms to the nation’s penal code, including an overhaul of mandatory sentencing guidelines and reducing sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. The goal of reformers is to reduce the nation’s large prison population, while also reducing the chances that offenders will not recommit crimes. Other advocates of reform have called for more mental healthcare for inmates.
“There’s a reason that good people across the country are coming together to reform our” criminal justice system” https://t.co/JPIVf42Teh
— Philadelphia CEO (@PhilaProsper) November 9, 2015
Sanders: “We need, very clearly, major, major reform in a broken criminal justice system from top to bottom.” #DemDebate
— HuffPost Politics (@HuffPostPol) November 15, 2015
Criminal justice reform moves closer to full House vote: https://t.co/u9PBptxK7N pic.twitter.com/5BePVoibn5
— The Hill (@thehill) November 18, 2015
Since 1962, Myanmar has been dominated by a military junta. This junta isolated Myanmar from the rest of the world and abused the rights of its citizens, notably those of ethnic and religious minorities. In 1990, the junta flirted with holding national elections, but after the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won it the junta annulled the result and went about governing as if there was no election at all. In 2011, Myanmar’s generals finally began the process of modernizing their country, making strides toward opening the nation’s economy to foreign investment, trying to reach a ceasefire with ethnic militias, and transitioning to a quasi-democratic system that allows Myanmar’s citizens to elect 75% of the national legislature, which in turn elects the nation’s president. Last week’s elections were the first in more than five decades and once again, the NLD achieved a significant victory behind its Nobel Prize-winning leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Unlike 1990, the military and its political allies publicly announced that it would respect the result, thereby paving the way for Myanmar to return to civilian rule. However, winning an election and governing a country are separate tasks, and there are concerns that Suu Kyi may find it difficult to maintain her popularity and keep her diverse coalition of supporters together.
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Off-year elections are an often neglected part of the American political discourse. These elections, which take place in odd numbered years, attract little attention due to the fact that they focus primarily on state and local issues with little national significance. Off-year elections do not involve elections to the House, Senate, or the White House and the states that hold these types of contests – Virginia, New Jersey, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky – tend to draw a small pool of registered voters. Nevertheless, off-year elections do matter for the voters of the states that hold them as new governors and state officials are elected and ballot measures are submitted for ratification. For example, in 2015 voters in Houston rejected an equal rights ordinance that would have covered homosexuals and transgender individuals, while Ohio voters rejected a proposal to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Furthermore, the recent elections provide continued evidence that the Republican Party thrives in non-presidential contests as they retained control of Mississippi’s governor’s mansion, won the Kentucky gubernatorial election for the first time since 2007, and fought off a Democratic attempt to win the Virginia Senate. It is unclear whether these off-year elections can affect 2016, but politicians on both sides of the aisle would be wise to pick the data apart and see if there is something to be learned from the successes and failures of various campaigns in the recent election cycle.
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