The Executive Committee cordially invites you to submit a proposal

for a session during the 2024 NASC conference.

 

PROPOSALS ARE DUE BY MARCH 14, 2024
to thenascsecretary@gmail.com

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Conference sessions are generally scheduled for 75 minutes. Topics for plenary and break-out sessions are solicited. Please use the attached form to submit a short paragraph describing the session. The Executive Committee will follow up with you to assist with

development of your topic as needed.

 

If registration waivers and/or other financial assistance are prerequisites for any speaker’s attendance, please indicate that potential need when submitting your form.   

 

The NASC conference is the only national gathering with a focus on sentencing and related issues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2024 Conference Theme

 

This year marks the second year of the thirty-year celebration of NASC. The 2024 conference theme is:

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NASC Thirty Year Anniversary Conference: Part II (2024)
Sentencing Then and Now: The Role of Commissions in

Sentencing Reform, 1993/1994 to 2023/2024

 

When the first informal gathering of state Sentencing Commissions took place at the University of Colorado in 1993, criminal justice systems across the United States were in the midst of historically high crime rates and growing correctional populations and costs. While some states had created Sentencing Commissions a decade or more earlier, these challenges coincided with the creation of several new state Sentencing Commissions in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The exact role of Commissions and the precise form of policy change varied by state, but there was typically some form of more determinate sentencing policies such as mandatory minimums, three-strikes laws, or “truth-in-sentencing” policies designed to keep people incarcerated for more of their stated sentence.

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• What was the role of Commissions as part of the adoption, or promotion, or resistance to these policy changes?

• What is their role today?

• How are Commissions and processes today different than 30 years ago? 

 

Please join your colleagues in Raleigh in August 2024 to explore these questions together as we reflect upon thirty years of NASC, how sentencing has changed or stayed the same, and what we can learn from different approaches to address similar challenges across jurisdictions.