Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

Show NLP summaries collection recirc on article pages

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Biden once nearly died of an aneurysm. Risky surgery changed his life.

Melania Trump, absent from court but a central figure in the trial

Democratic group starts attacking Trump with abortion rights testimonials 

Senator will block RFK site bill unless team honors family of logo creator

Victor Robles has been driving everyone crazy for years. Enough is enough.    

Nationals-White Sox rained out; Josiah Gray edges closer to return

Are home prices still rising? See how prices have changed in your area.

Can you spot bad financial advice on TikTok? Take our quiz.

In photos: The scene in Indonesia after flash floods and cold lava killed at least 44 people

Miss Manners: My relative’s memoir was poorly written and boring

Ask Amy: What if the mysterious mourner at my dad’s memorial is my brother? 

Carolyn Hax: Is it ‘charming’ to stage a surprise wedding at a family reunion?

Second Russian invasion is worse than the first, Kharkiv region evacuees say

U.S. threats led to rupture of vital military ties, Nigerien leader says

Rafah border closure strands American doctors in Gaza hospital

OpenAI wants users to act natural around ChatGPT

U.S.-China talks on AI risks set to begin in Geneva

Pentagon worried its primary satellite launcher can’t keep pace

5 myths about Social Security as the program faces a funding crisis

Social Security has to be fixed. But you still need your own savings.

Airlines are trying to stop Biden from enforcing ‘junk fees’ rule

Pete Buttigieg’s view from the middle seat

The case for eating at Italian gas stations

Retired cop meets abandoned baby he helped 23 years ago: ‘What are the odds?’

I used to dismiss my mom’s advice. Then I found a note she wrote before she died.  

Photos of his mom at lunch are a balm people didn’t know they needed

Haiti’s plight is a case study in the ‘responsibility to protect’

No, Apple, people do not want tech to crush everything in its path 

The urgent air defense lessons of April 16 

Election 2024 latest news: Primary elections being held in Maryland, Nebraska

Angela Alsobrooks and David Trone are Democratic primary candidates for the US Senate seat in Maryland

iStock

<em>Keith Humphreys is a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University.</em>

Congress failed <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-campaign-criminal-justice-reform-ends-whimper">this year</a> (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/09/15/criminal-justice-reform-is-breaking-down-before-our-eyes/">again</a>) to pass criminal-justice reform legislation, despite strong bipartisan interest in curbing mass incarceration. Nevertheless, a <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/">Bureau of Justice Statistics</a> report released Thursday shows that the U.S. imprisonment rate dropped for the seventh straight year in 2015, reaching its lowest level since 1997. How is the country sustaining progress on de-incarceration, congressional paralysis notwithstanding?

First, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/11/a-lot-of-people-get-a-basic-fact-wrong-about-criminal-justice/?utm_term=.9950fa7f574e">states, rather than the federal government</a>, control most of U.S. correctional policy. California, for example, has reduced its prison population by tens of thousands in recent years through <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/true-crime/wp/2016/05/18/mass-release-of-california-prisoners-didnt-cause-rise-in-crime-two-studies-find/">legislative reforms</a> and <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_47,_Reduced_Penalties_for_Some_Crimes_Initiative_(2014)">ballot initiatives</a>. Many other states have also implemented reforms that cut prison populations — <a href="http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/multimedia/data-visualizations/2014/imprisonment-and-crime">not incidentally while reducing crime, as well</a> — including Alaska, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland and South Carolina. Because state facilities house more than 85 percent of U.S. prison inmates, states can roll back mass incarceration even when Congress is dithering over parallel federal reforms.

Second, as in many other public policy areas, the Obama administration responded to congressional gridlock on criminal-justice reform by taking executive action instead. Most notably, President Obama has granted clemency <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/12/19/president-obama-grants-153-commutations-and-78-pardons-individuals-deserving-second">to more than 1,300 federal prisoners</a>. His two attorneys general (Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch) have also played a role, for example by pushing the Justice Department to pursue mandatory minimum sentences more sparingly and to allow compassionate release of aging prisoners more often. Holder <a href="http://prospect.org/article/holder-urges-retroactivity-fair-sentencing-act">also urged</a> the U.S. Sentencing Commission to make Congress’s one recent reform success — the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/oip/legacy/2014/07/23/fair-sentencing-act-memo.pdf">2010 Fair Sentencing Act</a>, which reduced crack-cocaine penalties — apply <a href="http://www.ussc.gov/policymaking/amendments/frequently-asked-questions-2011-retroactive-crack-cocaine-guideline-amendment">retroactively</a> to thousands of federal inmates.

Because the federal prison system is a small part of the U.S. correctional system, even all these Obama administration actions accounted for less of 2015’s drop in incarceration than did state-level reforms. But by becoming the first president in at least 40 years to leave office with a smaller federal prison system than he started with, Obama can deservedly claim to have finally gotten the federal government on the de-incarceration path blazed by many governors and state legislators across the country. Together they have brought the country to a generational low in imprisonment, despite the ongoing inability of Congress to get off the dime.

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-white-kids-are-less-likely-to-go-to-prison-than-rich-black-kids/">Poor white kids are less likely to go to prison than rich black kids</a>

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/07/the-states-that-spend-more-money-on-prisoners-than-college-students/">The states that spend more money on prisoners than college students</a>

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/15/how-mass-incarceration-is-spreading-to-rural-counties-and-the-suburbs/">How mass incarceration is spreading to rural counties and the suburbs</a>

Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University, served as senior policy adviser in the White Office of National Drug Control Policy in the Obama Administration.