NASC 2023 Conference

2023 Conference Theme

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This year marks the beginning of thirty years of NASC, an anniversary that will be recognized over the next two years at the annual conference. The 2023 conference theme is:

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The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same?
Challenges Faced by State Criminal Justice Systems
and Approaches to Reform, 1993 to 2023.

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States are facing some of the same problems they faced when NASC was originally formed thirty years ago: following two decades of decreasing crime rates, the trend has reversed in recent years and concerns about prison-overcrowding and the cost of incarceration persist. These issues are combined with concerns about the disparate treatment in the criminal justice system—largely by race—and the reality of collateral consequences of a criminal record. Rather than the similar response of states in the 1990s, states seem to be taking a variety of approaches to address these contemporary challenges. This takes many forms, including: the evaluation of existing guidelines, the creation of sentencing guidelines where none existed, or the change from a determinate to an indeterminate sentencing system (or vice versa). Given that some of the challenges today mirror those of thirty years ago, this conference gives us the opportunity to reflect upon our past efforts:

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• Did any criminal justice reforms of the 1990s have their desired effect? What were they and why were they successful?

• What were the unintended consequences of the ‘tough on crime’ reforms? Were there later reforms designed to address these unintended consequences?

• What are some of the lessons from the earlier reform? How can those be used to prevent repeating mistakes of the past?  

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Please join your colleagues in Lake Tahoe in August 2023 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.