November 18, 2013
Dervan testifies before House Judiciary Committee task force
Lucian E. Dervan, an assistant professor at the SIU School of Law, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Over-Criminalization Task Force on Nov. 14. Dervan testified at a hearing titled, “Regulatory Crime: Solutions.”
A small excerpt from Dervan’s written testimony points to a March 2009 report that states 2.3 million adults in the United States were in prison or jail, which represents one out of every 100 adults. When adults on probation or parole are included, the total of adults under correctional control was 7.3 million, or one out of every 31 adults in the U.S. A 2011 study indicates that 65 million adults in the United States, which represents more than one in four adults, haves a criminal record.
Dervan’s written testimony also stated that given the statistics it should come as no surprise that the U.S. has the world’s largest prison population; while the U.S. has 5 percent of the world’s population it has almost one-fourth of the world’s prisoners.
A video of the hearing, along with the full text of Dervan’s testimony is available here. Dervan, who came to the law school in 2009, focuses his teaching and research on domestic and international criminal law.