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After decades of the steady growth of inmate populations, the mass imprisonment movement has stalled and serious attempts are being undertaken to downsize prisons. At issue, however, is whether the American public will endorse this policy agenda. This issue is explored with data from a 2010 survey of 1,569 Oregon adults. On a broad level, the respondents favored a preventative-rehabilitative approach to crime control and endorsed a range of reentry services for inmates. Most significant, the sample supported specific policies, including community sanctions and several forms of early release, to reduce prison populations. Notably, however, they did not embrace downsizing for the purpose of lowering spending—a finding that should be explored in other states. These results indicate that, at least in Oregon, the public is willing to consider efforts to downsize prisons. Capitalizing on this public support remains the challenge to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eastern Snake River Plain (ESRP) is a northeast-trending volcanic basin that marks the track of the Yellowstone hotspot. Subsidence has characterized the ESRP since at least 4 Ma. To test whether subsidence of the ESRP surface is an active process, synthetic aperture radar interferometry has been applied to detect deformation during 1993-2000. Results show that no regionally consistent deformation occurred across the ESRP during the periods of observations. However, local displacements of 1-3-cm magnitude have been detected in the adjacent Basin-Range province. This deformation is not attributed to long-term movement of the ESRP but instead to local tectonic and/or groundwater processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]