Tax Issues Associated With Reporting Fellowships: Fill & Download for Free

Kind of complicated and dangerous question. So: 1) Consult your accountant and tax attorney. I am neither and am not representing myself as an accountant nor attorney licensed to practise in your location.Typically: Fellowship income is just like any other income and you will get a statement for that income just like a job. Now, there are MANY different issues around some of this income. Some states, require you to pay taxes on income you never even receive (like tuition waivers). So, you may have Income + Waivers == Fellowship income. There may be other income associated with this as well. Thus, you should probably check your locale or even better, contact the HR department of the school. They can likely get you the accounting information you need on what they will be reporting and answer questions about the locale and how it will be taxed.As to doing your taxes, use Turbotax. It’s cheap, easy, and for most people the best way to do your taxes if you don’t want to hire a professional which is likely not necessary if you have a simple return.

Chartered accountants are regulated under The Chartered Accountants Act 1949. The act makes it very clear that if a person becomes a member of the institute, he has to comply with all the requirements irrespective of his residential status or any other criteria.Now, regarding Indian CA practicing abroad, there are many people doing the same and even the ICAI proudly acknowledges the reach of Indian CA’s in many foreign countries. There is a specific FAQ series that has been released by the ICAI regarding practicing abroad. The following points are taken substantially from the ICAI issued FAQs.1. Can a member of the Institute holding Certificate of Practice residing outside India, do any attest functions?This means let's say an Indian CA is residing in Dubai, can he attest financial statements of a Dubai based company. The ICAI makes it very clear that,he can do attest functions outside India, subject to the local laws permitting him to do so.Thus ICAI has not barred a CA from doing practice outside India, however, he may have to additionally follow various local lawsThe following are some foreign countries which have entered in MoU with ICAI to provide corresponding foreign membership for Indian CA’s for practicing abroad.England & Wales (ICAEW):The Institute of Chartered Accountants of IndiaAccording to the MOU enteredICAI members joining the ICAEW will be eligible for an ICAEW practicing certificate on the same basis as ICAEW members if they have two or more years of membership with their homebody, have relevant work experience, and are compliant with ethical, CPD and PII requirements.UK statutory audit rights are not covered under this MoU and will not be conferred on ICAI members joining ICAEW under the terms of this MoU. UK statutory audit rights are controlled by the UK Financial Reporting Council and are dependent, among other things, on the achievement of the ‘audit qualification’ under the Companies Act, 2006.An ICAI member joining ICAEW and wishing to obtain UK audit rights would be required to undertake a period of re-qualification in order to gain a UK audit qualification. This would involve three years of supervised work experience within an ICAEW authorized training employer, the achievement of specified minimums of approved audit work, and passing a minimum of the ICAEW’s Advanced Level examinations and Principles of Tax and Law examinations from the ICAEW’s Certificate Level examinations.Canada:ICAI members meeting the general membership criteria will be eligible for membership in a Canadian Provincial CPA Body subject to Passing the final examination, Meeting the practical experience requirementsA public accounting license is required for members who wish to practice public accounting once they are admitted – specifically, they want to be able to sign financial statements and perform other services for which a license is required. Candidates may apply for a public accounting license after candidates’ admission to membership by completing an application, paying a prescribed fee, and fulfilling additional requirements above and beyond membership requirements in order to obtain and maintain a public accounting license.The above countries are only some of the foreign bodies which have entered into MOU with ICAI. You can see the following link for more information about different foreign countriesThe Institute of Chartered Accountants of India2. Whether a member residing abroad can be a partner of a firm of chartered accountants in India?Yes, a member residing abroad can be a partner in a firm of Chartered Accountants in India provided he holds C.O.P.Now, this is interesting. In the case of a Statutory Audit under section 139 of Companies, it is essential for the majority of partners of the CA Firm to be practicing in India. However, it seems that there is no restriction to act or sign on behalf of the firm by such members residing abroad.3. Can a member practicing outside India impart articles training under the Chartered Accountants Act and Regulations?As per Regulation 43 of the Chartered Accountants Regulations, a member practicing outside India is also eligible to engage an articled assistant subject to such additional terms and conditions as the Council may impose.4. Can a Member working abroad have a Proprietary Firm in India?Yes. A member working abroad can have a proprietary firm in India provided the firm in India is under the charge of a member of the Institute who should be a full time paid assistant.Thus, if you are a foreign-based CA and want to have a proprietorship office in India, you can do that but the office should be under the charge of a CA who shall be residing in the city of office.5. Can a member having a proprietary firm in India and recently shifted from India, continue to be a proprietor of a firm in India?The member can continue to be a proprietor of the firm in India if the member himself is actively associated with the firm by residing in India for a period of not less than 182 daysIn case you are unable to be in India for the above period, you can employ another CA and hand over the charge to such a person.6. Whether an Associate Member of the Institute practicing abroad is eligible to become a Fellow Member?No. Only members who being associates and who have been in continuous practice in India for at least five years are eligible to apply for admission to fellowship on payment of prescribed fee and submission of Form '3′. [Section 5(3) of the Chartered Accountant Act, 1949].Now it seems that ICAI even allows CA’s to pay membership fees in US dollars, so they are recognizing CA’s based on foreign countries.For your additional reference: The full FAQ by ICAI is provided herewithThe Institute of Chartered Accountants of IndiaLet’s Conclude, If you want to have audit engagements in a foreign country, the ICAI has no restriction but the local laws applicable to the foreign land need to be fulfilled.Please let me know if there is anything I missedThanks for reading!!!! Hope it was useful

Three Strikes laws are shortsighted and contribute to more problems in our legal system instead. Our laws and our choices about incarceration need to be based on intelligent, informed assessments of the crimes committed and the people involved. It's absurd that we consistently lock up far more nonviolent offenders than violent ones, and that we in fact are consistently releasing violent and even predatory offenders in order to make more room for nonviolent offenders.One glaring point that helps demonstrate the flaws in Three Strikes laws, is that very often there is an intentional choice to charge someone with a more serious offense specifically to make Three Strikes laws apply, whereas in other cases a lot of people might plead their more serious cases down and avoid falling under Three Strikes laws for a longer period of time. The result will be the cliched but very real examples of someone going to prison for a longer period of time for eating a piece of pizza off another person's table at a pizza joint, than someone who rapes or murders someone. Literally, that can and does happen under Three Strikes laws.If we had rational sentencing for offenses in general to begin with, so that we weren't giving longer sentences for drug crimes than (for one glaring example) for violent sex crimes against children, and if we instead focused on locking up violent offenders for longer periods of time and focused on rehabilitation and education for nonviolent offenders, we could solve many problems of repeat offenses and dramatically reduce our prison population.Three Strikes laws are an example of one of the most typical problems in this nation's broad social behavior -- laziness in dealing with problems, and a desire to just apply some reactionary simplistic response in order to claim to have taken some action, rather than doing the serious, harder work of thinking about the issue and applying a rational, long-term solution. We do this all of the time, getting angry about something and making a stupidly gross overreactive choice and then pretending we solved the problem and can now promptly ignore it and just complain and get angry without having to further consider and work on the real, more nuanced, harder issues involved.Drug law reform that eliminates the obviously failed and morally bankrupt prohibitions against marijuana and other drugs; reforming and tightening laws against violent offenses such as rape (seriously, if any crime beside premeditated homicide needs to result in a life sentence, it's sex crimes); and dealing with basic economic and educational inequalities that we all know contribute directly to crime, are just a few examples of the ways we need to more reasonably change our approaches to law enforcement and incarceration. Allowing jails and prisons to be treated as some sort of industry to address job creation is absurd and speaks to a moral failing of our approach not only to crime and justice, but to economic stimulus as well.But that's part of the difficulty in getting everyone to be honest about these issues and look at them seriously and intelligently -- vested interests abound, including the private prison industry, companies that supply services to jails and prisons, the fact local police departments get large amounts of extra money and resources and militarized weapons and training due to continued drug prohibition, and so on. That these are all ultimately false "benefits" and that we lose far more as a society as a whole is lost amid the propaganda from the small select groups who benefit from keeping things the way they are in our justice system and who in fact promote even harsher, less intelligence-based choices and regulations and laws.Whomever benefits from California's Three Strikes law, for example, their financial interests pale in comparison to the fact marijuana alone generates more than $100 million in sales tax alone from dispensaries for approved medical patients -- when you add business licenses, personal income taxes, payroll taxes, and other revenue, California is benefiting to the tune of more than a quarter of a billion dollars every year just from medical marijuana dispensaries. That's not to mention the role in job creation played by the hundreds of dispensaries, too. Imagine if this was expanded in a full tax-and-regulate program for marijuana. Then imagine if we just rationally took all recreational drugs, put them into private business models, applied FDA standards for purity levels and preventing tainting with other drugs etc, and then sold them in limited specialty shops that only let adults come in, that required ID, that were heavily taxed and regulated like tobacco and alcohol, and then we treated addiction as a health care problem instead of a criminal justice problem. We'd remove most of the secondary problems associated with illicit drug use, we'd be able to treat addiction a lot easier and with better results, we'd reduce access to drugs for young people and kids, and we'd generate BILLIONS of dollars in revenue and create a large number of jobs, and we'd massively reduce state and federal expenditures for crime and punishment.Compare that to whatever benefits people mistakenly believe we get from Three Strikes laws. If drugs were taken off the table as an issue, you'd in fact remove most of the crimes that are part of Three Strikes sentencing. We'd cut our jail and prison populations by more than half. Meaning we'd be able to sentence violent criminals to much longer sentences, allowing judges to listen to the details of the crimes and consider the defendant's behavior and attitude and background and other factors, and then make a reasoned determination about sentencing.It's not exactly the same thing in every respect, but Three Strikes fits into the broader category of sentencing requirements like mandatory minimum sentencing, which is something I've been mostly against for a very long time. I say "mostly" because I do in fact think that certain violent crimes with specific kinds of context should result in sentences that ensure the offender cannot threaten the victim or society any more -- sexual assaults, for example, are crimes where by definition there's no "defense" to explain and justify having committed the crime, as compared to a beating or physical assault where a person might claim self-defense or having been overcome with rage against what they thought was another person who did something that might itself be considered a crime (if you see someone beat their child, you might be enraged to the point of punching that parent, as an extreme example). I think that even with murder and manslaughter cases, we can all think of hypotheticals and real-life examples where it would be reasonable to say that a harsher sentence might not be the best choice and where there are mitigating circumstances; but with sexual assaults and similar sex crimes, there is no real mitigating circumstance -- if someone committed a rape or molestation, then they need to be punished very severely and locked up for a long time.But anyway, for MOST crimes, that kind of narrow context doesn't apply, and I think mandatory minimums should be abolished. A lot of -- probably most of -- the points against mandatory minimum sentences tend to generally apply to Three Strikes laws as well, so it's worth considering some quotes from experts and other with experience related to mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Here are a few from the Web site of the excellent organization Families Against Mandatory Minimums...AcademicsCharles Ogletree, Harvard professor“The criminal justice system is devouring our resources; putting people who have committed low-level offenses, who are perfectly capable of being rehabilitated, away for lengthy sentences and turning them into hardened criminals; destroying families and communities; and callously throwing away lives. We cannot afford to continue to invest in such a system.”- Written testimony submitted to the Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, June 11, 2009.Roger K. Warren, National Center for State Courts"State sentencing statutes, rules, and guidelines should provide sufficient flexibility so that sentencing judges can craft orders designed to reduce the risk of recidivism in appropriate cases, and should avoid overly broad, strict, or arbitrary sentencing mandates that interfere with more appropriate sentencing options. Principal examples of interfering mandates are provisions that prohibit judges from granting probation, require disproportionately long periods ofincarceration, or set mandatory minimum terms of imprisonment where neither the seriousness of the particular offense nor the risk factors presented by the particular offender warrant such restrictions."- Roger K. Warren, President Emeritus, National Center for State Courts, “Arming the Courts with Research: 10 Evidence-Based Sentencing Initiatives to Control Crime and Reduce Costs,” Pew Center on the States, Public Safety Policy Brief (May 2009)ConservativesGrover Norquist“The benefits, if any, of mandatory minimum sentences do not justify this burden to taxpayers. Illegal drug use rates are relatively stable, not shrinking. It appears that mandatory minimums have become a sort of poor man’s Prohibition: a grossly simplistic and ineffectual government response to a problem that has been around longer than our government itself.”- Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform, written testimony submitted to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, House Committee on the Judiciary, July 14, 2009.David A. Keene“[M]y opposition to mandatory minimums . . . is rooted in conservative principles; namely, reverence for the Constitution and contempt for government action that ignores the differences among individuals. . . . James Madison, for one, believed that a clear separation of powers was more vital to protecting freedom than the Bill of Rights. Yet mandatory minimums undermine this important protector of liberty by allowing the legislature to steal jurisdiction over sentencing, which has historically been a judicial function. The attempt by legislatures and the Congress to address perceived problems in the justice system by transferring power from judges to prosecutors and the executive branch violate these principles and have, in the process, given prosecutors unreviewable authority to influence sentences through their charging decisions and plea bargaining power.”- David A. Keene, Chairman, American Conservative Union, written testimony submitted to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary (July 14, 2009)Pat Nolan, Justice Fellowship“When judges mete out sentences for certain crimes, mandatory minimum laws prohibit them from weighing the relative harm caused by the crime or the relative culpability of the defendant. Mandatory minimum sentences are “one size fits all”. These laws offend the very notion of justice, which requires that the severity of the punishment match the harm done by an individual criminal. In Exodus 21:24, we are told that our judgments should exact an “eye for eye, tooth for tooth.” This verse limits punishment by requiring that offenders pay back “value for value.” The Bible calls for proportionality in punishment, and stresses that penalties should match the injury.”- Pat Nolan, President, Justice Fellowship, “Mandatory Minimums, Unjust and Unbiblical”Ed Meese, former U.S. Attorney General for President Reagan“I think mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders ought to be reviewed. We have to see who has been incarcerated and what has come from it.”- Ed Meese, former U.S. Attorney General under President Reagan and Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, quoted in Texas Public Policy Foundation, “What Conservatives are Saying About Criminal Justice Reform” (Jan. 2010)Pat Robertson, Christian Broadcasting Network"[O]ur government [should] revisit the severity of the existing laws because mandatory drug sentences do harm to many young people who go to prison and come out as hardened criminals. ... [T]hese mandatory sentences needlessly cost our government millions of dollars when there are better approaches available."- Thoughts of Pat Robertson, Founder and Chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, as delivered by CBN spokesman Chris Roslan on Dec. 23, 2010Drug czarsGeneral Barry McCaffrey, U.S. drug czar for President Clinton"I am unalterably opposed to the system of mandatory minimums. I think we need to give this authority back to the judges.”– Barry McCaffrey, former U.S. drug czar in the Clinton administrationElected officialsU.S. Representative Bob Inglis (R-S.C.)“Mandatory minimums wreak havoc on a logical system of sentencing guidelines. Mandatory minimums turn today’s hot political rhetoric into the nightmares of many tomorrows for judges and families.”- Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.), statement for press release, “New Poll: Americans Oppose Mandatory Minimums,Will Vote for Candidates Who Feel the Same,” (Sept. 24, 2008)U.S. Representative Bobby Scott (D-Va.)“Mandatory minimum sentences have been studied extensively and have been shown to be ineffective in preventing crime. They have been effective in distorting the sentencing process. They discriminate against minorities in their application, and they have been shown to waste the taxpayers’ money.”- Rep. Bobby Scott, statement before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, House Committee on the Judiciary, June 26th, 2007.U.S. Representative Henry Hyde (R-Ill.),1994“It doesn’t make sense to put away everybody, no matter how peripherally involved in drug dealing, for five years or 10 years. Not only are such sentences morally troublesome, they threaten to sap the willpower we must maintain to deal with the true threats to society.”U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), 1998“I do…understand that some first-time, nonviolent offenders have been given mandatory minimum sentences, and I would consider supporting legislation to give judges flexibility in such cases.”Presidents of the United StatesPresident George W. Bush“I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that maybe long minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and/or heal people from their disease. And I’m willing to look at that.”– George W. Bush on CNN (Inside Politics), January 18, 2001, three days before his inauguration as President of the United States.President Bill Clinton“I think the sentences in many cases are too long for nonviolent offenders… . Most judges think we should [do away with mandatory minimum sentences]. I certainly think they should be reexamined. And the disparities are unconscionable between crack and powdered cocaine….Our imprisonment policies are counterproductive.”– President Bill Clinton, Rolling Stone, December 28, 2000President George H.W. Bush“[Eliminating mandatory minimums] will result in better justice and more appropriate sentences.”– President (then Representative) George H.W. Bush, in 1970 speaking about a successful bill to eliminate mandatory minimums.U.S. Supreme Court justicesJustice Anthony Kennedy“I'm against mandatory sentences. They take away judicial discretion to serve the four goals of sentencing. American sentences are eight times longer than their equivalents in Europe. California's 3-strikes law emanated from the electorate, and the sponsor of the initiative was the correctional officers association—and that is sick. California has 185,000 people in prison, and the cost is astounding.”- Justice Anthony Kennedy, William French Smith Memorial Lecture, Pepperdine University, February 3, 2010."If you were asked to design a penal system that would win the prize for the worst system, the one you’ve got would at least be runner-up... If cost is a way to activate human compassion, I’ll take it. We are squandering our resources and spending them in the wrong way.”- Justice Anthony Kennedy, speech to the Forum Club of Palm Beaches and the Palm Beach County Bar Association, West Palm Beach, Fla., May 14, 2010.“I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences. In too many cases mandatory minimum sentences are unwise and unjust. . .The legislative branch has the obligation to determine whether a policy is wise. It is a grave mistake to retain a policy just because a court finds it constitutional. Courts may conclude the legislature is permitted to choose long sentences, but that does not mean long sentences are wise or just…A court decision does not excuse the political branches or the public from the responsibility for unjust laws.”– Justice Anthony Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court justice at annual meeting of the American Bar Association, 2003“Mandatory minimums are harsh and in may cases unjust.” If the hypothetical example of an 18-year-old gets caught growing marijuana in the woods and happens to have a hunting rifle in his truck when arrested, he could face a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years. Now he shouldn’t be doing that, (but) an 18-yearold doesn’t know how long 15 years is.”– Anthony Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court justice, in Congressional testimony, 2003Chief Justice William Rehnquist“These mandatory minimum sentences are perhaps a good example of the law of unintended consequences. There is a respectable body of opinion which believes that these mandatory minimums impose unduly harsh punishment for first-time offenders…mandatory minimums have also led to an inordinate increase in the federal prison population and will require huge expenditures to build new prison space...they frustrate the careful calibration of sentences, from one end of the spectrum to the other, which the sentencing guidelines were intended to accomplish.”- Chief Justice William Rehnquist, "Luncheon Address," in U.S. Sentencing Commission, Drugs and Violence, 2005."Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long."– William H. Rehnquist, former chief justice of U.S. Supreme Court, at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Bar AssociationJustice Stephen G. Breyer[More statutes containing mandatory minimum sentences are] “not going to advance the cause of law enforcement in my opinion and it’s going to set back the course of fairness in sentencing. . . . There has to be room for the unusual or the exceptional case.”– Stephen G. Breyer, associate Supreme Court Justice, at a John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, 2003Federal judiciaryHonorable Judge Julie E. Carnes“Unjust mandatory minimums . . . have a corrosive effect on our broader society. To function successfully, our judicial system must have the respect of the public. The robotic imposition of sentences that are viewed as unfair or irrational greatly undermines that respect. . . [S]ome of these statutes do not produce merely questionable results; instead, a few produce truly bizarre outcomes.- Honorable Judge Julie E. Carnes, Chair of the Criminal Law Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States, statement before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, July 14, 2009.Professor David Zlotnick, Roger Williams School of Law, Rhode Island, created a set of case studies of federal sentencings that captures judicial dissatisfaction with the sentencing laws in effect during the mandatory Guidelines era . After corresponding with hundreds of inmates, he gathered sufficient documents to write detailed profiles of forty Republican appointees and at least one case in which each of these judges stated their disagreement with the sentence required by law from the bench. Only cases where reliable documents, such as the Pre-Sentence Investigation Report (“PSI”) and the Sentencing Transcript, were available were considered. Read the studyU.S. District Judge Paul Cassell“I express no view on mandatory minimum sentencing schemes in general. But …one particular feature of the federal scheme – the ‘count stacking’ feature of § 924(c) for first-time offenders – has lead to an unjust result in this case and will lead to unjust results in other cases….The 55-year sentence mandated by § 924(c) in this case appears to unjust, cruel and irrational.”– U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell in sentencing first-time offender Weldon Angelos to 55 years in prison, 2004. Nominated by President George W. Bush, 2001.Honorable Robert Cindrich"When the law provides a result that is repugnant, we must still follow the law. And you can only do that so many times before you start to wonder, 'How many more times am I going to put my name on this sentence that I don't believe in?'”– Robert Cindrich, who resigned from the federal bench, partially in protest of federal sentencing guidelines, 2004. Nominated by President William J. Clinton, 1994.Honorable John S. Martin Jr.For most of our history, our system of justice operated on the premise that justice in sentencing is best achieved by having a sentence imposed by a judge who, fully informed about the offense and the offender, has discretion to impose a sentence within the statutory limits. Although most judges and legal scholars recognize the need for discretion in sentencing, Congress has continually tried to limit it, initially through the adoption of mandatory-minimum sentencing laws. . . . For a judge to be deprived of the ability to consider all of the factors that go into formulating a just sentence is completely at odds with the sentencing philosophy that has been a hallmark of the American system of justice.– John S. Martin Jr., federal district judge in Manhattan, retired in protest of restrictions on federal judicial discretion, 2003. Nominated by President George H.W. Bush, 1990.Honorable J. Spencer Letts“Statutory mandatory minimum sentences create injustice because the sentence is determined without looking at the particular defendant…. It can make no difference whether he is a lifetime criminal or a first-time offender. Indeed, under this sledgehammer approach, it could make no difference if the day before making this one slip in an otherwise unblemished life the defendant had rescued 15 children from a burning building or had won the Congressional Medal of Honor while defending his country.”– J. Spencer Letts, U.S. district judge, Central District of California, senior status 2000. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, 1985.Honorable Leon Higginbotham“We must remember we are not widgets or robots, but human beings. Defendants should be sentenced within the spectrum of what most judges would consider fair and reasonable.”—Leon Higginbotham, judge, 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Nominated to the circuit court by President Jimmy Carter, 1977.Honorable David Doty“I think that a lot of people do not understand what is going on until, all of a sudden, they are caught up in the system; and they find out that people have been mouthing all kinds of slogans, and when the slogans all come down to rest, they sometimes come to rest very hard on the shoulders of the individual.”—David Doty, U.S. district judge, Minnesota, senior status 1998. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan, 1987.Honorable Paul A. Magnuson“…I continue to believe that sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment under the circumstances of this case is unconscionable and patently unjust….[the defendant] will be sacrificed on the altar of Congress’ obsession with punishing crimes involving narcotics. This obsession is, in part, understandable, for narcotics pose a serious threat to the welfare of this country and its citizens. However, at the same time, mandatory minimum sentences – almost by definition – prevent the Court from passing judgment in a manner properly tailored to a defendant’s particular circumstances.—Paul A. Magnuson, U.S. district judge, Minnesota, senior status 2002. Nominated by Ronald Reagan, 1981.Honorable Joyce Hens Green“As a consequence of the mandatory sentences, we (judges) know that justice is not always done…[Y]ou cannot dispense equal justice by playing a numbers game. Judgment and discretion and common sense are essential.”—Joyce Hens Green, U.S. district judge, District of Columbia, senior status 1995. Nominated by Jimmy Carter 1979.Honorable Stanley Sporkin“We need to deal with the drug problem in a much more discretionary, compassionate way. We need treatment, not just punishment and imprisonment.”—Stanley Sporkin, U.S. district judge, District of Columbia, retired 2000. Nominated by President Ronald Reagan 1985Other notablesMartha Stewart“. . .So many of the women here in Alderson will never have the joy and wellbeing that you and I experience. Many of them have been here for years -- devoid of care, devoid of love, devoid of family. I beseech you all to think about these women -- to encourage the American people to ask for reforms, both in sentencing guidelines, in length of incarceration for nonviolent first-time offenders, and for those involved in drug-taking. They would be much better served in a true rehabilitation center than in prison where there is no real help, no real programs to rehabilitate, no programs to educate, no way to be prepared for life ‘out there’ where each person will ultimately find herself, many with no skills and no preparation for living.”– Martha Stewart, December 2004