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In a new report , the non-profit Impact Justice explored the effects of a program in Alameda County that employs restorative justice techniques to keep juveniles out of lockup. Community Works West’s Restorative Community Conferencing (RCC) program diverts more than 100 young people away from the juvenile justice system each year, according to the report. The program brings the youth—supported by their family and community—face to face with their crime victims to engage in a dialogue to...

Earlier this month, an innovative youth program called We’Ced Youth Media, located in Merced, California, co-hosted an event called #SchoolsnotPrisons Merced. The event’s stated purpose was “to educate the Merced community about the impact of the school-to-prison pipeline and mass incarceration.” A portion of the event included poetry that expressed the pain of incarceration, both for the one who is locked-up, and for those who lose a family member to jail or prison. What is particularly...

What sets the course of a life? Three years before my beloved cousin’s murder—before the weeping, before the raging, before the heated self-recriminations and icy reckonings—I awoke with the most glorious sense of anticipation I’ve ever felt. It was June 29, 2006, the day that Michael was going to be freed. Outside my vacation condo in Hollywood, I climbed into the old white BMW I’d bought from my mother and headed to my aunt’s small stucco home, in South Central. On the corner, a fortified...

Children of addicted parents are unseen victims of a situation they do not understand and are not equipped to handle. They are often angry, embarrassed and fearful and they need help and support. “One of four kids in the United States are affected,” said Jerry Moe, national director of children’s programs at the Betty Ford Center. “The numbers are huge and while we say this is a family disease, it is a parent or parents who are addicted. But, the whole family is affected. The biggest myth is...

Democratic up-and-comer Kamala Harris visited just about every corner of California during her successful 2016 campaign to take over Barbara Boxer’s seat in the US Senate, and she’s kept it up somewhat since taking office. But on a recent, sweltering July afternoon, I accompanied Harris to a place where no senator has set foot for at least a decade. The Central California Women’s Facility, which houses nearly 3,000 inmates, is tucked amid the farmlands of Chowchilla, about three hours from...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told law enforcement officers that cities with policies protecting immigrants have more violent crime and attributed the conclusion to a university study. "When cities like Philadelphia, Boston, or San Francisco advertise that they have these (‘sanctuary city’) policies, the criminals take notice," Sessions said July 12 in Las Vegas. "According to a recent study from the University of California Riverside, cities with these policies have more violent crime on...

It was 45 years ago Tuesday when the nation first learned about the horrors of a federally funded experiment on unsuspecting African Americans with syphilis in rural Alabama — a study whose repercussions are still being felt today. Medical researchers and providers withheld treatment from about 400 black men in Tuskegee, Ala., from 1932 to 1972 in order to study the course of the untreated disease. Researchers did not obtain informed consent from these men, nor did they tell them they were...

While opioid abuse has fallen among younger Americans, the same cannot be said for older adults, a new government report shows. Opioid abuse includes either the use of heroin or illegal use of prescription opioid painkillers, such as oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percocet) and hydrocodone (Vicoprofen). Rates of opioid abuse among young adults -- aged 18 to 25 -- decreased from 11.5 percent in 2002 to 8 percent in 2014. But in adults 50 years and older, opioid abuse doubled, from 1 percent to 2...

England is in the midst of a unique national experiment, the world’s most ambitious effort to treat depression, anxiety and other common mental illnesses. The rapidly growing initiative, which has gotten little publicity outside the country, offers virtually open-ended talk therapy free of charge at clinics throughout the country: in remote farming villages, industrial suburbs, isolated immigrant communities and high-end enclaves. The goal is to eventually create a system of primary care for...

The biological mother of "Jailyn" had turned her over to her cousins when she was several months old and they became her custodial parents. That is, until the custodial father fatally shot the mother while the girl was in the house. Now living in foster care, she has angry outbursts in the classroom that include screaming at her teacher and kicking objects. When she hears a loud noise, she thinks it’s a gun. Her 6th-grade teacher says she is slow to complete schoolwork, appears disorganized,...

There is an nonprofit agency in Duluth which helped six people purchase a car in 2016. That same year, it helped nearly 1,200 people do their taxes. It oversaw 12 families purchase their first home. Its three full-time navigators assisted more than 900 people in obtaining health insurance. Ten of the agency's participants pursued college, 67 added new work skills or GEDs and four started their own businesses. Sixty-four people became employed as the result of its help, and 18 more were aided...

Mary-Ann Rich rises at precisely 4:45 every morning. After feeding her cat, she returns to bed and rests with her back against the headboard, her eyes closed. There she sits for 20 minutes, motionless, her mind drifting far from the images of burned and blown up bodies that have haunted her for a decade. “I would rather miss sleep than miss meditation,” the 63-year-old Rich tells me in her home in San Francisco. “I will be late for work rather than miss my meditation.” For the past four...