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The Washington, D.C., jail has big metal doors that slam shut. It looks and feels like a jail. But down a hall in the medical wing, past an inmate muttering about suicide, there's a room that looks like an ordinary doctor's office. "OK, deep breaths in and out for me," Dr. Reggie Egins says to his patient, Sean Horn, an inmate in his 40s. They talk about how his weight has changed in his six weeks in jail, how his medications are working out and whether he's noticed anything different about...

The unusual topic of conversation seems to follow me. At business meetings, dinner parties, and coffee dates, people keep talking to me about their childhood abuse. It makes sense: my story of abuse motivates my work, and I don’t stop talking about my mission to end violence in every home ( TEDTalk ). Because I share my vulnerable story, people open up to me; some tell of severe cases, others of the occasional slap or scream. It must be human nature to diffuse pain and suffering because most...

When Jay Preskenis watches the Ashland High School graduation ceremony each June from his fold-up chair at Lithia Park, he appreciates the walk, diploma handoff and traditional mortarboard toss-up in a way few in the audience — AHS staffers included — can. That’s because as a member of the school’s Student Services Team, Ashland High’s assistant principal knows exactly what some of those students had to overcome in order to arrive at that moment, and even now, only three months into the...

Louisiana is one of a handful of states that still allows corporal punishment in schools— not without controversy. Earlier this month, The Times reported about the use of corporal punishment in Shreveport-Bossier schools, with more than 3,000 combined incidences since 2010, according to district data. That report sparked sharp reactions among both community members and parents. Despite a nationwide call by the Obama administration this month to end the use of corporal punishment as a...

Thanks so much to everyone who was able to join us for the screening of the documentary film, Portraits of Professional CAREgivers: Their Passion. Their Pain. earlier today. It was exciting to see so many of you interested in this very important topic. After the film, the co-producers hosted a Q&A discussion, which was recorded and is available for anyone to listen to. Link is below: ...

Sometimes there’s nothing to do but take matters into our own hands. A reader who is both a mom and a sociologist decided to do just that. After discovering that one of her daughter’s books required some “subversion,” she decided to do a little editing. Here’s to one way of fighting the disempowering messages taught to little girls by capitalist icons... [For more of this story, written by Lisa Wade, go to ...

The Department of Justice announced last week a bundle of prison reforms aimed at easing the transition for ex-prisoners back into the outside world. The measures include the creation of a school district within the federal prison network, reforming halfway houses, and providing funds to ensure that every former inmate is issued a state ID upon re-entering society at large. If that last reform seems surprising, it shouldn’t be: Most people leaving prisons don’t have state identification,...

The road to Kakuma, in the northwestern corner of Kenya, is long and full of potholes. Occasionally, young boys spot our car approaching and quickly begin pouring dirt into these potholes, pretending to repair them — hoping we’ll give them some loose change for the favor. “Do they ever actually fix it?” I ask our driver, John. “No, not really.” But for the occasional four-wheel-drive vehicle belonging to one international agency or another, the road is empty. The only time the road does fill...

Note: Many survivors, activists and parents get lots of free information and research through the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM). While t he material they share and sell is geared towards clinicians, social workers and health providers, they make videos and articles available to anyone, for free, for at least time-limited periods of time. It's not totally free. You have to share your email about a million times and will be inundated with...

National experts on sexual harassment in K-12 schools have teamed up to create a new educational video about gender equality, intended to inform students that they have a legal right to attend a school where nobody is harassed because of their gender. The timing couldn’t be better, said Esther Warkov, cofounder of the nonprofit group Stop Sexual Assault in Schools , which produced the free video for use by schools, clubs and parent groups. President-elect Donald Trump, who boasted in a 2005...

At first, the playground at Officer Willie Wilkins Park looks pretty standard. There’s a slide to skid down, ramps to climb up, bridges to cross, and nooks to investigate. But there’s also something relatively unusual: words, and lots of them. Mixed in among the bright primary colors of the structure are white panels plastered with whimsical illustrations and phrases like “let’s talk about the sunshine” and “let’s talk about food.” They’re not a random addition; the panels are a deliberate...

In the brushfire wars since Donald Trump won the presidency, skirmishes over how to speak to his coalition of voters have consumed liberals. Leading the vanguard in those conversations is a collection of writers and thinkers of otherwise divergent views, united by the painful process of reexamining identity politics, social norms, and—most urgently—how to address racism in an election clearly influenced by it. Though earnest and perhaps necessary, their emphasis on the civil persuasion of...