Jose Armendariz, 30, has never been able to vote. Sentenced to 90 years to life in prison at 16, Armendariz is barred from casting a ballot by California’s felony disenfranchisement laws. But after learning that many of those behind bars can cast ballots, he has become an inside organizer for Unlock the Vote , an American Civil Liberties Union project aimed at registering voters in Southern California jails. Armendariz goes cell-to-cell at Orange County’s Theo Lacy Jail, educating people...

By Kim Schneider, The Imprint, October 12, 2020 A Minnesota tribal community and county have announced a partnership that aims to better serve Native parents and kids in family and criminal cases through more coordinated court processing. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe and Itasca County, located in northern Minnesota, will design and pilot family-centered solutions for people in criminal or dependency court cases. One of the project leaders, Minnesota Ninth District Judge Korey Wahwassuck,...

We just received word that Governor Newsom signed microstamping bill, AB 2847! We'd like to thank Assembly Members Chiu & Gabriel, and coauthoring Assembly Members Bauer-Kahan, Gipson, Gloria, Muratsuchi, M. Stone, Ting, and Wicks. We'd also like to thank coauthoring Senators Jackson & Wiener, and of course, Governor Newsom. Congratulations to the thousands of Brady supporters who helped steward this lifesaving bill through the state legislature and onto the governor's desk. Your...

How Do You Help Police Officers Address Trauma? Officer mental health is an often overlooked component of safety and wellness. Good mental health is just as essential as good physical health for law enforcement to be effective in keeping our country and our communities safe from crime and violence. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), between 7 to 19 percent of police officers have symptoms of PTSD and 1 in 4 police officers have thoughts of suicide at some point in...

By Kat Schuster, September 1, 2020, Patch. Nonviolent former prisoners who participated in fire camps will now have an opportunity to become year-round, full-time firefighters. SACRAMENTO, CA — Lawmakers approved a bill Monday that will finally allow former prisoners to pursue a career in fire. The new legislation arrived while fire crews were overwhelmed, facing multiple devastating lightning complex fires across California. AB 2147 , authored by Assemblywoman Eloise Gomez Reyes, will allow...

By Jennifer Micale, August 12, 2020, Binghamton.edu. Education should lead to opportunity: a proud walk down the aisle during graduation, followed by a job, college or specialized training, and then a rewarding career. But for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, school can too often present a narrowing set of options. Problems at home or in their neighborhood can spark behavioral issues in the classroom, and a punitive response by the school can lead to long-term suspension or...

By Victoria Greening, The Royal Gazette, August 14, 2020 I would like to consider a counterintuitive method of achieving crime reduction and disruption to the cycle of offending behaviour in Bermuda. This is as a follow-up to recent concerns raised in The Royal Gazette between August 4 and 7 when the lack of resources available to vulnerable and mentally unwell members of the community who end up caught up in the criminal justice system was addressed. There has been a recent upsurge in...

When I first learned about ACEs science, I was working for the local police department as the Director of a crime prevention program. This program was aimed at reducing drug related and violent crime by strengthening community partnerships. Our efforts yielded 19 crime prevention programs implemented by 35 community agencies. Together we reduced crime by 40% in one neighborhood, and pioneered a first probation program of its kind in Tennessee to reduce recidivism. At the end of the grant in...

Cowart Trauma Informed Partnership is thrilled to announce new initiative in trauma-informed policing!

By Hannah Critchfield, July 16, 2020, NC Health News. Correctional facilities throughout the state have shut down in-person visitations to help quell the spread of COVID-19, creating one more roadblock for kids trying to navigate the criminal justice system to stay connected with a parent. In any other year, on Father’s Day, 11-year-old Marley Bennett and her grandmother would pack up their pre-made lunches and drive to Orange Correctional Center for a visit with Marley’s father. They’d sit...

By Jason Fagone, Megan Cassidy, and Alexei Koseff, San Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 2020 Gov. Gavin Newsom will release approximately 8,000 people incarcerated inside California’s prison system by August, in a move that comes amid devastating coronavirus outbreaks at several facilities and pressure from lawmakers and advocates. The releases, which were announced just before noon Friday, will come on a rolling basis, and they’ll include both people who were scheduled to be freed soon as well...

Karen Clemmer, the Northwest community facilitator with ACEs Connection, was already deeply interested in the CDC/Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study when she and a colleague from the Child Parent Institute were invited to lunch by ACEs Connection founder and publisher Jane Stevens in 2012. But that lunch meeting changed everything. Karen Clemmer “Jane helped us see a bigger world,” says Clemmer. “She came with a much wider lens. She didn’t look only at Sonoma County, she...