Last month, Congress passed the First Step Act, a prison-reform bill intended to reduce recidivism. Do you think this bill will actually change the realities of mass incarceration? It’s important but insufficient, in terms of the actual number of people in jails and prisons. We’ve gone from 300,000 people in jails and prisons in the 1970s to 2.2 million people today. We have to radically reorient ourselves and start talking about rehabilitation, restoration and how we end crime. And if we do...

We make the case that the conditions that foster violence and the conditions that perpetuate poverty are interconnected and reinforce each other; we further show the traumatic effects of violence -- and how trauma drives both poverty and violence. We then examine how violence has been used to enforce systems of racial oppression and how communities of color are disparately impacted by violence today. The conditions that perpetuate poverty and the conditions that foster violence often...

By Tyrone, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, October 7, 2019 March 7, 2012 my oldest brother was killed. He was killed by the NOPD (New Orleans Police Department). Coming home from school March 7, 2012, my oldest brother and his friend was sitting outside. They were just chilling and talking. Once he saw my siblings and I get off the school bus, he told us not to come outside until we finished our homework. I told him “OK” and we walked past him to the front door. First thing I remember...

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In Garden Grove in October, Jason Gomez, 34, was asked to talk about himself. He had been recently released from jail after being convicted of robbery. Gomez sat in a county office meeting with a big shot from the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency. At stake was the future of the program that had helped Gomez get a job after jail. It’s called LEAP (Linking to Employment Activities Pre-release), which was established with a $500,000 grant to the Orange County Sheriff’s...

By MDRC, May 2020 Subsidized employment programs use public funds to create or support jobs for people who can’t find employment in the regular labor market. These jobs are often called “transitional” because they are temporary until program participants can find permanent unsubsidized work. The largest subsidized employment programs in the United States have operated during periods of economic distress, most recently during the Great Recession in 2009-2010. These programs help to ensure...

Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...

AMY BACH WAS Â researching her book about the US court system when she met a woman named Sharon in Quitman County, Mississippi. One July day in 2001, Sharon said, her boyfriend took her under a bridge and beat her senseless with a tire iron. Sharon passed out numerous times before her niece intervened and stopped the man from killing her. In photos from the emergency room after the attack, Sharon's brown, almond-shaped eyes are swollen shut. She reported the crime to the police, who wrote up...

Progressive voices long ago characterized America’s penal system as a failure. However, in recent years, even a few button-down conservative, law-and-order types have grudgingly acknowledged the need for change. Of course, they don’t sign on to so-called “bleeding heart” concerns about human rights. But they do express alarm about the dollars and cents required to warehouse human beings with no financial return. Texas lawyer Marc Levin, who helped establish the organization Right on Crime...

From Legal Defense Fund, Photo: Unsplash, Legal Defense Fund, July 15, 2022 Yesterday, the Southern Prisons Coalition, a group of civil and human rights organizations, submitted a new report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination on the devastating consequences of incarceration on Black people throughout the southern United States. With the long-term goal of eliminating all forms of racial discrimination in the criminal legal system,...

SACRAMENTO, Calif — The California Senate on Thursday rejected a proposal to ban involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime after Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration warned it could cost taxpayers billions of dollars by forcing the state to pay inmates who work while in prison a $15-per-hour minimum wage. California's constitution bans both slavery and involuntary servitude — forcing someone to provide labor against their will — but there is an exception for the punishment of a crime.

Because of a collaboration with Columbia University and UW-Madison, we have answers to these questions. By Peter Peter Pecora, Casey Family Programs, March 17, 2023 - Overview The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recently released a “ roadmap ” to reduce child poverty by as much as half through the implementation of a series of social policy packages. The aim of this study was to simulate the reductions in Child Protective Services (CPS) involvement and foster care placements that are...