Tagged With "Vikki Law"
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A Federal Judge’s New Model for Forgiveness (nytimes.com)
Should a judge care what happens, years down the road, to the defendants convicted in his courtroom? In 2003, John Gleeson, a federal district judge in Brooklyn, presided over the trial of a woman charged for her role in faking a car accident for the insurance payments. After a jury found her guilty, Judge Gleeson sentenced the woman to 15 months in prison. Many judges might leave it at that, but in an extraordinary 31-page opinion released on March 7, Judge Gleeson stepped back into the...
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A Prosecutor's Vision for a Better Justice System (dailygood.org)
I am a prosecutor. I believe in law and order. I am the adopted son of a police officer, a Marine and a hairdresser. I believe in accountability and that we should all be safe in our communities. I love my job and the people that do it. I just think that it's our responsibility to do it better. The staggering inefficiency is what drove me to criminal justice work. The unfairness of it all made me want to be a defender. The power dynamic that I came to understand made me become a prosecutor.
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Addressing Social Justice with Compassion (dailygood.org)
Professor Rhonda Magee is a faculty member at the University of San Francisco law school, an expert in contemplative pedagogy, the President of the Board of the Center for Contemplative Minds in Society, and a teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction interventions for lawyers and law students. She has spent her career exploring the interrelationship between law, philosophy, and notions of justice and humanity. Having grown up in a segregated North Carolina, Magee developed an early...
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All too often, California’s default mental institutions are now jails and prisons (calmatters.org)
Perhaps nowhere is California’s mental health crisis more evident than in its criminal justice system. After decades of failure to create and fund policies that effectively help people with serious mental illnesses, many now say the jails and prisons have become the state’s default mental institutions. Close to a third of California’s inmates have a documented serious mental illness, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. A few decades ago, fewer than half...
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At a different kind of summer camp, students try out a career in criminal justice. (ocregister.ccom)
Local high school students got a behind-the-scenes look at the county’s criminal justice system Wednesday as part of the Orange County District Attorney’s 17th annual Summer Youth Education Conference. The weeklong program gives students interested in a career in law enforcement a taste of what it’s like to be an attorney, police officer and judge. With educational workshops, the students are walked through the criminal system from the arrest and booking process to the courtroom, said Jose...
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Beyond Paper Tigers is Back!
Back for the second year, Beyond Paper Tigers conference will take place June 28th and 29th in Walla Walla, WA. Featuring Dr. Ken Ginsburg from Children's Hospital of Philadelphia as the keynote speaker, BPT builds on the story of one community and how they've learned that embracing trauma-informed care and implementing ACEs science truly takes a village. Operationalizing the latest in brain science, BPT will provide concrete strategies for intervention with youth, families, and communities...
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Big Jump Seen In Number Of Inmates Prescribed Psychiatric Drugs In California (npr.org)
The number of inmates in California who've been prescribed psychiatric drugs has jumped about 25 percent in five years, according to a recent analysis of state data. These inmates now account for about a fifth of the county jail population across the state. The increase might be a reflection of the growing number of inmates with mental illness, though it also might stem from improved identification of people in need of treatment, say researchers from California Health Policy Strategies , a...
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Building a Resilient Community (United Way of East Central Iowa)
ACES: Building a Resilient Community Childhood trauma has affected the majority of people in our community. Specific family problems as well as child abuse and neglect (summarized as Adverse Childhood Experience, or ACEs) have been shown...
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California's 'ban the box' law to help ex-felons find jobs after release (vcstar.com)
Starting Jan. 1, people with felony convictions across California will have a chance to do that. That’s when new “ban the box” legislation goes into effect, expanding an older state law that covered only public agencies to every business with five or more employees. At issue is that one little box on an employment application — the one that requires the applicant to check “yes” if she or he has a criminal history. Knowing they are likely to be screened out, job-seekers who would have to...
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California's mentally ill inmate population keeps growing. And state money isn't enough to meet needs, lawmaker says (latimes.com)
Gov. Jerry Brown has earmarked $117 million in his new state budget to expand the number of treatment beds and mental health programs for more than 800 mentally ill inmates found incompetent to stand trial. State officials said they have struggled to keep up with the needs of a population that has jumped in size by 33% over the last three years, as judges are increasingly referring defendants to treatment. But one state lawmaker says additional funds are not enough. Legislators, he said,...
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California would virtually eliminate money bail under proposed legislation (sacbee.com)
California lawmakers have unveiled a sweeping plan to overhaul pretrial release in the state that could virtually eliminate the use of money bail. Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Los Angeles, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, introduced legislation last December to change a system they argue unfairly punishes the poor by keeping them stuck in custody if they cannot afford expensive bail rates. Updated with new details last Friday, the proposal envisions instead a system of risk assessment to...
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Cash bail doesn’t make California safer, it just crowds our jails (ocregister.com)
According to Human Rights Watch, between 2011-2015, one-third of the nearly 1.5 million felony arrests made in California ended in either charges never being filed, charges being dismissed or acquittal, with such resolutions coming days, weeks or months after arrest. In a nation where people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, people who have not been found guilty of a crime and found eligible for release from jail pending a trial or further proceedings should not have their lives...
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Child Law Penalizes Moms for Abusive Partners [capitalandmain.com]
By Angelika Albaladejo, Capital & Main, October 16, 2019 Ingrid Archie thought she was doing everything right to protect her children. She got a restraining order against her abusive partner and moved into a domestic violence shelter with her kids. Then Archie got arrested for child endangerment. It had been only a month since she’d left the relationship and she was struggling to get back on her feet. She was stressed out and trying to run errands with her two youngest daughters. One of...
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Children of imprisoned parents get Oregon bill of rights [streetroots.org]
"The first state law of its kind..." reads the article! A big thanks to Oregon law makers for pioneering law supporting the rights of children of incarcerated parents. On Tuesday September 19 th , Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law a bill of rights for Oregon's children requiring the Oregon Department of Corrections to develop and sustain policies and procedures supporting the needs of families, and protecting the rights of children, when parents are incarcerated. This legislation is...
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Connecting With Incarcerated Parents Is Easier With Photo Patch, an App Developed By a Teen [teenvogue.com]
When Jay'Aina Patton was three, her father, Antoine, went to prison for gun possession. It wasn’t until she was seven or eight that Jay’Aina (or “Jay Jay” as friends and family call her) really understood where her father was. She also knew just how difficult maintaining a relationship with him was. Her father was imprisoned hours away. Her mother, raising two children on her own, could only afford to take them to visit twice during his seven-year incarceration. They couldn’t make up the...
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Court Resources
7 Common Characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts Source: Gains Center, SAMHSA Description: Identifies seven common characteristics of Juvenile Mental Health Courts (JMHCs) as part of a National Institute of Justice – funded study,...
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Credible Messengers Help Turn Former Convicts into Leaders (nationswell.com)
The key to this program is an initiative called the credible messenger approach to restorative justice. It pairs at-risk and justice-involved youth, who are individuals who’ve been involved with the criminal system, with people who have had comparable life experiences, such as ex-convicts or ex-gang members. “When you think of a credible messenger, you think of those closest to the problem are closest to the solution,” says Jason Clark, the program manager at King County Credible Messengers...
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Criminal Diversion offers treatment instead of jail time in San Diego (sdnews.com)
As part of their ongoing effort to get low-level drug offenders off the streets and into treatment, City Attorney Mara W. Elliott and San Diego Police Chief Nisleit have teamed to launch Prosecution and Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Services (PLEADS). PLEADS is a voluntary, pre-booking diversion pathway that allows individuals suspected of being under the influence of a controlled substance to avoid prosecution and jailtime by agreeing to seek support services. The Neighborhood Policing...
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Cycle of Risk: The Intersection of Poverty, Violence, and Trauma (issuelab.org)
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...
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Designing a Way out of Mass Incarceration [CityLab.com]
As it stands today, criminal justice in the U.S. exists inside an architecture of isolation: those within the system are shuffled between courthouses and prisons, which are separated from society by thick walls and high fences. “Our dominant justice system is framed around three questions: What law was broken, who did it, and what do they deserve—with the deserving part being about punishment,” says Barbara Toews, an assistant professor of criminal justice at the University of Washington...
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Documentary captures how a high school in a San Francisco jail heals and reduces recidivism
Believe it or not, although 70 percent of the adults incarcerated in our nation’s county jails lack a high school diploma, only one jail – San Francisco County Jail #5 in San Bruno, CA – offers inmates the opportunity to earn a high...
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#MeToo Doesn’t Always Have to Mean Prison (nytimes.com)
Restorative justice is an alternative we should also consider Ashley Judd, one of Harvey Weinstein’s accusers and a key figure in the #MeToo movement, reacted to the Hollywood producer’s conviction with satisfaction. But she would have preferred a “restorative justice process in which he could emotionally come to terms with his wrongs.” The criminal justice system, she said, was less satisfying than this “more humane” alternative. For decades, victims’ rights advocates, including many...
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Mindfulness & Resilience Training for Law Enforcement
https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/police-officers-learn-meditation-to-tackle-job-tension-1349636163854?v=railb& Lt. Richard Goerling the person teaching is incredible. I met him while I was training Trauma Response for the Justice System and Trauma-Informed Victim Interviewing for the Justice System in Cambridge, Mass. I have attended 2 immersion weekends in the mountains of Bend, Oregon with the LT. It changed my career, helped me get healthier, and I can honestly say saved a...
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Momentum Grows In Congress To Expand Access To Quality Postsecondary Education For People In Prison [witnessla.com]
By Witness LA, July 8, 2019. Twenty-five years ago, the massive Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which, among other things, prevented incarcerated students hoping for a college degree from accessing Pell Grants, was signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, and essentially resulted in the slashing of opportunities for higher education in federal and state prisons across the U.S., a move that, as Mikaol T. Nietzel, president emeritus of Missouri State University,...
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Nearly 200,000 felonies erased by Prop 47, but some former felons don't know (desertsun.com)
Despite the dramatic impact of erasing felonies, some former felons whose cases were retroactively resentenced will be slow to seize their newfound opportunities because they don’t know their conviction has changed. In at least a few California counties, felonies were downgraded in bulk without any involvement from the defendants. In these counties, public defenders rushed to file as much Prop 47 paperwork as possible, deciding there was no time to track down former clients before...
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Nine Lessons About Criminal Justice Reform [TheMarshallProject.org]
Adapted from remarks to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference, San Francisco, July 17, 2017. Since November, a kind of fatalistic cloud has settled over the campaign to reform the federal criminal justice system. With a law-and-order president, a tough-on-crime attorney general, and a Congress that has become even more polarized than it was in former President Barack Obama’s time, most reform advocates say any serious fixes to the federal system are unlikely. Reformers have been consoling...
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North Dakota’s Norway Experiment (motherjones.com)
Late one night in October 2015, North Dakota prisons chief Leann Bertsch met Karianne Jackson, one of her deputies, for a drink in a hotel bar in Oslo, Norway. They had just spent an exhausting day touring Halden, the maximum-security facility Time has dubbed " the world's most humane prison", yet neither of them could sleep. Halden is situated in a remote forest of birch, pine, and spruce with an understory of blueberry shrubs. The prison is surrounded by a single wall. It has no barbed...
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Officers rue the return of US 'war on drugs' [BBC.com]
Nearly half a century ago, Richard Nixon called for an "all-out offensive" on drug abuse. It was the opening salvo in America's longest running war. Successive presidents took up the call to arms. Arrest rates soared and mandatory minimum sentences sent young men - particularly black men - away for long stretches for low-level offences. Then as violent crime rates fell under George W Bush and prisons became clogged, prosecutions eased. The war on drugs fell out of fashion. Barack Obama...
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On Demand Webinar: A Trauma-Informed Approach for Criminal Justice-Involved Women
https://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1679197/2A6EFC02B0741BFF9497FF7CF19B475C A Trauma-Informed Approach for Criminal Justice-Involved Women With the increased awareness of the impact of trauma on w omen’s lives, criminal justice professionals are beginning to consider what this means in their specific settings. There is a growing evidence-base documenting the impact of child neglect and abuse (as well as other forms of trauma) on heath, mental health and behavior. While research and clinical...
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Paying (and Paying and Paying) a Debt to Society [TheAtlantic.com]
Last week, a federal judge in Brooklyn issued a ruling that sent a small shockwave through the criminal-justice world. Rather than sentencing a woman who had been convicted of smuggling more than a pound of cocaine into the United States to a few years in prison, Judge Frederic Block opted for extraordinary leniency and gave her probation. Block’s rationale was simple enough: The “collateral consequences” of being a convicted felon are punishment enough. Quoting experts on American...
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Pipeline to Prison May Start with Childhood Trauma
Leah Bartos - California Health Report - January 6, 2016 Pediatric patients giving their health histories at the Center for Youth Wellness, a health clinic in the impoverished Bayview Hunter’s Point area of San Francisco, are asked for more than the usual details about allergies and current prescriptions. Doctors there need a different kind of medical history: did their parents use drugs or have a mental illness? Were any family member in jail or prison? Have their parents divorced or...
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Police Face Dilemma Over When to Take Suicidal Officer's Gun [washingtonpost.com]
By Tom Hays, The Washington Post, October 24, 2019 A law enforcement think tank wants police departments dealing with a suicide crisis in their ranks to rethink how they make one of their toughest decisions: when to take guns away from troubled officers. The recommendation to review gun-removal policies is contained in a new report by the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum released in anticipation of a gathering of police chiefs this weekend in Chicago. It aims to help law...
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Presentation to Philadelphia Defenders Association
On October 17th I gave a presentation to 70 + attorneys from the Defenders Association. Several members of this group assisted me by sending me great information about ACEs and the criminal justice system for which I am grateful. The 3...
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Reducing Bench Warrants—By Text Message (Route Fifty)
By Kate Elizabeth Queram, October 8, 2019 for Route Fifty Minnesota is rolling out a statewide program that sends text messages and emails to remind defendants of their court appearances. A program that sends email and text reminders of upcoming court dates will expand statewide in Minnesota after a one-county pilot significantly reduced the number of bench warrants issued for people failing to appear. The eReminder program debuted two years ago in Hennepin County after officials there...
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Residents praise correctional re-entry program, as Gov. Bullock pays a visit [ktvq.com]
"The program focuses on treating people and educating them about trauma in their lives, and how that trauma has contributed to their addictive or criminal behavior.
Women must apply for the program, through their probation officer, and register a high score on the “adverse childhood experience” scale. Program officials said most women on the program scored at least eight out of 10 on the scale, making them a very high risk for behavioral and mental-health problems."
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Safeguarding Children of Arrested Parents
This model policy from the Bureau of Justice Assistance US Department of Justice and the International Association of Chiefs of Police focuses on police interaction with children who are impacted when a parent is arrested and law...
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San Joaquin County D.A. highlights role of women in criminal justice (lodinews.com)
San Joaquin County’s first female district attorney, Tori Verber Salazar, is among those speaking at a special Women in Blue event Tuesday. “An Evening with San Joaquin County’s Top Women in Crime, Law and Public Safety” is part of the TEP Talk lecture series. Increasingly, women are rising through the ranks in agencies that protect the public, create safer streets and prevent social injustices such as human trafficking and domestic violence, and are making a significant difference in our...
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Skene: Elayn Hunt inmates learn about impacts of childhood trauma, applying research to their own lives
Ryan Crotwell's memories of growing up in French Settlement are filled with mental snapshots of abuse at the hands of his alcoholic father. First he remembers kneeling on rice. Then the whippings started — "switches, belts, whatever was within reach." Crotwell, 34, recalls acting out in school and receiving brutal punishments at home. He was institutionalized for psychiatric treatment twice before his 10th birthday and diagnosed with various psychological conditions including attention...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
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...
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Spotlight on Restorative Justice (dailygood.org)
In America alone, more than 2 million people are incarcerated, millions more on probation or parole, and tens of millions more with a criminal record. What distinguishes us from them? What if there were no 'us' and 'them' when it came to criminal behavior? What if we all had, at one time or another, fallen short of a perfect, law-abiding life? Would that realization make us more open to rehabilitation and less inclined to imprisonment as the first recourse? With her non-profit, "We Are All...
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Ella Baker Truth and Reinvestment Justice Teams underway in 8 CA Counties
There are various forms of emergency preparedness for natural disasters. From an early age, one learns how to put out a fire, board up their home if a hurricane or tornado is coming, or drop under a desk if an earthquake hits—but low-income communities of color have little to no response to more frequent incidences of state violence in the streets and inside of jails. The Justice Teams for Truth and Reinvestment will be the local rapid response networks inside of eight different counties...
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Eric Holder Wants to End Bail as We Know It [CityLab.com]
Nationwide, a movement is growing to address what civil rights advocates have called a “wealth-based detention scheme”—the traditional bail system, which often holds arrestees who can’t scrape together the funds to post bail, even for minor offenses. About 450,000 Americans are held in jails each day because of inability to pay, according to the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and Equal Justice Under Law, a Washington-based civil rights group. Eric Holder, the former attorney...
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Federal Bill Would Reverse Perverse Incentives for Mass Incarceration [stopthedrugwar.org]
This article was produced in collaboration with AlterNet and first appeared here . Even as President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions descend into a law-and-order authoritarianism that views mass incarceration as a good thing, Democrats in Congress are moving to blunt such tendencies. A bill introduced last week in the House is a prime example. Last Wednesday, Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-CA) filed the Reverse Mass Incarceration Act of 2017 (HR 3845), which would use the power of the...
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Florida Woman Became Prison Pen Pals with the 13-Year-Old Who Shot Her in the Face (people.com)
Ian Manuel spent 26 years behind bars after he shot a woman in the face when he was just 13 years old, but he rarely felt alone. That’s because the woman he hurt, Debbie Baigrie , decided to forgive him — and more. Baigrie, then 28, was out with friends for the first time since giving birth to her second child, and she was walking back to her car to head home. Manuel, who had a history of minor run-ins with the law, was with a group of older men and was being peer-pressured into robbing...
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For Male Victims Of Child Sexual Abuse, Untreated Trauma Can Lead To Run-Ins With The Law (wpin.org)
Every week, Daniel Westbrooks walks through a metal detector and several locked doors to visit teens at Nashville’s Juvenile Detention Center. He weaves through the shuffle of boys in matching blue polo shirts and gray slip-on sneakers, joking and chatting. Westbrooks says he knows what it’s like to be locked up. He cycled in and out of juvenile detention, jails and prisons for nearly two decades. All the while, he was holding in painful secrets from his past. It’s easy for Westbrooks to...
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Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls
[This information is from The Crittenton Foundation website.] Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls by Francine T. Sherman and co-author Annie Balck. This report is the most comprehensive to date on girls in the juvenile justice system. The report is released through a partnership between The National Crittenton Foundation and The National Women’s Law Center and the authors. The full report, executive summary and comprehensive infographic...
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Grassroots Organizations Are Leading the Way on Criminal Justice Reform (psmag.com)
Across the country, jails are, all too often, used as holding pens for people who can't afford to pay bail. The Workhouse in St. Louis is no exception to this phenomenon. In July of 2017, almost all of the 836 inmates were awaiting trial, with only a handful having actually been convicted. Given that, historically, criminal justice reform has only rarely come from the city's prosecuting attorney , community members have taken matters into their own hands. These local-led efforts are part of...
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How Can America Reduce Mass Incarceration? [npr.org]
Julian Adler, co-author of Start Here, and Judge Victoria Pratt discuss alternatives to jail, including community service, social services and even personal essays. TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. My guest Judge Victoria Pratt is known for having done her best to avoid sending people to jail by offering alternatives such as community service, social services and even writing a personal essay. She served as chief judge of Newark's municipal court and presided over...
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How The Juvenile Justice System is Failing Girls [yr.media]
By Susie Armitage, YR Media, October 16, 2019 When Bree was booked into a juvenile detention center as a teen, they were subject to a strip search. “The staff had to take off my clothes and started patting me down, touching me, and making me feel uncomfortable,” said Bree, who asked that their last name not be used for privacy reasons. As a youth advocate with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, Bree recounted their experience of incarceration in a report. “I felt violated, like I...