August 2018

From 2000 to 2016, the United States’ use of controversial for-profit prisons to lock up inmates increased by nearly half, according to a new report by The Sentencing Project called “ Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration .” During a similar period, between 2002 and 2017, the number of immigrant detainees in private prisons soared 442 percent. In 2016, there were 128,063 prisoners—or 8.5 percent of the state and federal prison populations—housed in private prisons, an increase of 47 percent...

Editor's note on Aug. 8, 2018: This piece has been substantially updated from a version published in 2014. A solemn little boy with a bowl haircut is telling Mr. Rogers that his pet got hit by a car. More precisely, he's confiding this to Daniel Striped Tiger, the hand puppet that, Rogers' wife, Joanne, says, "pretty much was Fred." "That's scary," says Daniel/Fred. He asks for a hug. The boy hugs the tiger. Not a dry eye in the house. That scene is from Won't You Be My Neighbor, the hit...

WASHINGTON — The toughest issue facing advocates working to abolish youth prisons may be what replaces them. It’s both an obstacle to change and a practical question that follows success. “Pushing for the closure of youth prisons is often the radical idea,” said Hernán Carvente Martinez, national youth partnership strategist at Youth First Initiative . “The question you get is ‘You want to shut it down and replace it with what?’ “Do we build something smaller?” he asked. “That is the part...

It was Bea Duncan who answered the phone at 2 a.m. on a January morning. Her son Jeff had been caught using drugs in a New Hampshire sober home and was being kicked out. Bea and her husband, Doug, drove north that night nine years ago to pick him up. On the ride back home, to Natick, Mass., the parents delivered an ultimatum: Jeff had to go back to rehab, or leave home. Jeff chose the latter, Bea said. She remembers a lot of yelling, cursing and tears as they stopped the car, in the dead of...

Today I’m going to talk about one of the most important concepts on the road to healing for a trauma survivor: consistency. Why is it so important? Many who have endured trauma experienced it during childhood, where they faced overwhelming neglect or danger they couldn’t escape. This could be due to family members who didn’t set clear, safe boundaries or parents or adults who interacted with a child inappropriately. It could be due to a parent’s use of alcohol or drugs, an abusive parent, or...

Dr. Vincent Felitti is shown with Dr. Mimi Graham, who spearheaded the event (center) Dr. Celeste Phillips, Florida's Surgeon General, and Kelly Romanoff, Director of the Barancik Foundation, which underwrote expenses for the Think Tank and printing of the booklet, Creating a Trauma Informed State - A Showcase of Florida's Cutting Edge Trauma Initiatives , for each attendee. Many of the more than 560 leaders from around Florida who attended Monday’s Trauma Informed Florida Think Tank – 350...

What happens when all people who spend time in a park—including people without homes—have equal say in how it is renovated? Or when the dignity of those living on the street is considered in urban design, down to the features of city trash cans? Creating inclusive, healthy places demonstrates that compassion is an undeniable community value. These examples are drawn from my participation in a study group during a visit to Copenhagen last summer. For the past year, I’ve served as a sounding...

Here are three questions that USC Rossier professor, Ron Avi Astor, suggest schools ask themselves about student safety. Secondly, this educator guide, created by USC Rossier's ME in school counseling online program, discusses how school staff can balance school security and school climate. These were created in a response to the Parkland shooting to spark conversations around school safety and gun violence prevention in schools. You can read more HERE .

Arne Duncan, the former education secretary under President Barack Obama, has always been more candid than others who’ve served in that role. He’s often used his platform to talk about what he sees as the persistent socioeconomic and racial disparities in access to quality schools. His new book, How Schools Work: An Inside Account of Failure and Success From One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of Education, further cements that reputation. How Schools Work’s first chapter is...

As teachers, I think it is a safe assumption that we all want what is best for our students and families. What we know is that not all students are successful in school, even life. Some students make us so frustrated, we can hardly stand them. We want them to succeed, why don’t they want to succeed, too? Fortunately, we are learning much about how stressors early in life and throughout development can change the way a person’s brain forms, which can significantly change the way she interacts...

Every family enjoys its stories . Several years ago, mine had its “Home Alone” moment. My brother, his wife and their two children were visiting my parents in New Jersey. They agreed to head out to dinner – in two cars – to a restaurant about 45 minutes away. When everyone arrived at the restaurant, they all jokingly asked where one of my nephews was, assuming he was in the other car. Only after a few long seconds passed did they realize that they had accidentally left him behind! My nephew...

Engaging resistant children and parents in trauma treatment is difficult at best. Traditionally, engagement and rapport building begins in the first face-to-face session. But more often than not it’s a harsh start-up. Join us for a free webinar to learn techniques to quickly put parents at ease and excited to attend treatment.