Skip to main content

Blog

How to Survive Solitary Confinement [Nautil.us]

With a sigh, Johnny Perez rises from his plastic chair, unfolds his lanky frame and extends his wingspan until the tips of his middle fingers graze the walls. “It was from here to here,” he says. “I know because I used to do this all the time.” Until recently, these measurements—10 feet by 6 feet—fit his entire life. Two years ago, Perez was released on parole after serving 13 years at Rikers Island penitentiary and prisons in upstate New York, three of...

James Ridgeway’s Solitary Reporting [NewYorker.com]

Prison officials rarely allow journalists to walk through their prisons, and even rarer is the warden who lets a reporter into his solitary-confinement unit. The voices of the men and women confined inside these prisons-within-a-prison are often the last ones that any prison administrator wants outsiders to hear. But the potential power of these prisoners’ stories to draw public attention—and propel politicians to act—was on display earlier this week, when President Obama...

Chicago Teens And Combat Veterans Join Forces To Process Trauma [NPR.org]

If you took a map of Chicago and put down a tack for each person shot last year, you'd need nearly 3,000 tacks. Of those, 101 would be clustered in the neighborhood of East Garfield Park. That's where 15-year-old Jim Courtney-Clarks lives. "To be honest, I really don't like it," Courtney-Clarks says. "Every time you look up somebody else is getting killed, and I never know if it's me or somebody I am really close to." For kids in some Chicago neighborhoods, walking up and down the same...

Racial Disparities in Child Adversity in the U.S. [AJPMOnline.org]

Introduction Childhood adversity is an under-addressed dimension of primary prevention of disease in children and adults. Evidence shows racial/ethnic and socioeconomic patterning of childhood adversity in the U.S., yet data on the interaction of race/ethnicity and SES for exposure risk is limited, particularly with consideration of immigration history. This study examined racial/ethnic differences in nine adversities among children (from birth to age 17 years) in the National Survey of...

Investing in Tomorrow: Helping Families Build Savings and Assets [AECF.org]

For a low-income family, a day’s wages might only fulfill today’s basic needs: food, clothing and housing that may be temporary. But some families’ daily struggle to support themselves leaves nothing for tomorrow. To help children realize their full potential, families need savings and assets, the currency of the future. Assets — emergency savings, a college fund, homeownership — provide the financial stability a family needs to create a quilt of resources that...

Success Among ACE Victims is Not What it Seems

Many ACE survivors are incredibly accomplished. I speak regularly to Ph.Ds and professionals who have more than 7 ACEs that they can identify. Yet they have achieved through education and work. But on occasion I am reminded about the price we pay for not addressing the ACEs, and instead praising those who are succeeding for being “resilient” and “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.” Carol Redding is one such example to go along with another example recently...

Conspiracies of Silence

A story about the punishment of a priest who turned in a fellow priest with a record of pedophilia was revealed in the press recently. [ LINK HERE ] Father John Gallagher, serving in Palm Beach, FL, reported the actions of a fellow priest to the local priest. Apparently, church leadership wanted him to keep silent about the abuse and put the priest back on a plane to his home country, India. For his contrary actions, Father Gallagher said that he had been “frozen” out of the...

Youth now have fighting chance at rehabilitation [YouthToday.com]

Ever send your kid to his room to “think about what he’s done” in order to give him time to be alone to reflect, feel remorseful and come out to hug you and tell you he’s sorry and it won’t happen again? Can you recall the aftermath when he willingly accepted your hug of approval — or better yet when he came to you for much-needed comfort following a punishment? Maybe it doesn’t turn out that storybook perfect, but it works and has for centuries. So...

Congress Moves To Tackle Heroin, Prescription Drug Epidemic [NPR.org]

What is being done to fight heroin and prescription drug abuse in hard-hit states like New Hampshire? What can Congress do to help? Lawmakers tackle the issue. ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: The abuse of heroin and prescription drugs is an issue that's not only getting the attention of politicians who are campaigning. It's also led to a rare moment of bipartisan cohesion in Congress. NPR's Ailsa Chang reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee has zeroed in on how lawmakers might be able to respond.

The Medicaid Coverage Gap Persists [PSMag.com]

First, the good news: The Affordable Care Act has resulted in a significant increase in the percentage of Americans with health insurance. Last September, the Department of Health and Human Services published a new analysis estimating that 17.6 million previously uninsured people had gained health insurance due to various provisions of the ACA. Similarly, a  paper published last summer in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the ACA's first two open enrollment...

A Ruling Against Doing Adult Time for Juvenile Crimes [PSMag.com]

In 1963, 17-year-old Henry Montgomery shot and killed a police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Montgomery was found guilty, and automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole, where he has spent the last five decades of his life. Then, in 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that life without parole for juvenile offenders is akin to cruel and unusual punishment, and, as such, violates the Eighth Amendment. But for Montgomery and the thousands of other inmates...

Shelf Help: 'The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome' [PSMag.com]

Historically, the relationship between gene science and racial justice has been uneasy at best. Too often, geneticists—or pundits brandishing their findings—have propagated bogus theories of racial superiority. And yet, in the current millennium, black Americans have embraced genetic testing with enthusiasm. The slave trade ripped Africans from their home tribes; once in America, black families were split apart as members were bought and sold—transactions for which...

Therapy that uses storytelling may be key to fighting trauma from bullying, family violence among teenagers [Buffalo.edu]

For teenagers from low-income households, trauma from bullying, parental abuse and dating violence often goes untreated, since many families can’t afford traditional therapy. In search of a less expensive, yet effective, form of therapy, a new study led by University at Buffalo behavioral health researcher Ellen Volpe will investigate the effectiveness of narrative exposure therapy (NET) at treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and substance abuse among adolescents who have...

A Comic Book for Refugee Children [DailyGood.org]

On August 3rd last year, 12-year-old Maher fled from his village to the Sinjar mountainside where he and tens of thousands of others sought refuge from ISIS attackers who swept up from the south to invade the region. Every person from Sinjar remembers the date, as men, women and children from each village and town in the area packed what they could carry on their backs and left their homes travelling by car or by foot to find safety. Stranded on the mountain, surrounded on all sides by ISIS...

5 of the most powerful moments from Idris Elba's speech on diversity in the media. [UpWorthy.com]

Earlier this week, actor Idris Elba addressed the U.K.'s Parliament, delivering a powerful speech about diversity. Maybe you know him from his role as Detective John Luther on BBC's "Luther"? Maybe you saw his powerful performance in "Beasts of No Nation"? Maybe as Stringer Bell on "The Wire"? Or maybe you just know him as that really good-looking guy who was rumored to be taking over as James Bond a while back. [For more of this story go...

Post
Copyright © 2023, PACEsConnection. All rights reserved.
×
×
×
×