Tagged With "california prisons"
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Trauma-informed training for Lancaster County corrections and parole officers seeks less use of force [LancasterOnline.com]
Police in a northwest Pennsylvania town responded about six years ago to a disturbance at a mental health center. The officers confronted an upset client. When he became combative, he was cuffed and spent five years in prison, said Audrey Smith, a psychologist in Meadville, Crawford County. Not long ago, the man returned to the center and became agitated. Back came the police. But this time, officers took a gentler approach. “They let the guy have a smoke,” Smith said, “and got him to an...
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Treat Historic Trauma to Rehabilitate Prisoners, Psychologists Say [belfasttelegraph.co.uk]
By Tess de la Mare, Belfast Telegraph Digital, January 2, 2020 The traumatic histories of offenders stuck in the prison system should be treated as a public health issue to break cycles of offending, psychologists working with inmates have said. But despite the often complex histories of violent offenders, in the UK’s squeezed prison system there are limited resources available for rehabilitation. Forensic psychologist Dr Naomi Murphy runs a five-year intensive psychotherapy programme for...
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Two Years After End Of Indefinite Solitary In CA, CDCR Violating Terms Of Settlement, And Inmates Experiencing Lasting Psychological Effects, Says Center For Constitutional Rights (witnessla.com)
In 2015, California settled Ashker v. Governor , a historic class-action lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of a group of Pelican Bay State prison inmates who had each spent at least a decade in isolation. The settlement resulted in an end to the use of indefinite solitary confinement in CA prisons. On Monday, CCR filed a motion accusing the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation of violating the rights of inmates freed from indefinite...
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Who’s Helping The 1.9 Million Women Released From Prisons And Jails Each Year? [witnessla.com]
By Wendy Sawyer, Witness LA, July 30, 2019 Given the dramatic growth of women’s incarceration in recent years, it’s concerning how little attention and how few resources have been directed to meeting the reentry needs of justice-involved women. After all, we know that women have different pathways to incarceration than men, and distinct needs, including the treatment of past trauma and substance use disorders, and more broadly, escaping poverty and meeting the needs of their children and...
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Why Jails Are Booming (citylab.com)
A new report from the Prison Policy Initiative shows that the populations of local jails are swelling for reasons that have little to do with crime. State prison rates have come down modestly overall, reports the Sentencing Project , and some states can boast double-digit decreases since the turn of the century. City and county jails, meanwhile, have been bloating. Roughly two-thirds of states have seen jail populations at least double since 1983 a dozen have seen jail populations triple.
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Will These Latest Prison Reforms Help Ex-Inmates Get Jobs? [PSMag.com]
The Department of Justice announced last week a bundle of prison reforms aimed at easing the transition for ex-prisoners back into the outside world. The measures include the creation of a school district within the federal prison network, reforming halfway houses, and providing funds to ensure that every former inmate is issued a state ID upon re-entering society at large. If that last reform seems surprising, it shouldn’t be: Most people leaving prisons don’t have state identification,...
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Yoga Behind Bars has offered yoga classes to prisoners for a while. Now it’s teaching inmates at the women’s prison near Gig Harbor how to lead classes themselves. (seattletimes.com)
“The people who know best what tools are needed to serve incarcerated people are those who are incarcerated themselves,” says Program Director Jess Frank. “Not only will it give them incredible tools while they’re incarcerated, it’s also a way for them to have … a part-time job” upon release. But teaching yoga in prisons requires special skills, and “trauma-informed” teaching is a central philosophy of the program. The curriculum for the day I attended included sessions on the impact of...
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Yoga helping inmates transcend jail cells [KEYT - Santa Barbara]
An ancient spiritual practice is helping rehabilitate men and women at the Santa Barbara County Jail. Prison Yoga Santa Barbara (PYSB) invites inmates to practice yoga, meditation and mindfulness during incarceration at no cost to taxpayers. Ginny Kuhn is the force behind the non-profit staffed by volunteers. The program is modeled after The Prison Yoga Project which was started yogi James Fox at California’s San Quentin State Prison 15 years ago. Kuhn's motto for PYSB is 'Working Freedom...
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Young Adult Court: Ending Mass Incarceration with Trauma Informed Criminal Justice
The last two decades have given rise to a body of research establishing that young adults are fundamentally different from both juveniles and older adults in how they process information and make decisions. The prefrontal cortex of the brain — responsible for our cognitive processing and impulse control — does not fully develop until the early to mid-20s. At the same time that young adults are going through this critical developmental phase, many find themselves facing adulthood without...
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Re: A Vision of Healing, and Hope for Formerly Incarcerated Women (nationswell.com)
When the American Arbitration Association's Rochester, NY office of the National Center for Dispute Settlement, began assembling a 'Nationwide Prison Dispute Mediation Team' [shortly after/in response to, the Attica 'Rebellion'] including former guards and former prisoners on the team, we were quite fortunate to have a woman who was a 'former prisoner' on the team, ....
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Re: A Vision of Healing, and Hope for Formerly Incarcerated Women (nationswell.com)
Hi, Robert: Please share if there are any vetted documents we could cross-post on ACEs Connection and lift up your Nationwide Prison Dispute Mediation Team model. Please know it would be terrific to shine a light on your model for others in our nation/world to learn from and be inspired by.
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Re: Policy
Hi Margaret, I'm assuming you're looking for Trauma-Informed policies as it relates to Criminal Justice. There have been some Crim. Jus. posts in the ACEsConnection.com/Blog, that I've seen,which may have links in the Blog to the story post, such as the Trauma-Informed programming in the Hawaii Women's Prison. The California [Men's] Honor Prison in Los Angeles utilized Trauma-Informed programming, while it was operational. I don't know if it still is. Prisoners there, voluntarily renounce...
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Re: 7.25+
Thank you Zachary, Yes, I too saw this video posted on facebook last week. As a substitute teacher (nowhere near retired), I see my ability to use trauma informed practices is directly enhanced by my learning to address White Supremacy Culture. I'm happy my state education association recently publicly named that. I'm learning that all the many people who've been directly impacted by incarceration have so many practical solutions! Those of us nearer the decision-making (traditionally-- with...
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Re: Without access to credit, ex-cons may return to lives of crime [thehill.com]
I too am an ex-offender and when I got out of prison...I cleaned up my credit, bought a home, started a non-profit, finished school, received a Masters and 2 State of WA, Dept of Health licenses to provide Therapist guidance in Mental Health & Addiction. I also started this journey after I swallowed a 1/4 ounce of crack cocaine and called on God to save me, after 9 days out of Prison. Here is a Link to the story they wrote about me: https://www.seattlepi.com/loca...n-s-list-1206233.php I...
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Re: Without access to credit, ex-cons may return to lives of crime [thehill.com]
Alfred, thank you for sharing a glimpse into your life. You have so much to teach all of us! Please consider sharing parts of your story on our home page. Our hope is that members of ACEs Connection feel safe and supported enough to share how the adverse childhood experiences they experienced impacts or impacted their life. Your road to recovery is a riveting story just waiting to be shared! No pressure at all, just a nudge. Karen
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Re: How to Build a Better Jail (nationswell.com)
I had the pleasure some years ago, of working with an architect who had previously been on the staff of the National Clearinghouse on Criminal Justice Planning and Architecture, at the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana, which was contracted by the Justice Department to develop National Standards for new prison/jail construction and programming. With the subsequent advent of 'trauma-informed care' and our better understanding of the role of ACEs, I wondered what changes might be...
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Re: Putting Their Prison Pasts Behind Them (nationswell.com)
Agree completely! Prison is not rehabilitating and more incarceration DID NOT equal less crime over the past 20 years. States are looking for innovative ways and resources for improving reentry success rates. Since reading this, I already forwarded the article to one of our Assistant Commissioners of state corrections.
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Re: Putting Their Prison Pasts Behind Them (nationswell.com)
That's fantastic, Becky! Thank you for forwarding to one of the Assistant Commissioners of state corrections! Please consider inviting them to join our ACEs in Criminal Justice community on ACEs Connection. With so many solutions shared in many communities and criminal justice systems (such as, the most humane prison in our world - Norway prison system ), learning from so many innovative approaches, and community-driven solutions, the site would also benefit profoundly from the Assistant...
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Re: Putting Their Prison Pasts Behind Them (nationswell.com)
While awaiting 'Job Offer Approval', I received an unexpected visit from a 'few folks-one of whom was the State Program director for VISTA [domestic 'Peace Corps']--who informed me that in spite of 'my incarceration', I'd passed an FBI/NCIC Record Check (I'd been 'Adjudicated' a 'Youthful Offender', supposedly 'No Criminal Record') and he'd flown up to to the prison from N.Y. City to let me know that I could 'serve my country' as a VISTA Volunteer-with the agency the other two 'visitors'...
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Re: “BECOMING MS. BURTON: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women” by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn
As a former "Adjudicated Youthful Offender", I'd been assured I had no "Criminal Record"--in spite of 'seeing the inside of Attica' as a 'registered guest' in late 1970/ early 1971, before another 'youthful offender' I'd known and respected, was killed. On the 40th anniversary of that Attica event, the SUNY-Buffalo Law School hosted an anniversary conference... and a New Hampshire Historian, Teresa Lynch, did a presentation there on the Telephone transcripts of then President Richard Nixon's...
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Re: California's 'ban the box' law to help ex-felons find jobs after release (vcstar.com)
When I first wrote "The Prisoner's Employment Assistance Brochure for N.Y.S."-which listed organizations in each N.Y. county that help prisoners get jobs to be eligible for 'employed-parole', in the early 1970's, I wasn't expecting my fellow inmates at the Attica Prison Print Shop to want to reprint it, but after they did that, the warden of Comstock Prison who saw the reprinted version from Attica, asked me for permission to reprint it there at Comstock....
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Re: Pipeline to Prison May Start with Childhood Trauma
Hi Emily, Thank you for your critically imperative post. So important that we (society) are well informed and engaged in transforming our systems to focus on bringing hope and healing to whom we serve cross-sector in a socio-ecological model, please find a link to an exemplary School to Prison Pipeline prezi with the glaring statistics of the reality and just as importantly, all the solutions on transforming this punitive pipeline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmI5nROpbqc if...
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Lifelines: How Yoga is Helping Women at N.H. State Prison Manage Trauma During COVID-19 [nhpr.org]
By ALEX MCOWEN & PETER BIELLO • MAY 7, 2020, NHPR.org Because of COVID-19, the New Hampshire Department of Corrections suspended all visits and volunteer services at the state’s prisons on March 16, more than 7 weeks ago. Nicole Belonga has been serving time at the New Hampshire State Prison for women in Concord for 11 years. She says these efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus have cut off almost all contact with the outside world, making stressful prison life even more so.
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Will the Coronavirus Make Us Rethink Mass Incarceration? (newyorker.com)
For decades, community groups have pointed out the social costs of mass incarceration: its failure to address the root causes of addiction and violence; its steep fiscal price tag; its deepening of racial inequalities. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed another danger of the system: its public-health risks. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union worked with epidemiologists and statisticians to show that, without protective measures in jails and prisons, including rapid reductions in...
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"How to talk policy and influence people": a Law and Justice interview with Fritzi Horstman
In this "How to talk policy and influence people" interview with Fritzi Horstman, founder and CEO of the Compassion Prison Project (see http://compassionprisonproject.org/), we discuss childhood trauma, the significance of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) science, offending behaviour, addiction, violence and the fact that the men and women who end up in prisons are often among the most traumatized members of any society. We talk about the power of the "Step Inside the Circle"...
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Mass Decarceration, COVID-19, and Justice in America [ssir.org]
(Free to be collage by Ekua Holmes/www.ekuaholmes.com) By Deanna Van Buren & F. Javier Torres-Campos, Stanford Social Innovation Review, June 9, 2020 With the highest incarceration rate in the world, US prisons and jails are drivers for the catastrophic outbreak of COVID-19. Because of dense living conditions, limited soap and hand sanitizer, poor access to quality healthcare, and an increasingly elderly population, the outbreaks we’ve seen so far may be just the beginning. It’s no...
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Proposition 47 and Racial Disparities in California [ppic.org]
From Public Policy Institute of California, June 16, 2020 About the Program While the COVID-19 pandemic has required changes to law enforcement and correctional policies, widespread protests over the police-involved deaths of African Americans have intensified concern about racial and ethnic disparities in our criminal justice system. In recent years, California has implemented significant reforms that, while not motivated by racial disparities, are narrowing them. PPIC researcher Brandon...
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California jail population plummets during the pandemic. Could this lead to long-term change? [sacbee.com]
By Jason Pohl, The Sacramento Bee, May 27, 2020 California’s long history of altering its criminal justice system — from requiring life in prison for third-strike offenders to reducing the punishment for hundreds of crimes — is having another moment that could dramatically alter how the state locks people up. In a seismic, almost overnight shift, California has jailed 21,700 fewer people — nearly one-third of its daily population — in county lockups since the new coronavirus hit the state.
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New episode of Transforming Trauma! Compassion Prison Project: Bringing Trauma-informed Care into the Prison System with Fritzi Horstman
Transforming Trauma Episode 017: Compassion Prison Project: Bringing Trauma-informed Care into the Prison System with Fritzi Horstman In this episode of Transforming Trauma, our host Sarah Buino is joined by Fritzi Horstman, Founder and Executive Director of the Compassion Prison Project . Through her work, Fritzi aims to bring trauma-informed care to a population in high need of trauma healing and not likely to receive it: men and women in prison. Sarah and Fritzi discuss Adverse Childhood...
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Newsom to release 8,000 prisoners in California by August amid coronavirus outbreaks [sfchronicle.com]
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...
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California reaches milestone with ACEs initiatives pulsing in all 58 counties. Next: All CA cities.
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...
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HEALING TRAUMA: HARPUR ALUM, INTERNS WORK TO STOP THE PIPELINE BETWEEN PRISON AND SCHOOL (binghamton.edu)
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...
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Pandemic slows legal voting from California jails (calmatters.org)
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...
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PROP 17: Restores Right to Vote after Completion of Prison Term. Legislative Constitutional Amendment (votersguide.sos.ca.gov)
Yesterday, millions of CA voters approved Proposition 17, restoring the right to vote to over 50,000 Californians who have completed their prison terms. Together, we have freed the vote for our community members on parole! We know how important the voices of these citizens are and we’re grateful that Californians across this state voted to include them in our democracy. Our democracy now includes more of US! For more information, visit, votersguide.sos.ca.gov by clicking HERE.
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FREE Event: Trauma-Informed Correctional Design with Boston Architectural College!
Join us on December 8th for this discussion on Transforming Correctional Design for Justice Reform! Work in corrections or youth justice? Engaged in the social justice movement? Are you a designer or architect? This is one talk you can't afford to miss! Christine Cowart, of Cowart Trauma Informed Partnership will join Janet Roche, faculty member and Alumni Council member of Boston Architectural College (BAC), in alive-broadcast event, to discuss the implications of trauma-informed principles...
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UC to Launch Its First Bachelor's Program in Prison [kqed.org]
By Vanessa Rancano, KQED, December 15, 2020 UC Irvine and the state prison system have reached a deal to create the first University of California bachelor’s degree program behind bars. Since California opened the door for community colleges to teach in prisons in 2014, some 2,000 incarcerated men and women across the state have earned associate degrees, said Brant Choate, director of rehabilitative programs for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. But opportunities...
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Fritzi Horstman of, Compassion Prison Project, Interviews Dr. Vince Felitti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-VAUnGV1Vs ( Editor's note: This interview is close to 1 1/2 hours. YouTube provides a timeline of the topics covered if you click on "More" in the description.)
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Where Incarceration Isn’t the Answer (yesmagazine.org)
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...
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Oregon law to decriminalize all drugs goes into effect, offering addicts rehab instead of prison (msn.com)
In prison six years later, Gullickson was contemplating joining an intensive recovery program when a “striking, magnetic gorgeous Black woman walked in the room, held up a mug shot and started talking about being in the very chairs where we were sitting,” Gullickson remembers. There was life on the other side of addiction and prison, the woman said. But you have to fight for it. Gullickson believed her. “I remember thinking, I may not be able to do all that, be what she was, but maybe I...
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Now Available Online! Transforming Correctional Design for Justice Reform!
Did you miss our talk on Transforming Correctional Design for Justice Reform? Based in the irrefutable facts of the biological effects of trauma, this talk is now available for you to stream!
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NDRN Applauds Ending Contracts with Private Prison Companies
NDRN Applauds Ending Contracts with Private Prison Companies - https://www.ndrn.org/resource/ndrn-applauds-ending-contracts-with-private-prison-companies/ On Tuesday, January 26, 2021, the Biden Administration announced that the Department of Justice will not renew any existing contracts for private prison operators in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). There are currently 12 privately-run prisons in the BOP, several of which had already been shut down or are pending transfer to government...
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uncuffed.org (Radio Station within San Quentin and Solano Prisons in California)
KALW , an NPR member station in San Francisco, has led classes in audio production inside San Quentin State Prison since 2012, and Solano Prison since 2018. Since then, KALW has aired over 80 stories produced inside the walls. Radio producers from KALW visit the prisons to teach classes in audio production, and to help edit the stories. Audio engineers at KALW do some final polishing before it goes out to the world. KALW’s classes in prisons are supported by the California Arts Council's...
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Prison Food
Community manager, Adrienne Markworth was interviewed for this piece (but not quoted) on the costs of poor quality food in prisons and how farm to table practices can help improve outcomes for the incarcerated and their families. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/opinion/prison-food-farming-health.html?searchResultPosition=4
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After rampant COVID cases and mass vaccines, is California’s prison system nearing ‘herd immunity’? (eastbaytimes.com)
A precipitous decline of coronavirus cases in state prisons has transformed California’s correctional system from a cautionary tale of mass incarceration in the time of a plague to something more unexpected: an intensely monitored field study that could help scientists develop strategies to defeat the pandemic outside prison walls. Highly effective vaccines distributed in the prisons combined with the lack of reinfections among inmates and staff previously diagnosed with COVID-19 appear to...
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A Farm in North Carolina Offers a Women's Reentry Program Unlike Any Other [dailyyonder.com]
By Olivia Weeks, The Daily Yonder, March 11, 2021 In recent decades, the number of women incarcerated in North Carolina has skyrocketed. In 2017, the state’s female prison population totaled 2,634, almost six times its 1978 number. In the early aughts, programming for women reentering society lagged behind growing incarceration rates, said Benevolence Farm Executive Director Kristen Powers in a phone interview. In 2008, social worker and Benevolence Farm founder Tanya Jisa put together a...
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Abolitionist Politics: The Case for a World without Prisons (nonprofitquarterly.org)
What is often called police and prison reform does not and has never worked for Black people. Measures to stem police violence and other acts of harm toward Black people, like hiring more Black police officers, community policing, modernized surveillance techniques, placing police outposts in under-serviced and marginalized neighborhoods, and starting sports camps run by police, among other programs, fail by their very nature because each is meant to further cement the position policing...
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Making Space for Restorative Justice (yesmagazine.org)
Over the past few years, statistics on how the U.S. justice system is failing its citizens have come fast and hard. With more than 2 million people detained in jails and prisons, we have the highest rate of incarceration in the world—a rate that’s increased 500% in the past five decades Possibly as many as 482,000 people currently held in local jails are there simply because they’re too poor to pay bail; they haven’t been convicted of a crime. African Americans are three times more likely to...
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ROBERT PRICE: The woman once known as W76337 is on a mission [bakersfield.com]
By Robert Price, Bakersfield.com, March 27, 2021 You might say Shawanna Vaughn got off to a bad start. Born in a California state women’s rehabilitation prison to a drug-addicted mother and assigned to the state foster care system as a toddler, her destiny must have seemed preordained. Books with first chapters like hers usually don’t end well. For a time, the arc of her young life had a hopeful trajectory. Her foster care experience in Bakersfield was fulfilling and positive, thanks mostly...
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Female imprisonment rates are increasing. So, too, are the number of children with incarcerated parents [spectrumlocalnews.com]
By Sabra Ayres, Spectrum News 1, April 12, 2021 When Nadia Kerr joined a program for incarcerated mothers a year into her 20-year prison sentence, she hoped it would help her maintain some kind of relationship with her two daughters while she did her time. At first, the visitations with her daughters, organized by Girls Embracing Mothers, a Dallas-based nonprofit, kept Kerr out of trouble in the Hilltop Unit Prison for Women in Gatesville, Texas. The visits allowed Kerr to hug and to talk...
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Prison Yoga Project Goes Behind Bars to Help Inmates Heal Their Trauma (Inside Edition)
By Inside Edition staff, February 8, 2020 Once a week, yoga teacher Chanda Williams walks through the gates at San Quentin Prison with her yoga mat under her arm to teach a class. She’s an instructor with the Prison Yoga Project, a non-profit organization that brings the ancient practice behind the walls of correctional facilities across the world to help inmates heal their trauma. Williams says it’s her way of trying to help break the cycle of incarceration many prisoners find themselves...