Tagged With "trauma and crime"
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"5 myths about putting people in prison and what actually works." (upworthy.com)
When people commit crimes, we send them away from their families and communities to become better by locking them in cells. That idea really starts to fall apart when you consider the number of people who abuse drugs , people with mental illness, and people of color in the prison system. Sometimes society's most egregious myths are right in front of our faces. Thankfully, as a society, starting to take a second look at the parts of our criminal justice system, especially prisons, that might...
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7 Ways to Help a Child Deal with Traumatic Stress
Traumatic stress feels awful. Thankfully, there are small things we can all do to help relax a hyperaroused nervous system.
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A college education in prison opens path to freedom (calmatters.org)
Cal State LA’s Prison Graduation Initiative is the state’s only public bachelor’s degree program sending professors to teach behind bars. College programs like it were once far more common, and today advocates are hopeful the political winds have shifted enough to bring public dollars back to prison education. Federal legislation that would make grant aid available has bipartisan support, and in California, a bill to open the state’s financial aid program to incarcerated students is headed...
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A Mass Incarceration Mystery [themarshallproject.org]
One of the most damning features of the U.S. criminal justice system is its vast racial inequity. Black people in this country are imprisoned at more than 5 times the rate of whites; one in 10 black children has a parent behind bars, compared with about one in 60 white kids, according to the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality. The crisis has persisted for so long that it has nearly become an accepted norm. So it may come as a surprise to learn that for the last 15 years, racial...
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A Modern-Day Harriet Tubman (nytimes.com)
She was 4 years old when her aunt’s boyfriend began to abuse her sexually. Then at 14, she had a baby girl, the result of a gang rape. Soon she fell under the control of a violent pimp and began cycling through jails, prisons, addiction and crime for more than 20 years. Yet today, Susan Burton is a national treasure. She leads a nonprofit helping people escape poverty and start over after prison, she’s a powerful advocate for providing drug treatment and ending mass incarceration — and her...
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A New Justice Challenge for Trump: Mental Health & Drugs [TheCrimeReport.org]
It’s a common lament of the nation’s police officers and prison wardens alike: A large proportion of the crime suspects and inmates they find themselves dealing with suffer from mental illness, substance-abuse issues, or both. Today, a coalition of organizations spanning justice and health interests are launching a new campaign to focus on what they call “behavioral health issues in the criminal justice system.” At a meeting in Washington, D.C., the groups are issuing what they termed...
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A Trauma-informed, Resiliency-based Community of Practice for Prison Educators
An article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review titled " How Philanthropy Can Create Public Systems Change " describes how Renewing Communities, a five-year, multifunder initiative aimed increasing education of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students by California’s public colleges and universities, partnered with the NYU McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research in order to address educator burnout through a trauma-informed and resiliency-based community of practice.
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Action steps using ACEs and trauma-informed care: a resilience model (link.springer.com)
The prison system is an example of the ways undigested trauma from early childhood experiences can join with the conditions of harshness and violence in many of our U.S. prisons and contribute to reinforcing a cycle of reactivity in both Correction Officers and prisoners. The correctional system is rife with challenges to the health and well being of Correction Officers (COs) as well as prisoners. Suicide rates of COs are more than double that of police officers as well as for the national...
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At Least 61,000 Nationwide Are in Prison for Minor Parole Violations [TheMarshallProject.org]
Among the millions of people incarcerated in the United States, a significant portion have long been thought to be parole violators, those who were returned to prison not for committing a crime but for failing to follow rules: missing an appointment with a parole officer, failing a urine test, or staying out past curfew. But their actual number has been elusive, in part because they are held for relatively short stints, from a few months to a year, not long enough for record keepers to get a...
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Bail or Jail? Tool Used by San Francisco Courts Shows Promising Results (kqed.org)
Last year, San Francisco began using an algorithm to assess whether someone accused of a crime and awaiting trial is safe to be let out of jail. Fifteen months later, prosecutors say the risk assessment tool appears to be working: According to information provided to KQED by the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, just 6 percent of defendants who were released from jail based on the “public safety assessment,” or PSA, over those 15 months committed a new crime; 20 percent failed to...
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Bill On Governor’s Desk Aims To Reduce Childhood Trauma By Diverting Parents Into Treatment, Instead Of Prison [witnessla.com]
By Taylor Walker, Witness LA, September 13, 2019 An estimated 10 million US children have parents who are currently locked up, or who have previously been incarcerated. A bill currently on Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk, SB 394, seeks to reduce the number of parents and children separated by incarceration by boosting diversion. Children arguably suffer the worst consequences of mass incarceration. In 2014, a UC Irvine study found that having a parent behind bars can be more damaging to a kid’s...
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Bill would require more mental health screening for some state convicts (pressdemocrat.com)
A state legislative bill that would require judges in certain cases to consider a defendant’s mental health during sentencing was approved by the Legislature this week and is headed for Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. The bill, AB 154, would require judges to make a recommendation to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that a convicted felon receive a mental health evaluation if mental illness played a role in the crime. North Coast Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael,...
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Bryan Stevenson Wants the U.S. to Face Its History [nytimes.com]
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...
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CA Could Reduce Its Prison Population By 30,000, Says Report (witnessla.com)
A new report outlines strategies the state of California could employ that would reduce its prison and jail populations by 30,000 and save approximately $1.5 billion in prison spending. In 2016, there were over 200,000 people were locked in California’s prisons and jails. According to the report, lowering the incarcerated population by 30,000—by reducing the length of prison time for the majority of inmates by 20 percent—would make it possible for the state to close five prisons. The report,...
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California Ramps Up College Education Behind Bars (capitalandmain.com)
Prisons have been called universities of crime. What if they became, instead, actual universities? There is plenty of evidence to support bringing higher education classes into prisons. Nearly all inmates will eventually be released, and a comprehensive 2013 RAND Corporation study found that inmates who participated in educational programs lowered their chances of recidivating by 43 percent. The RAND study also found that each dollar invested in correctional education returns between four...
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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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Can Restorative Justice Help Prisoners to Heal? (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
The Insight Prison Project helps incarcerated men learn new emotional skills in order to succeed in and out of prison. But it can also help crime survivors. A dozen men sit in a circle. Some are old and some are young. A facilitator asks each one to check in with the group about how they are feeling emotionally, physically, or spiritually. Sometimes a man tears up with emotion as he talks. The others listen, offering nods of support or asking clarifying questions. It sounds like a typical...
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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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Crime and Punishment in America
This book--a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize--is for readers interested in the criminal justice system and how poverty, abuse, and neglect early in life shape our future citizens and can predict, in part, whether or not they will become the perpetrators of violent crime. According to author Elliott Currie, to prevent violent crime and create a more peaceful society, the first priority is to address the roots of violence and invest resources in the prevention of child abuse and neglect. He...
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Crime declines despite drop in imprisonment (ocregister.com)
As national imprisonment rates continue to fall, so too does crime, according to data collected by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Between 2010 and 2015, the national imprisonment rate declined 8.4 percent while property and violent crime rates fell a combined 14.6 percent. During this time period, 31 states saw reductions in both crime and imprisonment. This includes California, which experienced a sharp 25.2 percent reduction in imprisonment rates along with a 1.1 percent reduction in property...
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Crime once plagued San Joaquin County, but now its jail has empty beds. Here’s what it did right (latimes.com)
While overall crime in California increased slightly after 2011, San Joaquin County’s dropped 20% — and hit a decades-old low last year. The county’s jail, which had been under court-ordered monitoring because of dangerous overcrowding, now has empty beds. Participation in specialized drug courts has increased and recidivism among newly released offenders has dropped. It is unclear how much of the county’s success is the result of its new programs rather than other factors, such as hiring...
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Criminal Justice Reform for the Long Haul [macfound.org]
It has been two eventful years since the launch of the Safety and Justice Challenge , MacArthur's ambitious effort to stimulate reform of local criminal justice systems, reduce racial and ethnic disparities, and change the way the nation thinks about and uses jails. The Challenge targets America's excessive reliance on jail incarceration, a key component and driver of mass incarceration, by supporting a diverse network of communities seeking better, fairer, and more balanced approaches to...
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Criminal Justice Videos
Dr. Gary Slutkin: Disrupting Violence Source: Source: PopTech Chicago Salon Description: In this 20 minute video Dr. Gary Slutkin speaks about applying his work fighting infectious diseases to fighting violence in Chicago. Link: ...
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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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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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Montana Prison Report: 7 out of 10 female inmates committed non-violent crimes [KXLH.com]
Women are being incarcerated at a higher rate than ever in Montana and across the nation and most of them are serving time for non-violent crimes. Twila Johnke, 36, has been in and out of prison since 2001 for crimes of forgery, drug possession, and distribution. Like most of the inmates at the Montana Women’s Prison, Johnke is serving time for a non-violent crime. In fact, a 2017 Montana Corrections report revealed that seven out of 10 women, compared to three out of 10 men, are locked up...
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More than eight in 10 men in prison suffered childhood adversity – new report [phys.org]
Male prisoners are much more likely than men in the wider population to have suffered childhood adversities such as child maltreatment or living in a home with domestic violence, according to a new report by Public Health Wales and Bangor University. The findings suggests that preventative action and early intervention to tackle Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) could prevent crime and reduce costs for the criminal justice system . In this new survey of men in Her Majesty's (HM) Prison...
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"Moving From Trauma Understanding to Trauma Responsive" - SAMHSA Forum
Johnson City to co-host forum on community-wide systems of care On Sept. 5, the City of Johnson City will co-host a forum entitled Moving from Understanding to Implementing Trauma-Responsive Services in conjunction with the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMSHA). The forum will address SAMHSA recommendations for communities to treat trauma as a component of effective behavioral health service delivery. Statistics recently released from the Tennessee Department of...
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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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New film rethinking incarceration for women in Canada
A new documentary film has recently been released called Conviction. It is self-described as A COLLABORATIVE DOCUMENTARY FILM THAT ENVISIONS ALTERNATIVES TO PRISON THROUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN BEHIND BARS
I've recently seen the film and highly recommend it. The content is Canadian, but no doubt the issues the women deal with are universal.
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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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Offender reentry program fits national initiative (ocregister.com)
The importance of reentry services for offenders has gained public prominence. The Department of Justice and Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently underscored this by announcing National Reentry Week April 24-30. During this week, the Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. attorney’s offices and others will coordinate and promote various reentry events, such as job fairs, mentorship programs and other community activities like the ones we organize frequently from this center. The Santa Ana BI Day...
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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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One man’s story: A remarkable story about crime, punishment and the quest for forgiveness on the mean streets of Stockton. The ballad of Rocky Rontal. (californiasunday.com)
Rocky was raised in Stockton, California, on the far south side. "Further you go, the worser it gets. And we lived at the very end." Rocky’s father, Ronly Rontal, was a small-time hustler who drove a truck and often gathered with his friends to drink whiskey and play guitar on weekends. When he drank, he’d get violent. Rocky wasn’t the oldest or the strongest, but he was the bravest, and so the task of standing up to their father fell to him. It happened most often on the first and the 15th,...
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One on One with the Police (nationswell.com)
Can open conversations with cops and inner-city youth bring down crime rates? The organization, Pennsylvania Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC), trains Philadelphia cops to empathize with inner-city youth. Its seminars aren’t a certain fix to rebuilding trust between police and the communities they serve, but data collected from DMC and other case studies around the country, suggest they are making a difference. These open conversations are happening across the country. In New Jersey’s...
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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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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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President Obama issued an executive order "banning the box" for federal government employees. (upworthy.com)
Earlier today, President Obama issued an executive order "banning the box" for federal government employees. What does this mean? Well, you know how on job applications, there's sometimes a little box that asks whether or not you've been convicted of a crime ? With the wave of a pen, Obama just ordered that box to be removed from applications for jobs within the federal government, saying, "We can't dismiss people out of hand simply because of a mistake they made in the past." The...
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Private Lockups May Prosper Under Trump Due to Predictions of More Deportations [JJIE.org]
The private prison industry may end up being one of the winners under the incoming Trump administration, though it’s not clear how or when the new administration will act. Stocks of for-profit prison operators tumbled after the U.S. Department of Justice announced in August that it would no longer house federal inmates in private lockups. But they rebounded after the Electoral College upset in November by Donald Trump, who campaigned on pledges to crack down on crime and step up deportations...
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Private Prisons Are Back in Business [PSMag.com]
It was only a matter of time before Attorney General Jeff Sessions backtracked on the Department of Justice’s earlier plans to phase out the use of private prisons. Indeed, the American Civil Liberties Union has been concerned about the former senator’s ties to the private prison lobby since October, when Geo Group—one of the biggest private prison corporations—hired two of Sessions’ former aides, David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux. On Thursday, Sessions issued a memo overturning the one put...
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Prop. 47 Reduced Recidivism & Infused Money Into Rehabilitation, But Also Boosted Theft-Related Crime Rates, Report Says (witnessla.com)
While California crime rates remain at historic lows, voter-approved Proposition 47 appears to have led to an increase in certain property crimes, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California report that aims to shed some light on the effects of the measure–an ongoing, contentious point of debate in the state. While researchers found what appeared to be a correlation between Prop. 47 and upticks in larceny, the measure did not make a measurable contribution to the state’s...
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Proposition 47: A failure to learn history’s lesson (sacbee.com)
In their laudable effort to reverse mass incarceration, California policymakers have been too slow to provide felons with necessary care and treatment upon their release. That’s among the conclusions to be gleaned from an important reporting project by newspapers in Palm Springs, Ventura, Salinas and Redding analyzing Proposition 47, the 2014 initiative that cut penalties for drug possession and property theft, and reduced many crimes to misdemeanors. “Thousands of addicts and mentally ill...
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Real Resilience is now a PODCAST
Women who support an incarcerated loved one finally has a place to share their stories on the Real Resilience P.W.L. Podcast.
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Reducing Harm for People in the Corrections System [Trauma Informed Oregon]
When I entered Framingham State Prison for the first time at age 19, I was placed in a cold, dark holding cell with 9 other women. Most of us were in bad shape, experiencing withdrawal symptoms, bruised from domestic violence, and simply scared to death of what we would experience after entering our designated cellblocks. After almost an entire day of being crammed in that cell, I was finally moved and asked to remove my clothes in front of an intimidating, angry-looking woman and then to...
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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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Restorative Justice conference focuses on 'energy of healing' (thecalifornian.com)
With crime and its aftermath often rippling through Monterey County , more than a hundred residents gathered at Hartnell College on Saturday to talk about how victims, offenders and the community can transform the negative effects of crime into positive solutions. Restorative justice is a system of criminal justice that focuses on rehabilitation of offenders through reconciliation with victims and the community at large. The “ Restorative Justice Conference: Justice that Heals ” was hosted...
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Restoring Health and Humanity to the Recently Incarcerated
“I told [my client] you are not cattle — I don’t get paid per head. You’re an individual who deserves respect…And you now have the ability to make decisions about your health care.”
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Restoring Prisoners' Access to Education Reduces Recidivism [psmag.com]
As of early April, imprisoned Americans stand to gain easier access to a higher education. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Representatives Danny Davis (D-Illinois), Jim Banks (R-Indiana), and French Hill (R-Arkansas) introduced a bipartisan piece of legislation to restore Pell Grant access to the incarcerated. If the bill passes, 463,000 prisoners will become eligible for federal financial support toward earning a college degree, which experts argue could go a...
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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...