Tagged With "Wake Forest School of Law"
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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 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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Restrictive housing is associated with increased risk of death after release from prison
By Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, Ph.D., in the UNC department of social medicine, finds that people who were held in restrictive housing while serving time in prison face a substantial increased risk of death after their release. Oct 4, 2019 for UNC Health Care and UNC School of Medicine. CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – October 4, 2019 – A new study led by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has found that being held in restrictive housing ( i.e., solitary confinement ) is...
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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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Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) speaks out about Community Violence and Introduces TIC Bill [chicagodefender.com]
It is noteworthy that in his press conference to introduce his new bill, The Trauma Informed Care for Children and Families Act, Senator Durbin (D-IL) speaks out about the impact of community violence. “As we work to address the root causes of violence, we need to focus on the impact that community violence and other traumatic experiences have on Chicago’s children,” said Durbin. “During a visit to the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center last year, I learned that more than 90 percent of...
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Serving Your Community: Pivoting a Social Enterprise to Meet Community Needs (aspeninstitute.org)
How can you tackle recidivism and serve your community at the same time? Civil Society Fellow Matthew Fieldman and the team at EDWINS Leadership & Restaurant Institute is leading the way. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, EDWINS is ensuring their work bettering the futures of previously incarcerated individuals would not end due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but instead pivoted their model to meet the needs of their community. We spoke with Matt about the EDWINS model, what it took to pivot, and...
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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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Social Policy Report The Biological Embedding of Child Abuse and Neglect Implications for Policy and Practice
Each year within the US alone over 770,000 children are victimized by abuse and neglect (US Department of Health and Human Services, 2010), and this figure is likely to underestimate the extent of the problem. Researchers have long recognized...
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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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Student Project Investigates Incarceration and Debt as Predictors of Homelessness [NWCPHP]
The Nickelsville Northlake tiny-house village provides shelter to Seattle's homeless residents.
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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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Federal Report Says Women In Prison Receive Harsher Punishments Than Men (npr.org)
Women in prison, when compared with incarcerated men, often receive disproportionately harsh punishments for minor violations of prison rules, according to a report released Wednesday by a federal fact-finding agency. The report from the United States Commission on Civil Rights comes after public hearings in 2019 and a yearlong investigation. The commission's findings reflect and cite stories by NPR that looked at why prison discipline policies often punish women more harshly than men. In...
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First Maine inmate to enroll in graduate school conducts groundbreaking research in prison (Portland Phoenix ME)
By Jordan Bailey, January 22, 2020, for Portland Phoenix ME In 2008, 21-year-old Brandon Brown shot a man in Portland’s Old Port. He was eventually convicted of attempted murder and elevated aggravated assault, and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Now Brown is poised to be the first person in Maine to earn a master’s degree while incarcerated, and may be the first inmate to conduct approved research on fellow inmates for his thesis project. Brown shot former Marine James Sanders, crippling...
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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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From Convict to College Student (theatlantic.com)
California’s public universities are starting to embrace a program that helps transition people from prison to campus. A program at San Francisco State University has quietly been helping former prisoners earn college degrees for decades. Now, it’s gaining wider attention as schools around the state begin to look for ways to help formerly incarcerated men and women gain access to higher education. In 1967, John Irwin, who had been incarcerated before becoming a sociology professor at SF...
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From Prison Back to School (ssir.org)
Alex Diaz’s story would not surprise anyone familiar with the effects of generational urban poverty. Born and raised in Dorchester, a lower-income neighborhood in Boston, Diaz grew up without a father and dropped out of school in the ninth grade. He joined a gang and committed a series of misdemeanors and felonies, including armed robbery and kidnapping, which eventually landed him in the South Bay House of Correction, a local prison. He spent eight years behind bars and was released four...
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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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Graduations, non-linear paths, & the importance of getting started
With graduation season upon us, I have been thinking a lot about one of my favorite graduation speeches. It’s the speech that Shonda Rhimes, creator of Grey’s Anatomy, gave in 2014 at Dartmouth College. She references the typical expected advice from a graduation speech: “Follow your dreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice and make it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big...." And then she says, “I think that’s crap.”
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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...
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I Did It Norway [themarshallproject.org]
In August, when the solar eclipse passed over South Boise Women's Correctional Center in Idaho, the officers held lunch early, handed out protective sunglasses, and invited the women outside to watch the sky. At the Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut, a few prisoners and officers recently played cards together; the warden seemed a little stunned when describing the scene. John Wetzel, who runs the prison system in Pennsylvania, has noticed a shift in tone at annual gatherings...
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Illness, incarcerated: As residents with mental illnesses cycle from the streets to cells, county officials struggle to create a new system (santamariasun.com)
The county’s current plan of action for decriminalizing mental illness is the Stepping Up Initiative, which aims to reduce the number of mentally ill inmates nationwide. The initiative brings together leaders in mental health, law enforcement, and criminal justice to help provide nonviolent mentally ill offenders with treatment, not jail time. The Sun spoke with mental health experts and county representatives who are vying to improve law enforcement’s approach to mentally ill offenders. At...
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In Sacramento County, Collaborative Program is Creating Hope (publicceo.com)
At the Northern California Construction Training Center in Sacramento County, you can find a number of probationers hard at work learning new crafts. And over the sound of hammers and buzz saws, a four-letter word is frequently heard. That word is H-O-P-E. For many of those taking part in this career training, it’s the first time they’ve had any hope in a long, long time — thanks to a joint program created by the Sacramento County Probation Department, County Office of Education and the...
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Inmates are part of an army of firefighters battling a 'monster' that just keeps growing (latimes.com)
For well over a week, hundreds of inmates have chain-sawed through relentless thickets of chaparral, cutting lines through the backcountry to thwart the fire's sudden rushes at homes. On Thursday, they were deep in the Los Padres National Forest, covered in wood grit, soot and sweat, as the Thomas fire continued to grow — becoming the fourth-largest in modern California history. Playing some of the hardest roles are the inmate hand crews, which make up about 20% of the firefighters here.
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Introducing myself, Morgan Vien & NEW Practicing Resilience Community
Hello! I’m a Community Manager for the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing community. This is an introduction to me and this new community. I graduated with a B.S. in Public Health from Santa Clara University June 2017. And I’m interested in preventing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, at the community and population level by addressing biological, psychological, and social factors that affect chronic disease outcomes. As the...
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Introducing NEW Becoming Trauma-Informed & Beyond Community
Earlier this year @Dawn Daum wrote to us when she was ready to share ACEs science with people in the organization she works in to make a case for moving towards more trauma-informed care for the benefit of the staff and those they serve. She was frustrated because almost all the training and resources she found were geared towards schools, clinical staff or to organizations working with children and families rather than ACE-impacted adults in the workplace and who are...
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Jail & Prison Resources
Addressing Correctional Officer Stress: Programs and Strategies Source: NCJRS Description: A guide to assist corrections administrators is addressing employee stress. Link: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183474.pdf Art Behind Bars...
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Jeff Sessions Is Throwing the Brakes on Criminal Justice Reform [PSMag.com]
This summer marks nearly three years not only since the deaths of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, but also since a major transformation began in the American criminal justice system. Police departments are increasingly implementing training regimens to combat racial bias and requiring officers to wear body cameras, with some 95 committing to do so in the future in January of 2016; district attorneys are increasingly prosecuting police officers...
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Juvenile Law Center (advancing the rights and well-being of children in jeopardy)
Trauma and Resilience: A NEW LOOK AT LEGAL ADVOCACY FOR YOUTH IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE AND CHILD WELFARE SYSTEMS While rates of trauma are high for all youth, they are particularly high for youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. This...
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L.A. County Considers Letting More Arrestees Go Free (laweekly.com)
It costs the taxpayers of L.A. County $177 a day to keep someone in the "largest and most costly local jail system in the United States," according to a motion by county supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis. About half the people in those cells are presumed innocent and awaiting trial, and according to Sheriff Jim McDonnell, most in that group can't afford bail. The proposal is similar to legislation at state and national levels that seeks to address the injustice of bail. State Sen. Bob...
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L.A. County has seven female police chiefs. They've brought different skills — and set an all-time high (latimes.com)
(Lisa) Rosales is one of seven female police chiefs in Los Angeles County, an all-time high. Women lead departments in Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Claremont, Hermosa Beach, Alhambra and Manhattan Beach. Several of the chiefs gathered recently at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy for a panel discussion on female leaders in law enforcement. Rosales said her style of policing encompasses listening, empathy and patience — qualities she said have helped de-escalate potentially volatile...
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Law Enforcement & Corrections Resources
Cops, Kids, and Domestic Violence Source: National Child Traumatic Stress Network Description: Law enforcement training DVD and support documents (which can be used independently). Link: Video – ...
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Life After ‘17to Life [nytimes.com]
STOCKTON, Calif. — In California, known for decades as one of the nation’s most avid jailers, the trajectory of law and order is shifting. Through litigation, legislation and a series of ballot initiatives, the state’s prison population has dropped 25 percent over the past decade. The photographer Joseph Rodriguez has been documenting crime and punishment in California for years and recently focused his gaze on the migration home, in Stockton — a barren outpost in California’s Central...
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Making It Right Again (lionsroar.com)
By bringing victims and perpetrators together, she’s helping repair harm and turn lives around. Meet restorative justice expert sujatha baliga. A graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe, baliga completed her law degree at the University of Pennsylvania and became a public defender, but she says the legal system began to feel like it was designed to not get at the truth. She began to look for a path to justice that “excavates from the deepest level who has been harmed, what do they need, and whose...
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Study: About 4 Percent of Women Are Pregnant When Jailed (nytimes.com)
About 4 percent of women incarcerated in state prisons across the U.S. were pregnant when they were jailed, according to a new study released Thursday that researchers hope will help lawmakers and prisons better consider the health of women behind bars. The number of imprisoned women has risen dramatically over the past decades, growing even as the overall prison rates decline. But there had been a lack of data on women's health and no system for tracking how frequently incarcerated women...
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System Changes Could Improve Relationships between Incarcerated Mothers and Their Children [chapinhall.org]
By Amy Dworsky, Colleen Schlecht, Gina Fedock, et al., Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, March 2020 The dramatic increase in the number of women in state and federal prisons in recent decades has led to calls for gender-responsive policies and practices that address the needs and circumstances of incarcerated women and recognize the central role that motherhood plays in many incarcerated women’s lives. This brief describes the results of a project undertaken by researchers from...
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Taking on the Private Prison Industry’s Corporate Backers [BillMoyers.com]
In the months since President Trump took office we’ve heard a lot about crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and the return of law and order. In fact, as The Atlantic recently reported, the administration is scaling up use of high-tech methods of tracking down what it deems the criminal immigrant class . In addition, the Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has walked back an Obama-era vow to step down use of private prisons, and his “ four-sentence memo rescinding...
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The law said an ex-felon couldn’t be a nurse. So this single mom got the law changed. (washingtonpost.com)
When Lisa Creason was a 19-year-old single mom, she robbed a Subway shop. Or, at least, she tried to. One evening in 1993, she walked in without a plan, without an ultimatum, and demanded money from the cash register. When she was denied, she took off. That spontaneous decision, which she said she made out of desperation to provide for her baby girl, would cost her for the next two decades. But it never defined her. On Thursday, Creason, now a 43-year-old mother of three and a nursing school...
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The Regulated Classroom Goes to California
Have you ever had the experience of becoming the living embodiment of an illustrated children’s book character? Yeah, that’s happened to me. I am Froggy. The Froggy that goes to school Froggy. In the children’s story, Froggy feels anxious about his first day of school. His healthy and natural nervousness (the body’s stress response system is activated by novelty) manifests in his dream. In his dream, he misses the bus and shows up to class in his underwear. I am feeling “Froggy.” Two...
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These prison inmates are saving the Earth as they serve their time (upworthy.com)
Efforts like this are possible through Washington's Sustainability in Prisons programs. It began in 2003 as a pilot project between Cedar Creek Corrections Center and Evergreen State College . Cedar Creek was looking to go green, and had already launched gardening, compost, and recycling projects. Around the same time, a professor at Evergreen, Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, was looking to work with inmates to study forest mosses, which desperately needed to be replenished. The two projects crossed...
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This Small Token Shows Love to Those Affected by Incarceration (nationswell.com)
These greeting cards give those who don't know what to say the ability to convey compassion. Every Friday, during a weekly book hour at a public middle school in Bergen County, N.J., a little girl picked out the same Scholastic pamphlet about Alcatraz Island. Delores Connors, the class’s reading instructor, couldn’t figure out why. What was so captivating about a defunct federal penitentiary? She teamed up with her colleague Mary Joyce Laqui to ease communication about loved ones who are...
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Thoughts on creating ‘restorative justice’ (modbee.com)
(Image Credit: shellyduffer.com) Restorative justice, which has been in the news lately , includes some interesting concepts about bringing criminals face to face with their victims to show them the impact of their crimes. The theory is that meeting those victims and hearing what they have suffered can lead to conciliation – or a coming to terms about what happened. When it works, restorative justice helps the offender take responsibility for his or her actions, possibly out of remorse or an...
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TIC: News and Notes for the Week of October 21, 2019 [dhs.wisconsin.gov]
ACEs, Adversity's Impact There is only one boat: The myth of normalcy by Dr. Gabor Mate Understanding historical trauma to strengthen community Childhood trauma linked to early, premarital childbirth and poor health for women Early life racial discrimination linked to depression, accelerated aging When mothers are killed by their partners, children often become 'forgotten' victims. It's time they were given a voice Children's language skills may be harmed by social hardship Does racism...