Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Inspiring Tale of a Chicago Neighborhood That Would Not Die

    Community members and local organizations on the South side of Chicago collaborate to reclaim their neighborhoods from crime, violence, and poverty by engaging in community conflict resolution, policing and networks of support. Groups like the Southwest Organizing Project and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network banded together to interrupt gang violence in the city, relying on the experience of former gang members and offenders to guide the organizations' missions for non-violence in their communities.

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  • Breaking the cycle: Fulton's first all-female program works to address recidivism

    The Fulton Community Supervision Center in Missouri provides trauma-informed, gender-specific care and services to women who face the risk of recidivism. Participants live at the center, where they receive services like cognitive behavioral therapy and classes that teach coping mechanisms and personal and professional development. Core to much of the programming is helping women find their self worth.

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  • Creative Freedom

    New York-based nonprofit, Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), runs theater programs for individuals experiencing incarceration as a way of improving mental health and reducing recidivism. While the United States’ criminal justice system has been focused on punitive measures, there’s been a trend toward rehabilitation across the country in recent years. Participants in RTA have shown a rate of recidivism of just 5% – compared to a 60% national average – but funding and sustainability remain a consistent hurdle.

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  • The judge, jury and lawyers are kids. But punishments at N.J. youth court are real.

    The 10-year-old Newark Youth Court has heard some 700 cases in which high school students serve as judge, jury, and lawyers in proceedings that avoid school discipline or criminal charges with creative exercises in personal accountability. Taking aim at fights, disruptive behavior, or more serious offenses involving weapons or drugs. the Youth Court seeks to encourage better life choices. Outcomes may exclude punishment altogether, imposing community service (including Youth Court jury duty) or other alternatives to jail, avoiding criminal records that can ruin someone's future.

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  • Pennsylvania will no longer hold death-row prisoners in endless solitary confinement

    Following an ACLU-led civil-rights lawsuit, the Pennsylvania Department of Correction has implemented huge changes to the treatment of death row inmates. In prisons across the state, individuals who have been sentenced to death no longer have to undergo strip searches, are allowed to have contact visitations with family and friends, can apply for prison employment, and socialize with others in their unit.

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  • Fresh Data Shows How Focused Deterrence Can Keep At-Risk Individuals from Crime

    In 2013, Detroit’s law enforcement agencies started using focused deterrence – a method that uses data to identify at-risk individuals – to decrease the rate of violent crime in the city. The method, part of the national program, Ceasefire, partners police departments with social workers and other city services to deter people from criminal behavior. A new study in the journal, Crime and Delinquency, has been published that links the strategy to decreased crime rates and recidivism.

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  • Hartford first city to aid former inmates with Lyft rides

    Hartford, Connecticut, in partnership with Lyft and the criminal justice reform group, #cut50, is providing transportation credits to formerly incarcerated individuals. The effort aims to help individuals reentering their communities with a way of getting to places like job interviews and doctors appointments – things that will help them get back on their feet.

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  • How More Than 50 Women Walked Out of a Prison in Oklahoma

    More than 500 people in Oklahoma had their drug possession felony sentences commuted after voters approved an initiative that changed some drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. The commutation led to a mass release of prisoners, something that took collaboration between social service groups to make sure those leaving had housing, job support, and other essentials.

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  • On One Issue, Americans Are United. Too Many Are Behind Bars. Audio icon

    In such a divided country, many groups from lawmakers to advocacy groups are finding rare bipartisan cooperation around the issue of criminal justice reform. Two congressional representatives, one Republican and one Democrat, have found common ground, as well as the Justice Action Network, which forms bipartisan coalitions, one of which was instrumental in passing the First Step Act.

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  • The Kim Foxx Effect: How Prosecutions Have Changed in Cook County

    In her first two and a half years in office as Chicago’s top prosecutor, Kim Foxx lived up to her campaign pledge to prosecute fewer low-level crimes, divert drug cases to treatment, and focus more on gun violence. An analysis of an unprecedented data release shows that Foxx’s office turned away more than 5,000 cases, mostly shoplifting and drug offenses, based on her vow to stop over-criminalizing behavior in ways that ruin lives. Meanwhile, her office prosecuted more gun crimes. Police complained her policies will increase crime, but in the short term at least there was no evidence that they had.

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