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

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  • Redemption for Offenders and Victims

    In Boston federal courts, select criminal defendants can participate in a restorative justice program called RISE (Repair, Invest, Succeed, Emerge) that delays sentencing while defendants engage in dialogue with crime victims, family, and others. The restorative dialogues are designed for a type of accountability unlike a prison sentence. Eligible defendants must admit their crime, have a history of addiction or other deprivation, and get jobs or attend school. By addressing the harms they have inflicted and the obligations they have to make things right, defendants can earn a more lenient sentence.

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  • Is School-Discipline Reform Moving Too Fast?

    As the national education discussion has shifted away from zero tolerance discipline policies towards reduction of suspensions and the introduction of restorative justice tactics, some teachers and administrators say the change is happening too fast. Following the elimination of suspensions, at one school in Washington state, each year almost 13 percent of district staff left. Teachers cited lack of training and inconsistencies between standards and implementation in different classrooms as reasons for departing.

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  • A Year of Pushback to Save Social Innovation

    When the federal government fails to stimulate social change, local areas step up. Tennessee is giving more structure and funding to community college education, and it’s drastically increasing graduation rates. Alaska and other states are getting rid of money bail. All around the country, citizen activists are becoming advocates and attempting to make our political system accessible to everyone. Despite partisan politics in Washington, D.C., the country is nonetheless experiencing social progress.

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  • What Can New York Learn from New Jersey's Bail Reform?

    In 2017, New Jersey eliminated the cash bail system – meaning that potential offenders awaiting court could not be held in jail for money. Instead, judges use an algorithm that considers the individual’s criminal history, flight risk, and threat level to the community. As New York considers doing the same, it looks the impact it has made in New Jersey.

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  • How Texas' Harris County went from ‘capital of capital punishment' to zero executions

    In 2017, Harris County, TX saw a year where no one was sentenced to death and no one was executed. The county, nicknamed as the capital of capital punishment, is seeing a shift in the support of the death penalty. While studies haven’t shown a definitive answer, it has been linked to new, reform-focused DAs, the introduction of life sentences without parole, and Supreme Court decisions that likely diminished the use of capital punishment.

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  • Bernalillo County partners with South Valley community programs to end racial and ethnic disparities in juvenile justice

    A program in Albuquerque, New Mexico that successfully diverted young offenders from the criminal justice system still grappled with kids running away while under house arrest. This defeats the purpose of diversion since they can end up in jail, so county officials found another option for kids who might have chaotic home lives. They partnered with a community organization where kids can go if they need a safe space without violating their probation orders and learn skills like gardening and screen printing.

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  • Rethinking Rikers

    In the ongoing challenge to reform New York’s Rikers Island prison complex, many have turned to Chicago’s Cook County jail as a model. While Rikers has made some reforms – including group therapy for those with mental health concerns and doing away with solitary confinement for inmates under 22 – there is more that they can do to follow in Chicago's footsteps. There, they have introduced the use of real-time data collection to map violence, made mental health care a key component of their services, and trained guards in verbal de-escalation.

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  • Why New York City Created Its Own Fund to Bail People Out of Jail

    Bail reform is a difficult process largely out of the hands of municipalities. Charitable bail funds allow individuals who can't afford bail to be free until their trial, in the hopes of changing the bail system from the inside.

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  • Native American peacemaking courts offer a model for reform

    A growing number of tribal judges nationwide - including Judge Abby Abinanti of the Yurok Tribal Court - are using a framework of traditional culture and an approach known as "restorative justice" to address both the need for rehabilitation of offenders and resolution for people often failed by the dominant criminal justice system.

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  • Participatory Defense

    While there are many factors that have contributed to the sky high incarceration rates in the United States which have left prisons bursting at the seams, one of the causes remains the simple fact that the resources of a private prosecutor vastly outweigh those of publicly-funded defense attorneys.

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