"By building social capacity, communities can respond to their own issues rather than rely on responses from the criminal justice system."
mass incarceration
The new criminal justice law is modest. But it may signal a shifting narrative.
From the psych hospital to the jail
Two new books provide a devastating vision of America’s mental health crisis.
The questions private prisons raise
Is private management more efficient? Is it wrong to profit from punishment? Is the whole idea immoral in concept?
Incarceration is a tomb. It beats death into people.
The role of county prosecutors in mass incarceration
John Pfaff's Locked In adds to what we've learned from Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.
Who I'd invite to my writers' dinner party
Several recent films and shows portray people of color with a complexity that James Baldwin once assumed was impossible for pop culture.
For some kids, jail is a school field trip. For others, it's nearly inevitable.
My state has the same number of churches as prisoners. This fact haunts me.
Some riots protest injustice. Others perpetuate it.
Here in Washington State, there is roughly the same number of churches as there are prisoners.
Though most of the American churches in the past failed to be a people that manifested the kingdom of God in society during racialized chattel slavery, as well as during Jim Crow white supremacy, we have the opportunity to repent and live into a new and more Jesus-shaped story, being a people that do what God requires; doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before our God. (Micah 6:8)
Imprisonment in this country is long on punishment and shamefully short on rehabilitation.
Caught, by Marie Gottschalk
Marie Gottschalk describes an American penal system that has all but abandoned any real attempt to rehabilitate its inmates.