Many issues that are primary drivers of mass incarceration cannot be remedied through government solutions alone. Issues such as broken families and mental health, both forever altered by over criminalization, cannot be simply be repaired through legislation. Civil Society has the unique capability to address certain social issues that government cannot, or to address them more effectively than government can. This section also addresses issues in which over-policing attempts to fix issues that should be handled through the community.
“The résumé that won John Koufos his job as national director of re-entry initiatives for Right on Crime, a project aimed at winning support from conservatives for criminal justice reforms, is one few would want. Before he landed on the radar of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the think tank behind the project, he was an ex-convict who had been disbarred from practicing criminal law in New Jersey, his home state.“
New York Times
November 13, 2019
Read More“He cited job interviews as one example. ‘The candidate may not be so great at making eye contact and smiling. Does that mean he can’t stack brownies onto a pallet?’“
New York Times
May 29, 2019
Read More“But the growing tide against felon disenfranchisement raises a related question: Why disenfranchise felons at all? Why not let prisoners vote — and give the franchise to the roughly 1.5 million people sitting in federal and state prisons? Why must supposedly universal adult suffrage exclude people convicted of crimes?“
New York Times
April 11, 2019
Read More“I am 13 now, and I still write holiday cards to people in prison. It’s really fun to think of nice things to say to people you’ve never met. I always try to imagine what I would want to hear if I was forced to be away from my family and was being treated poorly. I would be terrified, sad and worried that nobody remembered that I existed.“
New York Times
December 21, 2018
Read More“Here in red-state America, the death penalty is supported by 73 percent of white evangelical Christians and by even a solid majority of Catholics — 53 percent, despite official church teaching to the contrary — according to a Pew Research Center survey released in June. “
New York Times
December 10, 2018
Read More“We must seriously consider whether society would benefit by letting reformed offenders re-enter their community, and whether it’s economical and humane to punish solely for the sake of retribution. When I hear of all the gun violence on Chicago’s South Side, for instance, I can’t help wondering what would happen if Illinois’s many reformed old-timers, who hail from those neighborhoods, were granted parole with a mission of working to reduce the violence.“
New York Times
October 6, 2018
Read More"In the short term, courts and correction systems should be required to inform people when their voting rights are taken away and how to regain those rights. Few jurisdictions currently do so."
New York Times
August 12, 2018
Read More"Stockton is one of six American cities taking part in a new experiment funded by the Department of Justice. (The others are Birmingham, Ala.; Pittsburgh; Gary, Ind.; Fort Worth; and Minneapolis.) The cities are beginning programs to promote racial reconciliation; to address the racial biases all of us carry; and to gain the community’s trust using an idea known as procedural justice."
New York Times
July 26, 2018
Read More"They realized that they had lost 13 employees to addiction over 10 years, and that half the cases were related to opioid drugs. 'They were not fired,' Mr. Perez said. 'They were dead'."
New York Times
July 10, 2018
Read More"Most theories for the great crime decline that swept across nearly every major American city over the last 25 years have focused on the would-be criminals....But none of these explanations have paid much attention to the communities where violence plummeted the most. New research suggests that people there were working hard, with little credit, to address the problem themselves."
The New York Times
November 9, 2017
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