Overcriminalization significantly undermines human flourishing and social well-being by harming the family, social networks, and social citizenship. Additionally, it prevents capable men and women from utilizing their creative capacities in the marketplace. This creates vast issues involving relations with family while incarcerated and reintegration into society after release. On the economic side, draconian cash bail systems undermine justice through basing someone's ability to attain pre-trial release upon their wealth, not their actual threat to society.
“An advocate for criminal justice reform and prison abolition who fell in love with a prisoner, Roberts opens up in her memoir The Love Prison Made and Unmade about her relationship with criminal justice reform advocate Shaka Senghor, author of Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison. Roberts, who I’ve known for many years, recently spoke with me about her book.“
Yes! Magazine
August 6, 2019
Read More“Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), who’s running for president, unveiled a new, aggressive criminal justice reform proposal over the weekend that would make it easier for people, particularly those older than 50, to get an early release from federal prison. The Matthew Charles and William Underwood Second Look Act, first reported by Leigh Ann Caldwell for NBC News, would let people who have served more than 10 years in prison petition a court for early release. Inmates 50 or older would get the presumption of release if they petitioned — so judges would need to show that the inmate is an actual threat to society to keep them incarcerated.“
Vox
July 16, 2019
Read More"In fact, nearly 70 percent of formerly incarcerated people nationally are re-arrested within three years of their release. Even more striking, nearly 60 percent of formerly incarcerated people who live on the street because of barriers to housing are rearrested within the very first year after being released. "
Vera Institute
August 30, 2018
Read More"Felony disenfranchisement has an undeniable racial present, not just past. Black Americans constitute 2.2 million of the disenfranchised, banned from voting at four times the rate of all other racial groups combined. Its history betrays a truth the nation has continuously refused to recognize in the experience of its most intimately reviled child: enslaved Africans and their descendants"
The Marshall Project
August 20, 2018
Read More"JPay charges an additional $4.15 service fee to transfer $20 from the outside to an inmate. Sending one email costs $.35, double that to include a photo, and quadruple to include a video. A song can cost up to $2.50, and an album can be — somewhat inexplicably — as much as $46. Chat with a loved one? That’ll be $18 per hour."
The Outline
August 10, 2018
Read More"The organizers explained to the detainees that because they had not yet been convicted of a crime, they were all likely eligible to vote in November. They could vote for Illinois’ governor or even elect the sheriff who ran the jail where they were detained, they told the women. "
Huffington Post
August 2, 2018
Read More"It’s one thing to make it legal for people to vote again, and another to ensure they know about it. Voters and even local officials may not realize what’s changed."
The Marshall Project
August 1, 2018
Read More"Prison gerrymandering, which counts prisoners as residents of their prisons rather than their home communities for the purpose of drawing political boundaries, stacks the political deck against medium size and large cities. The process effectively gives communities around prisons, which are disproportionately white and rural, additional representation while stealing people and votes from home communities, which are generally urban areas. This can produce results that are unfair, even absurd."
USA Today
July 25, 2018
Read More"Several studies of excellent quality and using a variety of interventions and methods all found that we could maintain public safety and possibly even improve it with less supervision—that is, fewer rules about how individuals must spend their time and less enforcement of those rules. Less supervision is less expensive, so we could achieve the same or better outcomes for less money. "
Brookings Institute
July 2, 2018
Read More"NO cash or checks. NO stickers or glitter. NO greeting cards. NO Polaroid pictures. NO magic marker or crayon. NO escape plans or bomb-making recipes... Well, that one makes sense...But the prison’s other prohibitions are, shall we say, a bit less immediately obvious in their rationale. Apparently the in-between middle space of a Polaroid is an ideal place to hide drugs. The folds of a greeting card, too, might be concealing more than wishes for a happy birthday. "
The Marshall Project
June 28, 2018
Read More"The Florida Department of Corrections has spent the past 15 years impounding issues of Prison Legal News to keep inmates from being tempted to act on ads for prohibited services they might see in the publication."
Courthouse News Service
May 21, 2018
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