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.
“Freedom and safety are too often imagined as being in opposition, but nothing could be further from the truth. Americans who have the most freedom — freedom to learn, freedom from illness, freedom of movement, freedom from violence — are invariably the safest, and the whitest, and the richest.“
Washington Post
October 28, 2019
Read More“At the Detroit Justice Center (DJC), which Alexander founded in 2017, lawyers work with community members to make freedom dreams a reality: a community land trust to protect neighborhoods from gentrification and offer a safe haven for men returning from incarceration; urban gardens that provide neighbors a space for connection and nourish bodies in the midst of a food desert; a bail fund to keep Detroiters from languishing in jail for the crime of being too poor to make bond. And, most urgently: imagining safe communities without jails and prisons.“
Detroit Free Press
October 21, 2019
Detroit Free Press
October 21, 2019
Read More“Criminal justice issues center around what to do with those people. Society and elected officials wrestle with how to make rules that are fair, just and workable. The difficulty is in figuring out the best way to protect the innocent, punish the guilty and integrate people back into society after they’ve paid the fine or done the time. For all the seemingly intense and divisive debates about politics, lawmakers, groups and individuals across the political spectrum are in agreement on some of the most significant and important reforms in the criminal justice system. The latest reform deals with expunging criminal records.“
The Detroit News
September 30, 2019
Read More“Myriad services exist to help older people or those affected by the criminal justice system, but rarely do they overlap. The elder reentry initiative aiding Daniel is run by the Osborne Association, a criminal justice-focused services provider and advocacy group, and has served 388 New Yorkers since its inception in 2015. Its case managers help recently incarcerated people transition upon their release.“
U.S. News & World Report
August 14, 2019
Read More“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“Harassment and bullying are plaguing our online lives, but social media companies seem fresh out of solutions. This week, On the Media experiments with a radical approach for detoxifying the web. Can theories of criminal justice reform rehabilitate trolls and fix the internet?“
New York Public Radio
August 2, 2019
Read More“During the trainings, inmates open up about their traumatic experiences, such as sexual assault, abandonment by their family and domestic violence inflicted by loved ones. Revisiting what they call this “original trauma” is an integral part of their work. It’s the experiences they had as young boys that formed the basis of their coping mechanisms and survival tactics.“
Huffington Post
July 31, 2019
Read More“Under a century-old law, Rhode Island classifies everyone serving a life sentence in the state as “civilly dead,” meaning they have absolutely no civil rights. Unlike other prisoners, they can’t sue or raise complaints in state court, even if they’ve been mistreated or abused. They can’t get married or divorced, they lose rights over their children, and they can’t own property in their name or sign a contract. In these matters, as the law puts it, they are “deemed to be dead in all respects, as if [their] natural death had taken place at the time of conviction.” It doesn’t matter if they are eligible for parole and will eventually leave prison.“
Mother Jones
July 30, 2019
Read More“The intent of the law was to train people before they leave prison to find work and to screen them for any risk they might pose to public safety, but it’s unlikely that those steps will occur before a looming legal deadline. “
The Marshall Project
June 5, 2019
Read More“The biggest sticking point was whether the financial requirement undermined the amendment's intent to end the disenfranchisement of more than 1 million felons who have completed their sentence and returned to society. The bill's sponsor, Rep. James Grant, R-Tampa, said the measure clarifies the meaning of the language of the ballot proposal approved in November and is consistent with the media campaign that promoted its passage.“
Tallahassee Democrat
April 24, 2019
Read More“If Utah wants to stop the revolving door between imprisonment and supervision, it must invest resources to help individuals meet their basic needs: housing, employment, transportation and medical treatment. It is very difficult to be a functioning and productive member of society without one of these basic needs, and it is even more difficult to be successful on probation or parole without all four.“
Deseret News
April 13, 2019
Read More“While police departments often recognize that “we can’t arrest our way out of the problem,” the broken windows paradigm remains active throughout policing. Perhaps most significantly, it still colors how the public views violence and demands responses to it: both as a danger that characterizes entire poor communities of color, and as a menace that poses a constant threat. This long-held view is, simply, wrong.“
City Lab
February 25, 2019
Read More“Someone’s ability to succeed (in rehabilitation) depends on what family circumstances they come back into. Another point we are trying to make is that when people come out of prison, most of them really do want to make a change in their lives. We really need to be supporting them to make that change, because if you do start to struggle and you don’t have any other options, you’re going to go back to what you did before. We were missing a big opportunity … not helping them with housing and employment and health services and to transition back into society.“
The Daily Californian
November 30, 2018
Read More“Alexander said there must be a shift in the paradigm with how criminality and incarceration are viewed. For instance, she said, if adults are honest, they’ve committed an illegal act at some point in their lives. The difference is in who gets caught and who doesn’t. “
Indianapolis Recorder
October 25, 2018
Read More“We are told that there is a great divide in our country, and at the voting booth that is apparent. But in the jury room, we were just 12 random people pulled out of our daily lives and asked to administer the final decision in a case. It felt like our justice system at work. I’ll vote in November, and it will be important. But I don’t think I’ll ever feel as significant as a citizen as I did in that jury room.“
USA Today
October 16, 2018
Read More"It’s tempting to chalk up Pope Francis’s recent announcement—that the catechism has been revised to decree the death penalty as always “inadmissible”—to his perceived leftism. But that would be a mistake not only from a theological perspective, but also from a conservative one."
The American Conservative
August 9, 2018
Read More"One problem with using recidivism as a primary measure of success is that it misleads the public and policymakers by focusing on negative rather than positive outcomes. It also ignores the structural conditions around an individual’s life that push them into the justice system and act as barriers to successful reentry."
Vera Institute of Justice
August 7, 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"Losing the right to vote is among numerous other consequences of being convicted of a crime. This so-called “civil death” suggests that person is considered dead to society. The larger political consequence is a lack of representation in government of a large group of citizens who are largely poor and people of color."
Truthout Magazine
August 2, 2018
Read More"The Catechism of the Church, a codified doctrine which sums up teachings, had previously stated that the death penalty could be used in some cases. It now says it is 'inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person'."
BBC
August 2, 2018
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