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“Across the country, more than 10,000 regulations restrict people with criminal records from obtaining occupational licenses, according to a database developed by the American Bar Association. The restrictions are defended as a way to protect the public. But Lincoln and others point out that the rules are often arbitrary and ambiguous.“
Washington Post
September 3, 2019
Read More“In at least five states — Utah, Kansas, South Dakota, Kentucky and Missouri — such technical violations account for more than half of all prison admissions. Such numbers underscore the extent to which the nation’s sky-high incarceration rate is partly a function of probation and parole policies.“
Washington Post
June 20, 2019
Read More“Given the internal incentives to keep jails full, change will have to come from outside the criminal justice system. The most obvious lever available, which is picking up steam in multiple states, is bail reform. States could simply mandate that individuals accused of low-level crimes are automatically released on their own recognizance before trial. Jurisdictions that have experimented with this approach have found rates of appearing at trial in excess of 98 percent.“
Washington Post
June 6, 2019
Read More“This debate has been largely symbolic, because New Hampshire has neither an active death penalty system nor any executions on the horizon. The state has only one person on death row — Michael Addison, who was sentenced to death more than a decade ago for killing Michael Briggs, a Manchester police officer — and last carried out an execution in 1939.“
Washington Post
May 30, 2019
Read More“The $353 million effort will test the idea that the best approaches to combat the drug crisis are well known but poorly implemented and coordinated. It will employ a comprehensive strategy in each community that encourages the involvement of doctors, treatment providers, law enforcement, courts, churches and even housing providers — an approach that has worked in a few places.“
Washington Post
April 18, 2019
Read More“When he learned he had lost the second rental, Charles told The Post that his disappointment was akin to what he felt when he learned he’d have to go back to jail after previously being released. He has been crashing on a friend’s couch since he was released Jan. 3 but hopes to secure a two-bedroom apartment of his own.“
Washington Post
March 18, 2019
Read More“Earlier in the summer, the House passed a version of the farm bill that contains a provision that would cut off benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (better known as SNAP or food stamps) for those who have completed sentences for certain violent crimes — even though they’ve served their time in prison. Current law, which expires this month, denies SNAP benefits only to those found guilty of a violent crime who violate their parole or the terms of their release.“
Washington Post
September 10, 2018
Read More"Within a penal system that in its other features was more likely to degrade and reduce human development, Michael accidentally fell into a program that, but for the exploitative pay, is an excellent example of a response to wrongdoing that seeks to make the victim whole, seeks to make the community whole and seeks to help the wrongdoer prepare for positive relations with the broader society."
Washington Post
August 8, 2018
Read More"Liberals look at mass incarceration and see structural racism. Libertarians see the denial of civil liberties. Fiscal conservatives see wasted resources. Religious activists see inhumane conditions and damaged lives. All these convictions converge at one point: We should treat offenders as humans, with different stories and different needs, instead of casting them all into the same pit of despair."
Washington Post
July 5, 2018
Read More"The June 21 report, which analyzed pretrial jail populations in Prince George’s County before and after bail reform was implemented in 2017, suggests that while cash bails have decreased, judges have opted to hold more people without bond instead of releasing them on their own recognizance. The increase in “no-bail” holds violates the spirit of rules that the Maryland Court of Appeals adopted to address concerns over racial and financial inequities in the cash-bail system, public defenders and advocates say."
Washington Post
July 2, 2018
Read More"The majority of people held in state and federal prisons are parents of minor children. One in 14 American children , most of them younger than 10, has seen a parent incarcerated. These children are sometimes referred to as the “invisible” victims of mass incarceration, and their suffering has been characterized as its most pernicious ancillary effect."
Washington Post
July 1, 2018
Read More"Before I started teaching in prison, I would have said they deserved to pay, in some cases, with their lives for the crimes they were convicted of doing. Now that I know them, it’s impossible to feel the same way."
Washington Post
May 31, 2018
Read More"A bold experiment in parenting and punishment is allowing children in prison. But is that a good thing?...Prison nursery programs remain rare nationwide, but eight facilities in as many states have opened them amid dramatic growth in the number of incarcerated women. The bold experiment in punishment and parenting has touched off a fierce debate."
Washington Post
May 11, 2018
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