Commentary: The Recidivism Trap
ReentryRecidivism is the reoccurrence of crime among people known to have committed crimes before. At all levels of justice, from local probation offices to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, if we judge the impact of interventions at all, we do so in...
A Crop of Reform-Minded Mayors Is Trying to Fix Policing and Fight Mass Incarceration
Public SafetyIn their choice of a police chief and through other local initiatives, mayors can make major strides in improving the way their constituents interact with police and the criminal justice system. “All of the dollars we’re spending to ...
The Burden of Mental Illness Behind Bars
DataToday, about 14.5 percent of men and 31 percent of women in jails have a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder, compared to 3.2 and 4.9 percent, respectively, in the general population. Whil...
Brenda Siegel: For-profit prisons are modern day slavery
CorrectionsA “for profit” or “private” prison, as evident in the name, is designed to make a profit. What are they profiting on? People. They are profiting on the buying and selling of human beings. They have motivation to keep their costs ...
Opinion: Turn Prisons Into Colleges
ReentryWhile racial disparities in arrests and convictions are alarming, education level is a far stronger predictor of future incarceration than race. Today, only a third of all prisons provide ways for incarcerated people to continue their ed...
Report Finds Racial Disparity in Youth Confinement
ChildhoodMore than 70 million people in the United States are under the age of 18 and on any given day, about 48,000 juveniles are held in youth correctional facilities across the country, the Prison Policy Initiative’s Feb. 27 report states....
PODCAST: How to reduce the U.S. prison population by nearly half
CorrectionsEditor’s note: Knowledge Applied is a new podcast from the University of Chicago News Office. Each of its five episodes will take listeners inside the research of UChicago scholars helping reshape everyday life while tackling some o...
ADMINISTRATION PRESSED TO EXPAND MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT
Health CareWASHINGTON — Amid the outcry over the Florida school shootings, the Trump administration says it is “actively exploring” ways to help states expand inpatient mental health treatment using Medicaid funds. Organizations representing stat...
Mental Health Courts and Sentencing Disparities
JusticeDespite the proliferation of mental health courts across the United States, virtually no attention has been paid to the criminal justice effects these courts carry for participants. This article provides the first empirical analysis of d...
What Colorado schools are doing for students’ mental health
ChildhoodThe American Academy of Pediatrics has announced new guidelines to help spot signs of depression in pediatricians’ young patients. They are recommending that doctors carefully screen their patients ages 12 and over during their annual ...