How I Learned Not to Call 911
Public SafetyEvery day, New Yorkers encounter so many mentally ill people, whether on the street or in their own buildings. The most recent data for New York shows that some 95,000 New Yorkers with serious mental illnesses, including bipolar disord...
A CRIMINAL PAST, AN UNWRITTEN FUTURE|
ReentryTheir message to these young men was simple: “You may be locked up, but your mind can still be free.” Over time, what started as a book club transformed into a robust operation that supports D.C. men from the day they are arrested to...
Why Jail is No Place for the Mentally Troubled
JusticeIn a discussion with The Crime Report about her new book, “Insane: America’s Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness,” Alisa Roth, a former Soros Justice Fellow, describes how jails and prisons have become the nation’s principal ins...
You Are What You Eat: Nutrition Plays An Important Role In Children’s Brain Health
ChildhoodParents of children who have mental illness fight so many daily battles—small and large—that trying to get a stubborn child to eat a healthy meal can seem like an impossible task. “But based on my research, I’ve decided healthy mea...
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....