In this episode, our host Juan Carlos Areán is joined by Dr. Charvonne Holliday, assistant professor in the Department of Population, Family, and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, attorney Casey Gwinn, President of the Alliance for Hope International, and Dr. Chan Hellman, professor at the Ann and Harry Zara School of Social Work and Director of the Hope Research Center of the University of Oklahoma. The group discusses the science of hope and how it can be applied to intimate partner violence.
Hurt people hurt people. That's not an excuse for harm, but it fuels much of the criminal justice system. At 19, Marlon Peterson was the unarmed lookout on a robbery where two people were killed. Peterson spent a decade behind bars. He writes about those years, and the childhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that preceded them, in his new memoir. I made my own choices, Peterson says, “but I also did not choose to experience the type of things I experienced.”
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, over 500,000 people a night in the U.S. lived without shelter, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. During the pandemic, those numbers rose even higher. Afraid they might contract COVID-19 in a shelter and lacking safe alternatives, many more people than usual sought warmth and safety in transit hubs.
In her new book, historian Elizabeth Hinton highlights a "crucible period" of often violent rebellions in the name of the Black freedom struggle beginning in 1968. Initiated in almost every instance by police violence, the rebellions—dismissed as "riots"—have been largely written out of the history of the civil rights era. Hinton contends the period is critical for understanding the roots of mass incarceration and contains important lessons today for people organizing against police violence.
In this episode, our host Juan Carlos Areán is joined by Mary Case, Manager of the Legal Advocacy Project for Survivors at the Los Angeles LGBT Center and Cat Shugrue dos Santos, Deputy Executive Director for Programs at the NYC Anti-Violence Project. They discuss the importance of applying an intersectional lens when intervening on intimate partner violence within LGBTQIA+ communities.
Thousands of veterans experience homelessness each year and many hundreds also find themselves in the justice system. Veterans treatment courts provide participants substance use treatment in lieu of jail and also provide support with benefits, employment and housing. A key partner in their work is the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which created the Veterans Justice Outreach Program with a goal to end homelessness among veterans. In 2016, specialists with the Veterans Justice Outreach Program worked with 461 veterans treatment courts. By 2019, that number had grown to 601.
One of every four people killed by police is experiencing a mental health emergency. Changing how we respond to crisis in the moment—and to widespread, ongoing mental health needs—means deferring to the leadership of people with lived experience and putting racial equity at the center of every reform. On our New Thinking podcast, listening to the people who know how to fix systems, because they’re surviving those systems' harms.
In the latest episode of our podcast series, our host Juan Carlos Areán from Futures Without Violence speaks with Ed Heisler and Chris Godsey from Men As Peacemakers and Kourou Pich from HarborCOV Communities Overcoming Violence about restorative practices in abusive partner intervention as well as intimate partner violence cases more broadly. The group explores various aspects of restorative justice, such as accountability, indigenous cultural practices that inform this approach, and how communities can come together to heal from harm.
What's the most effective way to reduce the chance of an arrest in the future? A new study suggests it's shrinking the size of the justice system in the here and now. Boston D.A. Rachael Rollins and the director of NYU's Public Safety Lab, Anna Harvey, talk about the benefits of not prosecuting low-level charges—an almost 60 percent reduction in recidivism—and the challenges, even with data in hand, of bucking the conventional wisdom.
Maurice Chammah says the unprecedented federal execution spree during the final weeks of the Trump presidency is evidence of the death penalty's continued decline, not its resurgence. The journalist is the author of the new book, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty. Chammah tracks the use and symbolism of the death penalty alongside the long arc of U.S history and the evolution of the criminal justice system.
