News
The Emerging Adult Justice Learning Community released a paper examining research on violent behavior and highlighting how poor, minority youth transitioning to adulthood are disproportionately the victims of violent crime and are also shouldering the brunt of the current, repressive penal policies.
Read the paper here.
A new case study released today by the Justice Lab details the New York Close to Home juvenile justice reforms, and highlights the key takeaways for other states and jurisdictions looking to reform their systems.
The Justice Lab released a new report in its Emerging Adult Justice Research Series.
Read the report here.
A new report released today by the Justice Lab has found that Wisconsin has unusually high rates of community corrections supervision and reincarceration, adding considerably to the state’s prison populations and costing Wisconsin taxpayers millions annually.
Read the full report here.
Our Co-Director, Bruce Western discusses his new book in which he followed 122 formerly incarcerated people for one year after they were released from prison to see how they re-integrated into society, with a focus on employment and family relationships.
Listen to the episode here.
Marc Schindler writes on the unfulfilled promises for rehabilitation support in the District's Youth Rehabilitation Act.
Read the opinion piece here.
Keeping people from going back to prison after they get out has long been a way to measure success in the American criminal justice system. But experts today say it may not be the best way.
Listen to the podcast here.
Bruce Western, author of Homeward: Life in the Year after Prison, discusses the importance of social integration to criminal justice - bringing people back into the community.
Listen to the discussion here.
In conversation with Matt Watkins, Bruce Western talks about criminal justice as social justice, and how the historically punitive system continues punish people who themselves have experienced a great deal of victimization.
Read the interview here.
Criminal justice reforms will depend on healing this population group too frequently left out of the equation. The complex reality of their lives as both violent perpetrators and victims of violence is one the U.S. justice system is ill-prepared to acknowledge or treat. This is a mistake that has put limits on criminal justice reforms designed to reduce the prison population.
Read the opinion piece by Bruce Western here.
Bruce Western reflects on significant cuts by the House of Representatives to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, which helps fight hunger in America. New work requirements have gained the most attention, but the House bill also includes lifetime bans for people with prior convictions for several kinds of violent crimes. People with violent convictions keep their food stamp eligibility under the bipartisan Senate bill, setting up a showdown in the conference committee. Cutting benefits for people with criminal convictions is a particularly mean display…
Bruce Western on society's tendencies to draw lines in the sand, making distinctions between victims and perpetrators, though these can very often be the same person just at different times.
Read the article here.
Perhaps the key lesson of the reentry study says something deep about the nature of incarceration. We usually think of incarceration as a deprivation of liberty, a loss of autonomy. But the men and women leaving prison in Boston were also disconnected from the intimate bonds of family, friendship, work and community. We saw in the stress of transition a strange kind of homesickness that endured even as the respondents returned from prison. Life, and all the relationships that comprise it, felt alien. Until it became more familiar, they were not yet home.
Read the commentary here.
Bruce Western is interviewed by the team at Decarceration Nation in this podcast about radically re-imagining America's criminal justice system. Reflections on Georgio Agamben's work on testimony and survivors solidifies a personal narrative around an all-encompassing, systemic issue.
Listen to the podcast here.
Prison is often just a stop along the road for individuals who have been struggling with victimization all their lives. In a world that is so saturated with issues of moral complexity, our criminal justice winds up piling punishment upon people who are the most disadvantaged and have very serious histories of victimization.
Read the article here.