The Solutions Story Tracker® is a curated database of rigorous reporting on responses to social problems. We collect and tag every story, providing you with the ability to find coverage of effective or promising ideas and approaches— by issue, location, journalist, and success factor (strategic insights that emerge as patterns).
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/nycs-non-police-mental-health-pilot-increasing-rate-of-those-getting-aid-data-show/3165520?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Darlene Rodriguez
WNBC-TV
22 July 2021
Broadcast TV News / Under 3 Minutes
In its first month as a pilot project in a part of Harlem, New York's Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division (B-HEARD) handled one-quarter of 911 calls for mental health crises. Despite fears of danger to the teams of social workers and paramedics, police backup was needed only seven times out of 110 cases. More people accepted help from the non-police teams than in the past from teams of police and paramedics. And that help depended half as often on hospital visits. People got helped on the scene or went to community centers for services. The city plans to expand the program.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2021/07/22/mental-health-responders-programs?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Robin Young
Allison Hagan
WBUR
22 July 2021
Radio Talk Show / 5-15 Minutes
The police chief in Eugene, Ore., home of the CAHOOTS program, which other communities see as the model for finding alternatives to policing, supports the program because it saves lives and saves the city money. Sending unarmed medics and social workers on calls involving behavioral health problems, mental health crises, and substance-use psychotic episodes automatically de-escalates many situations because of the lack of a police presence.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/for-girls-with-mothers-in-prison-a-summer-camp-offers-much-needed-support?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Amna Nawaz
PBS NewsHour
21 July 2021
Broadcast TV News / 5-15 Minutes
For three days each summer, the Girls Embracing Mothers (GEM) camp near Dallas gives girls an escape from their daily reality of being denied a normal relationship with their incarcerated mothers. Founded by a lawyer whose own mother was incarcerated, GEM combines typical summer-camp fun with trust-building exercises. During camp and afterward, the girls become part of a community of peers who understand each other's trauma – which puts them at higher risk of dropping out of school, mental health problems, and homelessness – in a place where they need not feel shame for their mothers' status.
https://www.thecut.com/2021/07/restorative-justice-lessons.html?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Amelia Schonbek
The Cut
21 July 2021
Text / Over 3000 Words
Among the many restorative justice programs in the U.S., the Domestic Violence Safe Dialogue program was one of the few to arrange face-to-face dialogue between survivors and men who had violently abused women. This form of surrogate dialogue – the pairings are between strangers – helps two people who want to change but can't do it alone. After extensive preparation and led by a facilitator, the meeting gives survivors a way to hear they were not to blame for the harm done to them, and for the men to admit responsibility and help someone else in ways that traditional punitive justice often cannot.
https://calmatters.org/justice/2021/07/california-gun-law-failing?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Robert Lewis
CalMatters
21 July 2021
Text / Over 3000 Words
Two decades ago, California became the first state to create a system to track and seize guns from people no longer legally permitted to possess a gun. Thousands of guns have been seized. But the database of gun owners now barred from gun possession because of a violent offense, a serious mental illness, or a restraining order has ballooned and many people slip through the cracks of a system "mired in chronic shortcomings." Local police often fail to support the system and the state's investigation bureau is understaffed.
https://news48.it/safar-travel?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Isa Grassano
News48
19 July 2021
Text / 1500-3000 Words
An Italian travel writer and a publishing house partnered to recreate the experience of travel to new places, providing tourists with a virtual experience and tour guides with a source of income to replace their lost businesses when the pandemic shut down actual travel. Called the Sarar project (Arabic for travel), the service charges 15 euros for one and a half hour Zoom tours featuring live explanations and interactions with local people, limited only by time zones and cellular reception. An average of 50 tourists have signed on with the seven tour guides who have been recruited so far.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/opinion/police-teenage-psychology.html?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Meryl Davids Landau
The New York Times
17 July 2021
Text / 800-1500 Words
"Policing the teen brain" is a training regimen devised by Strategies for Youth that teaches police officers to de-escalate conflicts with adolescents to avoid unnecessary incarceration. Youth detention has dropped significantly since Tippecanoe County put most of its officers through the training. Police learn how to account for teens' lowered impulse control and undeveloped problem solving skills. The county decided to pay for the expensive training because detention, which hits Black youth hardest, can be even more costly – and leave lasting damage in the lives of young people.
https://www.fox47news.com/neighborhoods/east-lansing-okemos/what-can-east-lansing-expect-from-its-police-oversight-commission?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Mikayla Temple
WSYM-TV
16 July 2021
Broadcast TV News / 3-5 Minutes
When Ann Arbor created a citizen panel overseeing its police department, it chose the approach that research shows is the one best suited to having real authority, and thus the most likely to reduce racial disparities in arrests and police shootings. It's too soon to know if the agency's investigations of complaints against police and review of police budgets and policies will achieve the ultimate goal of improving community trust in the police. But its chair says it is in a position to press for more accountability and transparency. East Lansing has just adopted the same model.
https://www.mediacites.fr/reportage/lille/2021/07/16/vigilans-le-dispositif-anti-suicide-qui-resiste-au-covid?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Arthur Fradin
Médiacités
16 July 2021
Text / 800-1500 Words
Depuis 2015 dans le Nord-Pas-de-Calais, des infirmières et des psychologues assurent un suivi pendant six mois des personnes ayant commis une tentative de suicide. Cet outil de recontact a été étendu à l’ensemble de la France en raison de ses très bons résultats. Les tentatives de suicides ont baissé de l’ordre de 10 à 12 % en trois ans.
https://people.com/crime/how-mental-health-first-responders-eugene-deescalate-conflict-save-lives?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Jeff Truesdell
People
15 July 2021
Text / Under 800 Words
CAHOOTS has become a national model because of its uncommon partnership with the Eugene Police Department. The police chief says CAHOOTS' unarmed first responders to mental health crises can de-escalate crises before crimes occur or someone gets hurt. That's the idea behind the decades-old agency that takes calls where police can sometimes cause worse outcomes. The crisis intervention workers and medics treat people on the scene or transport them to places where they can get the help they need. Police are available but rarely needed for safety on those calls.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-15/how-many-traffic-crashes-are-going-unreported?sref=EHcL0Cmk&utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Laura Bliss
Bloomberg CityLab
15 July 2021
Text / 800-1500 Words
The Vision Zero program many cities use to reduce traffic deaths depends on data to inform where to target safety measures like redesigned streets and speed limits. But, when significant numbers of crashes, particularly involving pedestrians and bicycles, go missing in the data, the interventions miss the problems. Racial disparities in unreported crashes or unresponsive police mean that the problems are compounded in under-served areas. Data improvements in D.C., San Francisco, and other cities aim to fill the gaps so that the benefits of Vision Zero can extend to places where they're needed most.
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/reducing-incarceration-no-prosecuting-minor-non-violent-crimes?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
David Byrne
Reasons to be Cheerful
12 July 2021
Text / 1500-3000 Words
When prosecutors in Boston and Baltimore stopped prosecuting certain non-violent, minor offenses, crime of all sorts, from minor to violent, went down. Getting prosecuted and jailed can in itself increase the probability that people will get in more trouble. When their mistakes are not compounded by an arrest record that limits their job and housing prospects, they are apt to stay out of trouble. The prosecutors and research found that simply excluding cases of non-violent, minor drug possession, disorderly conduct, shoplifting from the system does not encourage more crime; probably the opposite.
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