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Two KCK schools shifting focus from punishment to make schools safer, reduce suspensions

Maria Benevento

July 02, 2021 |

The Kansas City Beacon |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Kansas City, Kansas

Restorative discipline in classrooms is allowing students to focus on building relationships and repairing harm instead of suffering punishments. The practice prioritizes communication in an effort to emphasize community as well as reduce suspensions. The technique has had proven success in other schools, resulting in dramatic decreases in safety offenses.

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Back to Life

Tanya Hendel

June 30, 2021 |

Transitions Online |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Belarus, Gomel

People Plus has begun to fill a vacuum left by the Belarus prison system's lack of reentry services aimed at giving people a better chance to succeed after prison. The NGO provides its "resocialization" counseling for incarcerated people in the six months before their release. In its first six months, the program counseled more than 1,000 people, helping prepare them to find housing and jobs and avoid substance abuse, which in many cases proved successful. Its peer counselors stay in contact with clients after prison through meetings and online forums.

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The career where it helps to have a criminal past

Jo Mathys

June 29, 2021 |

BBC |

Podcast |

Over 15 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Washington, District of Columbia

All people between the ages of 14 and 21 in Washington, D.C., who are placed on probation for criminal convictions get assigned a probation officer, social worker, and a "credible messenger" – a mentor, usually with his or her own criminal past, who is paid by the city Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services to help ensure a successful probationary period. The cost is far lower than youth detention and is associated with a much lower rate of re-offending. The work is so intense that the highly trained messengers often need their own counseling to cope with the stress of turning lives around.

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Post-Derek Chauvin, Police Are Training to Intervene When They Witness Misconduct

Zusha Elinson Denise Blostein Rob Alcaraz

June 28, 2021 |

Wall Street Journal |

Multi-Media |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Denver, Colorado

After videos showed two Minneapolis police officers did nothing to stop Derek Chauvin from killing George Floyd, more than 130 police departments raced to sign up to train their officers on how to intervene to prevent fellow officers from using excessive force or committing other misconduct. A course called Active Bystandership for Law Enforcement (ABLE) trains officers who then take the training to the officers in their departments. The training seeks to overcome the insular culture of policing, teaching an escalating series of tactics to stop misconduct on the spot.

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Safe Streets celebrates a year with no homicides in a South Baltimore area they serve, with hope for rest of the city

Jessica Anderson Phillip Jackson

June 26, 2021 |

The Baltimore Sun |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Baltimore, Maryland

South Baltimore's Cherry Hill neighborhood enjoyed its third homicide-free year since the violence intervention program Safe Streets began operation. While a formal evaluation of the program's nine neighborhood sites is yet to be completed, community members credit it with lowering violence by putting "violence interrupters" on the scene of conflict or in hospitals to counsel gunshot victims against retaliation. Safe Streets mediated more than 400 disputes in Cherry Hill in the past year, most of them involving people armed with guns and likely to commit violence. Violence citywide has remained high.

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Millions of People With Felonies Can Now Vote. Most Don't Know It.

Nicole Lewis Andrew Rodriguez Calderón

June 23, 2021 |

The Marshall Project |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Nevada

Thirteen states restored the right to vote to millions of formerly incarcerated people in the years leading up to the 2020 elections. An analysis of four of them—Nevada, Kentucky, Iowa, and New Jersey—shows the new rights were rarely exercised, ranging from 4% to 23% of newly eligible voters actually registering. None of the four states required prison, parole, or elections officials to notify eligible voters. Those and other information gaps and barriers teach instructive lessons as the 2022 elections approach.

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‘It liberated me': The fight for Calgary's supervised drug-use site

Hamdi Issawi

June 22, 2021 |

The Sprawl |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: Canada, Calgary, Alberta

In less than three and a half years, Safeworks, the only supervised drug-use site in Calgary, saved thousands of people from opioid-overdose deaths and helped users for whom abstinence-based treatment didn't work. The government of Alberta deemed the site a scene of "chaos" and ordered it closed once two new sites open. Safeworks supporters oppose the disruption in harm-reduction work that move would bring, considering how critical personal relationships built on trust are to this kind of service.

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College-in-prison programs have many benefits, but barriers to access abound

Tamar Sarai Davis

June 21, 2021 |

Prism |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Middletown, Connecticut

College-in-prison programs like Wesleyan University's Center for Prison Education have a track record for improving incarcerated students' lives, lowering crime, and making prisons safer. But a number of factors compromise the number and effectiveness of such programs. Many fewer programs exist since incarcerated students were denied Pell Grants beginning in the 1990s. A 2015 program aimed at making financial aid more accessible poses a number of logistical hurdles. Prisons themselves can be inhospitable environments for attending classes and independent studies.

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The Everglades Experiment: Florida's First 'Incentivized' Prison Redefines Punishment

Ryan M. Moser

June 21, 2021 |

The Crime Report |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Miami, Florida

Two years into an experiment in "incentivized prison" management, Florida's Everglades Correctional Institution is considered the state's safest prison. An incarcerated journalist reporting from inside writes that by rewarding good behavior instead of only punishing bad behavior, the prison has expanded the classes it offers incarcerated men who can participate if they have a trouble-free record for four years. Separating men from the general population based on their desire to work toward their own rehabilitation and success once they leave prison has reduced stress and violence in the prison.

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How Does Treating Gun Violence As A Public Health Crisis Work? One Bronx Program Offers A Potential Flagship Model

Elizabeth Kim

June 21, 2021 |

Gothamist |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, New York, New York

Stand Up to Violence is the only street-outreach gun-violence-prevention program in New York that centers its work in hospitals. Street outreach is a policing alternative that uses former gang members and formerly incarcerated people to intervene before arguments turn deadly. Hospital-based intervention work puts counselors and mediators at gunshot victims' bedside to start the intervention, and offers of services, at the earliest stage. In a four-year span, the areas covered by Stand Up, based at Jacobi Medical Center, saw many fewer shootings and instances where victims got shot again.

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