Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

Search Results

You searched for: -

There are 1326 results  for your search.  View and Refine Your Search Terms

  • Community courts and the homeless: Do these programs make a difference?

    September 05, 2020 |

    The Register-Guard |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Oregon

    As an alternative to traditional courts, community courts provide resources to those experiencing homelessness. Fines and jail time are often the punishment in traditional courts for those charged with trespassing or loitering, but community courts provide services that help people find housing, jobs, health care, and even offer mobile showers, food stamp assistance, and mental health care. While the long-term data are lacking and don't offer a clear picture of recidivism rates, community courts do provide a better quality of life for those living on the streets.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • In CAHOOTS in Oregon

    September 04, 2020 |

    Voices of Monterey Bay |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    Oregon's CAHOOTS program has succeeded in replacing police on many mental-health crisis calls over its 30-year history because it is integrated in a larger system of services, including law enforcement. CAHOOTS' crisis workers, who cover the cities of Eugene and Springfield with three vans taking dozens of calls for help a day, come to their jobs with expertise as EMTs, nurses, or social workers. Then they spend 500 hours of training in crisis management and de-escalation, learning to offer help without forcing it, and without the threat of arrest except in the few cases when police backup is needed.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • Where Calling the Police Isn't the Only Option

    September 03, 2020 |

    Bloomberg CityLab |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States

    As the "defund-the-police" campaign sparks interest in alternatives to police-only responses to crises involving mental illness or similar problems, cities as disparate as Eugene, Oregon, and Stockholm serve as exemplars of ways to handle thousands of calls per year without involving the police. Like Eugene's CAHOOTS program, Stockholm's Psykiatrisk Akut Mobilitet (PAM) sends mental health and medical professionals to help people suffering mental crises. Now Oakland, Portland, Denver, New York, and other cities are exploring how to customize such programs to their own communities' needs.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • How Angela Merkel's great migrant gamble paid off

    August 30, 2020 |

    The Guardian |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: Germany

    Five years after Germany sparked controversy with a welcoming message to the flood of refugees applying for asylum, more than half of those 1.7 million refugees have work and pay taxes, their youth show strong signs of belonging to their German communities, and more than 10,000 have mastered the language enough to enroll in German universities. Refuting anti-immigrant skeptics meant overcoming, or enduring, enormous social and economic challenges. Despite many bumps, the policy now appears to have avoided the nightmare scenarios foreseen by critics, such as inviting even more refugees.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • Ex-gang members draw on their past to stop Fort Worth shootings before they happen

    August 28, 2020 |

    Fort Worth Star-Telegram |

    Multi-Media |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Fort Worth, Texas

    Inspired by a news story about a successful violence-intervention program in Richmond, California, and alarmed by a surge in gun violence in 2019, city officials in Fort Worth created VIP FW to deploy formerly incarcerated men and former gang members as mentors and mediators. In the program's startup phase, its mediations interrupted 18 potential shootings. Led by a man who pleaded for solutions at city council meetings, VIP FW intervenes in the lives of young men deemed at risk of committing violence who aren't reached by other community programs or by police enforcement.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • Deradicalizing Militants the High-Tech Way

    August 26, 2020 |

    HlídacíPes.org |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Czech Republic

    Czech Technical University's online learning platform, HERMES, combats terrorism based on proven methods of deradicalization of former jihadists and preventing recruitment of new people to terrorism. Interactive exercises and other tools teach prison and court officials to separate radical jihadists from other prisoners. As thousands of people imprisoned on terrorism charges finish serving their sentences and are released from prisons, the programs also target community-based spread of radical thought, including with job opportunities for former prisoners.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • Can Prosecutors Be Taught to Avoid Jail Sentences?

    August 25, 2020 |

    The New York Times |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Columbus, Ohio

    A nonprofit consulting firm, Prosecutor Impact, advances the cause of reducing incarceration and related reforms by helping reform-minded elected district attorneys confront one of the greatest obstacles to change: their own staff's opposition. In Columbus, a two-week curriculum educated front-line prosecutors about local services that can serve as problem-solving alternatives to punishment. It also taught them about poverty's challenges and engaged them in dialogue with prisoners, to make them more open to alternative approaches, which a local defense lawyer says was successful.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • The Prison Within

    August 22, 2020 |

    Raw Love Productions |

    Documentary |

    Over 15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, San Quentin, California

    In San Quentin Prison, men convicted of murder attend a 72-week restorative-justice circle where they tell their stories of trauma: what they suffered in their lives, and how they turned that into harm they inflicted on others. The Victim Offender Education Group enables a form of accountability and healing that being locked up doesn’t, because of the dialogue among the men and with others’ victims of violence.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • Flint Community Schools is Going Door to Door to Find Hard-to-Reach Students

    August 20, 2020 |

    Flint Beat |

    Text |

    Under 800 Words

    Response Location: United States, Flint, Michigan

    Staff from Flint Community Schools are taking a more door-to-door approach to find the close to 1,500 students who have not yet started attending virtual school when the fall semester started. FCS assembled "wellness teams" made up "social workers, behavioral specialists, nurses, and paraprofessionals" and sent them to neighborhoods with mapped routes to walk around neighborhoods and find students and their families, as well as help identify needs to assist with including food assistance, wi-fi hotspots, and other individual needs.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

  • With a truce brokered over Zoom, one D.C. neighborhood goes nearly 100 days without a shooting

    August 19, 2020 |

    The Washington Post |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Washington, District of Columbia

    Violence interrupters conducted a dozen meetings over Zoom to negotiate a truce between two warring groups in a neighborhood that went from 11 shootings in 5 months to none for at least 99 days following the truce. To mediate the personal disputes that had led to violent clashes, those leading the negotiations, from the D.C. attorney general's Cure the Streets program, used their knowledge of the community and their credibility as streetwise actors standing apart from police to strike an agreement. Truces like this often don't last long, but this one helped amid big increases in violence citywide.

    Read More


    Go to Original Story

Go to All Solutions in Focus