GPS monitoring servings its purpose in Minnesota

Judge Inna Klein and probation officers from The Community Supervision and Corrections Department are bringing domestic violence reform to Nueces County. By taking more aggressive approaches toward supervision and accountability, and by focusing on rehabilitative services for offenders, they hope to break the cycles of violence.

The organization Southerners on New Ground is helping reform the criminal justice system in the south. Activists won a small victory in Atlanta, where the mayor and city council approved a resolution that replaced cash bonds with signature bonds for misdemeanor offenses. They also raised money to help people pay their cash bails as part of a larger event called the National Bail Out collective, which bailed out 147 Black women in 26 cities this year.

For Redina, and others suffering from addiction, it is hard to break the cycle. 'Women Working for a Change' is a program that tries to change addicts' thinking in order to prevent a relapse.

What does a business like IKEA do if they want to hire former prisoners? They listen to a panel of people who have already done it.

In High Point North Carolina, domestic violence cases dramatically dropped after the city adopted a “focused deterrence” approach. “Where the city once saw between three and five domestic homicides a year, it has only had two in the last five years (one involved a couple from out of town). The last domestic homicide in High Point was in 2015.” The approach has worked in other cities as well. Now, Spartanburg County is the first to implement it at the county level.

Communities nationwide, including in Wisconsin, work to help ex-prisoners by surrounding them with supportive people. But in Vermont, a statewide network funded by the DOC makes it happen.

In St. Paul, one of Minnesota’s collective approaches to solutions in action — dubbed The Blueprint for Safety — is a foundation of laws that adapt to the proliferation of domestic violence in the state and successful efforts of marrying the advocate community with the criminal justice system.

In a conservative upstate town in New York, an early advocate of what is now known as restorative justice pioneered the idea of finding alternatives to incarceration that address root causes of crimes and offer victims larger roles in the process. He did this by engaging different people across law enforcement, the community and social services. That built broad support, but the programs have struggled to maintain these innovations or make them permanent after the departure of the visionary founder.

Connecticut is attempting to reduce prison recidivism by changing parole practices. Changes to the system are allowing parole officers to foster relationships with parolees and counsel them as people, not as cases.

A New Way of Life gives formerly incarcerated women something that most did not get from prison: treatment for the trauma that so many incarcerated women suffered from domestic violence. As an antidote to a system geared to punishing wrongdoing without addressing its causes, New Way provides housing and supportive programs, many of which are taught by women with similar experiences. Some of the women tell their stories of lives repaired and families reunited thanks to New Way's interventions.