Solving problems by addressing the underlying factors. By digging deep and attacking the root causes of a problem, changemakers are able to treat the disease rather than just the symptoms. These solutions offer help to those in need, employ a comprehensive approach to problem-solving, and address the determinants that keep individuals and communities from succeeding.
Treating underlying conditions, specifically those that are structural and systemic that cause social problems. These issues arise as a consequence from the way a society is organized. For example, a solution that addresses patriarchy or a lack of jobs in a poor neighborhood.
Help rather than punishmentThinking of behaviors such as addiction as diseases that require treatment.
Using a comprehensive approachProviding people with services that address multiple challenges at once.
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https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/09/18/metro/how-teachers-are-bringing-lessons-racial-justice-uprisings-into-classroom?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Deanna Pan
The Boston Globe
21 September 2020
Text / 800-1500 Words
Teachers across Massachusetts are finding ways to incorporate antiracist practices into their curriculum. An English teacher at Newton High School is replacing required reading materials produced by white male authors with texts from authors like Sandra Cisneros, Langston Hughes and other authors of color. A physics teacher at Brookline High School is sharing more stories about scientists of color and teaching students about "naming conventions in scientific laws and theorems rooted in European colonization."
https://www.rrstar.com/news/20200919/program-offers-alternative-to-calling-police?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Jeff Kolkey
Rockford Register Star
19 September 2020
Text / Under 800 Words
For 31 years, CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets) has used unarmed medics and crisis intervention experts to respond to mental health and other non-violent crises, saving money and preventing potentially violent reactions that can result from having police respond first. No effects on police officers' use of force have been measured. But CAHOOTS estimates it saves taxpayers $8.5 million annually in police costs.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/19/alexandria-kentucky-police-social-workers?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Josh Wood
The Guardian
19 September 2020
Text / 800-1500 Words
When Alexandria, Kentucky's police chief realized how many of his officers' calls were for mental health crises or minor interpersonal disputes, and then how many of these unresolved problems resulted in repeat 911 calls, he hired a social worker to follow up with people to offer health and social services after the police leave. Now the department's two staff social workers do that work, costing less than hiring more police and reducing repeat calls. Alexandria is a small town, but now its approach is being copied in nearby Louisville.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/913229469/mental-health-and-police-violence-how-crisis-intervention-teams-are-failing?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Eric Westervelt
NPR
18 September 2020
Text / 1500-3000 Words
More than 2,700 police departments in the U.S. have crisis intervention teams aimed at responding to mental health crises with fewer arrests and less violence, but the death of Daniel Prude in Rochester police custody offers clear lessons in the shortcomings and misuse of the CIT model. A lack of adequate mental health services across the country, coupled with superficial training of the police, too often means a police response to a crisis will not de-escalate the situation or lead to meaningful help for the person in crisis. A recent study found CITs have not shown they will lower violence.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/18/police-shooting-mental-health-solutions-training-defund/5763145002?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Grace Hauk
USA Today
18 September 2020
Text / 1500-3000 Words
Daniel Prude's death in police custody illustrates a common flaw in how police respond to mental health crises, but reform advocates disagree on whether to improve police training or bypass police almost entirely. Mental health crises make up a large share of police calls, jailings, and fatal police shootings. Most police training on mental health responses is limited to 4-12 hours. Some departments put at least some officers through crisis intervention training. But critics of police-focused responses prefer non-police response teams, in use in a few cities.
http://filtermag.org/lead-program-police?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Helen Redmond
Filter
17 September 2020
Text / 1500-3000 Words
The LEAD program (Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion), which was launched in Seattle in 2011 and is used in such cities as Atlanta, Los Angeles, Portland, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, provides intensive case management and services to people who come in contact with police and qualify to have their low-level cases bypass the criminal justice system. LEAD has been shown to lower recidivism by half and to make it more likely that people with drug and mental health, and other problems can find housing and jobs more easily. But this critical analysis argues that the police should not serve as gatekeepers.
https://thecrimereport.org/2020/09/16/digging-our-way-out-of-the-hole-the-safe-alternative-to-solitary?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Jeremiah Bourgeois
The Crime Report
16 September 2020
Text / 1500-3000 Words
Washington's prison system cut by half the number of people held in solitary confinement by reducing its security system's reliance on the method and helping former solitary detainees transition back to the general population in a healthier way. But a formerly incarcerated journalist who spent more than seven of his 27 years in prison locked in solitary confinement says the state's disciplinary system is still rooted in an overly punitive approach to mostly petty offenses. A system based on positive incentives to good behavior exists in North Dakota prisons, modeled in part on Norway's approach.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-chicago-violence-hospital-responder-20200916-ruutbxhob5b27fermnb52blui4-story.html?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Annie Sweeney
Chicago Tribune
16 September 2020
Text / 1500-3000 Words
Since the 2018 opening of a trauma-care center near the neighborhoods most affected by Chicago's gun violence, the University of Chicago Medical Center's Violence Recovery Program has helped survivors and victims' families to address the emotional harm that can go untreated when only physical harm is treated. Part of a growing field nationwide, hospital-based violence intervention, the program's nine specialists counsel people through the immediate shock of a gun injury or death. Then they address longer-term needs for services. The goals are both humanitarian and pragmatic, to head off more violence.
https://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/as-call-for-police-reform-grows-here-some-look-to-oregon-for-possible-answers/Content?oid=12250508&utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Beth Adams
City Newspaper
15 September 2020
Multi-Media / 800-1500 Words
Protests over police officers' conduct in the death of Daniel Prude prompted Rochester, N.Y., officials to look to Eugene's CAHOOTS program for an alternative model in responding to mental health crises. But CAHOOTS officials caution that their longstanding practice of dispatching mental health counselors as first responders, in place of police, has resulted in a safer, more caring response only because the agency is part of a broader system of social services. CAHOOTS teams are on call 24/7, replacing police on up to 8% of 911 calls and calling for police backup a fraction of the time.
https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/atlantas-trying-to-support-not-punish-its-teenage-water-vendors?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker
Adina Solomon
Next City
15 September 2020
Text / 800-1500 Words
Teens selling water on the sweltering streets of Atlanta are typically dealt with by police officers who often crack down on "unpermitted sales of water by youth." In a new approach, city officials convened a council to offer alternatives to police action and suggested ways to promote and develop the entrepreneurial spirit in teens through a variety of programs. The council looked to a similar program in Baltimore that re-engaged windshield-washing teens in school and re-directed others to full-time jobs.
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