January 2016

Suppose you're a 45-year-old woman living in the U.S. You have no history of breast cancer, nor worrisome symptoms. Should you have a mammogram? If you follow the American Cancer Society's recommendation , the answer is "yes": You should begin routine mammography screening for breast cancer at age 45. But if you follow the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation , the answer is "no": You should probably wait another 5 years. Which recommendation is right? Answering this question...

A new ban on solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison could bring momentum to reform efforts on the state level. President Obama announced the ban and other prison reforms Monday, saying in an op-ed that he hoped the policies would be a model for state and local corrections systems. “How can we subject prisoners to unnecessary solitary confinement, knowing its effects, and then expect them to return to our communities as whole people? It doesn’t make us safer.

DECEMBER 31, 2015 - BY YTFG   “For these are all our children. We will all profit by, or pay for, whatever they become. ” - James Baldwin, Writer The Blueprint for Youth Justice Reform is a call to action to funders, policymakers, community leaders, system stakeholders, advocates, youth and families. We seek your bold leadership, your commitment and your voices as we work in partnership for youth justice reform.   Together, we can transform the way we respond to...

Privilege can be a hard thing to talk about. Oftentimes, when it's implied or stated that someone is "privileged," they can feel defensive or upset. They may have worked very hard for what they have accomplished and they may have overcome many obstacles to accomplish it. And the word "privilege" can make a person feel as though that work is being diminished. The key point about privilege, though, is that it doesn't mean that a person was raised by wealthy parents, had everything handed to...

A teacher asks her students to take out a pencil for a pop quiz, but one child won’t pick up his pencil. The teacher repeats her request. The child refuses. What happens next—what sort of discipline is meted out, how long it lasts, and whether administrators or parents are notified—may differ drastically from one state to the next. While all educators struggle with how to cope with defiant or disruptive kids, there is no federal legislation and only a patchwork of state...

In 2008, in El Cajon, California, 30-year-old John Nicholas Gunther bludgeoned his mother to death with a metal pipe, and then stole $1378 in cash, her credit cards, a DVD/VCR player, and some prescription painkillers. At trial, Gunther admitted to the killing, but argued that his conviction should be reduced to second-degree murder because he had not acted with premeditation. A clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist testified that two previous head traumas—one the result of an...

T here are only two parts of the American criminal justice system that haven’t succumbed to privatization, according to research released on Thursday by In the Public Interest: the police and the courts. Everything else – including transportation, probation, food, electronic monitoring, psychiatric and drug treatment and fine collection – has been privatized somewhere in the country. We’ve farmed out so many correctional services to private corporations that criminal...

T he guard-on-inmate violence that makes it to the news – an inmate in a wheelchair thrown down the stairs, women in Rikers who allege rampant sexual abuse – is just a fraction of the violence that happens in prisons daily. And it’s not just a few bad apples among a mostly do-gooder group: most prisons and jails foster violence because it is their main form of control. I’ve reported at several California prisons and heard stories of correctional officers who flood a...

On the surface, the notion seems preposterous: Hand out Samsung computer tablets to dozens of Sacramento County Main Jail inmates. But 40 of the tablets have been in use at the Main Jail downtown for two months, and officials say they have had virtually no problems. Inmates have used them to take classes toward high school diplomas, for parenting and domestic violence courses and, once they have earned enough points from studying, to watch preapproved movies or listen to music. The project,...

Housing vouchers allow the federal government to offer quality homes to low-income families . Allocation of the vouchers has expanded tremendously in the post-public housing landscape. Research shows, however, that in cities including New Orleans, vouchers have mostly reshuffled poor families to other impoverished neighborhoods. A report from The Data Center of New Orleans last year showed that most families currently using housing vouchers in the city live in highly racially segregated,...

In 2010, a 16-year-old named Kalief Browder from the Bronx was accused of stealing a backpack. He was sent to Rikers Island to await trial, where he reportedly endured unspeakable violence at the hands of inmates and guards — and spent nearly two years in solitary confinement. In 2013, Kalief was released, having never stood trial. He completed a successful semester at Bronx Community College. But life was a constant struggle to recover from the trauma of being locked up alone for 23...

I never had a student change his behavior for the better because he was suspended. Most of the time students returned and reoffended. Time away from school seemed to exacerbate problems, not fix them. As a public school leader, I was in charge of major disciplinary actions — suspensions and expulsions. My school was for older, disconnected youth, some with violent and criminal backgrounds. We had to suspend students for all types of reasons: theft, fighting, threatening, bringing a...