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October 2017

Debating Risk-Assessment Tools [themarshallproject.org]

Risk-assessment tools are on the rise in courts across the country, causing a fierce debate over whether justice should be meted out via algorithm. Sunday, The Marshall Project published a piece of commentary by Adam Neufeld, a senior fellow at Georgetown Law’s Institute for Technology Policy and Law and the Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation. In it, Neufeld comes down in favor of risk-assessment tools, arguing that algorithms can help the criminal justice system, “but only...

Scientists Work To Overcome Legacy Of Tuskegee Study, Henrietta Lacks [npr.org]

It's a Sunday morning at the Abyssinian Baptist Church , a famous African-American church in the Harlem area of New York City. The organist plays as hundreds of worshippers stream into the pews. The Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III steps to the pulpit. "Now may we stand for our call to worship," says Butts, as he begins a powerful three-hour service filed with music, dancing, prayers and preaching. "How good and pleasant it is when all of God's children get together." Then, about an hour into...

New Report Paints Picture of Dysfunction, Rampant Racial Disproportionality in L.A.’s Juvenile Probation System [chronicleofsocialchange.org]

A scathing report recently made public by the Los Angeles County Probation Department paints a troubling picture of the agency that oversees the county’s juvenile justice system. The report describes long-standing department-wide problems, including decrepit and out-of-date conditions at its three juvenile halls, widespread racial disparities for youth overseen by the department, numerous staffing and training issues and continuing failures to re-direct money to work with community-based...

What If Getting Laid Off Wasn't Something to Be Afraid Of? [theatlantic.com]

NORRKÖPING, Sweden—When Beate Autrum first heard that she and hundreds of other employees were getting laid off from the Whirlpool factory where she worked, she was terrified. Autrum, a single mother, had uprooted her whole life to move to Sweden from Germany to work for Whirlpool, and she worried about her immigration status, how she would support her daughter, and whether she’d find a new job again. It was 2014, a tough time to lose a job in this industrial Swedish town, as other companies...

A Design Dilemma: How to Visualize the Trauma of Slavery [citylab.com]

When visiting Sullivan’s Island off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, a few years ago, designer Walter Hood came across an interesting pattern or tapestry of some sort in a small museum there. As he looked closer, he realized that it wasn’t a pattern: It was the outlines of bodies lined up next to each other. He was looking at the Brooks Map , the document that shows how enslaved Africans were packed into the bottom of slave ships. Sullivan’s Island was a slave ship hub; it was where...

The Long, Strange Journey of the U.S. Drug Court System [nationswell.com]

The United States isn’t exactly an international role model when it comes to incarceration; out of all developed countries, we imprison the most people , and not very cheaply . Close to half of those incarcerated in federal and state prisons are there because of drugs , but that hasn’t solved the nation’s ongoing drug crisis. And even though America is safer now than ever before, putting a glut of people behind bars isn’t the reason why . The failures in the American justice system to tackle...

Can Gratitude Be Good for Your Heart? [greatergood.berkeley.edu]

Could saying “thank you” help you to live longer? For many decades, behavioral cardiology studied only the impact of so-called “negative traits”—such as stress, depression , and anxiety—on people with cardiovascular disease. The field got its start in the late 1950s with the work of cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman , who found that “Type A” behavior—characterized by hostility, time urgency, and competitiveness—doubled the risk of coronary heart disease. Over the next five...

Introducing myself, Morgan Vien & NEW Practicing Resilience Community

Hello! I’m a Community Manager for the Practicing Resilience for Self-Care & Healing community. This is an introduction to me and this new community. I graduated with a B.S. in Public Health from Santa Clara University June 2017. And I’m interested in preventing chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, at the community and population level by addressing biological, psychological, and social factors that affect chronic disease outcomes. As the...

How Innovation Leads to Economic Segregation [citylab.com]

The urban revival of the past two decades has led to a striking contradiction. As high-tech talent and industry have moved back to many cities, increasing their economic output and lowering unemployment rates, these cities have become increasingly unequal. Now a new study documents in meticulous detail the extent to which rising innovation and deepening economic segregation in cities are two sides of the same coin. The study , by economists Enrico Berkes of Northwestern University and my...

Why Are Prosecutors Putting Innocent Witnesses in Jail? [thenewyorker.com]

One night in May, 2015, an accountant named Renata Singleton arrived home from work and changed into lounge pants. Singleton, a polite, bespectacled woman in her mid-thirties, who kept the books for a local New Orleans charter school, intended to have a quiet evening with her three children. She was surprised when two uniformed police officers knocked on the door. “Can we speak to you away from your kids?” one of the cops asked. Singleton stepped outside to join the officers and recalls one...

Why We Must Save Small Black Cities [citylab.com]

Can less populated cities on the outskirts of larger metropolitan areas be too small to succeed ? Are urban municipalities with fewer than 100,000 people vestiges of a bygone era? Should small “inner-ring” cities even exist? These questions are being posed with greater frequency across the country. “Merger with the central city is an option more physically contiguous inner-ring suburbs should consider,” writes Aaron Renn, a researcher at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

Key Childhood Trauma Bills Become Law in California

On October 15th, Governor Jerry Brown wrapped up the first year of a two-year legislative session by signing some bills and vetoing others. Three of those signed bills had been supported by 150 individuals from all around the state on Policymaker Education Day in July, as part of the California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity ( 4CA ): AB 340 (Arambula): Creates a statewide advisory body to review how trauma is detected in children as early as possible. Specifically, it brings...

Crawford and Erie County Trauma Conference sells out

Crawford and Erie County in Northwest Pennsylvania joined together again this fall to host the 4 th Annual Trauma Informed and Resilient Communities Conference at Edinboro University . This entirely free conference was well attended with approximately 355 participants who sold out the venue in less than one day. Our morning plenary promoted the themes of building community resilience and the Pennsylvania opioid crisis. It began with a brief introduction to ACES through 3 short videos. We...

Low Earnings Keep Women Unnecessarily In Jail Pre-Trial, Says New Report [witnessla.com]

Slightly under half of the approximately 219,000 women incarcerated in the United States right now are in local jails, and 60 percent of these jailed women have not been convicted, but are still awaiting trial, according to a new report produced jointly by The Prison Policy Initiative and the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice. The report, “Women’s Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017”- —authored by Aleks Kajstura, the Legal Director of the Prison Policy Initiative—is an addition to a...

Children of Color Face Higher Barriers to Success, New Casey Report Says [jjie.org]

The children of immigrants make up less than one-fourth of the nation’s youth population yet account for 30 percent of children living in poverty, a new report finds. More than that, young black and brown Americans were worse off compared to white and Asian-American children, the Annie E. Casey Foundation said. The foundation analyzed youth welfare along several axes, including education, health and economic indicators, to come up with an index of how well young people in various racial and...

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