Posts Tagged ‘prison reform’
Beyond Prisons
Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System explores the history of the American penal system and presents a moral and ethical criticism of the state of the current prison system.
Beyond Prisons: A New Interfaith Paradigm for Our Failed Prison System is available for purchase on Amazon.
Posted by hcdmedia
Sensible Justice
Former New York Times editor, David C. Anderson’s Sensible Justice: Alternatives to Prison describes the writer’s research of alternative criminal justice systems such as community based work and house arrest.
Sensible Justice: Alternatives to Prison is available for purchase on Amazon.
Posted by hcdmedia
Texas Prison Reforms
According to a new report released by the Justice Department, Texas has become a successful example of a state that worked to reduce its prison population and find new solutions for nonviolent offenders.
In 2007, Texan lawmakers passed measures geared toward reducing the prison population and saving $443 million. They also invested $241 million in substance abuse and mental health treatment programs. These measures proved successful and the state’s prison population increased by .4% in 2008 (down from an average annual increase of 3% since 2003).
Texas is still considered far behind many other states in reducing its prison population, but these steps are the beginning.
According to University of Houston Law Center professor Sandra Guerra Thompson, University of Houston Law Center professor, agrees: “We’re way behind many other states, and we have a long way to go to catch up.” But, she said, “There seems to have been a change recently, a more nuanced approach.”
Read more here.
Posted by hcdmedia
Everything I Didn’t Learn in Kindergarten I Learned in Prison
Restorative Justice System in a Prison Community: Everything I Didn’t Learn in Kindergarten I Learned in Prison by Cheryl Swanson shows an inside look of the development of an “Honor Dorm” in an Alabama Prison. The book recounts the developments in policy that gave way to the Honor Dorm as well as recounts everyday problem-solving with inmates.
Restorative Justice System in a Prison Community: Everything I Didn’t Learn in Kindergarten I Learned in Prison is available for purchase on Amazon.
Posted by hcdmedia
Inside Brazil’s Prisons
In a photo essay by Michelle Ferng and Danny Thiemann, life in Brazilian prisons is showcased.
Read more about the photographer’s trip and view more photographs here.
Posted by hcdmedia
Abolition Democracy: Beyond Prisons, Torture, and Empire
In a series of lectures, this book addresses the shifts in US policy that have occurred post-9/11 in dealing with international and domestic law, politics, human rights, prisons, and prisoner treatment. Davis discusses her own past as a former prisoner and “enemy of the state” as well as the impact that racial legacies have on our current prison system and state of democracy. What responsibility does the U.S. have as the world’s leading democracy to take accountability for abuses of power that occur in our prison system?
Posted by hcdmedia
Are Prison’s Obsolete?
In this book activist, author, community leader, teacher, and former Black Panther, Angela Davis, compares the history of abolition movements within the U.S. with current movements to reform and/or abolish the current prison system. She raises questions regarding the necessity and purpose of prisons in our present society, confronts what it would take to transform prisons and the politics, economics, social and class hierarchies that support it. Her book poses the question: Are prisons the site of the next abolition movement?
Are Prison’s Obsolete cam be found on Amazon.com.
Posted by hcdmedia