Community service has long been a staple of sentencing in the U.S., and has long enjoyed a sunny, mostly uninterrogated, reputation as a more restorative and humane alternative to fines and fees or short-term jail. But two new reports—one from the Center for Court Innovation and one from the UCLA Labor Center—suggest many of the ways courts are actually using community service is undercutting its potential to act as a genuine alternative sentence.

The episode is in two acts. In Act One, an on-location snapshot of community service at the Center for Court Innovation. In Act Two, Joanna Weiss of the Fines and Fees Justice Center runs through some of the troubling recent findings, and outlines recommendations for making an alternative sentence work.

Full show notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

The movements to end cash bail and close jails are connected, and gabriel sayegh has been in the thick of organizing both fights. The co-executive director of the Katal Center for Health, Equity, and Justice explains why he thinks New York’s impending reforms to bail are potentially the most sweeping in the country. And in a critical week for the campaign to close New York City’s notorious Rikers Island jail facility, sayegh, one of the founders of the #CLOSErikers effort, outlines why the heated debate on the left over what is to come after Rikers, is a split organizers have long known was coming.

Full show notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

As chief medical officer for New York City jails, Homer Venters realized early in his tenure that for many people dying in jail, the primary cause of death was jail itself. To document these deaths, Venters and his team created a statistical category no one had dared to compile before: “jail-attributable deaths.” His work led him into frequent opposition with the security services. It also led to his book, Life and Death in Rikers Island, about New York City’s notoriously violent jail facility.

Full show notes (transcript, images, resources & references)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Can art transform the criminal justice system? On this special edition of New Thinking, host Matt Watkins sits down with two New York City artists on the rise—Derek Fordjour and Shaun Leonardo—who both work with our Project Reset to provide an arts-based alternative to court and a criminal record for people arrested on a low-level charge. With the program set to expand city-wide, the three discuss art’s potential to help heal a racialized criminal justice system.

Full show notes (images, links, transcript, etc.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

**episode originally aired in October 2018**

About two out of three people in local jails are being held awaiting trial, often because they can’t afford bail. What if a mathematical formula could do a more objective job of identifying who could be safely released? That’s the promise of risk assessments. But critics call them “justice by algorithm,” and contend they’re reproducing the bias inherent to the justice system, only this time under the guise of science.

UPDATE August 2019: Since this episode aired, the report covering much of the same ground as the podcast has been published. You can read ‘Beyond the Algorithm’ here. The study was also covered by The Marshall Project and The Appeal, among others.

Full show notes (includes episode transcript and our famed resources & references section)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

In 2017, more than 17,000 people were murdered in the United States, most of them in cities. Thomas Abt, a long-time policy-maker and researcher, says that far from intractable, there are proven ways to reduce the violence, but he worries the urgency of acting now is being ignored. And when it comes to how we think about violence, he has a bone to pick with both the right and the left. Abt’s new book is Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets.

Full show notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

With so much of the focus now on keeping people out of jail and prison, it can feel like there is a reluctance among criminal justice reformers to work on improving life for the more than two million people already there. But one group beginning to mobilize on the issue is prosecutors—or at least “progressive” prosecutors. Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby and Washington, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine explain what they learned on a tour of European prisons, and the “bright line” they see running from the overt racial control in America’s past to the disparities and dehumanizing practices inside jails and prisons today.

Full show notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

If you’re not following Scott Hechinger on Twitter, you’re missing something important. A public defender and the director of policy at Brooklyn Defender Services, Hechinger is a fantastic explainer and participant-witness at the frontlines of the justice system. In May 2018, he joined our series on prosecutors, outlining how prosecutor power is exerted at key decision-points in his clients’ cases, mostly to their detriment. Chosen by the Vera Institute of Justice for its ‘Best of 2018‘ awards, we’re revisiting that episode with a new introduction in light of the remarkable new series from Ava DuVernay, ‘When They See Us.’ The series dramatizes the story of five black teenagers arrested and imprisoned for the rape of a white woman in New York City’s Central Park in 1989 showing how prosecutor and police power is used to force false confessions from the five teens. Their case is an extreme one, but it’s by no means an isolated example. Indeed, what emerges from the discussion with Hechinger is how much the system, as part of its day-to-day operation, relies upon a combination of coercion and incentives to get what it wants from defendants.

Full show notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

Rachel Barkow contends criminal justice policy is a “prisoner of politics,” driven by appeals to voters’ worst instincts and an aversion to evidence of what actually works. Defined by its severity and unfairness, the criminal justice system, she says, is counterproductive to the goal of public safety it claims as its justification. In her new book, the NYU law professor makes a provocative case for “freeing” criminal justice from the political imperative in order to achieve real reform.

Full show notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More

The well-known journalist and commentator Emily Bazelon talks about her new book, Charged, on the “movement to transform American prosecution,” and where she thinks power might be shifting in the criminal justice system. So-called progressive prosecutors are very much a minority among elected D.A.s, but what if they could be the model for dismantling what she calls America’s “giant machine of punishment”?

Full show notes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS | More