Rachael Rollins says she has seen the criminal justice system from “almost every angle.” Now, as Boston’s first female African-American district attorney, she’s setting the agenda. She explains her new approach of “services not sentences” as a response to low-level “crimes of poverty” and the urgency of changing the traditional role of the prosecutor.
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Rikers Island was once the dream of progressive reformers for a more rehabilitative corrections system. Now New York City, taking advantage of its plunging jail population, has pledged to replace the scandal-plagued complex with four smaller redesigned facilities—located near courthouses, not on an isolated island. It’s a shift the mayor says will end the era of mass incarceration in the city. But can building “better” jails lead to less reliance on jails overall? New Thinking host Matt Watkins moderates a public discussion of “Justice by Design.”
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Almost any encounter with the criminal justice system comes with a price tag, and fines and fees are capturing millions of Americans in a cycle of poverty and justice-involvement. Various states across the country charge you for using a public defender, a DNA sample, your monthly parole meetings, even a jury trial. And that’s in addition to the fines attached to any conviction. Fall too far behind on your payments and you could end up in jail. On this episode, we hear from a judge in Washington State who’s come up with an innovative solution to help break this cycle, and from Alexes Harris, a leading researcher on how fines and fees are used across the country.
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How can the recent victories of the campaign to elect reform-minded district attorneys be wedded to larger systemic change to ensure the movement’s gains outlast the next election? On the final episode of our Prosecutor Power series, the ACLU’s Somil Trivedi says progressive D.A.s have to take the next step of campaigning to reduce their own power.
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Alexandra Natapoff calls the misdemeanor justice system a “quiet behemoth”: making up four of every five criminal cases in the U.S., neglected by scholars and reformers, and potentially harming those caught up in it for life. In Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal, she describes a system warped by financial incentives that acts as a leading engine of racial and social inequality. She also says the reforms are obvious, and already happening in pockets across the country.
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The movement to elect reform-minded prosecutors has been around long enough and scored enough victories that progressive D.A.s now have their own support network: Fair and Just Prosecution. Miriam Krinsky, its executive director, explains why she thinks “starry-eyed idealists” who want to transform the justice system need to get the message that “the biggest difference they can make is to go and work in a prosecutor’s office.”
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How effective is therapy or treatment when it’s used instead of incarceration, and what are the challenges to conducting it inside the coercive context of the criminal justice system? New Thinking host Matt Watkins is joined by clinical psychologist Jacob Ham who works with justice-involved young people affected by trauma, and John Jay College’s Deborah Koetzle who evaluates programs aiming to help participants rebuild lives outside of the justice system.
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Highlights from a public screening and panel discussion of Bill Moyers’s ‘Rikers: An American Jail,’ moderated by New Thinking host, Matt Watkins. Commenting on the film and the future of criminal justice reform are Tina Luongo of the Legal Aid Society, Jill Harris of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office, and two of the people formerly held on Rikers featured in the film: Barry Campbell of the Fortune Society, and Johnny Perez of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. This episode was originally released in July 2018.
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As a defense attorney, Larry Krasner sued the Philadelphia police upwards of 75 times. In late 2017, he was elected D.A. in a landslide. As part of our series on the power of prosecutors, Krasner explains why he has little patience for compromise in a city whose justice system is “an outlier in a country that is an outlier.”
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An audio portrait of Make It Happen, our program working with young men of color in Crown Heights, Brooklyn affected by violence. Through interviews with participants and practitioners, the episode explores the intersections of trauma, involvement with the justice system, and the lived experience of race. This episode was originally released in April 2018 and chosen as ‘Best of 2018‘ by the Vera Institute of Justice.
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