Links of Interest for the Week — May 20, 2011
Immigration Court Reform:
- Human Rights Watch presented testimony to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary about reducing the immigration court backlog through decreasing transfers and providing counsel.
Criminal Justice Reform: Chicago Appleseed does not work in the area of prison reform but several articles discussing prisons, prison populations, and the costs of incarceration caught our eye this week.
- Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University, had an editorial titled “In Prison Reform, Money Trumps Civil Rights” in the New York Timesthis week.
- A longer article in Wednesday’s New York Times questioning conventional wisdom that privately-operated prisons can cost less to operate than state-run prisons.
- Equal Justice Works is commemorating Mental Health Awareness Month with a series of blog posts on the courts, prisons, and persons with mental health issues.
Community Justice:
- The Chicago News Co-Op has put up a nice interactive guide to Chicago’s aldermen as we all get accustomed to having a new mayor.
- Social IMPACT Research Center, a program of Heartland Alliance has released a report examining publicly-funded human services and highlighting the social and economic value for society when investments are made into human services, briefly touching on the benefits of community schools.
- Illinois’ Senate Democrats released their proposed redistricting map, drawn during a closed-door session. You can view the proposed map using Google Earth By following the instructions at this link.