Doctors’ Orders: Treat, Don’t Incarcerate, Mentally Ill and Addicts

One of the world’s most respected academic journals, The New England Journal of Medicine, recently published a piece offering a fresh perspective on the US policy of incarcerating drug users and the mentally ill.  “Medicine and the Epidemic of Incarceration” (pdf) takes a public health approach to a...
June 10, 2011

Featured Resource: ABA Criminal Justice Section

The ABA's Criminal Justice Section "State Policy Implementation Project" includes a collection of research and recommendations proposing five reforms: 1. Pre-Trial Release Reform 2. Decriminalization of Minor Offenses 3. Effective Reentry Programs 4. Increased Use of Parole and Probation 5. Comm...
June 3, 2011

Diversion Court a Must for Justice and Economy

This article originally appeared at the Huffington Post. Imagine a program that saves Cook County at least $20 million per year while reducing crime, incarceration, and unemployment. This is no fantasy -- it's called diversion court, and Cook County can and should implement it right away. Last fal...
May 13, 2011

NAACP President and Staunch Conservative Norquist Promote Prison Reform(!)

NAACP President Benjamin Jealous and fierce anti-tax and conservative advocate Grover Norquist have been doing a media tour recently to debate prison reform. The surprise? They’re on the same side of the debate. Jealous and Norquist, who leads the fiscally ultra-conservative group Americans for Tax...
April 15, 2011

Diversion Division: A Remedy for Racially Disproportionate Drug Enforcement

This post originally appeared at the Huffington Post. In Illinois last week, a statutorily mandated, unbiased committee, the Disproportionate Justice Impact Study (DJIS) Commission, reported the latest evidence confirming a long-held suspicion -- that the war on drugs undermines African American...
February 9, 2011