Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • The ‘prison' with no fence: Go inside a Charlotte women's center changing lives for good

    Charlotte's Center for Women uses a rehabilitative approach to incarceration, letting up to 30 women at a time live in a group home that provides both therapy and connections to employment. Women with one to three years left on their sentences can apply for a spot in the residential work-release program. They and their families – most are mothers – get the counseling they need to adjust to a better life once the residents get released. The women say the small freedoms they are granted in the home, plus the respect and help they get, do for them what prison never could in changing lives.

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  • In Southwest Virginia, Reestablishing a Rural Hospital System Requires Rebuilding Trust

    When two hospital systems merged to create Ballad Health, agreements ensured all hospitals would stay open for at least five years and essential services in each of the rural and poorly served counties would be maintained. Enforceable price controls lowered patient costs and, in an effort to rebuild community trust and improve overall health, $308 million was committed to community-based care. The community health programs are based on the missions of organizations like Health Wagon, which serves its rural patients by forming personal relationships, being easily accessible, and understanding their needs.

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  • Rethinking policing: How Tempe de-escalation class changes officer behavior

    A controversial police shooting and other fraught encounters between Tempe police and residents prompted police to devise their own retraining regimen focused on de-escalation. The department observed other cities' programs and learned from its own officers who are known for defusing potentially volatile situations. After training some officers with the new curriculum, the department invited researchers to compare body-cam footage of trained and untrained officers. Though the findings did not show fewer shootings or uses of force, they did show a less aggressive, more calming approach.

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  • Police Reform: Walking a beat

    When the Richmond Police Department began putting police officers on foot patrol, walking neighborhood beats, relations with the public improved. That and other changes were associated with higher public trust and lower violence. But budget cuts have undermined the program. Now, nearby Vallejo is considering its options to address poor community relations and high gun violence. It is unclear whether Vallejo has passed the point of no return in its troubled police-community relations.

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  • Police Reform: Federal monitor

    With a long string of questionable uses of force and huge payouts to settle brutality lawsuits, the Vallejo Police Department might look to nearby Oakland for one approach to achieving better, more accountable policing: a court-appointed monitor. In Oakland, a monitor since 2003 has had the authority of a judge's order behind him as he and a staff oversee the city's use of force, handling of complaints, training, and other operations. The costly process is not without critics, nor is the Oakland department trouble-free. But some see the monitor as a force for positive change after a period of corruption.

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  • Police Reform: Police commission

    Vallejo officials are studying which type of civilian oversight they want for their police department, following years of controversial shootings of residents. Nearby Oakland and San Francisco have some of the strongest models in the nation. In both cities, civilian oversight commissions can fire police chiefs while overseeing the integrity of investigations into alleged police misconduct. Such commissions come in three main types, with varying degrees of power and autonomy.

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  • The career where it helps to have a criminal past

    All people between the ages of 14 and 21 in Washington, D.C., who are placed on probation for criminal convictions get assigned a probation officer, social worker, and a "credible messenger" – a mentor, usually with his or her own criminal past, who is paid by the city Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services to help ensure a successful probationary period. The cost is far lower than youth detention and is associated with a much lower rate of re-offending. The work is so intense that the highly trained messengers often need their own counseling to cope with the stress of turning lives around.

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  • ‘It liberated me': The fight for Calgary's supervised drug-use site

    In less than three and a half years, Safeworks, the only supervised drug-use site in Calgary, saved thousands of people from opioid-overdose deaths and helped users for whom abstinence-based treatment didn't work. The government of Alberta deemed the site a scene of "chaos" and ordered it closed once two new sites open. Safeworks supporters oppose the disruption in harm-reduction work that move would bring, considering how critical personal relationships built on trust are to this kind of service.

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  • ShotSpotter tech eyed as possible tool in gun violence prevention

    An audio alert service called ShotSpotter uses audio sensors and algorithms to detect gunfire and report it to the Cleveland police. The technology is helping to bridge the gap in unreported gunfire in the city.

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  • How Does Treating Gun Violence As A Public Health Crisis Work? One Bronx Program Offers A Potential Flagship Model

    Stand Up to Violence is the only street-outreach gun-violence-prevention program in New York that centers its work in hospitals. Street outreach is a policing alternative that uses former gang members and formerly incarcerated people to intervene before arguments turn deadly. Hospital-based intervention work puts counselors and mediators at gunshot victims' bedside to start the intervention, and offers of services, at the earliest stage. In a four-year span, the areas covered by Stand Up, based at Jacobi Medical Center, saw many fewer shootings and instances where victims got shot again.

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