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

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  • From LA jail, two inmates pioneer care for mentally ill peers

    At the Los Angeles County Jail, two men incarcerated on pending murder charges created a homegrown approach to improving the care and conditions of confinement for people with serious mental illness. Their approach is simple: showing love and care for people whose illness makes them feel like outcasts. By helping fellow incarcerated men attend counseling and other programs, and by tending to their personal needs, the initiative has contributed to a significant drop in people harming themselves. Fewer restraints are needed, and the pods where the program operates are notably cleaner and calmer than before.

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  • The FBI is supposed to track how police use force – years later, it's falling well short

    Five years after the FBI started tracking how often police use force, the majority of police departments still fail to comply and the FBI refuses to release publicly what information it has collected. The policy was enacted in response to the realization that no one had definitive data on how often the police kill people, use teargas, or other incidents of force. What little data exists showed racial disparities in whom police use force against. But compliance was made voluntary and the FBI made public release of the data contingent on 80% of police departments complying, a goal it's nowhere near.

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  • Minneapolis Lawyers Uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act

    The 43-year-old Indian Child Welfare Act continues to make a "profound" difference to Native American families and tribes, despite being under frequent legal attacks. The law limits the placement of Native children in non-Native foster or adoptive homes, to preserve families and Native culture. Helping parents stabilize their families is preferred over removing children. Native children are still removed from their families and culture at disproportionately high rates. But a review of 40 cases handled by the ICWA Law Center in Minnesota showed "clear benefit for the children it is designed to protect."

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  • Santa Barbara County Looks to Yolo County for Criminal Justice Reform

    By turning over its criminal justice data to Measures for Justice, a nonprofit developer that turns raw data into publicly available reports, the Yolo County district attorney has a much better grasp on the work that it has been doing. Better data mean better-informed decisions about criminal justice reforms. The investment in the new system is prompting policy changes because of racial disparities showing up in the numbers. And that is prompting many other DAs to clamor for the same kind of system.

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  • Police banned from participating in NYC Pride events and march through 2025

    NYC Pride, which commemorates a LGBTQ+ uprising against police harassment and brutality, banned police participation in its events. About 200 NYPD members from the Gay Officers Action League typically participate in the pride march. However, since police presence for some LGBTQ+ people, including people of color and trans people, causes fears of violence rather than security, private companies will provide first response and security and volunteers will be trained in de-escalation tactics. The NYPD will be at least a block away and only intervene if necessary. The policy will be reviewed again in 2025.

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  • Bringing Midwifery Back to Black Mothers

    Black midwifery has deep cultural roots, especially in the South as a remnant of the medical profession's neglect of Black women. Though the tradition largely died out, and nurse-midwives have become more professionalized, the latter-day profession is largely white. Choices, the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, is training Black midwives and returning the practice to its communal roots to give Black mothers better care than they get from mainstream obstetrics and to combat the high maternal-mortality rate in the U.S.

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  • Philly should look to this Oakland program to protect its AAPI community

    In response to a string of hate crimes across the country that has left the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community on edge, a volunteer-led group is standing in solidarity through more than just words. Compassion in Oakland is providing chaperone services to Asian elders. The volunteer-led group is helping the Asian-American community feel safer by accompanying people on their errands and doing street patrols to show solidarity and support.

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  • 'We're dealing with victims': Ride-along offers glimpse at anguished work of crisis teams

    Rochester's Person In Crisis team, launched in response to the death of Daniel Prude in police custody during a mental health crisis, began a six-month pilot project in January. PIC uses a "co-response model" of crisis intervention, sending social workers alone or with police, as first responders or called in by police at a scene, to connect non-violent people with needed services. PIC teams work 24/7, replacing or supplementing police on calls where help, not arrest, will resolve the problem, and empathetic conversation can work better in places where distrust of the police runs high.

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  • Is new California police deadly force law making a difference?

    More than a year after taking effect, California's law restricting when police can use deadly force has had some effects on police accountability and training, but a number of flaws illustrate how long and difficult the process of change will be. The Act to Save Lives, which limits the use of deadly force to cases when it is needed to defend a life, has been cited by prosecutors in two homicide prosecutions. A number of police departments have followed the law's training dictates. But many others have been slow to roll out the training, and the state is not requiring officers to take it to stay certified.

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  • The Ferguson movement is on the cusp of revolutionizing political power in St. Louis

    Frustrated at the slow pace of criminal justice reform after the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the grassroots group Action St. Louis formed to seize political power and make change happen from the inside of the system rather than pressuring for change from the outside. After years of organizing and politicking, it flipped key offices – St. Louis city and county prosecutors, the Board of Aldermen, and the mayor – outflanking the police union's candidates with officeholders committed to re-imagining public safety policy.

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