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  • Changing the environment in Iowa's prisons to change results for women Audio icon

    The Iowa Correctional Institution for Women has reformed how inmates are treated, adapting approaches informed by gender and past trauma. A new campus provides private counseling suites and a mental health unit, larger cells with light controls and a visitation area with play space and a garden so women can engage with their children. Disciplinary policies have also shifted toward building women up for returning to society rather than automatic discipline for small infractions.

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  • A small state with big ideas on rehabilitating female prisoners

    Across the United States, women statistically receive a higher rate of disciplinary tickets for minor infractions compared to their male counterparts. In Vermont, however, where corrections falls under the Department of Human Services, employees of the correctional facilities are trained in gender-informed practices to better suit their responses to women and men offenders.

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  • The Crime Machine, Part II

    CompStat seemed like a miracle of technology and data when it was rolled out in New York City in the 1990s. Crime dropped as police leadership demanded precincts report every crime and what they were doing about it at weekly meetings where they were pressured to conform to this new system. But this also resulted in police distorting actual crime data to avoid reporting crimes in their districts and the push for increased police activity resulted in cops targeting minorities for minor offenses.

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  • The Love Story that Upended the Texas Prison System

    An unlikely relationship between Frances Jalet, an attorney, and Fred Cruz, an inmate, led to some of the most historic rulings against the Texas Department of Corrections. Jalet became a plaintiff in one of the suits, and alongside two dozen other inmates, called the Eight Hoe squad, they drafted a lawsuit. Despite targeted attacks against Jalet and the inmates by prison leadership, they won in the courts. In 1980, a federal judge declared that the Texas Department of Corrections was operating unconstitutionally.

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  • To Help Immigrants Feel Safer Around Police, Some Churches Start Issuing IDs

    The Archdiocese of Baltimore is set to start issuing parishioner ID cards in a program modeled off a similar one in Texas. The ID cards include a name, address, and birth date and are meant for undocumented immigrants to feel safer around law enforcement.

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  • The Crime Machine, Part I

    The creation of CompStat fostered a huge drop in crime rates in New York City by the 1990s. The idea came from an odd and obsessive transit cop was to track every single crime daily in every precinct and use that data to systematically go after everything from murders to low-level crimes once ignored by police. It was a drastic shift in the way NYPD worked and was credited with making the city far safer, but was also flawed.

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  • How to grapple with soaring world population? An answer from down south

    Botswana stands out for its rapidly falling fertility rate; a complex set of factors, including increased access to comprehensive education and contraception, is driving the falling rate. The country's family planning programs are far-reaching, providing services in even rural areas of Botswana, and giving women more control of their reproductive health and choices.

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  • More Women Are Behind Bars Now. One Prison Wants to Change That.

    Connecticut's WORTH program (Women Overcoming Recidivism Through Hard Work) has changed the tone of one prison where it's being tested, by giving incarcerated women the ability to craft self-help programs while treating them with an approach in short supply in American prisons: dignity. While the ultimate goal of the program is to reduce returns to prison, and the state's overall female incarceration rate, the more immediate effect of the new program is anecdotal: Prison officials and incarcerated women alike see people gaining a sense of control over their lives and planning for a healthy future.

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  • Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women

    Amazon trashed its automated resume-reviewing software after the company discovered that the software had taught itself to discriminate against women applicants. The situation shows the limits of machine learning in human resources.

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  • How One Inuit Community Won Against Big Oil

    Faced with the existential threat posed by an oil company in their community, the Gwich’in nation banded together with a former rival, Greenpeace, to take the company to court. By highlighting the failure of the company to consult the community and think through the effects of oil exploration on "lives and livelihoods," the Canadian Supreme Court forced the company to look for oil elsewhere.

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