Ep. 14 - A Call to Action on Racial Disparity

Seek Justice

Links

• Decarceration Strategies – How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions (PDF, The Sentencing Project)

  • Connecticut: Declined 25%, 2007-2016

    • Focused on reducing young people’s contact with the justice system through reducing school suspensions, changing criteria for detention, and raising the age of adult jurisdiction from 16 to 18.

  • Michigan: Declined 20%, 2006-2016

    • Increased parole grants by expanding capacity of the parole board, and reduced returns to prison by establishing Technical Rule Violator centers for enhanced programming and services.

  • Mississippi: Declined 17.5%, 2008-2016

    • Reduced time served in prison by scaling back the “truth in sentencing” policy from 85% time served to 25%, and applied changes retroactively; adopted a risk assessment instrument that contributed to doubling of parole approval rate.

  • Rhode Island: Declined 23%, 2008-2016

    • Reduced time served in prison by establishing earned-time credits of 10 days per month, and eliminated mandatory sentences for drug crimes.

  • South Carolina: Declined 14%, 2008-2016

    • Reduced parole violator revocations to prison through diversion to alternative sanctions and reduced returns of 17-25 year-olds through enhanced job-related prison programming and Intensive Aftercare reentry services.

• Gina Raimondo (Wikipedia)

• Racial Disparity Map (The Sentencing Project)

  Rhode Island exceeds the national disparity index (8 to 1, Blacks to Whites incarcerated in Rhode Island versus 5 to 1 nationally)

• A Review of the Jail Function Within State Unified Corrections Systems (PDF, National Institute of Corrections)

• Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers, by Dennis Schrantz and Jerry McElroy (The Sentencing Project)

• Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo’s Jobs Video (YouTube, 2016)

• The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander (Amazon)

  

• Cornel West (Wikipedia)

• 13th (Netflix Documentary)

• The New Jim Crow Study Guide and Call to Action (Amazon)

  

“Cowardice asks the question, ‘Is it safe?’ Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’ Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’ But, conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’ And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one’s conscience tells one that it is right”

– Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Proper Sense of Priorities”, February 6, 1968

• Georgia Governor Nathan Deal (Wikipedia)
• Why Your Brain Wants To Help One Child In Need — But Not Millions (NPR, Hidden Brain)
• We Followed Obama During His Visit To A Federal Prison | HBO Special Report (YouTube, Vice)