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

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  • The Latest Trend in Reducing Recidivism: Keeping Mothers and Children Together

    Most states and cities don’t permits mothers who give birth in prison to stay with their children. However, scattered across the country are programs like ReMerge, a program in Oklahoma City that allows mother and children to stay together, and avoid prison time. Programs like these are working, and yield lower recidivism rates.

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  • Meet the Disruptor: Quaker City Coffee

    Christian Dennis stood up in front of his class and told them about his life: He sold drugs, went to prison three times before the age of 18, and realized he had to start over. That’s all his classmate, Bob Logue needed to hear to realize he wanted Dennis to be his business partner. Together, they started Quaker City Coffee, a business they hope can “bridge the gaps between Philly neighborhoods.” How can they do that? By hiring former inmates, and giving back money to the community.

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  • New Zealand Tries a Different Kind of Private Prison

    The privatized prison system is largely skewed against inmates, as most are funded based on the number of individuals incarcerated, creating a disincentive to invest in the rehabilitation and comprehensive treatment of inmates. But the Wiri prison in Auckland is piloting a new approach that focuses on the greater good: the government pays the prison for positive results based on recidivism rates and improved outcomes for inmates, especially the Maori minority.

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  • Pennsylvania training mentally ill inmates to help others on the cellblock

    Peer to peer programs have existed since the 1980s. These programs pair up a person with mental health illness, with one another. The concept, is relatively new in the prison systems, and is gaining traction in states like Pennsylvania.

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  • Meet a new breed of prosecutor

    Across the country, a small number of young prosecutors are changing the face of our current criminal justice system. They are moving away from the “strict law-and-order practices of the past,” and employing a more liberal approach: “eschewing the death penalty, talking rehabilitation as much as punishment, and often refusing to charge people for minor offenses.”

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  • Delivering Gourmet Pizza, and Jobs Training, in Cook County Jail

    Recipe for Change is a program that teaches incarcerated people Italian cuisine skills, which is meant to help them gain employment when they reenter society. An estimated 200 people have gone through the program. Similarly, other programs are focusing on helping formerly incarcerated people gain employment.

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  • Why a $10,000 Philly tax break got almost no takers

    In Philadelphia, the city enrolled out a program that offered companies a $10,000 tax credit. The catch? Hire former prisoners who have crime records. To the surprise of the city, the program tanked. Now, the city created a similar, but revised program “ the Fair Chance Hiring Initiative.”

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  • Furnishing A Future

    Furnishing a Future offers furniture making classes to former inmates. The program was created with the intention of giving former prisoners job skills, who often leave prison with no work experience. “If these guys are trained in how to make a resume, and how to make it outside, but have no skills, they’re just not going to get a job.”

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  • Can this group of former offenders swing the Philly DA race?

    How does an organization go about reducing incarceration rates, and eliminate racial bias? Hiring the people affected by the prison system: former inmates. That’s the strategy that ACLU is taking in Philadelphia.

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  • Here are the 3 steps everyone agrees we need to take to tackle recidivism

    Activists, and lawmakers have been proposing ideas for prisoner reentry, or supporting former prisoners by finding work, housing, and healthcare, in order to reduce the trend of prisoners being released, committing another crime, and returning to prison. Philadelphia, which has a high recidivism rate, is one of the cities that is already implementing solutions.

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