Marc A. Levin is the Chief Policy Counsel at the Council on Criminal Justice and Senior Advisor to Right on Crime.
The line from the classic American songbook “nice work if you can get it and you can get it if you try” has never been truer. As this nation emerges from the pandemic and states pare back COVID-19 restrictions, there are now a record 8.1 million jobs waiting to be filled. However, old criminal records...
Larry Robinson is no stranger to the battlefield, having served five combat tours in his 24 years as a sergeant in the U.S Army. But now he is fighting for a much more personal cause—a chance at redemption for his son, Jason. While Robinson was deployed to Iraq in 1994, his son, 16 at the...
When police encountered George Floyd, they unknowingly met someone who had lost his restaurant job amid a pandemic-triggered shutdown and suffered from many preexisting medical conditions. We don’t know if Floyd would have survived the arrest if he were perfectly healthy, but we know that being poor is a disadvantage in the justice system and that incarceration exacerbates health...
You don’t need to be a cartographer to look at the county map of the 2016 presidential election to see that there is a political divide between dense urban areas and rural America. This chasm will almost certainly be on display again as the results roll in on Election Night. Media reports on criminal justice...
We don’t yet have a vaccine for COVID-19, but there is an antidote for mistrust and misunderstandings in the justice system. What if we could improve the quality of communications between police officers and others in positions of authority — and those over whom they exercise it? Progress requires a communications paradigm that is courteous...
On Nov. 3, the future for all Americans is at stake at the ballot box, but for some children any possibility of a future outside of prison will be at stake before the Supreme Court. On Election Day, the nation’s highest court will hear arguments on the issue of juvenile sentences of life without parole....
It’s election season, so of course candidates on each side are predicting doom and gloom if the other prevails. However, on criminal justice reform, recent history suggests even a divided government can prioritize public safety without being too tough on taxpayers. At the federal level, this meeting of the minds culminated in the First Step...
At a time of wrenching division, police officers and those returning from prison share unexpected commonalities that can bring us together. On the surface, these two groups would seem dissimilar, but a groundbreaking Las Vegas program that bridges this divide has caught the attention of both the White House and the governor of Nevada. Perhaps more importantly, it...
As the U.S. continues to grapple with COVID-19, we can’t lose sight of the pandemic’s impact on the criminal justice system. All 10 of the top clusters for the virus are in correctional institutions. Beyond the wrenching human toll on individuals incarcerated and the staff who work in jails and prisons, corrections departments are incurring hundreds of...
The U.S. is exceptional in many positive ways, from its Founding ideals to the dynamism of its free market economy and technological innovations. It is also distinguished by having less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but 20 percent of those behind bars. The U.S. has 8.5 times the incarceration rate of Germany. Of course, there are many...
As Americans seek a return to some modicum of normalcy, when it comes to criminal justice, we must not be the handcuffed to the past. Much of that past was abnormal, especially in view of new possibilities. Not only does the United States have a fifth of the world’s population compared to 25 percent of its...
The recent White House executive order on policing and proposed legislation by Republican Sen. Tim Scott tap into a national consensus that we must do more to address crises involving people with mental illness. Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender said the desire to call the police “comes from a place of privilege,” but in so many...