Three years ago, Oregon made a fundamental break with the War on Drugs, decriminalizing the possession of small amounts of drugs—hard drugs: heroin, meth, fentanyl. Instead of punishment, the measure promised a “health-based approach.” That short-lived experiment has now been called off; Oregon’s legislature recently voting to recriminalize possession. The measure faced stiff headwinds from the start: from the arrival of fentanyl on the West Coast to a relentless, well-funded opposition campaign. But part of what went wrong was a challenge for any legislation: implementation. How do you make a ..read more

Vincent Schiraldi used to run probation in New York City; now he’s asking whether it should even exist. Schiraldi says some of the roots of mass supervision—and its connection to mass incarceration—can be found in a surprising place: the Supreme Court’s 1963 Gideon decision. It recognized, but failed to adequately support, a poor person’s right to a lawyer. Hear the final episode in our “Gideon at 60” series. Full show notes ..read more

Today we’re profiling the fight to secure lawyers for people facing eviction and the radical impact that is having in Housing Court. With its 1963 Gideon decision, the Supreme Court guaranteed a lawyer to any poor person facing prison time. For criminal cases, the decision was both sweeping and critically incomplete. On the civil side, the current campaign for a right-to-counsel is taking a different approach—it’s slow and piecemeal, but it’s also working. This is the second episode in our series on the legacy of the Gideon decision. Hear the first episode here. Full show notes ..read more

As the legal scholar Paul Butler wrote ten years ago, “On every anniversary of Gideon, liberals bemoan the state of indigent defense.” On this 60th anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision granting a lawyer to every poor defendant facing prison time, there is much to bemoan. Yet as the harms of the criminal legal system come into sharper relief, there is a larger question: even if all of Gideon‘s promise was fulfilled, how much would that change who principally suffers under the current system: the poor and people of color? Full show notes ..read more

April Barber Scales was a pregnant 15-year-old when she received two life sentences; Anthony Willis was 16 when he was sent away for life. After more than 25 years behind bars, they each received something desperately rare: clemency. They describe how they fought against a prison system that “sets you up for failure.” We also hear from an organization in Baltimore that works exclusively with young people at high risk of violence. Rather than arrests and incarceration, what do these young people need? Full show notes ..read more

Efforts to reform the justice system often tout they’re “evidence-based” or “data-driven.” But at a moment when a national increase in crime, likely triggered by the pandemic, seems to have put the reform movement on its heels, why do arguments based on data rarely seem to win the day? Guests Christina Greer and John Pfaff are both scholars and frequent media commentators working at the intersection of criminal justice data and politics. Full show notes Hear Pfaff on New Thinking as part of our series on Prosecutor Power ..read more

Eyal Press contends there are entire areas of life we’ve delegated to “dirty workers”—functions we’ve declared necessary, but that we strive to keep hidden. In his new book, Dirty Work: Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America, Press points to the transformation of jails and prisons into the country’s largest mental health institutions. He calls the people struggling to offer treatment in those settings “dirty workers”—not because their work isn’t noble, but because collectively we’ve put them in a situation where it’s impossible to practice ethical care. Full show notes Hea ..read more

Justice reforms often exclude people with charges involving violence, even though these are the same people most likely to be incarcerated and to be in the most need of the programs and treatment reform can bring. But a felony court in Manhattan is offering alternatives to incarceration, regardless of charge. Can a treatment-first approach be brought to scale inside of the same system responsible for mass incarceration in the first place? Full show notes ..read more

An audio snapshot from an emergency rally demanding immediate measures to release people from New York City’s Rikers Island jail. Eleven people have died in the custody of the city’s jail system this year as Rikers’ chief medical officer warns of “a collapse in basic jail operations ..read more

Hurt people hurt people. That’s not an excuse for harm, but it fuels much of the criminal legal system. At 19, Marlon Peterson was the unarmed lookout on a robbery where two people were killed. Peterson spent a decade behind bars. He writes about those years, and the childhood in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, that preceded them, in his new memoir, Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist’s Freedom Song. I made my own choices, Peterson says, “but I also did not choose to experience the type of things I experienced.” Full show notes ..read more