Alternatives

Advocates say Atlanta mayor is trying to sabotage the city’s contract with a diversion services provider—and the City Council is letting him.

Mayor Andre Dickens’s office initiated a secret bidding process for community responders—that left out the current beloved program.

Violence interrupters work. But D.C.’s police union is trying to capitalize on a scandal to eliminate them.

The Reverend Christobal Kimmenez has joined others in calling for greater services for survivors of crime and the formerly incarcerated, including restorative justice.

Inconsistent funding and commitments, poor organization, and political pressure have hamstrung the work of community violence intervention groups across the U.S.

Attorneys say the district’s practice of sending armed police officers to mental health emergencies violates the Americans With Disabilities Act.

When we see police sweeping a homeless encampment, we must ask: How much did this cost? And what difference could that money have made if it went instead to housing—or, better yet, the people themselves?

A mother and father – a mental health crisis worker himself – grieve the needless death of their son

State policies nearly everywhere banish those with a sexual offense in their past. Vermont does the opposite by building communities around them—with dramatically positive results.

In total, 44 states lack universal air conditioning requirements in their prisons. A new federal program called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund could help catalyze action.

Incarcerated people have testified before state lawmakers about legislation that would directly impact their lives, including bills to change the cost of prison communications and rein in extreme sentencing practices and the use of solitary confinement.

I realized that I had fallen victim to one of white supremacy’s greatest weapons: the war on imagination.

A small unit inside the Omaha Police Department helps to handle the deluge of mental health crises that police grapple with daily.

After decades of protests over police violence, many cities have created non-police crisis response teams. These unarmed first responders typically answer 911 calls for people having mental health crises. Here’s how they work.

A new report by the Abolitionist Law Center says that, while pitched as a more humane alternative to criminal court, Allegheny County’s Mental Health Court instead humiliates people with mental illness and feeds them back into jail.

The city of Milwaukee lacks a plan to replace JusticePoint’s incarceration alternatives services if it succeeds in canceling its contract.

Police are failing to promptly process expungements and continuing to disclose records that should be sealed, according to a lawsuit filed by the state public defender’s office.

This excerpt from Survivor Injustice asks us to reconsider what justice really looks like for crime victims.

Municipal Court officials refuse to comment on efforts to cancel JusticePoint’s contract without lining up an alternative provider. A legal ruling allows the services to continue—for now.

A new lawsuit alleges that the city is discriminating against people with mental health disabilities by continuing to send armed officers to mental health calls.

The third installment in The Imprint’s series on the fight to close California’s youth prisons.

After a carjacking, I had to navigate a chaotic patchwork of resources in search of support. To heal, I would take recovery into my own hands.

David Shipley tells Phillip A. Jones, who has spent more than 30 years in U.S. prisons, about his experiences in a British “open prison.”

Instead, harm reduction advocates are calling for strategy to create a safer supply of currently criminalized drugs.

Neely’s killing is once again a reminder that carceral approaches to homelessness reproduce, rather than ameliorate, poverty.

Our legal system focuses on punishing those who cause harm without considering what victims need, a former prosecutor writes.

In Healing Justice Lineages, Cara Page and Erica Woodland document a history of care models that don’t involve the prison industrial complex.

How a scrappy group of parents played a key but lesser-known role in the pending closure of the Division of Juvenile Justice

In 2015, Los Angeles County created a program to reduce the number of mentally ill people trapped in jail. But since then, the number of people with mental illness incarcerated in LA has instead increased significantly.

No system designed to make money by subjugating people intends to rid us of those harms. Abolition is a vision for the future.

As cities look to make new investments in non-police responses to gun violence, the Bull City United program in Durham, North Carolina, shows the importance of stable funding and sustained commitment.

An associate professor of psychology and a clinical lecturer in law at Yale explain how they’ve seen the criminal legal system treat psychopathy as a moral failing—instead of a treatable mental illness.

For millions of families, this time of year is yet another reminder of all that is missed when a loved one is incarcerated

Deaths at the Fulton County Jail have quadrupled compared to last year. Despite this, county commissioners are threatening to cut funding to one of the Atlanta area’s main pre-arrest diversion initiatives.

In September, an Iowa judge sentenced Pieper Lewis, a Black teenager who was trafficked and sexually assaulted, to community supervision after she pleaded guilty to stabbing one of her abusers to death. Some hailed the sentence as compassionate. But facts about supervision say otherwise.

Some recent redevelopment projects show how the work of reforming and dismantling the prison system can move us towards a society centered around restorative justice and social wellness.

Police gave Alex Mingus an award for saving a shooting victim’s life. Mingus showed up wearing a shirt that said “Smash white supremacy”.

Instead of co-opting victims’ voices, political candidates and elected officials should center them.

Olayemi Olurin spoke with The Appeal about abolition, living in a police state, Rikers Island, and the media.