Is America heaven on Earth? John Winthrop commenced the nation’s early history with his dream that “we shall be as a city upon a hill,” and American exceptionalists have long thought that the nation has been destined by God for an empyrean superiority. Others sway toward “maybe,” questioning whether heaven on Earth is even attainable […]
Tag: Mass Incarceration
The Hunger for Retributivist Justice
There’s a carnal hunger in the U.S., deep, pervasive, and violent — it’s the hunger for retributivist punishment that persists within the darkest depths of our society. Retributivism, or the idea that punishment is justified so long as someone is seen as “deserving” of it and for no other reason, is most famously attributed to […]
Why is Ecuador Working With Gangs?
Once known as an “island of peace,” Ecuador has descended into seemingly irreparable violence. In 2023 alone, the police recorded a striking 8,000 deaths in Ecuador, which was eight times more than the number of deaths recorded in 2018. Ecuador’s recent homicide rate greatly surpasses those of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico—in fact, Ecuador currently has […]
Rikers Island Illustrates the Issues Endemic To America’s Horrific Prison System
A dozen deaths at Rikers Island Jail this year alone. 5 suicides, some within days of one another. The debate on closing Rikers Island is quickly becoming less of a partisan issue and more of a human rights one. But this New York City jail complex is not unique in its inhumanity — rather, Rikers […]
Death to the Death Penalty: Capital Punishment as a Tool of White Supremacy
White America is slowly but surely coming to the realization that when government-created and funded systems fail minorities, the intended systems have not broken; rather, those systems are working exactly as intended. They directly reflect their creation on the backs of slaves as our nation was born. One of the most vile and haunting reminders […]
The Real Winner of the 2020 Election: Local Criminal Justice Reform
As our nation was fixated on the results of the Nov. 2020 presidential election, many Americans may not have paid much attention to local down-ballot elections concerning criminal justice and mass incarceration. Yet, voters delivered resounding and consequential verdicts on the criminal justice system, from electing progressive prosecutors and decriminalizing drugs, to addressing felony […]
A Death Sentence for a DUI — The Devastating Impact of the Pandemic in Prison
In March of 2020, as it became increasingly clear that COVID-19 would be a catastrophic threat to the United States, numerous criminal justice experts warned that the impending pandemic would have a devastating impact on correctional facilities and their surrounding communities. These early warnings proved to be prescient, as seven months later, amidst an unprecedented […]
Bail Reform: The Antidote America Has Been Looking for, or an Instrument of Discrimination?
“Crime wave” is the phrase that surrounds the newest set of criminal justice policies passed by New York and California. If you look up “bail reform” on Google, the first page of results reveals a host of articles in which it is a keyword, authoritatively bolded. There are publicly available transcripts of police chiefs in […]
Plea to Prison Pipeline: Assessing the Feasibility of Mass Plea Refusal
In the American criminal justice system, more than 90 percent of all criminal charges are resolved through plea bargains. A plea bargain is an agreement wherein the defendant pleads guilty to a crime, usually a lesser crime than the original charge, and as a result, waives his or her right to a jury trial. What […]
Prison Valley: Why Rural Californians Want Correctional Facilities
To many of California’s economically struggling and politically isolated rural residents, prisons are welcome additions to their communities. Former New York Corrections Commissioner Thomas Coughlin claimed, “Prisons are… the anchor of development,” in a 1990 Newsweek interview. “People [in the Valley] for a very long time have felt a sense that we don’t matter,” argued James Gallagher, […]