Seek Justice
24 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 4 years ago - ★★★★★ - 2 ratingsA weekly deep dive into Criminal Justice with Erik Rasmussen and Dennis Schrantz
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Episodes
Ep. 24 - Pete Buttigieg's Criminal Justice Reform Promises
November 12, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Securing Justice: Reforming Our Criminal Legal System Summary Page 2000 Winning Essay by Peter Buttigieg – Bernie Sanders (JFK Library) Pete Buttigieg has been criticized for his handling of policing. He hopes his criminal justice plan will change that. (Vox) Buttigieg Raised $19.1 Million in Third Quarter, Campaign Says (Yahoo News)
Ep. 23 - Kamala Harris' Criminal Justice Reform Promises
October 17, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Kamala’s Plan to Transform the Criminal Justice System and Re-envision Public Safety in America [Joe Biden] was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 at the age of 29, becoming the fifth youngest senator in history. – Britannica How Kamala Harris’ death penalty decisions broke hearts on both sides (CNN) Kamala Harris Touts Her Opposition to the Death Penalty. Her Track Record’s More Complicated (Mother Jones) Kamala Harris’s criminal justice reform plan, explained (Vox) Kamala Harri...
Ep. 22 - Joe Biden's Criminal Justice Reform Promises
October 02, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks The Biden Plan for Strengthening America’s Commitment to Justice SAFE Justice Act (Bobby Scott) The Reverse Incarceration Act (The Brennan Center) Decriminalization Versus Legalization of Marijuana (Thought Co.)
Ep. 21 - Elizabeth Warren's Criminal Justice Reform Promises - Part 2
September 24, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Rethinking Public Safety to Reduce Mass Incarceration and Strengthen Communities (Team Warren) The United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, but nearly 20% of the world’s prison population. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with over 2 million people in prison and jail. Our system is the result of the dozens of choices we’ve made — choices that together stack the deck against the poor and the disadvantaged. Simply put, we have criminalized too many t...
Ep. 20 - Elizabeth Warren's Criminal Justice Reform Promises - Part 1
September 17, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Rethinking Public Safety to Reduce Mass Incarceration and Strengthen Communities (Team Warren) The United States makes up 5% of the world’s population, but nearly 20% of the world’s prison population. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, with over 2 million people in prison and jail. Our system is the result of the dozens of choices we’ve made — choices that together stack the deck against the poor and the disadvantaged. Simply put, we have criminalized too many t...
Ep. 19 - Bernie Sanders' Criminal Justice Reform Promises - Part 2
September 10, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Bernie Sanders – Justice and Safety For All (Bernie Sanders) For most of our history as a country, the United States incarcerated people at about the same rates as other western democracies do today. In the early 1970s we had the same low crime rate as today, but we now have an incarceration rate five times higher. Indeed, America is now the world’s leading jailer. We lock up more than 2 million people in America, which is more of our own people than any country on Earth. And that do...
Ep. 18 - Bernie Sanders' Criminal Justice Reform Promises - Part 1
September 04, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Bernie Sanders – Justice and Safety For All (Bernie Sanders) For most of our history as a country, the United States incarcerated people at about the same rates as other western democracies do today. In the early 1970s we had the same low crime rate as today, but we now have an incarceration rate five times higher. Indeed, America is now the world’s leading jailer. We lock up more than 2 million people in America, which is more of our own people than any country on Earth. And that do...
Ep. 17 - Jeffrey Epstein and Suicide in Jail
August 26, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Jeffrey Epstein (Wikpedia) Ep. 15 - The Meaning of Life, with Marc Mauer Journalists should examine the leading cause of jail deaths, in light of Jeffrey Epstein (Poynter) The Daily Show with Trevor Noah clip (YouTube) Last Week Tonight with John Oliver clip (YouTube) Mortality in Local Jails and State Prisons, 2000–2013 - Statistical Tables (PDF) (Department of Justice) Suicide has been the leading cause of death in jails every year since 2000. In 2013, a third (34%) of jail in...
Ep. 16 - Implementing Reform Is like Conducting an Orchestra, with Roger Przybylski
July 25, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesFollow Roger Przybylski’s work at: RKC Group Implementing Evidence-Based Practices (PDF) What Works - Effective Recidivism Reduction and Risk-Focused Prevention Programs (PDF) Special Issue on Evidence-Based Policy and Practice – Introduction (PDF) Links National Criminal Justice Reform Project (NCJA) National Governors Association (Wikipedia) Formative Evalutation (Wikipedia) Summative Evaluation (Wikipedia) Types of summative assessment and formative assessment (ResourceEd) “Whe...
Ep. 15 - The Meaning of Life, with Marc Mauer
July 16, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesFollow Marc Mauer’s work at: The Sentencing Project End Life Imprisonment The Meaning of Life: The Case for Abolishing Life Sentences (Amazon) Links Sentator Gerald Malloy (South Carolina State House) Charles “Joe” Heinz (Wikipedia) Vera Institute of Justice (Wikipedia) Racial Impact Statements: Changing Policies to Address Disparities (The Sentencing Project) In reaction to a study that found Iowa topped the nation in racial disparity in its prison population, Iowa Governor Chet Cu...
Ep. 14 - A Call to Action on Racial Disparity
July 02, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Decarceration Strategies – How 5 States Achieved Substantial Prison Population Reductions (PDF, The Sentencing Project) Connecticut: Declined 25%, 2007-2016 Focused on reducing young people’s contact with the justice system through reducing school suspensions, changing criteria for detention, and raising the age of adult jurisdiction from 16 to 18. Michigan: Declined 20%, 2006-2016 Increased parole grants by expanding capacity of the parole board, and reduced returns to prison by ...
Ep. 13 - The Economic Impact of Persons Diverted From Prison
June 27, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Economic Impact of Sentencing Reform Act Initiatives on the Economy, David Hughes, Ph.D, Clemson University, Clemson Institute for Economic and Community Development, 2.28.14 (PDF, South Carolina State House) Based on a 2011 report conducted by the United States (U.S.) Government Accountability Office, and on data taken from a factsheet produced by the Children’s Defense Fund for South Carolina (2011), we estimated that 25 children are not in foster care and three children were not a...
Ep. 12 - The Role of Defense Attorneys
June 18, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Criminal Defense Lawyer (Wikipedia) Judges are more lenient after taking a break, study finds (The Guardian) Failure to Appear (Wikipedia) Economic Impact of Sentencing Reform Act Initiatives on the Economy, David Hughes, Ph.D, Clemson University, Clemson Institute for Economic and Community Development, 2.28.14 (PDF, South Carolina State House) Victim offender reconciliation (National Institute of Corrections) ‘Close to a breaking point’: Public defenders walk off job over high ...
Ep. 11 - Reducing Costs in Criminal Justice
June 12, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Michigan spending one-fifth of its general fund budget on prisoners (USA Today) It cost the state — and by extension, taxpayers — an average of $36,106 to incarcerate a single person in Michigan in 2017. You can buy a new Ford Explorer for that, according to Kelley Blue Book. At that rate, a single prisoner sentenced to 30 or more years would cost Michigan taxpayers more than $1 million to incarcerate. Budget Briefing: Corrections (pdf) (Michigan House of Representatives) FY 2018...
Ep. 10 - Trust the Methodology
June 04, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Ep. 5 – How do we know what works?, in which we discussed Jennifer Doleac’s work previously. Jennifer Doleac’s thread on Twitter Working on criminal justice topics gives me a very different perspective on the Kochs than my equally-liberal friends & family have. Charles Koch Foundation & Charles Kock Institute are perhaps the most important funders of research related to criminal justice policy & reform. They also frequently host conferences that bring top-notch researchers and prac...
Ep. 9 - Institutional Ego and Broken Promises in Mississippi
May 21, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Broken promises and lost funding: how Mississippi prison reform failed (The Guardian) Between 1993 and 2013, Mississippi’s prison population more than quadrupled, thanks largely to mandatory minimum sentences, with the population peaking in the past decade at more than 23,000. The state had a higher per capita rate of incarceration than countries such as China or Russia. By the time the bill became law in July 2014, the Mississippi Parole Board was paroling more offenders and had al...
Ep. 8 - Unemployment, Before and After Prison
May 14, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Unemployment benefits in Denmark (Wikipedia) Soft Skills (Wikipedia) Center for Employment Opportunities, in New York City New Orleans Business Alliance United Way Prosperity Center, South Eastern Louisiana (United Way) Work and opportunity before and after incarceration (Brookings) Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Annie E. Casey Foundation Integrated Reentry and Employment Strategies – Reducing Recidivism and Promoting Job Readiness (PDF) (BJA)
Ep. 7 - Privatization of Prisons
May 07, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Judith Greene, Director of Justice Strategies (Justice Strategies) Bailing Out Private Jails, by Judith Greene (The American Prospect) Michael Jordan has NOT invested in prisons (Earth The Necklace) Marc Mauer, of the Sentencing Project (Wikipedia) Ankle Monitor (Wikipedia)
Ep. 6 - Free Labor
April 30, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks DOJ: Alabama prisoners exposed to horrifying violence, rape; murders a ‘regular’ occurrence (USA Today) Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Wikipedia) Inmates at Kentucky prison build teddy bears to give back to children (WKYT) Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (Wikipedia) Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject ...
Ep. 5 - How do we know what works?
April 22, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks EconTalk – Jennifer Doleac on Crime (EconTalk) Jennifer Doleac Randomized Controlled Trial (Wikipedia) Ban the Box (Wikipedia) Unintended Consequences: How “Ban the Box” Backfires for Minority Job Seekers (UVA Today) Propensity Score Matching (Wikipedia) United Way Prosperity Center, South Eastern Louisiana (United Way)
Ep. 4 - Racial Disparity
April 15, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks New Zealand bans suspect’s manifesto (The Detroit News) The New Jim Crowe, by Michelle Alexander (Wikipedia) Jack Maple – creator of CompStat methodology that reduced crime in NYC but ultimately lead to arrest quotas (Wikipedia) North Carolina Jury Sunshine Project findings (Wake Forest University) Women and men serve on felony trial juries at about the same rate. Prosecutors remove twice as many potential black jurors at trial as white jurors (20 percent of available black juror...
Ep. 3 - Plea Bargaining
April 08, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Invisibilia, S05E02 - Post, Shoot (NPR) Plea Bargaining in the United States (Wikipedia) But in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury. Most people charged with crimes forfeit ...
Ep. 2 - Community Engagement
April 02, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks Michigan Governor – Gretchen Whitmer Northpoint Institute of Public Management, now Equivalent Florida Amendment 4, Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative (2018) - ✅ Approved (Ballotpedia) The report [by The Sentencing Project] estimated that, as of 2016, around 6.1 million people, or about 2.5 percent of the U.S. voting age population, were disenfranchised due to a felony conviction. Florida was estimated to have 1,686,318 persons—10.43 percent of the voting age populatio...
Ep. 1 - What is Criminal Justice?
March 28, 2019 00:00 - 133 BytesLinks 40% of murders in the US went unsolved in 2017 (NY Post) Clearance Rate (Wikipedia) – Measure of percentage of “solved” crimes Bernie Sanders raises $5.9M in 24 hours after announcing 2020 campaign National Criminal Justice Reform Project (ncja.org) The Sentencing Project (Wikipedia) JEHT Foundation The Unmet Promise of Alternatives to Incarceration, by James Austin and Barry Krisberg (not actually Kay Harris) Kay Harris Obituary (philly.com) Stategies, Values, and the Emergin...