Housing is a human right. What if we designed our systemsbeginning with Housing Courtto embody that? Given the current eviction crisis, it's a far-off concept, but there's work to make it a reality

Nominated for a Media for a Just Society award, revisit New Thinking's conversation with activists Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar. In their book, Prison By Any Other Name, Law and Schenwar contend tha

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 re

New York City has committed to closing its notorious Rikers Island jail facility by 2027. That could dramatically reorient the city's approach to incarceration. The plan envisions a citywide jail popu

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

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 refo

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

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. Peters

In 1996, 16-year-old Reginald Dwayne Betts was sentenced to nine years in prison for a carjacking. He spent much of that time reading, and eventually writing. After prison, he went to Yale Law School

In her new book, historian Elizabeth Hinton highlights a "crucible period" of often violent rebellions in the name of the Black freedom struggle beginning in 1968. Initiated in almost every instance b