By Vivian D. Nixon, Writer in Residence at the Square One Project The Biden-Harris Administration recently issued three pardons and 75 commutations, changing the lives of 78 human beings for the better. …

By Evie Lopoo, Project Manager for the Square One Project, Tyler Harvey, Program Administrator at SEICHE Center for Health and Justice, and Emily Wang, Professor at Yale School of Medicine Decades of research show that a person’s surroundings — including access to quality food, good schools, a steady income, and…

By Susan M. Glisson “If the abolition of slave-manacles began as a vision of hands without manacles, then this is the year; if the shutdown of extermination camps began as imagination of a land without barbed wire or the crematorium, then this is the year; if every rebellion begins with the idea that conquerors on horseback are…

By Vivian D. Nixon, Executive Director, Community & College Fellowship I walked into the conference room for the morning meeting. With a nod of greeting to familiar faces, I took my seat and resumed worrying that comments I was about to make would drift, making sense only to the unruly…

More than 50 years later, black men in America are still not viewed as fully human. By Eric L Cumberbatch, Executive Director, Office to Prevent Gun Violence, NYC Mayor’s Office In April 1968, in what would turn out to be the final days of his life, Martin Luther King Jr…

by Marcia Rincon-Gallardo, Executive Director, Alianza for Youth Justice To end incarceration of Indigenous/Chicanx/Latinx/Afro-Latinx Two-spirit youth in the youth justice system, one begins with placing cedar smoke to honor the ancestors of Abyanahuac — the decolonized term for this continent — who universally welcomed and protected children as sacred beings…

By Nneka Jones Tapia, Managing Director of Justice Initiatives, Chicago Beyond In May 2015 I was appointed to be the warden of Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois. Unlike my predecessors and most of the individuals responsible for correctional leadership across the country, I did not have a law enforcement…

By Jonathan Simon, Lance Robbins Professor of Criminal Justice Law, UC Berkeley Since the 18th century philosophers (think Immanuel Kant or Cesare Beccaria), usually responding to spikes in political unrest, have periodically returned to the search for an ideal system of criminal justice, freed of all the historic flaws of…

By Abbey Stamp, LCSW. Executive Director, Multnomah County Local Public Safety Coordinating Council Here in Oregon, it feels like opportunity is in the air. The days are growing longer, spring flowers are blooming, vaccines are rolling out, the COVID-19 outbreak in jail has abated, the jail population remains low, and…