The Roosevelt Institution
Submit policy pieces for the 25 Ideas Series addressing this challenge to submissions@rooseveltinstitution.org. Submission guidelines can be found here. The sooner you submit policy ideas, the more time you'll have to work with the editing team which increases your chances of being published.
Come to Chicago for Roosevelt's first conference of 2008, and help us move "Towards a New Progressive Citizenship"
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The Challenge: ensure that the criminal justice system strengthens our communities and delivers justice for all.
Crime is a destructive force in our communities. It undermines trust, steals children from schools, and all but precludes economic progress. In theory, a functioning Justice system will work to reverse these realities.
Unfortunately, our country has a broken system of justice, which so often makes crime worse. Our unprecedented prison population grows every year, while crime rates are unaffected. Very few of those who exit the prison system do so for good. Harsh incarceration policies do not treat addiction, but they do separate parents from children, suck up budget dollars that could be spent on education or crime prevention, and destroy career opportunities for incarcerated individuals.
At the same time, the justice system itself is filled with injustice. The death penalty, unequal access to legal aid, judicial elections financed by those with interests before the court, unequal sentencing laws, and racial profiling are just some of the unfairnesses within the system.
For many Americans, the dominant feature of their life is being caught between widespread crime and a cruel and destructive justice system. Fixing the system so it strengthens rather than hurting communities and delivers fair justice for all would make a huge difference in the lives of these individuals, and greatly expand safety, prosperity, and opportunity in America.
As prison spending spirals to the point of necessitating tax increases or squeezing out education entirely, and drugs become a rural as well as an urban issue, there is a potential new consensus about making the justice system work better for Americans. We will be a part of building and defining that consensus. Because so many of the decisions here are made at the community and state level -- prisons versus schools, treatment versus punishment, tougher sentencing versus fairer sentencing -- we are in an ideal position to make an impact.
The allies Roosevelt would make by picking a below-the-radar, politically unpopular issue rather than a limelight issue like healthcare or energy would appreciate our attention much more, and it would do good things for Roosevelt to work with these populations more.
Background briefing from the Summer Research College
Potential avenues for further exploration from the original policy proposal
Check out the Student Peace Alliance Conference at Brandeis on October 19-21. They'll be discussing violence and its costs on society, and ways to improve the criminal justice system to ameliorate the current system.
Some Related Organizations:
Urban Institute, Justice Policy Center
National Center on Institutions and AlternativesNational Juvenile Defender Center
Group members:
Tim H Krueger
Jonathan S Alexandratos
Adrian J Barry
Adam Beck
Nick R Bradley
Takiyah A Butler
Gracye Y Cheng
Monica Chu
Natalia Cianfaglione
Bryce G Colquitt
Robert J Coniglio
Kirti Datla
Ellen Y Davis
Natalie C Doss
James D Elias
Lauren P Elliott
Matthew D Fischler
Amy K Frame
Daniel F Gilles
Anthony W Gomez
Joseph H Grochowalski
Stephanie A Gross
Jake M Grumbach
Adrian D Haimovich
Amanda R Hillman
Morgan H Hoban
Joanna K Kyriazis
Frank Lin
Zach Marks
Katie L Mesner-Hage
Alyssa A Meyer
Dalia M Mortada
Elizabeth L Norris
Fay O Pappas
Brian C Pemberton
Josh A Price
David W Richardson
John M Saylor
Joseph A Sorgini
Oliver Traldi
William S Warden
Jane Wilson
Linda Zang