PRISON FELLOWSHIP BLOG: Uncategorized

Every person who breaks the law is different. Every person who is convicted of a crime is different. Every crime and the situation surrounding it is different. And every person who is harmed by a criminal act is also different.

We understand that all of these variables make it impossible to accurately quantify the harm crime causes.

The following article originally appeared on the Justice Fellowship website.

Restorative justice works. Its principles are effective in facilitating individual change and impeding the cycle of crime whenever they are applied. However, it is helpful to understand what root issue restorative justice really helps to treat and why it’s a better response to harm in our society.

The following article originally appeared on the Pretrial Justice Institute website, and appears here with permission.

Joe has not been convicted of a crime. He’s innocent, in fact, but he’s still in jail. He’s been sitting there for over two months now, waiting to appear before a judge, waiting for the chance to prove his innocence, but his trial date is nowhere in sight, and he doesn’t have the money to post bond.

The following post originally appeared on the Justice Fellowship blog.

In a perfect world, people wouldn’t commit crimes. They wouldn’t hurt one another or themselves.

In a perfect imperfect world, people who committed crimes would receive a just punishment, one that was proportionate to the harm they had caused.

“An ineffective probation system can result in further criminal acts and the imprisonment of those same offenders before they complete their terms.”

Justice Fellowship’s latest report, Incentives in State Probation Systems: Relation to Structure and Practices, reveals why it’s a good idea to examine our probation systems.

A mom finds out that her son hasn’t been brushing his teeth at camp because he can’t find the toothpaste he packed. The mom runs to the store, buys the toothpaste, and tosses it in the mail. Problem solved. The cost of making sure her son keeps his pearly-whites clean?

A version of this article originally appeared on the Justice Fellowship website.

“I agree with you; I want to do it; now make me do it.”

So President Franklin Roosevelt is believed to have replied when labor leaders asked him for executive action.

The following post originally appeared on the Justice Fellowship blog.

There’s no way anyone is going to do this.

That depressing whisper of doubt and futility kept up its nagging as I set up the email that would go out to our national list of supporters.

The following post originally appeared as a BreakPoint radio commentary.

Now that Father’s Day is past, we can ignore dads again for another year. I’m joking, of course, but society isn’t. And that’s the problem.

We’ve discussed the cultural attacks on men many times before on BreakPoint, how pop culture is fond of portraying them as over-grown adolescents, or worse, as sadistic and violent haters of women.