Friends of Justice

“In short, hyper-punishment continues, even accelerates, following new arteries and pathways in the body politic. The punitive state is a behemoth, a monstrous machinery that struggles to maintain its equilibrium. Piecemeal reforms of this or that part of the system will fail to dramatically shift the logic of the system.

“We have not addressed the moral panics that sedimented over the past forty-five years into draconian laws. We have not curbed the zeal to punish. We have not restored what ought to be at the center of law: the idea that punishment has limits, and that the institutions have a responsibility to restore offenders to society in a better condition than when they were judged guilty of crimes.”

Read the article by NCRJ Director Roger Lancaster in Jacobin.

david robinson/iohud

“A New York State psychiatric center operated illegally with impunity while two dead bodies, 40 assaults and 25 sex offenses triggered police responses behind its walls from 2012 to 2016, The Journal News/lohud has found.

“The newly obtained tally of violence, roughly one attack per month, is part of 210 criminal incidents at Central New York Psychiatric Center. Much of the violence involved the mentally ill men locked up there, and it unfolded without the independent monitor required by law.

“From rapes and beatings to illicit drug use and falsified treatment records, the incidents offered a rare look into problems inside the closely guarded psychiatric center, according to records obtained by The Journal News/lohud through Freedom of Information Law requests.”

Read the exposé by David Robinson in The Journal News.

“Perhaps the most irrefutable statement that can be made about modern day America is this: we have a penchant for putting people in cages. More than any other nation on the planet, we rely on incarceration as the fix for our social ills.”

Read the article by Guy Hamilton-Smith in Injustice Today.