Transaction Search Form: please type in any of the fields below.
Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:45 pm
Time: 10:45 pm
Results for targeted investment
1 results foundAuthor: Richie, Beth Title: The Crisis of Criminalization: A Call for a Comprehensive Philanthropic Response Summary: Executive Summary This report is an urgent call for a comprehensive philanthropic response to the growing crisis of criminalization. Over the past decade mass incarceration - the reality that over 2.2 million people are locked up in the nation’s prisons and jails, and 60% are people of color – has emerged as a central social justice issue of our time. Advocates, organizers, and philanthropic partners have confronted this crisis by working to reduce both racial disparities and the overall population of incarcerated people, and to mitigate the collateral consequences of criminal convictions. While these interventions remain critical, mass incarceration represents the tip of a much larger iceberg – the growing crisis of criminalization. Over 10 million arrests take place annually across the country. Four million people are currently on probation, parole or otherwise under the control of the criminal legal system without being incarcerated. These daunting statistics reflect a growing crisis in the United States – not of increasing violent crime, but of an ever-expanding web of criminalization. Beyond passage of criminal laws, criminalization represents a broader social and political process by which society determines which actions or behaviors – and by who - will be punished by the state. Increasingly, surveillance, policing, arrest, and criminal punishment have become the default response to drug use and addiction, poverty, mental illness, youthful behavior and school discipline, and countless other social problems, real and imagined. Criminalization is seeping into virtually every aspect of society and every institution, including schools, hospitals, social services, public and private housing, and child welfare, dramatically increasing the number of people caught in the web of the criminal legal system, often with devastating consequences beyond the walls of a jail or prison cell. Collectively, we have invested far less attention and resources in interrupting the process of criminalization - which drives mass incarceration - and on the broader impacts of criminalization beyond incarceration. The crisis of criminalization is dramatically intensifying in the current political climate. Criminalization is increasingly being used as both a mechanism and justification for mass detention and deportation of immigrants. And policymakers at all levels are pursuing increased policing and harsher punishment of drug offenses, poverty, reproductive autonomy, and of trans and gender nonconforming people. This report calls on philanthropy – including those who are not traditional criminal justice funders - to seize this moment to challenge criminalization as a default response to social problems. Criminalization - of individuals and entire communities - is increasingly impeding progress in virtually every field of philanthropic investment: racial and economic justice, civil liberties and human rights, women’s and LGBTQ equality, education and youth leadership, reproductive justice, and public health. But it is a process in which we can – and must – intervene to build safe, healthy, and thriving communities. Groups across the country are working to interrupt criminalization through grassroots organizing, policy advocacy, legal and legislative challenges. Current interventions include decriminalization, breaking the school and foster care to prison pipelines, police and bail reform, and pre-arrest diversion programs, among others. Communities are also exploring and elaborating responses to violence and harm that don’t implicate criminal punishment. And advocates are increasingly working toward diversion of resources away from systems of policing and punishment into programs that meet community needs such as housing, health care, treatment, employment, and education. However, the vast majority of groups working to confront the crisis of criminalization have access to very few resources for this work, in a climate where both need and obstacles are exponentially increasing. An immediate, concerted, comprehensive, sustained, cross-sector, collaborative philanthropic response to the growing crisis of criminalization is urgently needed - to more effectively tackle mass incarceration, to stop the spread of surveillance and punishment, and to meet the challenges of the current political climate. Such a response requires an injection of resources into organizations currently working to challenge criminalization on the front end – including those working to develop alternate responses to violence and to redirect social resources to meeting basic needs. It also requires targeted investment in fields where criminalization is rapidly expanding, such as immigrant, gender, sexual and reproductive justice, and LGBTQ rights. While there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to challenging criminalization, there are a number of key principles and strategies that should guide our response outlined throughout this report. Ultimately, confronting the crisis of criminalization is an essential element of strategies to promote social, racial, gender, sexual, and economic justice. And perhaps most importantly, by confronting the crisis of criminalization, we will ultimately create the communities, human relationships, and world we want to see. Details: New York, NY: The Barnard Center for Research on Women, 2017. 48p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 11, 2019 at: http://bcrw.barnard.edu/wp-content/nfs/reports/NFS9-Challenging-Criminalization-Funding-Perspectives.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: http://bcrw.barnard.edu/publications/the-crisis-of-criminalization/ Shelf Number: 154102 Keywords: Barnard Center for Research on Women Criminalization Deportation of Immigrants Drug Offenses Mass Detention Mass Incarceration Philanthropic Philanthropy Poverty Targeted Investment |