Tag: CNN

Who’s Responsible for Mass Incarceration? Van Jones Weighs In

Posted on by robbie

It could be said that Van Jones is a Renaissance man. Best known for his book “Rebuild the Dream,” a proposal to revive the American economy, Jones also served as President Barack Obama’s special advisor on green jobs, co-founded four nonprofits to tackle the country’s largest obstacles and regularly appears as a commentator on CNN.

Recently, the Yale Law School graduate turned his attention to mass incarceration. He spoke to NationSwell by phone from the Bay Area about the latest in criminal justice reform.

After so many highly publicized events — the shootings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, you could go on and on — people on both sides of the aisle are talking about criminal justice reform. What allowed this historic moment to happen?

“I think that the core values of both political parties have been violated by the massive expansion of the incarceration industry. If our country is a ‘liberty and justice for all’ country in the ideal, then both parties have their roles to play. The Republicans tend to be the part of liberty. They’re concerned about individual rights and limited government. Well, the incarceration industry is rolling over both those ideas every day. The Democrats tend to be very concerned about justice — particularly social and racial justice. Well, obviously the incarceration industry is the antithesis of that. It’s the antithesis of treating marginalized groups fairly. Both parties have their own independent reasons for being concerned. Then you have this explosion of digital media, social media and hashtag activism that has created a context in which both see the salience of the issue.”

For so long, our justice system seemed to rely on fear: We need harsh penalties so criminals aren’t out on the streets committing more crimes; we can’t change our policing methods because crime will go up. How do you combat that pervasive negative emotion?

“Both political parties were stuck on stupid for three decades. Democrats and Republicans were in a footrace with each other off this cliff to see who could propose dumber, longer sentences for increasingly petty offenses, and both parties got completely away from any kind of evidence-based, rational policymaking in this area.

“I think now we’re seeing another set of fears is beginning to counterbalance that. Crime has reached historic lows, both in places where there was excessive incarceration and in places where there was not. Crime’s been going down and so people can be a little more reasonable when they think about this stuff psychologically. But there’s also a growing fear on the right of increasing government power as more of a libertarian strain in the Republican party gets bigger. Their concern for militarized police, people being jailed for personal choices of drugs and even the NSA has created a counterbalancing set of fears within some quarters of the right.”

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So, do you capitalize on that fear? Or do eventually you need to shift perceptions for a more lasting change?

“It took decades to get a system this big and unjust in place. You now have a lot of economic interests that are baked into the cake here. And it’s not just private prisons. You have public employee unions that are made up of prison guards who have a stake in the status quo. You have whole towns that have now been built up around prisons out in rural parts of America. They’re gonna fight to keep those prisons open because they’re looking at being a prison town or a ghost town. This is going to be a long process of unwinding mass incarceration. What really has to happen is a much deeper paradigm shift.”

Personally, how did you get involved in this issue of criminal justice reform?

“I’ve been African American for a very long time. From that perspective, it’s very difficult to ignore the racial imbalances that have been built up and even accelerated in our criminal justice system. Iowa’s population is two percent black, but 25 percent of its prison population is black. I agree with the author Michelle Alexander when she says this is the new Jim Crow. We had enslavement in the 1700 and 1800s, we had Jim Crow segregation and now we have mass incarceration. It’s another way to deny basic humanity and dignity and equality to people with darker-colored skin.

“I think a lot of people in the back of their minds believe there’s more and more black people in prison because more and more black people are criminals. And yet the numbers don’t bear it out. In fact, African-Americans and whites do illegal drugs at exactly the same rates, literally the exact same rate. So, if 10 percent of African-Americans are using substances at any given point, 10 percent of whites are. And yet African-Americans are not incarcerated at equal rates. Not at double the rate, nor at three times, but at six times the rates of whites doing the exact same thing. Now that’s not ‘These African-Americans should get better educated and pull their pants up.’ That’s literally six times the rate of incarceration.

[ph]

“Now where does that come from? It comes from police assuming the worst about any African-American motorist or pedestrian and giving them extra scrutiny. They’re more likely to be stopped, and in those encounters, more likely to be arrested, more likely to be held without bail, more likely to be given heavier charges by district attorneys. At every step and stage, you end up with unfair treatment. It’s not that there’s a lot of outright racism. It’s not conscious — ‘Oh, I hate all black people. I want them to be in prison.’ It’s just this tiny little tickle in the back of your brain that says, ‘I need to secure this guy,’ or ‘I need to teach this guy a lesson.’ As opposed to the white college student to whom he maybe says, ‘Oh well, boys will be boys,’ or maybe, ‘They’ll grow out of it.’ But black guys appear as marauding, drug-abusing menaces. Those kinds of things make it very important for me to speak up.”
This interview has been edited and condensed. 

It’s a Woman’s World Now, and Women Are Making It Better for Everyone

Posted on by robbie

In the past few years, coding has taken on a life of its own and is seen almost as a universal digital gateway to a lucrative career. Kimberly Bryant, a biotech engineer, is harnessing the power of code education through Black Girls Code, a non-profit organization she launched in 2011. In just three years, it’s become so successful that CNN just named Bryant to its CNN 10: Visionary Women list.
The idea came to Bryant when her 12-year-old daughter, a heavy gamer, found herself as the only girl of color at a weeklong computer programming camp at Stanford University in California.  Her daughter’s experience was all too familiar: In the 1980s, Bryant was the only African-American woman in her electrical engineering classes, and to this day, she still finds herself completely outnumbered in her field.
Black Girls Code aims to not only amend the dearth of black women in the technology industry workforce —they make up only 3 percent — but to turn the face of the industry on its head.
“We don’t want to just teach the girls to code,” said Bryant, who now works full-time for the nonprofit. “We also want to teach them to create businesses and to become business owners and become like the next Mark Zuckerberg or the next Bill Gates.”
To do so, the organization teaches computer programming and entrepreneurial skills to girls of color, ages seven to 17, attempting to train them to become tech leaders of the future. The program goes far beyond Bryant’s home base in San Francisco, reaching 2,500 girls through chapters in seven U.S. cities and in Johannesburg, South Africa. Eight additional chapters across the country are planned for 2014, with the goal of reaching 1 million girls by 2040.
“We like to say we hope to be like the Girl Scouts of technology, having many different chapters in many different states, as well as many different countries,” Bryant told CNN.
“I’m doing something to make the world a better place for her child,” she adds.
Bryant’s goal to foster a global atmosphere of female success echoes the stories of the rest of the members of the CNN 10: Visionary Women list.
In honor of Women’s History Month, which lasts all of March, CNN told the stories of 10 women working to help other women through education, emotional support, and career motivation. They’re all working toward that goal via unique paths. Victoria Budson, executive director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, is shattering the wage gap through data-driven means like a gender action portal and professional partnerships. Molly Cantrell-Kraig founded the Women With Drive Foundation to provide transportation to women who otherwise find education and job training inaccessible. Other women included are making fashion-forward clothing for Muslim women and teaching women about menstruation.
“What they have in common is a mission to empower their fellow woman,” CNN wrote in the introduction. And what Bryant, along with the others, represents is a passionate commitment to training the next generation of female leaders.

How to Fix Alaska’s Culture of Sexual Violence

Posted on by robbie

Alaska is America’s “Last Frontier,” one of the most breathtakingly beautiful states. But it also has a dark side: the highest rates of rape and sexual violence in the country. According to 2012 FBI crime data, an estimated 80 rapes are reported in Alaska for every 100,000 people. That’s nearly three times the national average. To determine why these violent acts are occurring so often — and more importantly what can be done to stop them — CNN columnist John D. Sutter spent two weeks in the state for his investigative report, “The Rapist Next Door”, interviewing perpetrators, victims and politicians, as part of the Change the List project.
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Sutter tells the story of Sheldon, a man who raped and molested his stepdaughter, Alice, but still lives in a shack directly next door to the family home. (Names have been changed to protect the subjects’ identities.) This may seem counterintuitive, but the proximity is part of a new treatment program centered on offenders. In this program, Sheldon has a “safety net” of five community members, including his wife, Ruth, who make sure that he cannot hide from what he did, but more importantly, won’t be able to harm someone again. According to the program’s director, of 90 sex offenders who have entered the treatment — to be fair, a small sample — the recidivism rate is about 2 percent. To put that in perspective, 5.3% of 9,691 sex offenders nationwide re-offended within three years.
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Ruth thinks that Sheldon can change, and Alaska can, too, with more programs that attempt to rehabilitate and support offenders. But the transformation won’t be easy. Sutter hypothesizes that the rape rate is so high because the crimes are tolerated, especially in some remote areas, where law enforcement is scarce and alcohol abuse is common. So, these are some logical reasons, but how can the culture be changed? Sutter writes: “Policy shifts are important, to be sure. The state should broaden the power of tribal courts; expand law-enforcement in rural Alaska; increase the number of women’s shelters, so fewer victims will have to hop a plane to find safety; and expand sex-offender treatment programs like the one in which Sheldon participates.”
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But you can help, too. CNN has a comprehensive (and vetted) list of five simple ways to make a difference. To get started, here is the condensed version:

And to better understand the realities of Alaska’s rape problem, don’t forget to read Sutter’s extensive report on CNN.