From The Brennan Center:
In April, Brennan Center friends and colleagues gathered at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco to discuss ways to provide the formerly incarcerated with opportunities for a fresh start. This discussion was prompted by the publication of the book Excessive Punishment: How the Justice System Creates Mass Incarceration, a collection of essays exploring the harms of, and potential solutions for, America’s punitive approach to crime and justice. The authors — including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people — are scholars, practitioners, activists, and writers.
The event was held during Second Chance Month. It opened with a video featuring Billie Edison, an alumna of The Last Mile, a nonprofit organization that provides education and technical training to incarcerated individuals for careers in technology after their release. The program has over 1,200 participants from 14 facilities across seven states. The video follows Edison through her difficult choice to stay incarcerated at Indiana Women’s Prison for an additional year so she could complete The Last Mile’s Web Development Program, as well as the challenges she faced in completing it. Upon returning home, Edison struggled finding employment like many returned citizens who have a record. Through TLM’s partnerships, and her continued hard work, she secured employment in the IT department of the Indiana Pacers and reconnected with her family.
The book’s editor, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program, reflected on the collection’s intention to educate the public on the overly punitive nature of America’s criminal justice system. To illustrate her point, she cited the nation’s lengthy sentences, such as life without parole, the cycle of criminal justice debt, and the more than 40,000 laws, rules, and regulations that impact people with convictions. Eisen stressed the lack of proportionality created by barriers to reentry for those released from prison. Continue reading >>>
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