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Citizen Brief

Understanding the Impacts of Incarceration on Health

Health is more than the absence of disease: it is a resource for living, shaped by conditions in the community. It’s found at the intersection of one’s physical, mental, spiritual and social well-being. Communities create health together; it is not something an individual can purchase (as in health care) or 3 produce alone (as in healthy behaviors). It is determined by of a number of social influences such as education, housing, family structure, and economic opportunity. Incarceration is a powerful force in many communities; it interacts with all of the social determinants, impacting the health of people and communities across the country.

Criminal Justice 

"The War on Drugs": Law enforcement-legal aspects of the war on drugs

Criminal justice is strong medicine: it can help, but applied too heavily or in the wrong way, it can hurt. It’s now clear that too much incarceration, aggressive, disrespectful policing, and other missteps can damage individuals, families, and communities and undermine relationships between neighborhoods and law enforcement. Law enforcement should do its work in ways that do not cause that harm.

 

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Courts

 

Drug Courts

Prosecutors

Public Policy

Ecosystem

Best Practice 

Law enforcement

 

Adam Foss: A prosecutor's vision for a better justice system

 

When a kid commits a crime, the US justice system has a choice: prosecute to the full extent of the law, or take a step back and ask if saddling young people with criminal records is the right thing to do every time. In this searching talk, Adam Foss, a prosecutor with the Suffolk County District Attorney's Office in Boston, makes his case for a reformed justice system that replaces wrath with opportunity, changing people's lives for the better instead of ruining them.

 

Filmed February 2016 at TED 2016

Court System

Prison System

The High Point Drug Market Intervention Strategy

 

The Drug Market Intervention (DMI) eliminates overt drug markets by bringing together community leaders, law enforcement, and service providers with street-level drug dealers and their families to make it clear that the dealing must stop

This panel, titled Mass Incarceration in America: Assessing the Costs & Human Impacts, took place at the historic #BipartisanSummit for Criminal Justice Reform on March 26, 2015 in Washington D.C. For more information,  http://www.bipartisansummit.org/

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