August 21, 2023
Let's just put the answer out right up front: Yes. "In the big picture, religious presence seems to [influence] the amount of violence and crime in a community, it matters to blacks, whites and Latinos." OK. So, everybody? A separate study analyzing crime and religion data from 182 counties in three states similarly found that violent crime decreased when greater numbers of people were religiously active in a community.
August 7, 2023
For those who think that ex-offenders can't make a stunning comeback, I give you Charles Dutton. He was sentenced to five years for manslaughter in 1967 after a knife fight in which a man was killed. Out on parole, he was arrested on robbery and handgun charges and was sentenced to the Maryland Penitentiary for three more years. After a fight with a guard, another eight years was added to his sentence. During that time he spent six days in solitary confinement for refusing to clean toilets.
July 21, 2023
It has long troubled me that our state legislators do not pass a 36 percent APR cap on payday loans in Indiana. Ninety percent of Hoosiers agree that a 36 percent Annual Percentage Rate (APR) cap should be enacted--so what's the hold up? These small loans are aimed at those with an urgent need and a very low income, and payday loan operators notoriously target people of color.
July 7, 2023
A good friend who I'll call "Benny" is a former inmate who is having a rough time. He's been out of prison for a couple of years, but it has been a series of uphill battles with few successes.He entered prison as a teenager and made very few decisions on his own for the next 20+ years of his life. Not surprisingly, right decision making is one of the biggest challenges reentrants face, and Benny is no exception.
June 21, 2023
A few years ago, I put together a recidivism map that showed re-incarceration rates in Indiana counties were between 30 and 50 percent, using source data from the Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC). But after learning that IDOC only counts Indiana prison inmates who are re-incarcerated in an Indiana prison, it became obvious why the recidivism figures here were drastically lower than rates across the country.
June 7, 2023
We all know there is an epidemic of gun violence and we are all shocked every time we hear of the latest murder. But did you know that far more kids are killing themselves with guns??? I didn't know it. Yet, a little research into youth gun violence uncovers the horrific number of children who use guns to kill themselves. Suicide with a gun is 60 percent higher than Homicide with a gun among youths. Here's why...
May 22, 2023
When people compare the United States to just about any other country with a low incarceration rate it is usually far from a realistic comparison. While many first world countries have lower rates of incarceration, they also are much smaller and do not have the melting pot of cultures and values that we have in the U.S., cultures that have added beauty and depth to the fabric of our nation, but cultures whose differences can be expanded into battle lines of offense and defense...
May 8, 2023
Across the United States, approximately 1.22 million people are incarcerated in state and federal facilities. This does not include the 3000+ county jails in the U.S. that have begun to hold longer-term prisoners as well. About a half million reentrants are released every year. In Marion County, Indiana alone, annual estimated releases are about 12,000. If recidivism is the yardstick we use to measure our ability to help reentrants create a new future, it is an uncertain one.
April 21, 2023
Last month a 13-year old Covington, Indiana boy killed himself. His passion was baseball. He had a batting average of around .400 last season, and on the Saturday before he died, he threw a pitch that clocked in at 71 mph. Not surprisingly, he dreamed of playing in the major leagues. But he was relentlessly bullied in school about his hair, or his clothes, or his shoes, and the bullies would always end the tirade with "now go home and kill yourself." He finally did.
April 7, 2023
Buried in the book of Ecclesiastes is the concept that if we wait for all conditions to be ideal, we will never sow a seed or reap a harvest. It's in Chapter 11, actually. It is also said, "From a tiny acorn a mighty oak doth grow," a saying that has inspired so many who have begun a work because of a nagging feeling that 'something needs to be done.' That's how it started with founder Jim Cotterill who was nagged by the issues he saw right here, where desperate families live in desperate need.
