Fat Albert first appeared in l967 during one of Bill Cosby’s stand-up comedy routines. The character of Fat Albert was based on Cosby’s tales about the neighborhood where he grew up in North Phillie. He had a distinctive voice; you knew Fat Albert was around because of his distinctive baritone, “Hey Hey Hey.” All the high school kids I taught … Read More
Do Men Who Perpetuate Mass Shootings Hate Women?
California Governor Gavin Newsom recently pointed out that mass shootings are almost exclusively perpetrated by men, adding that a discussion of this “is missing from the national conversation.” He got me wondering if this was true and if it was time to begin a conversation. I started reading research about the fact that many of the gunmen in mass shootings … Read More
Corporate Greed Fuels the Opioid Crisis
For some time the focus of the opioid crisis has been on the doctors who run pill mills, the pharmacies who dispense opioid pills by the thousands, and the Sacklers, the family that controls and profits from Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin. Now the attorneys general in New York, Vermont, and Washington State are going after the distributors of … Read More
Let’s Try Portugal’s Solution to the Heroin Epidemic
Last year approximately 64,000 Americans died of overdoses, as many as were killed in the Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars combined. More than fifteen years ago both Portugal and the U.S. were struggling with illicit drug use. The U.S. cracked down, spending billions of dollars incarcerating drug users. Portugal, on the other hand, decriminalized the use of all drugs in … Read More
What Happened?-Dealing with the Bully
I’m reading Hillary Clinton’s account of her stunning loss in the 2016 Presidential election. In her memoir, What Happened, Clinton talks about the well-coordinated campaign by the Trump operatives to fuel anger throughout the country. As Trump continued to provoke violence in his rallies, she kept thinking, “People are going to be shocked by this.” But as we know, they … Read More
Phase Out Private For-Profit Prisons
On August 18th, the Obama administration said it would begin to phase out the use of private for-profit prisons to house federal inmates. The deputy attorney general, Sally Q. Yates said that private prisons do not save substantially on costs and provide fewer rehabilitative services like education and job training that reduce recidivism when inmates are released. From 1980 to … Read More
Drug Overdoses for Young Whites an Epidemic: Police Chief’s Solution
The mortality rates for heart disease, HIV and cancer have decreased for young whites aged 25-34 while drug related deaths due to both oxycontin and heroin have skyrocketed. At the same time, the death rate for young blacks due to overdoses is falling. Young whites death rates for overdoses for both illegal and prescription drugs are the highest since the … Read More
Police Chiefs, Sheriffs and Prosecutors Join Prison Reform Movement
In an abrupt change in philosophy, more than 130 top law enforcement officials including those from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and others now support a roll back of tough laws and rigid judicial practices that have built a criminal justice system in the U.S. with the highest incarceration rate in the world. It also costs taxpayers $80 billion a … Read More
Heroic Actions for Prisoners’ Human Rights
A Psychologist Warden in Chicago and a Federal Court Decision in California address Prisoners’ Human Rights There are now 10 times as many mentally ill people in the nation’s 5000 jails and prisons as there are in state mental institutions. And these prisoners are more likely to be kept in solitary confinement and to be beaten by guards and other … Read More
A New Lease on Life
In 1992, Rudolph Norris, 58, was convicted of possessing and selling crack-cocaine and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. 30 years. He would have received a greatly reduced sentence for the same non-violent crime today but his conviction came during the war-on-drugs debacle of decades past. According to federal data, roughly ½ of the 1.5 million federal and state … Read More
Criminal Justice Reform is Having a “National Moment”
This week President Obama visited a federal prison in El Reno, Oklahoma, marking the first time in history that any sitting president visited a prison. As the President looked into a 9 by 10 foot cell for 3 prisoners, containing 3 bunks, a night table with books, a small sink and toilet with no seat, he reflected on the life … Read More
Report on Treatment of Mental Illness in Prisons by Human Rights Watch
Those of you who have been reading my blog know that our prisons have become the largest mental illness institutions in the United States. An estimated one in five prisoners in the US has a serious mental illness including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, and major depression. I thought I had read everything about the despicable treatment the mentally ill receive … Read More
Site Unseen: Incarceration
Site Unseen: Incarceration is a gallery show curated by Sheila Pinkel, Emerita Professor of Art, Pomona College, to highlight the realities and challenges confronting incarcerated people. The exhibit at Los Angeles Valley College displays the work of 7 incarcerated individuals as well as 7 non-incarcerated people who use a variety of approaches to create consciousness about incarceration in the United … Read More