5/2/13

First Parish Church, Unitarian Universalist of Northboro & EPOCA (Ex Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement)

Please join us next Thursday, May 9th for a Public Forum on Criminal Justice Reform! We will be there discussing what CJPC (among many other organizations) is doing to address our Commonwealths high recidivism rates and outdated criminal justice policy.

Presented by: First Parish Church, Unitarian Universalist of Northboro & EPOCA (Ex Prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement)

At: First Parish Church, Unitarian Universalist of Northboro
(Event will take place in the Sanctuary)

40 Church Street
Northboro, MA 01532

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, May 9th, 2013

***Please RSVP!***

Can't wait to see you all there!

Please join us at the exciting upcoming event!

The Needham Human Rights Committee hosts the Yale Visual Law Project’s advance screening of its latest film, The Worst of the Worst! The film is co-produced and co- directed by Needham High School 2010 alum - Aseem Mehta. After 15 months of filming, editing, and criss-crossing the state of Connecticut, VLP is excited to share this 30-minute original documentary with the Needham community:

The Worst of the Worst
A Yale Visual Law Project film
May 2, 2013
7:30 PM
Needham Town Hall Auditorium
1471 Highland Avenue Needham, MA 02492

The Worst of the Worst tells the story of Connecticut's Northern Correctional Institute’s supermax prison through the individuals whose lives it has altered: a former inmate trying to rebuild his life but haunted by memories in Northern, a guard suffering from PTSD and his buddies trying to help him, a desperate mother on a mission to support a son at Northern who spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement. Through their stories and interviews with officials and advocates, the film asks who is really being held inside Northern, to what purpose, and at what cost.

Witness the stories, learn the policy, and bring your questions. The 30-minute screening will be followed by Q&A and panel discussion with Aseem Mehta, Gerard Horgan (Superintendent Jail Operations, Norfolk County Sheriff’s Office), Bonnie Tenneriello (Prison Legal Services of MA), and Andrew J. Zarro (Executive Director, Criminal Justice Policy Coalition). Moderator is Jim Glickman (Senior Trial attorney for US Dept. of Labor Office of the Solicitor). See the trailer for the film here. Watch MSNBC's coverage about the film here.

To learn more about the Yale Visual Law Project, check out their website, and follow them on Twitter @VisualLaw To learn more about the Needham Human Rights Committee, check out their website, or contact co-chairs Marlene Schultz and Amelia Klein at Needham.HRC@gmail.com.

3/28/13

We would like to thank MassINC and Community Resources for Justice for their outstanding work on their newest report, "Crime, Cost, and Consequences:Is It Time to Get Smart on Crime?" The report outlines the costs of the current approach to criminal justice and puts great emphasis on how important it is to evolve parole and probation rather than invest in prisons and impose mandatory sentences.

Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth (MassINC) is a non-partisan think tank and civic organization focused on putting the American Dream within the reach of everyone in Massachusetts. MassINC uses three distinct tools — research, journalism, and civic engagement — to ful?ll its mission, each characterized by accurate data, careful analysis, and unbiased conclusions. MassINC sees its role not as an advocacy organization, but as a new kind of think tank, rigorously non-partisan, whose outcomes are measured by the in?uence of its products in helping to guide advocates and civic and policy leaders toward decisions consistent with MassINC’s mission, and in helping to engage citizens in understanding and seeking to in?uence policies that affect their lives. More information available at http://www.massinc.org.

For more than 130 years, Community Resources for Justice has been improving public safety while helping some our society’s most challenged individuals develop their full potential. We help men and women released from incarceration to successfully re-enter mainstream society; we steer at-risk youth away from crime and toward productive lives; we offer adults with developmental disabilities the chance to ?ourish while living in the community. Our national-scale research and consulting practice accelerates system-level changes in corrections policy by using evidence-based practices. Working with our partners, we strengthen individuals, families, and communities. More information available at http://www.crj.org.

Find the Boston Globe article on the report here: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/24/report-slams-state-for-lack-corrections-reform/3LLXnzZpiA4jCBTn1ycHQJ/story.html.

3/20/13

Dear Friend of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition,

It is a privilege to introduce myself as the new Executive Director of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition. As a longtime advocate of criminal justice reform and someone that has experienced the system as it currently operates, I'm looking forward to this new role as an opportunity to collectively make great strides in reform.

I have an interdisciplinary background that has been consistently channeled into work to realize more widespread social justice. I hold a degree in Applied Economics from the University of Vermont, and will hold a Master of Public Administration from Northeastern University as of this May. I have worked with an array of membership and community-based organizations in the greater New England area, with much emphasis on community development initiatives. Simultaneous with my employment at CJPC, I will continue acting as Owner and President of Good for Great, LLC, a production firm that is keenly focused on further development of the "In Our Name" conferences on restoring justice in America.

Membership Updates

It has been some time since the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition has looked at its membership rolls and been in contact with those people who have a concern for criminal justice policy and practice in Massachusetts.

Our concern is that in our haste to be aware of legislative issues and to respond to them in a timely fashion, provide informative and educational programs about criminal justice policy and action, seek collaborative efforts with other agencies working in the field of criminal justice, and be on hand for those who seek assistance, we may have lost touch with you.

To that end, we are writing to you to ask you to confirm your membership with us! We have included a short questionnaire that you may complete online or print out and mail back to us, whichever is best for you!

We should add that recently, the Board noted to discontinue membership fees. Thus, the sole way we have to raise an operating budget is through small grants and donations. If you could make a donation at this time, it would help us in our work, and it would be very much appreciated. At the end of the day, we can't come close to operating as a true coalition without you. Please consider my email ajzarro@cjpc.org an open line of communication to let us know what we're doing right and what we could be doing better to make the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition more effective.

I look forward to meeting each and every one of you at our upcoming events and forums.

Sincerely,

Andrew Zarro, Executive Director
Criminal Justice Policy Coalition

Check out our printable Membership survey here!

3/8/13

We are grateful to the Coalition for Effective Public Safety for drafting and releasing this White Paper: The Current State of Parole in Massachusetts. The paper is extremely well researched and written; it makes a compelling case that the Massachusetts Parole Board needs extensive reformation. The paper was prepared by Attorneys from Prison Legal Serivces--Leslie Walker, James Pingeon, Tatum Pritchard and Stephanie Young Marzouk (now with Glickman Turley LLP)--and by Attorney Patricia Garin from Stern, Shapiro, Weissberg and Garin. It was distributed by Jean Trounstine, CEPS MEDIA. We are posting this paper with their permission. We hope the paper is the beginning of significant change and introspection regarding parole in Massachusetts.