The City — Five Days Without Cops: Could Brooklyn Policing Experiment be a ‘Model for the Future’?

A Brooklyn community’s experiment to deal with a longstanding crime hotspot in a busy commercial corridor took a new approach last month: They pulled back on policing. … Jeffrey Butts, who has done extensive research on Cure-Violence initiatives, also questioned how far the experiment could go. Continue reading The City — Five Days Without Cops: Could Brooklyn Policing Experiment be a ‘Model for the Future’?

Going Back to College? Criminal Stigma in Higher Education Admissions in Northeastern U.S.

Access to education is a constant theme in discussions germane to correctional reform, particularly to reduce rule breaking while incarcerated and re-offending after release from prison. Focusing on the latter, we examine the extent to which education is accessible for individuals who have felonious non-violent records in the United States (US). We generated a stratified random sample of 85 institutions of higher education (IHE) in the northeastern US and analyzed emails from admission departments in response to inquiries about how a felony record would affect admissions decisions. Results from multivariate models indicate that the institution type (public vs. private) significantly predicts how an IHE would use an individual’s criminal history in admissions decisions. Public IHEs are less likely to consider criminal history when reviewing an individual’s application and IHEs with higher proportions of minority students are associated with reduced consideration of an applicant’s criminal history in admissions decisions. Continue reading Going Back to College? Criminal Stigma in Higher Education Admissions in Northeastern U.S.