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A former prisoner’s view of ‘Orange Is The New Black’
Those of you without Netflix might be wondering what’s all the fuss about with “Orange is the New Black.” The first 13-episode season of ONB is the second TV show to debut on the website. It is time...
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The conservative counterpunch to the March on Washington
I like to believe that more Americans believe in the concept of equal justice today than in 1963. The 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington will evoke different thoughts from different people,...
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Symposium on mass incarceration confronts challenges, unites system
Not in more than a decade has Rhode Island confronted the reality of mass incarceration as unflinchingly, as ambitiously and as uncomfortably as it did last Friday. “Sounding the Alarm on Mass...
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ACLU president Susan Herman on civil liberties, South Carolina and Black...
Susan Herman. Photo courtesy of ACLU. Susan Herman, president of the American Civil Liberties Union who is in Rhode Island today to speak at a panel discussion on policing, said she is not surprised to...
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Incarceration is the new slavery
Slavery is the most extreme form of stratification. It relegates people to the status of property for the purpose of producing labor. The slave is a commodity. The slave trade was very profitable on an...
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ACI administrator praises Prison Op/Ed Project
Racial injustice. Voting. Prisons. Entitlements. Zero tolerance. These are but a few of the topics written about by inmates enrolled in the Community College of Rhode Island Introductory Sociology...
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Joyce Penfield always finds new ways to fight for racial, social justice
Reverend Joyce Penfield in the St. Peter’s and St. Andrew’s Church. Reverend Joyce Penfield, of the St. Peter’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Providence, has been fighting for racial and social...
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Second Chance Act deserves a second chance at full funding
We all have in our lifetime needed at least one second chance. The barriers that inmates face in the reentry process, for some, can be a life or death situation. Every year state and federal prisons...
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Mass incarceration creates a permanent underclass
“The country’s poverty rate would have been more than 20 percent lower between 1980 and 2004 without mass incarceration.” Villanova University study Like most U.S. adults, I have violated the nation’s...
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Prison Op-Ed Project gives inmates a voice
This fall, I visited a class of smart and engaged Rhode Island students. They seemed a lot like other students I’ve visited over the years: They asked good questions. They shared their experiences...
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Has slavery really ended?
“Churches can be a place where judgment, shame and contempt [for families with felons] are felt most acutely.” Michelle Alexander Time for a pop quiz question. Ready? In what year did the U.S. end...
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RI Supreme Court upholds major probation violation bill
The RI Supreme Court, in a decision written by Supreme Court Justice Maureen Goldberg, upheld what is one of the most influential pieces of criminal justice reform legislation in the past ten years....
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