“Where will I live? Are all my clothes where I left them? How will I get a decent job with these charges? How will I navigate the DSS system to get my children back? How do I make a change [...]
We are in a very difficult time right now: a pandemic, civil unrest, a financial crisis. Our country was already divided due to religious and political beliefs, and now the highly published [...]
I thought I was free when I walked out of prison over 20 years ago. But I quickly learned there’s a second prison manned not by armed guards, but by social stigma and legal restrictions. [...]
America was founded on Christian principles. European immigrants who were looking for freedom and independence – freedom from oppression of a government and freedom to serve God openly. So [...]
As America explores what 400 years of African presence on this soil has meant, I’ve had the opportunity to base my reflections on a reverse journey of sorts earlier this year. But it was no [...]
by Jerry Blassingame & Allie Hargrove A person with a mental illness is more likely to be incarcerated than to receive medical help. We incarcerate about two million people a year who have [...]
by Jerry Blassingame, as published in The Root When President Donald Trump signed the recent First Step Act into law, many people considered it to be the most important criminal justice reform [...]
by Jerry Blassingame What if someone cut off your legs? Well, that would be challenging. It would be difficult to move in ways that you are accustomed to moving. We don’t realize how important [...]
Here at Soteria, we see the ways in which a criminal record can haunt returning citizens. There are significant implications that plague every returning citizen in our program. Before we consider [...]
Let’s start by defining these two words: Mass incarceration is a term used by historians and sociologists to describe the substantial increase in the number of incarcerated people in the United [...]