Jails, Sheriffs and Carceral Policymaking is a useful law review article about the “hidden to the public” story of the business of incarceration that verifies the hands-on research done in Whatcom County by the Restorative CommUnity Coalition. When we started, our work was striving to help people who got out […]
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Blindspots 1.2: Whatcom County Jail Trauma Research Study Episode 2 It’s about discovering the false pre-assumptions that people make about an arrest. Joy had no idea she herself would have blindspots even after years of researching the issues and working with people. For example, she discovered that most people who
Blindsposts 1.2 – Radicalized Acute Distress under Duress (RAD) Read More »
Repetitive Acute Trauma (RAT) Is one section of the Blindspots Chart It follows the initial shock of being that accused person who was in a crisis that led to an accusation, arrest, and now jailing. Videos of Blindspots: Unexpected Findings from Jail Trauma Research – 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 discuss
Blindspots 1.4 Repetitive Acute Trauma Symptoms – Jail Trauma Read More »
The immediate and then compound ripple effects that come from just an arrest process, then a jailing process are serious and last a lifetime. All this happens before a court is even involved or a person is charged with a crime. The immediate and then compound ripple effects that come
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JoyTalks Episode 3 details what people reported happened to them emotionally when they are arrested. This part of the study is not about guilt or innocence, it is simply what people go through, and may help people understand how mental illness develops in the aftermath of an incident that leads
Blindspots 1.3 Radicalized Acute Distress Under Duress-Jail Trauma Read More »
This was the first debate held about the Prosecutor’s position in decades! The incumbent prosecutor retired and had held the position virtually without competition for 44 years! As a result, this was a powerful educational opportunity for the public to learn how two different professionals would approach the position and
2018 Prosecutor’s Debate!!! Read More »
3-Step Civic Strategy: Emotional Resilience Tools After an arrest, an individual is thrown into an accelerated pattern of self-destructive emotional chaos. This arrest shock overwhelms their reasoning and coping skills. They experience acute emotional trauma such as shame, guilt, fear, sorrow, and then feelings of abandonment, betrayal, and isolation. Their
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MISMANAGEMENT = SYSTEMIC PATTERNS OF POVERTY After analyzing data about Whatcom County’s Justice system for the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force, dated November 2017, the Vera Institute of Justice published a report that identified “the following factors contributing to jail overuse in Whatcom County: Most admissions (62%) into the
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What are the “true costs” of incarceration? It’s complicated. It’s ultimately a contrarian lose/lose/lose game. People try to simplify the question of the growth of mass incarceration as a Good Guy vs. Bad Guy problem. Or as a good vs. evil problem. Or as a safety problem, like how we
Money: What are the True Costs of Incarceration? Read More »
NEW YORK, NY – Today, incarcerated men and women in prisons across 17 states began a 19 day strike to draw attention to the poor conditions they face and to demand change for all those who live and work in prisons across the country. Nicholas Turner, President of the Vera Institute of
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