Seek Justice

Seek Justice

By Erik Rasmussen and Dennis SchrantzSociety & CulturePhilosophy
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Seek Justice episodes

  • Ep. 4 - Racial Disparity
    Links

    • New Zealand bans suspect's manifesto (The Detroit News)

    • The New Jim Crowe, by Michelle Alexander (Wikipedia)

    • Jack Maple – creator of CompStat methodology that reduced crime in NYC but ultimately lead to arrest quotas (Wikipedia)

    • North Carolina Jury Sunshine Project findings (Wake Forest University)

      1. Women and men serve on felony trial juries at about the same rate.
      2. Prosecutors remove twice as many potential black jurors at trial as white jurors (20 percent of available black jurors compared with 10 percent of available white jurors).
      3. Judges remove 14 percent of available black jurors compared with 10 percent of available white jurors.
      4. Defense attorneys remove white jurors more often: they exclude 22 percent of the available white jurors versus 10 percent of the available black jurors.
      5. The differences in removal rates are different for urban and rural districts, with racial disparities larger on average in urban districts.
      6. The differences in removal rates are different from some urban districts than for other urban districts: the largest disparities occur in Charlotte, Durham, and Winston-Salem, while smaller disparities happen in Fayetteville, Greensboro, and Raleigh.
      7. Juries with more black males tend to acquit the defendant more often, all other things being equal.
      8. Juries with more white males tend to convict the defendant more often, all other things being equal.
      9. Juries with more black females tend to acquit more often, but only slightly; juries with more white females do not tend to acquit or convict any more often than the overall pool of trials.

      10. John Engler, 46th Governor of Michigan, from 1991 to 2003 (Wikipedia)

      11. First Step Act (Wikipedia)

      12. Criminal Conviction of Charles Kushner (Wikipedia)

      13. Assessment platforms:

        • Northpointe's COMPAS (Equivalent)
        • Ohio Risk Assessment System (NICIC)
        • Level of Service Inventory - Revised (MHS)
          • 53 min
        • Ep. 3 - Plea Bargaining
          Links
          • Invisibilia, S05E02 - Post, Shoot (NPR)
          • Plea Bargaining in the United States (Wikipedia)

            • But in this era of mass incarceration — when our nation’s prison population has quintupled in a few decades partly as a result of the war on drugs and the “get tough” movement — these rights are, for the overwhelming majority of people hauled into courtrooms across America, theoretical. More than 90 percent of criminal cases are never tried before a jury. Most people charged with crimes forfeit their constitutional rights and plead guilty.

            – Michelle Alexander, Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System (NYTimes)

            • Parens Patriae (Wikipedia)
            • Van Jones & CT Governor Ned Lamont Lead Criminal Justice Reform Conversation at Quinnipiac (YouTube)
            • Serial Podcast
            • Van Jones
              • 45 min
            • Ep. 2 - Community Engagement
              Links
              • Michigan Governor – Gretchen Whitmer
              • Northpoint Institute of Public Management, now Equivalent
              • Florida Amendment 4, Voting Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative (2018) - ✅ Approved (Ballotpedia)

                • The report [by The Sentencing Project] estimated that, as of 2016, around 6.1 million people, or about 2.5 percent of the U.S. voting age population, were disenfranchised due to a felony conviction. Florida was estimated to have 1,686,318 persons—10.43 percent of the voting age population—disenfranchised due to felonies. The majority of the disenfranchised persons, around 88.23 percent, were estimated to have completed their sentences. Florida had the highest rate of felons disenfranchised in the U.S. in 2016, according to the report. The estimated average rate of felon disenfranchisement across the 50 states was 2.28 percent in 2016.

                – The Sentencing Project

                • Nation Outside, in Michigan
                • The Center for Community Transitions, in North Carolina
                • Justice Reinvestment Initiative
                • Ron Taylor, Prisons Division of National Institute of Corrections (NICIC)
                • If It Bleeds, It Leads: Understanding Fear-Based Media (Psychology Today)
                • Memorandum of Understanding (Wikipedia)
                  • 51 min
                • Ep. 1 - What is Criminal Justice?
                  Links
                  • 40% of murders in the US went unsolved in 2017 (NY Post)
                  • Clearance Rate (Wikipedia) – Measure of percentage of "solved" crimes

                    • Bernie Sanders raises $5.9M in 24 hours after announcing 2020 campaign

                    • National Criminal Justice Reform Project (ncja.org)

                    • The Sentencing Project (Wikipedia)

                    • JEHT Foundation

                    • The Unmet Promise of Alternatives to Incarceration, by James Austin and Barry Krisberg (not actually Kay Harris)

                    • Kay Harris Obituary (philly.com)

                    • Stategies, Values, and the Emerging Generation of Alternatives to Incarceration (PDF), by Kay Harris

                    • Reducing Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: A Manual for Practitioners and Policymakers, by Dennis Schrantz and Jerry McElroy (The Sentencing Project)

                    • Voice of the Experienced (vote-nola.org)

                      1 hr 1 min

                    About Seek Justice

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                    A weekly deep dive into Criminal Justice with Erik Rasmussen and Dennis Schrantz