New Thinking, from the Center for Justice Innovation

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**New Thinking, from the Center for Justice Innovation**

New Thinking is a podcast about justice—and injustice—in America. It’s about the people working to fix a justice system that falls so short of our ideals, and the people organizing to build something new in its place. It’s hosted by Matt Watkins and produced by the Center for Justice Innovation (formerly Center for Court Innovation).

Latest Episodes:

Josie Duffy Rice: Fighting a Big Fight Dec 17, 2020

Show notes

It’s been a long year for justice in America. Josie Duffy Rice offers a sharp take on what the future could hold.

Guns, Young People, Hidden Networks Nov 30, 2020

Show notes

Three of the authors of a groundbreaking year-long study into young people and guns talk about their disturbing findings, and the remarkable way the research was conducted.

Reform and Its Discontents Oct 26, 2020

Show notes

In their book, Prison By Any Other Name, activists Victoria Law and Maya Schenwar contend that much of what is packaged today as “reforms” to the criminal legal system are extending, not countering, that system’s harmful effects. So what is the ultimate goal of reform of a system like the criminal legal system? (Episode nominated for a Media for a Just Society award in 2021.)

Full show notes

What We All Get Wrong About Gun Violence Oct 05, 2020

Show notes

While crime of nearly every kind has been declining amid COVID-19, in cities across the country, gun violence and homicides have been the exceptions. Long-time researcher and former Obama DOJ official, Thomas Abt, says there are proven solutions to reduce the violence. But he says both the right and the left fail to grasp the essence of any solution: focus on the violence itself. Abt is the author of Bleeding Out: The Devastating Consequences of Urban Violence and a Bold New Plan for Peace in the Streets.

This episode was originally released in July 2019 (new episodes start next week!)

Full show notes

Listen back to New Thinking’s episode with Patrick Sharkey, author of Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, The Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence.

Learn more about the Center for Court Innovation’s “credible messenger” violence interruption program, Save Our Streets.

Misdemeanors, Race, and a History of Injustice Aug 20, 2020

Show notes

The alleged use of a $20 counterfeit bill, selling loose cigarettes on a street corner, a broken brake light—think how many police encounters that ended with the killing of a Black person began with misdemeanor enforcement. If you want to shrink the role of police and the justice system, misdemeanors are the best place to start. Low-level, often “order maintenance,” charges make up 80 percent of criminal cases, and it’s here the justice system’s endemic racial disparities are at their most yawning.

In this conversation from February 2019, Alexandra Natapoff explains how the consequences of the sprawling misdemeanor system can trail someone for life. She calls that system “one of the great, under-appreciated engines of racial inequality in this country,” tracing its roots to the backlash against Reconstruction at the end of the Civil War.

A professor of law at the University of California, Irvine, Natapoff is the author of Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal.

Full show notes

Restorative Justice is Racial Justice Jul 06, 2020

Show notes

Restorative justice is about repairing harm. But for Black Americans, what is there to be restored to? This episode features a roundtable with eight members of the Center for Court Innovation’s Restorative Justice in Schools team. They spent three years embedded in five Brooklyn high schools—all five schools are overwhelmingly Black, and all five had some of the highest suspension rates in New York City.

Episode page

The episode features music from Zanny London, a student at one of the high schools in the program. Find more of his work on SoundCloud and Instagram.

Justice and the Virus: Racial Patterns Jun 03, 2020

Show notes

The death of George Floyd after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee to Floyd’s neck for close to nine minutes has triggered a wave of long-held anger and revulsion across the country. Vincent Southerland, the executive director of the Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law at NYU, compares Floyd’s death—in public, in broad daylight—to a lynching. The furor comes in the midst of a pandemic itself exacerbated by racism. How will COVID-19, and the reaction to police violence, affect the deep racial patterns of the justice system?

Episode page

Interview recorded May 29

Hear the first episode in the ‘Justice and the Virus’ series with Rachel Barkow

Justice and the Virus: Rachel Barkow May 22, 2020

Show notes

With justice systems across the country scrambling to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a lot of talk about what justice is going to look like when the virus ends. But what has the response actually consisted of—especially from prisons and jails, which have emerged as epicenters of the virus—and is there any reason to anticipate a “new normal” to emerge? New York University law professor Rachel Barkow explains her skepticism.

Episode page

Hear Barkow on New Thinking discuss her 2019 book, Prisoners of Politics: Breaking the Cycle of Mass Incarceration

Interview recorded on May 19

Getting People Off Rikers Island in a Pandemic May 05, 2020

Show notes

The infection rate from COVID-19 in New York City’s Rikers Island jails is currently almost 30 times the rate for the U.S. as a whole. As the city struggled to get people out from behind bars—criticized both for moving too slowly, and for even contemplating releasing anyone early from a jail sentence—it turned to a trio of nonprofits to repurpose a successful program on the fly. The urgency of supporting people being released abruptly from jail in the midst of a pandemic is clear, but so are the challenges. The experience also raises the question: what happens to criminal justice when the virus ends?

Interview recorded on May 1

Episode page

See a summary of results from the Rikers Early Release Program

Listen to a related New Thinking: ‘Jail-Attributable Deaths’

The Inequities of COVID-19: A Focus on Public Housing Apr 17, 2020

Show notes

In cities across the United States, the effects of the coronavirus are not being experienced equally. Whether it’s infection rates, deaths, or job losses, people of low income and people of color are being hit hardest. In New York City, many of those effects are concentrated in communities where public housing is located. The Center for Court Innovation’s Neighborhood Safety Initiatives program works with public housing residents. On New Thinking, the program’s Alicia Arrington explains the challenge, and the response.

Full show notes

Episode recorded on April 14

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