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 (for...
Recent Episodes
228 episodes
Harm Reduction Is Doing Better Than You Think
Born out of the HIV-AIDS epidemic, harm reduction began as a scrappy, drug-user-led movement with an ethos entirely opposed to the War on Drugs.
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AI and Justice: The Neutrality Myth
The justice system is awash in purported AI solutions—for everything from prisons to courtrooms. But how do we separate AI’s real promise from the hyp...
Punishment Isn’t Safety
Emily Galvin Almanza says, for the most part, the criminal justice system has only one setting: punishment. But punishment isn’t safety. It isn’t even...
Punch: The Real-Life Restorative Justice Story Behind the Broadway Show
This is a story, not so much of forgiveness, but of something richer, more complicated, and even more deeply human.
Trauma 360
Vicarious trauma is the trauma you absorb working with traumatized people, especially when you’re both inside of already traumatizing systems. Treatme...
Drug Testing and the Ordeal of Probation
What is probation—and the ethos of drug testing that is at its heart—actually testing?
Inside Literary Prize: And the Winner Is…
Hear from the winner of this year's Inside Literary Prize, the first major U.S. book award to be judged exclusively by people who are incarcerated.
Inside Literary Prize: Shakopee Women’s Prison
A behind-the-scenes portrait of a day of judging for the Inside Literary Prize, the first major U.S. book award judged exclusively by people who are i...
Mental Health and Anti-Blackness
"Even in the clients we serve, anti-Blackness is the reason why they show up in harmful ways in the community."
Recriminalization in Oregon
Morgan Godvin was at the frontlines of Oregon's decriminalization fight. She says progress towards a health-based approach to drug use "has fallen pre...
Gideon at 60: Deconstructing Mass Supervision
Vincent Schiraldi used to run probation in New York City; now he’s asking whether probation should even exist. Schiraldi says some of the roots of mas...
Gideon at 60: Uncivil Justice
A profile of the fight to secure lawyers for people facing eviction and the radical impact that is having in Housing Court. With its 1963 Gideon decis...
Gideon at 60: The Unfunded Mandate
Sixty years on from a landmark Supreme Court decision, how can public defenders organize for genuine change?
When Young People Go to Prison for Life
Rather than arrests and incarceration, what do young people who commit harm actually need?
Emphasizing the Harms
A recent training for Manhattan prosecutors was a drumbeat on the harms of incarceration; hardly the typical message prosecutors receive. It was part...
Evicting Evictions
Housing is a human right. What if we designed our systems—beginning with Housing Court—to embody that?
Reform and Its Discontents
What if much of what is packaged today as "reforms" to the criminal legal system are extending, not countering, that system's harmful effects?
Why Data Doesn’t Stick
Data makes a powerful case against the criminal justice status quo, but who's listening?
Can We Close Rikers?
NYC has pledged to close its notorious Rikers Island jail by 2027, but obstacles abound.
The Question of Dirty Work
Have we placed people working to offer mental health treatment behind bars in a situation where it's impossible to practice ethical care?
Taking Reform Out of Its Comfort Zone
Can a treatment-first approach be brought to scale inside of the same system responsible for mass incarceration in the first place?
The Crisis on Rikers Island
An audio snapshot from an emergency rally demanding immediate measures to release people from NYC's Rikers Island jail. Eleven people have died in the...
Cages Don’t Help Us Heal
I made my own choices, Marlon Peterson says, “but I also did not choose to experience the type of things I experienced.”
One of These Days We Might Find Us Some Free: Reginald Dwayne Betts
In 1996, 16-year-old Reginald Dwayne Betts was sentenced to nine years in prison for a carjacking. He spent much of that time reading, and eventually...
The Cycle: Police Violence, Black Rebellion
Historian Elizabeth Hinton on the lessons for the present from her new book, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellio...
Policing, Race, and a Crisis in Mental Health
People experiencing a mental health emergency make up one of every four people killed by police. Changing how we respond to crisis in the moment, and...
Does the Criminal Justice System Cause Crime?
A headline-grabbing new study suggests even fleeting contact with the criminal justice system is a significant risk factor for incurring a future arre...
How Will the Death Penalty End?
Journalist Maurice Chammah discusses his new book, Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty.
COVID-19 Behind Bars: A Pandemic of Neglect
Homer Venters has been inspecting detention facilities for COVID-compliance almost since the start of the pandemic. The former chief medical officer f...
Heal and Punish? Treatment and Trauma Inside a Coercive System
How effective is therapy or treatment when it’s used instead of incarceration, and what are the challenges to conducting it inside the coercive contex...
Josie Duffy Rice: Fighting a Big Fight
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
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 r...
Reform and Its Discontents
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 crim...
What We All Get Wrong About Gun Violence
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....
Misdemeanors, Race, and a History of Injustice
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 end...
Restorative Justice is Racial Justice
Restorative justice is about repairing harm. But for Black Americans, what is there to be restored to? This episode features a roundtable with eight m...
Justice and the Virus: Racial Patterns
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...
Justice and the Virus: Rachel Barkow
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 lik...
Getting People Off Rikers Island in a Pandemic
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 str...
The Inequities of COVID-19: A Focus on Public Housing
In cities across the United States, the effects of the coronavirus are not being experienced equally. Whether it’s infection rates, deaths, or job los...