What We Know

<p><strong>This is what we know and we know it better than anyone else. -from the introduction by Vivian Nixon and Daryl V. Atkinson</strong></p><p><strong>A thoughtful and surprising cornucopia of ideas for improving America's criminal justice system from those most impacted by it</strong></p><p>When The New Press the Center for American Progress and the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted Peoples and Family Movement issued a call for innovative reform ideas over three hundred currently and formerly incarcerated individuals responded. <em>What We Know</em> collects two dozen of their best suggestions each of which proposes a policy solution derived from their own lived experience.</p><p>Ideas run the gamut: A man serving time in Indiana argues for a Prison Labor Standards Act calling for us to reject prison slavery. A Nebraska man who served a federal prison term for white-collar crimes suggests offering courses in entrepreneurship as a way to break down barriers to employment for people returning from incarceration. A woman serving a life sentence in Georgia spells out a system of earned privileges that could increase safety and decrease stress inside prison. And a man serving a twenty-five-year term for a crime he committed at age fifteen advocates powerfully for eliminating existing financial incentives to charge youths as adults.</p><p>With contributors including nationally known formerly incarcerated leaders in justice reform twenty-three justice-involved individuals add a perspective that is too often left out of national reform conversations.</p>