NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Wednesday more than 20 male prisoners in Tennessee are celebrating the completion of the associate degrees they earned while behind bars.

It's the first such group to receive the honor in more than 20 years.

The inmates will graduate at the Turney Center Industrial Complex as part of a program with Nashville State Community College that's coordinated by the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative (THEI).

Executive director Molly Lasagna says education is one way to give people a place to start once they are released.

"Our mission at the Tennessee Higher Education Initiative is really to think about the way that higher education opportunities, college opportunities, prepare folks to go back to their communities and experience success," she states.

THEI currently has 140 students enrolled at two prison facilities, the other being in the Memphis area at Northwest Correctional Complex in partnership with Dyersburg State Community College.

A mix of public and private funding supports the program. It has been in existence since 2012, and Lasagna says the recidivism rate is 4 percent, compared with the state average of more than 40 percent.

Similar programs have been more widely available to female inmates in Tennessee for several years.

Lasagna says the education the men and women receive only helps them contribute to their communities.

"The majority of our students will be released from prison either during their studies or once their studies are complete," she points out.

According to the Institute for Higher Education Policy, recidivism rates for incarcerated people who participated in educational programs behind bars were on average 46 percent lower than rates of inmates who did not take college classes.





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Cities and states are struggling with mounting homelessness, and West Virginia is no exception.

A recent report points to potential solutions and immediate actions local governments can take to reduce the number of people on the streets.

A different report, released this year by the state's Department of Human Services, found homelessness is up by 24% compared to 2021.

Providing jobs such as trash cleanup for homeless individuals, and managing public spaces, are effective - said Lisel Petis, senior fellow at the R Street Institute.

She said in several states local organizations are working with businesses to create safe designated places for people living in cars to go at night.

"One that I've spoken with where they have seen success in working with businesses and using parking lots and giving people some privacy," said Petis, "so that they can transition from their car back into houses."

According to the state report, nearly 60% of individuals experiencing homelessness were male, and nearly half were between the ages of 25 and 44.

Thirteen percent identified themselves as Black or African American.

Petis added that while encampment sweeps reduce the spread of disease and reduce pollution, they can also displace people without offering viable alternatives and destroy personal belongings and important documents - increasing barriers to long-term stability for unhoused people.

She said she believes the surge of anti-camping laws popping up across the nation is a knee-jerk reaction to a complex and long-simmering problem.

"Homelessness across the nation has been growing year over year since about 2016," said Petis, "so we know that just by kind of slapping a band aid on isn't going to stop this growing issue."

According to a 2019 report from the National Homelessness Law Center, 72% of the 187 cities surveyed had at least one law enforcing public camping bans, a 92% increase from 2006.




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New federal data show aggravated assaults are up in Kentucky by 7.2%, but other types of violent crime have gone down.

Overall, violent crime in Kentucky remains much lower compared to the nation as a whole, said Ashley Spalding, research director at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy.

"When you compare 2023 to that 2021 peak for violent crime," she said, "we see it's come down significantly since then."

A 2022 Bureau of Justice Statistics survey found younger people and people with lower incomes are far more likely to report being the victim of a violent crime than are higher-income people.

Spalding said laws such as House Bill 5, which lawmakers passed earlier this year, will drive up the number of people in the state's prisons and jails without addressing the root cause of crime.

"High rates of incarceration in communities are associated with higher rates of overdose deaths," she said. "The more that states make harsher criminal penalties for opioids like fentanyl, can put communities more at risk."

She said the policies in the bill are expected to cost the state an estimated $1 billion over the next decade. That money, she contended, could go toward health care, shelters and other resources that help communities.

"It would be the wrong direction for Kentucky to pass more harmful, harsh, regressive criminal legal system policies in 2025," she said.

According to the Pew Research Center, at least 60% of U.S. adults have said they believe there is more crime nationally than there was the year before, despite an ongoing downward trend in crime rates.

Hundreds of people from across Michigan gathered in Lansing this week, urging House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit and Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids, to advance the Second Look Sentencing Act to improve prison safety. The legislation allows people serving long sentences to have their cases reviewed for possible sentence reductions based on factors such as rehabilitation. The crowd included formerly incarcerated people who've turned their lives around and their families, victims of crime, prison staff and lawmakers.

Chuck Warpehoski, projects director with Michigan Collaborative to End Mass Incarceration, warned there is a prison staffing crisis in Michigan.

"We're seeing it in nursing, we're seeing it in child care, we're seeing it on the shop floor, we're seeing it with baristas. When it happens in a prison and people are forced to work mandatory double shifts, they're tired, they're not seeing their family -- it creates unsafe conditions for everyone," he said.

Warpehoski added they're urging lawmakers to pass the Second Look Act during this lame-duck session before they go home for the holidays.

He also pointed out the high costs of incarcerating people -- up to $48,000 per year, per person. He added that with the failed pay incentives to attract more staff, he believes it's clear a different solution is needed. Warpehoski shared some of the feedback they received.

"A lot of legislators and their staff said, hey, this makes sense -- and so it was a really, really positive response from not every office, but from a large number of offices we had meetings with," he continued.

Warpehoski stressed that Second Look legislation focuses on fairness by offering the possibility of release for individuals who have rehabilitated and are no longer a threat to society.