In Mississippi, people face many barriers to restarting their lives after prison and this week, the "Rethinking Reentry" conference will focus on helping them succeed.

Mississippi has one of the world's highest incarceration rates, with more than 1,000 people locked up for every 100,000 residents.

Yahaira Battiata, community outreach administrator for the DirectEmployers Association, said her organization will be part of the conference to network with employers and community-based organizations hiring people who have served their sentences, and who may need help with compliance and recruitment challenges.

"We help employers bridge the gap between recruitment marketing and OFCCP compliance. We assist them with online recruitment, DEI and compliance," Battiata outlined. "My role is to connect community-based organizations who have any kind of diversity program, any kind of employment or job readiness program."

The nonprofit Mississippi Center for Reentry hosts the one-day in-person and virtual conference Aug.1, at Tunica Resorts. Participants will hear from people who have been in jail or prison and those who work with them, on how to improve reentry services.

Elizabeth English, a criminal justice advocate, said at the conference, she will discuss how her son being charged as an adult at 17 and her grandson's murder in 2020 have intensified her fight for justice.

"I'll be speaking on several different things," English noted. "Transparency within our judicial and law enforcement, that's a big problem. Habitual offender is a big issue, and drives mass incarceration nationwide; and if I can get a word or two in about no-knock warrants, and the dangers that poses."

English added her advocacy work also involves reaching out to lawmakers and local law enforcement to explore ways to improve Mississippi's criminal justice system.

Andre De Gruy, Mississippi state public defender, said he will join English and other speakers for the "Reentry Talk" panel discussion. They will discuss how the state can potentially improve things from a legal advocacy perspective.

"I'll be talking about the public defender system, so people maybe have a better understanding of how it's working, how it's not working," De Gruy explained. "What are the things that we want to do, like having standards for public defenders, so that public defenders know what they're supposed to be doing?"

De Gruy noted for the last few years, legislation has been proposed to establish standards for public defenders in Mississippi, subject to Supreme Court approval, on issues like data collection and workload limits. The bill passed both House and Senate last session, only to be killed on a procedural motion.


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Maryland has one of the highest percentages in the nation of people in prison who began serving time when they were juveniles.

A new report from Human Rights for Kids included survey results from more than 120 people in Maryland who have been in prison since childhood. It found nearly 70% had experienced six or more Adverse Childhood Experiences, the major upheavals in a child's life affecting their development, from abuse and neglect to incarcerated relatives and domestic violence.

Nate Balis, director of the Juvenile Justice Strategy Group at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said one concern is children in Maryland are automatically tried as adults if they're accused of any of more than 30 crimes.

"Because it's based on offense -- and not based on the individual circumstances of the offense itself, or of a young person's history, or of even considering the trauma that young people have experienced -- it means that just because of the offense, we are charging young people as adults," Balis explained.

The report showed 6% of Maryland's incarcerated population has been in prison since childhood. The numbers also include immense racial disparities, with more than 90% being people of color. The report recommended all cases involving a child start in juvenile court and courts be required to take Adverse Childhood Experiences into account during sentencing.

Balis also noted compared to adults, young people are more capable of change, which he argued should mean more effort is made to keep them out of the adult system.

"We want to do everything we can to steer them away from the system," Balis urged. "To prevent them from future offending, to fill their lives with good things, to keep them away from the justice system. Not to pull them deeper into the system and even into the adult criminal justice system, when we could serve them effectively in the juvenile justice system."

Other recommendations include prohibiting the use of solitary confinement for children and not housing children in adult jails and prisons.

Changes in federal law will permit West Virginia and other states to use Medicaid dollars to pay for health care services for incarcerated youths beginning Jan. 1.

In addition to helping kids get physical and dental health care, the new rules should give them needed resources to address mental and behavioral health challenges stemming from childhood trauma.

Elizabeth Crouch, associate professor of health services policy and management at the University of South Carolina, said mitigating adverse childhood experiences is a growing part of efforts to keep rural children out of the juvenile justice system and detention.

"A fifth of rural children are diagnosed with developmental behavioral mental health disorders," Crouch pointed out. "Rural children are more likely to be diagnosed with developmental behavioral disorders, such as ADHD, than their urban counterparts."

About 45% of West Virginia children experience adverse childhood experiences, a rate five points higher than the national average. The Medicaid coverage for youth in detention includes physical, dental and behavioral health screenings and case management services.

States are also taking into account neurocognitive research showing teen brains do not fully develop until the mid-20s. Crouch noted arrests of young people have dropped by more than 80% since the mid-1990s, as a greater understanding of childhood trauma has increased the number of alternatives to detention. Still, she acknowledged the challenges for rural kids are formidable.

"What we have found is that rural children have been disproportionately living in homes affected by current substance use or mental illness," Crouch explained. "Rural children have experienced much higher rates of opioid use."

Despite declining arrests and detention rates, young people of color are still far more likely than white youth to be held in juvenile facilities, according to The Sentencing Project.

The New York Police Department's new commissioner must address the agency's dwindling public trust as her tenure begins.

Jessica Tisch became the agency's top official after former commissioner Edward Caban resigned amid federal investigations. Past surveys show moderate trust in the department but a new survey of heavily policed neighborhoods paints a different picture.

Brett Stoudt, associate director of the Public Science Project, said it found people in such neighborhoods want crime handled differently.

"A significant number of these residents do not desire more investments in policing but instead desire approaches to public safety that invest in a broad set of supports and services, and institutions," Stoudt explained. "The kind that more fundamentally address the root causes of violence."

Other findings show people are fearful of their neighborhood's expanded police presence. Along with this, some said they have experienced physical or sexual violence from police officers. Stoudt noted this kind of policing mostly affects minorities in the city. The New York Civil Liberties Union finds Black people are 20% of the city's population, but were 60% of people police stopped in 2023.

Recommendations to fix the issues include increasing transparency for the department, firing officers who abuse their position for power and stopping the spread of misinformation from the agency.

Ileana Méndez-Peñate, program director for the group Communities United for Police Reform, said other recommendations aim to reduce the department's omnipresent role in some areas.

"The other policy recommendation related to that is the real need to invest in the fundamental needs of New Yorkers," Méndez-Peñate emphasized. "I talked about housing and education but also youth programs and services and quality city infrastructure through security. These are some of the top concerns."

There could be challenges to enacting the survey's solutions. One is the charter revisions passed on Election Day, since one of them gives the department more power. She added another challenge is financing, since the millions of dollars the city spends on the police department do not address the root causes of certain issues.


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