Blog from the Justice Programs Office
The scene may be familiar: a family movie showing three young children, beginning a road trip to visit their mom who lives far away. The camera zooms in on one of the little girls and her uncle asks, “what do you tell people when they ask why Mommy is in Florida?” She responds, “I tell them that it’s something only the family needs to know about, and they seem okay with that.”
Continue reading “When we punish the family – a review of The Sentence”
“No touching!” the corrections officer yelled at me, pointing at my outstretched hand as I sat down in the attorney interview room across from my client Raphael. “Oh right, sorry!” I snatched my hand away quickly. In my first year as a public defender, I had a hard time “un-learning” my natural instincts about how human interaction should work. On this occasion, I was meeting with Raphael at Rikers Island to interview him for a letter I was writing to the judge about why she should give Raphael a shorter jail sentence for his heroin possession case than the DA was recommending. Continue reading “Revolutionary Empathy”