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I’m still reeling with the shock of yet another mass murder in the U.S. As we learn more about what happened in Orlando, like many of you I want to do something to prevent the next tragedy. Many people will offer ideas and solutions and I’d like to share my own. I call this a modest proposal since this is a complex problem and there are no simple solutions. No matter what is done, it isn’t going to stop senseless killing. On the other hand, I think there is much we can do to make our country...

When the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 was introduced in the United States Congress last year, Republican and Democratic senators backed the ambitious bill. Experts complimented its call for changes to mandatory minimums and solitary confinement and its proposal to thin the federal prison population . Lost in the praise, however, was a section that would radically change how the Bureau of Prisons tries to prevent recidivism. A proposed program instructs the U.S. attorney...

Jeffrey Michael Friedman of the East Coast Trauma Project and is a member here as well. We are friends on Facebook and he finds the most amazing articles and essays. Here's an excerpt from one he shared yesterday. There is also a story from when I was doing this work with a group of gang interventionists. This was a group of former gang members who worked in their community, in the places of their original traumas. One man had been shot on a particular street corner, and whenever he would...

I doubt there are more passionate people around than those who work with youth in our community: teachers, coaches, nonprofit workers and volunteers. It could be that we know they have time to live in abundance through good choices, having positive role models and having access to resources along the way. We can feel hopeful for our future through helping to shape lives one by one. It is with great interest that I have read many recent articles relating to our youth, among them on Gov. Bill...

What if doctors prescribed the same treatment to every patient with a particular symptom, without trying to diagnose its cause? Or if they offered powerful medications, without bothering to figure out if they worked? That, Marc Levin argues, is how America’s criminal-justice system presently operates. “We’re still basing the sanction on the specific offense they’ve committed,” Levin said, without attempting to figure out its underlying causes. “We need to diagnose someone as soon as they’re...

Try tracing the history of America’s most racially discriminatory policies, and you’ll actually wind up starting with a man hailed by many for his perceived progressiveness. In the 1930s, in desperate need of any sort of remedy to the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt enacted a sweeping package of social safety net programs and workplace reforms known as the New Deal. Under the terms of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (just one piece of the New Deal), American workers...

Before the Brexit vote, economists were near-unified in voicing fears that the UK will suffer outside the EU. The list of consequences is long: The UK’s economy will lose out on a favorable trade union, businesses may relocate their European headquarters, and the whole episode could very well spark a recession for the country. People who were counting on reason to win out were left depressed and confused after the votes were tallied. What they missed was, fundamentally, an understanding of...

Hard-core criminals are trapped in a vicious circle of their own thinking. Cognitive treatment of offenders can show them a way out of that trap. With effort and practice, even the most serious offenders can learn to change their thinking about other people and themselves. They can learn to be good citizens, and feel good about it. But in most cases the criminal justice system doesn't present them that opportunity — not in a form that offenders recognize as genuine. Since 1973, I've been...

Recent research from a team led by Shelby McDonald of Virginia Commonwealth University looks at the effects of seeing animal abuse on children’s psychological health in a context where they already witness intimate partner violence. Not long ago, I reported on a related study by McDonald that found one-quarter of children whose mothers experience domestic violence also see their pet threatened or abused, and that most often the child says the motivation is to control the mother. Since pets...

After a hellish first night in Sacramento, Nazir Ahmad Ahmadi was ready to return to Afghanistan with his wife and 5-month-old son despite the danger of being killed by the Taliban. He took his family to the Sacramento refugee health clinic. There, a tall, well-groomed interpreter listened patiently to his story. Ahmadi told Dr. Fahim Pirzada about the roaches and bedbugs that besieged his family that first night, leaving them with irritating bites and rashes days later. Their refugee...

When Afomeia Tesfai, a research fellow for Human Impact Partners , took a look at the health impacts of public-housing policies on the formerly incarcerated in Oakland, California, she found some good news. Public housing authorities normally have a bad rep for creating policies that make it difficult for those returning from jail to find new, affordable homes . In Oakland, however, former inmates have been finding it a bit easier to get into public housing in recent years, Tesfai found in a...

“I wanted to call the book The New Normal, but everyone around me said no, you can’t!” said Louise Greenspan, a pediatric endocrinologist and co-author of a book that ended up being calledThe New Puberty: How to Navigate Early Development in Today’s Girls,on Sunday at Spotlight Health, a conference co-hosted by the Aspen Institute and The Atlantic. “It may be average, but it’s not okay.” Greenspan is also a co-author of a longitudinal study that looked at around 1,200 girls ages six to...