"The first state law of its kind..." reads the article! A big thanks to Oregon law makers for pioneering law supporting the rights of children of incarcerated parents. On Tuesday September 19 th , Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed into law a bill of rights for Oregon's children requiring the Oregon Department of Corrections to develop and sustain policies and procedures supporting the needs of families, and protecting the rights of children, when parents are incarcerated. This legislation is...

A new program helping jail inmates and at-risk shelter dogs get a new chance at life is off to a good start. A nonprofit organization called Pivot Animal Rescue & Educational Outreach offers training programs for both incarcerated adults and juveniles in detention centers. "We are targeting the people that are the repeat offenders. We are trying to get that person who keeps coming back, trying to communicate with them in a different way," said Pivot board director John Brockus. The...

Hubbard County, MN Christina Day, Hubbard County Jail Programs Coordinator is finding success with new support groups, classes and programs in the correctional facility as well as stronger support systems outside the facility. “Day and her team of volunteers are proponents of the power of positivity, empowering people to set goals, believe in themselves and make better choices.” “That's where I feel our role, as far as myself and the other volunteers and instructors that come in and even...

A state legislative bill that would require judges in certain cases to consider a defendant’s mental health during sentencing was approved by the Legislature this week and is headed for Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk. The bill, AB 154, would require judges to make a recommendation to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that a convicted felon receive a mental health evaluation if mental illness played a role in the crime. North Coast Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael,...

Origins offers a number of training and consulting services. We developed The Basics as a half-day session to provide the foundation to support trauma-informed and resilience practices across sectors and industries. The session includes an overview of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, the neurobiology of toxic stress, the impact of social and historical trauma, and the science of resilience. We have tested The Basics with two cross-sector audiences, in Los Angeles and Phoenix.

What supports exist to "uplift" fathers who have survived abandonment, abuse or torture as children? Where can men go to discuss the joys, struggles and issues of being a father with ACEs? Where are the men who face hard, heavy and complicated realities to make life easier and lighter for all who come after? We found two of them and they will be the featured guests in the next Parenting with ACEs chat . Meet Charles Clayton Daniels, Jr. of Father's Uplift and "Trauma Dad" Byron Hamel. Both...

In a campus near the river here, a program that focuses on helping women who have suffered trauma is seeing success a year and a half after its inception. Riverside Recovery and Reentry Program, operated by the state Department of Corrections along with private contractors, aims to provide a safe, secure and trauma-informed program for women who have been sentenced to time with the department. [For more of this story, witten by Holly K. Michels, go to ...

Late one night in October 2015, North Dakota prisons chief Leann Bertsch met Karianne Jackson, one of her deputies, for a drink in a hotel bar in Oslo, Norway. They had just spent an exhausting day touring Halden, the maximum-security facility Time has dubbed " the world's most humane prison", yet neither of them could sleep. Halden is situated in a remote forest of birch, pine, and spruce with an understory of blueberry shrubs. The prison is surrounded by a single wall. It has no barbed...

"The program focuses on treating people and educating them about trauma in their lives, and how that trauma has contributed to their addictive or criminal behavior. Women must apply for the program, through their probation officer, and register a high score on the “adverse childhood experience” scale. Program officials said most women on the program scored at least eight out of 10 on the scale, making them a very high risk for behavioral and mental-health problems."

The Humboldt County Correctional Facility is trying to inspire their inmates by introducing them to speakers who have changed their own lives. The Hope and Resiliency Speaker Series is a volunteer based program that invites influential community members to come share their stories of redemption. Three of the four speakers for the series have even been incarcerated themselves. To read the News Channel 3 article, please click here.

It's rare that a California lawmaker seeking a policy model to follow would turn to Kentucky. But with the Legislature on summer recess, that's precisely what Sen. Bob Hertzberg is doing. The mission: travel to the Bluegrass state to investigate how Kentucky gets its defendants awaiting trial to show up for court dates and keep them from committing crimes - all without locking them up. Civil rights advocates point to Kentucky as a shining example of reform, and Hertzberg, a Democrat who...

For the past several years, three residents of St. Andrew’s Court, a halfway house on Chicago’s west side, have waited patiently for a spot in Chicago’s public housing system. Bobby Flowers, Jimmy Edwards*, and John Stamps are among the nearly 282,000 Chicagoans who registered for affordable housing assistance when the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) waitlist last opened in November 2014. In past waitlist cycles, these men would not have had a shot at CHA housing because all three are...