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Opinion | To change the criminal justice system, we need to change policymaking

House Bill 2002 was a thoroughly crafted and heavily negotiated bill. It should have passed, yet the BIPOC-community-led effort fell short by the smallest margin because of a Senate leadership failure to back it. No unnecessary police stops. Giving someon ...

28 Jul 2021 - Talia Gad
Trespass arrests at Portland-area hospitals criminalize mental illness, homelessness

DIRECTOR'S DESK | A new report from Disability Rights Oregon finds people seeking help often wind up in jail – we can do better In a harrowing report on trespass arrests made at six Portland-area hospitals between 2017 and 2018, Disability Rights Ore ...

18 Jun 2019 - Kaia Sand
‘Exoneree Diaries’: Released – but not free | BOOK REVIEW

Journalist Alison Flowers follows four exonerees whose lost opportunities and struggles to rebuild their lives left them feeling trapped even after their release from prison More than 2.3 million people are being held in state and federal correctional fac ...

13 Oct 2016 - Katherine Luck
Portland area police don't show warrants during arrests, despite state law

Departments say showing a warrant immediately would be impossible in most cases Local police and sheriff’s departments charged with enforcing the laws of the land aren’t in compliance with one of the laws governing their authority to do so. According to ...

14 Aug 2015 - Emily Green
Human investment: the politics of trying to keep people out of prison

Justice reinvestment programs help keep people out of prison, so why are legislators starving the funds? Carole Hinojosa didn’t expect a second chance. She grew up in a drug house in deep Southeast Portland in the 1970s, where, she says, she began her lo ...

19 Mar 2015 - Emily Green
Warrant Day? Perhaps the avalanche of reality the system needs

Everyone with a warrant or who thinks they might have a warrant should turn themselves in on Jan. 1. What would happen if everybody with a warrant turned themselves in on the same day? In one jurisdiction, if only 25, 50 or 100 people were willing to do ...

29 Sep 2014 - Chris O'Connor
Director of Oregon’s psychiatric review board says she welcomes change

On the desk in Juliet Follansbee’s downtown Portland office is a thick book of Oregon laws. It contains only a few sentences that grant the state agency she operates tremendous power over the lives of hundreds of Oregonians. In May, Follansbee was made in ...

12 Apr 2014 - Jake Thomas
The false choice between victims and sentencing reform

By David Rogers and Kerry Naughton, Contributing Columnists America’s criminal justice debate is broken in two. With just 5 percent of the world’s population, the U.S. leads the world in the use of incarceration with 25 percent of the planet’s prison popu ...

22 Feb 2013 - Street Roots Staff