New Thinking, from the Center for Justice Innovation Center for Justice Innovation

Morgan Godvin was at the frontlines of Oregon's decriminalization fight. For now, she says progress towards a health-based approach to drug use "has fallen prey to fear-based policy."

Vincent Schiraldi used to run probation in New York City; now he’s asking whether it should even exist. Schiraldi says some of the roots of mass supervision—and its connection to mass incarceration—can be found in a surprising place: the Supreme Court’s 1963 Gideon decision. It recognized, but failed to adequately support, a poor person’s right to a lawyer.



Hear the final episode in our “Gideon at 60” series.



Full show notes

A profile of the fight to secure lawyers for people facing eviction and the radical impact that is having in Housing Court. With its 1963 Gideon decision, the Supreme Court guaranteed a lawyer to any poor person facing prison time. For criminal cases, the decision was both sweeping and critically incomplete. On the civil side, the campaign for a right-to-counsel is taking a different approach—it's slow and piecemeal, but it's also working.



This is the second episode in our series on the legacy of the Gideon decision. Hear the first episode here.



Full show notes

Sixty years on from a landmark Supreme Court decision, how can public defenders organize for genuine change?

Rather than arrests and incarceration, what do young people who commit harm actually need?

A recent training for Manhattan prosecutors was a drumbeat on the harms of incarceration; hardly the typical message prosecutors receive. It was part of a wider effort by D.A. Alvin Bragg to expand the use of alternatives such as treatment and restorative justice. But in a newly-cramped climate for criminal justice reform, can that effort become a reality?