Recommendation: "Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction" by Maia Szalavitz

I first heard of Maia Szalavitz from the Citations Needed Podcast episode 99, The Cruel, Voyeuristic Quackery of Rehab TV Shows. Her book Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction basically contradicts everything I'd ever thought I knew about addiction to mind-altering substances before involvement with supporters of recreational and medicinal cannabis legalization and decriminalization, who opened my eyes to the compound hypocrisies and harms of prohibition and incarceration.

Favorite Quotes from "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption" by Bryan Stevenson

This entry contains some quotes from Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Stevenson is one of the founders of the Equal Justice Initiative. His work is profiled in a documentary and a soon-to-be released feature film.

Proximity to the condemned and incarcerated made the question of each person's humanity more urgent and meaningful, including my own. p. 12

I have discovered, deep in the hearts of many condemned and incarcerated people, the scattered traces of hope and humanity -- seeds of restoration that come to astonishing life when nurtured by very simple interventions. p. 17

Film: The Stanford Prison Experiment (Kyle Patrick Alvarez, Director)

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a 2015 movie directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez. It is based on Philip Zimbardo's 1971 experiment where 20 college-aged subjects were divided into guards and inmates and simulated a prison in an unused campus building. The experiment is famous for exposing how easy it is for healthy individuals to become abusive and violent. While the movie promotes this as Zimbardo's conclusions, the movie also confirms points his critics made about the experiment, namely that Zimbardo's design and execution of the experiment had as much to do with its results as "human nature."

I particularly remember two scenes. The first is Zimbardo's orientation meeting with the guards, where he told them they were better than other people. In the interview process, all prospective subjects had expressed a preference to be an inmate.

Central Park 5 Available Online for Limited Time

I can think of no crime that the "Law and Order" reactionaries in the United States exploited more than the 1989 attack on a white female jogger in Central Park in New York, for which five black and Hispanic youth were convicted based on circumstantial evidence and coerced confessions. Later evidence emerged which exonerated them and revealed the identity of the assailant. Recently, New York City settled with the five men. The Ken Burns PBS Documentary Central Park Five has been made available to U.S. internet users to mark this milestone in the case.

Support Georgia Innocence Project's Concept Album on Life of Clarence Harrison, Exonerated After 18 Years

I attended a talk by Clarence Harrison, a Decatur, Georgia man convicted of rape and kidnapping and sentenced to life imprisonment. He served 18 years before he was exonerated with help from the Georgia Innocence Project (Facebook page).

I have posted other material regarding the United States criminal justice system. And I hope you've watched the latest Ken Burns documentary, Central Park Five.

Donate to the Georgia Innocence Project. In addition, some musicians are teaming up with Clarence Harrison to produce songs about his life, in mostly his own words. That project needs support as well.

Dawud Walid Explains Why CAIR Urges Moratorium on Death Penalty in the United States

Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has endorsed a national moratorium in the United States on the death penalty. You can listen to CAIR-Michigan's Executive Director Dawud Walid explain CAIR's position and discuss other matters related to the criminal justice system, which I've blogged about in the past.

Note: The audio file is embedded in 4shared.com. My recommendation is to create an account on the web site, but don't download and install on your computer its "download" assistant, which will embed itself in your browser and activate every time you try to download a file.

P.S. Act on this Amnesty International alert to prevent the execution of Abdullah al-Qahtani in Iraq.

Film: The Exonerated

The Exonerated is a dramatic reading of transcripts and letters of six wrongfully convicted and imprisoned US citizens. Supplement this by reading Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld & Jim Dwyer and this article at The Nation magazine from June 18, 2012.

Review: Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld & Jim Dwyer

Actual Innocence by Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld & Jim Dwyer, founders of the Innocence Project (Twitter).