T’ruah’s Handbook for Jewish Communities Fighting Mass Incarceration includes
- Jewish texts on criminal justice, policing, and prisons.
- Reflections by people engaged in the criminal justice system, including rabbi chaplains, the formerly incarcerated, and more.
- Information on how your community can get involved in creating a more fair criminal justice system.
- Background on issues connected with incarceration in short, easily-understood chunks.
Learn about topics such as
- Racial disparities in policing
- Sentencing
- Prison conditions
- Solitary confinement
- Treatment of juveniles
- Special issues for women and LGBTQ people
- Re-entry
To browse or download one section at a time, use the following table of contents.
Introduction
3 Introduction and Acknowledgements
4 Mass Incarceration: A Complex and Dangerous System
5 Why Jews Should Care About Mass Incarceration
7 Overview of Mass Incarceration
9 A Brief History of T’ruah’s Involvement
10 Definitions
13 Race, Racism, and Incarceration
18 A Timeline of Mass Incarceration
Before Incarceration
21 Policing
27 The Drug War
35 Poverty and Mass Incarceration
39 People Convicted of Violent, Nonviolent, and Sex Offenses
42 The School-to-Prison Pipeline
44 Restorative Justice and Victims’ Rights
During Incarceration
50 Overcrowding, State Budgets, and the Rise of Private Prisons
55 Jails
57 Special Populations: Women, Youth, LGBT People, and People with Mental illness
67 Prison Labor
69 Prison Rape
75 Immigration Prisons: Operating in the Shadows
78 Life Without the Possibility of Parole
80 The Families of the Incarcerated
81 Outside the Walls: Prison Towns
After Incarceration
87 Parole
88 Recidivism: A Slippery Problem
90 Reentry Programs: What Works
93 Summing Up
Jewish Resources
95 Introduction to Jewish Resources
96 Opportunities to Speak About Mass Incarceration Throughout the Year
98 Praying for an End to Mass Incarceration
100 Police in Jewish Law: A Brief Overview
102 Text Study: Policing in Jewish Law
108 Text Study: Oppression and Justice, Then and Now
110 Incarceration in Jewish Law: A Brief Overview
113 Text Study: Jews Incarcerating Other Jews–What Can We Learn?
117 Text Study: Cities of Refuge, by Rabbi Nancy Wiener
123 Holding a Vision of Freedom, by Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari
125 Poem: On Joseph and Solitary Confinement, by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
126 Text Study: Jonah and Solitary Confinement
130 What Jonah Teaches Us About Repentance, by Rabbi Avi Killip
131 Text Study: The Metzora As A Model For Welcoming Returning Citizens
142 Text Study: Victims and Perpetrators: Teshuvah and Restorative Justice
147 Text Study: Justice Among Brothers
149 Two Final Lessons the U.S. Could Learn From Jewish Criminal Law
150 Lesson Plan: Change the Conversation About Justice
154 Introduction and Organizations To Follow
156 Education That Leads to Action
157 Start Inside Your Community
159 Using Art and Media for Advocacy and Education
162 It Starts With Advocacy….But It Doesn’t Stop There
164 Get Connected
165 Reaching Out To Incarcerated People and Their Families
168 How Clergy Can Help Inside Prisons and Jails
170 Jewish Language for Protest Signs
Addendum
“Ferguson/Fargesn,” sermon from Rosh Hashanah 5775 by Rabbi Michael Rothbaum, delivered at Congregation Netivot Shalom, Berkeley, CA
This sermon blew us away. We offer it as a model and source of inspiration, with gratitude to Rabbi Rothbaum for permission to feature it here.