Letters from All Over

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

There is good news this month. There is.

Abigail Henson, an assistant professor of criminology, wrote from Phoenix to let me know about a podcast (“Critical Conversations”) she started a few months ago with no less an aim than to transform the criminal justice system.

Her conversations, with folks directly impacted by the system, might just transform you. The episodes are bite-size, most less than an hour each, and are here.

Another newsletter writer with an interest in criminal justice, Professor of Biology Nathan Lents wrote from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York to share an article he co-authored with colleague Lila Kazemian. It tells us what biology (and other animals on this planet) can teach us about crime and justice.

The article is here.

From London, Kingston University Senior Lecturer Peter Finn, who directs traffic at the intersection of national security and human rights, wrote this month to tell me of the series he hosts called “The Covid-19 and Democracy Podcast.” He thought readers of Drunk & Disorderly might particularly be interested in the episode about the English and Welsh criminal justice systems to which you can listen here.

Finally, there was a letter from the State of Virginia that felt like an undiscovered Christmas gift.

It brought the news that after four hundred thirteen years of an eye for an eye, there will no longer be a death penalty in the state that hosted more revenge killings, of mostly black men, than any other.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.