local copy of press coverage
Pre-crime preventative detention was the focus of an almost hour-long conversation on the Crossroads Radio show hosted by Roach Brown and Nkechi Taifa on WPFW 89.3FM, known as “Washington’s station for jazz and justice”
Click Play to listen to Galen Baughman talk about how he has been directly impacted by these Kafkaesque systems of pre-crime preventative detention and his work with Just Future Project.
By: Jordan Michael Smith. Jun 04, 2020 The detainees already completed their criminal sentences—but they are prevented from leaving for years. And with the coronavirus spreading, their lives are at risk. This story was produced in collaboration with Type Investigations. With its innocuous name, the Special Treatment Unit (STU) sounds like a hospital. It’s a building in Avenel, New Jersey, housing 441 “residents,” as it calls them. It has what state officials have described as a “comprehensive treatment program” with cognitive behavioral therapy delivered by mental health experts. But the STU is actually a prison in all but name—it’s run by the…
Pre-crime preventative detention and the stress forced upon all persons in carceral settings by the current global pandemic were the focus’ of an hour-long conversation on the Crossroads Radio show hosted by Roach Brown and Nkechi Taifa on WPFW 89.3FM, known as “Washington’s station for jazz and justice”. Olinda Moyd, who is the former Chief of parole division in the Public Defender Service in D.C., joined in on the conversation, and emphasized the fact that many of these individuals are being held involuntarily for technical or administrative violations of their parole and could easily be returned to their families. Click Play…
by Charlie Clark, September 4, 2019 5:27 PM Our Man in Arlington. A culture-clash of a trial will resume in late September in Arlington Circuit Court. The scantly reported-on civil procedure involves the disturbing topic of predatory sexual behavior and the Virginia laws intended to protect potential victims. The trial, preliminaries for which I attended Aug. 26, involves an Arlington family eager to spring a son from an open-ended incarceration they feel the state is pursuing to make a statement against a gay man. Galen Baughman, 35, a graduate of H-B Woodlawn Secondary program who studied opera at Indiana University,…
By: Patrick Hope Sept 29, 2019 The “lock ’em up and throw away the key” era of criminal justice is over. Virginians have reassessed their views on criminal justice to better address mass incarceration weighed against costs and the likelihood to reoffend. Policies ripe for reform include: resentencing prisoners who were convicted as youth; repealing mandatory minimums; legalizing marijuana; abolishing the death penalty; ending solitary; reinstating parole; ending cash bail; and creating alternatives to incarceration. Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has a strong track record of criminal justice reform. But there’s one enforcement aspect his office needs to re-examine: the…
The essence of the American criminal justice system is reactive, not predictive: You are punished for the crime you committed. You can’t be punished simply because you might commit one someday. You certainly can’t be held indefinitely to prevent that possibility. And yet that is exactly what is happening to about 5,000 people convicted of sex crimes around the country. This population, which nearly doubled in the last decade, has completed prison sentences but remains held in what is deceptively called civil commitment — the practice of keeping someone locked up in an institution for months, years or even decades for…
This is a very interesting video about a man that left the United States while on probation to Permanently live in Germany as his new home to live as a free person. He shows what the new International Megan’s Law marked passports look like and talks about the reasons that they are not a problem for entering Germany. Everyone should watch this video. Those currently on the sex offender registry in the United States and those that think they will never ever have to be on the sex offender registry. Everyone that cares about the future of the United States…
1. Abolish pre-crime preventative detention laws
2. Free our friends and loved ones from dehumanizing labels
3. Realign our justice system with the values of restoration and reintegration
Just Future Project is a new initiative focused on challenging pre-crime preventative detention laws. We are a people-driven grassroots advocacy campaign dedicated to building a movement of community members demanding an end to indefinite detention regimes.
Why Is This Important?
Pre-crime preventative detention systems are a dangerous departure from the traditional values of our legal system.
We believe in justice, that persons who have caused harm may be held accountable for their actions. But justice also demands proportionality and due process, elements essential to distinguish justice from mere vengeance. The goal of any true system of justice must be restoration and re-integration, not the perpetual containment and incapacitation that have come to define the U.S. criminal legal system.