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CURRENT PROGRAMS AND ACTIVITIES AT A BETTER WAY FOUNDATION:

In 2008, A Better Way Foundation began organizing a resident led research project called the A Better Way Foundation Law and Justice Commission. ABWF has successful track record of public policy reform, public education, public health, community organizing, and criminal justice research for state legislative staff, public officials and residents we have developed this project.

The Law and Justice Commission serves four primary purposes:

• Use statistics to confirm real life experiences that show punitive measures do not result in public safety;
• Strengthen relationships between civil service/political staff/bureaucrats and grassroots/grasstops groups prior to the legislative sessions and municipal meetings;
• Promote public education strategies that will provide political cover for legislative policies that improve public safety while reforming punitive laws; and
• Make non legislative recommendations to government agencies on ways to improve public safety.

Leadership Structure Purpose and Membership

Purpose – To identify and compile research, studies, reports, and best practices to interpreted and presented to the general public for the purposes of advocacy and organizing.

Membership - comprised of a representation from the following advocacy and research areas and may shift based on immediate areas of interest.

• Residents
  • Formerly and currently incarcerated individuals
  • Neighbors and families of formerly incarcerated
  • Other
• Advocates
  • Community advocates, activists, and educators
  • Community based experts on sub groups
  • Researchers and academics on sub groups
  • Faith Based, lobbying, and organizing groups
  • Public Defenders, Social Workers, & Service Providers
  • Other
• Researchers
  • Applied researchers
  • Academic researchers
  • National issue based researcher on sub group areas
  • Other
• Law Enforcement
  • Police
  • State’s Attorney offices & Police
  • Public Safety officials
  • Other
• Policy officials
  • Local and legislative elected officials (sitting and former)
  • Local and legislative policy staff
  • Local and national lobbyist on sub group areas
  • Other
• Communication
  • Local newspaper representatives
  • Intimate communication forms – newsletters, website, blogs, etc
  • Media training on local and national communication
  • Other

Over the past 8 months ABWF has collected local and national data in the areas of education, public safety, drug policy, criminal justice, and housing for residents and community advocates. We are currently meeting with researchers and agency staff throughout Connecticut to identify useful data, adult community residents to record personal stories, and youth to identity cracks in the system where families fall through. These conversations, meetings, and interviews have been helpful not only to the Law and Justice Commission but it has also allowed ABWF to build an extensive network of people willing to participate in a dynamic grasstops and grassroots public education strategy.

For more information please contact LaResse Harvey, A Better Way Foundation’s Policy Director at 860-270-9586 or lrn8jn@aol.com.

 

A Better Way Foundation Board of Directors

Michelle Yorio - President
Andrea Comer - Vice President
Afua Atta-Mensah, Esq. - Secretary
Gina Brassaw - Treasurer

Key Advisors and Volunteers:

Robert Rooks – National Training and Organizational Development
Deacon Art miller - Office for Black Catholics
Laura McCarger – Youth Development
Janice Flemming – Community Organizing
Barabra Fair – Grassroots Communication
Sally Joughin – Grassroots Communication
Orathai Northern – Written Media
Maureen Price-Boreland – Organizational Development
Tani Cooper - Faith Based Outreach
Tim Black – Applied Research Outreach
Judy Greene – Criminal Justice Research
John Allen – Media and Messaging
Soyun Park - Campaign Development and Strategy

HISTORY

During 1999-2004, ABWF Foundation facilitated a public education and policy advocacy strategy that created important changes in Connecticut’s drug policies. Beginning in 2003, ABWF added an emphasis on improving public safety through public health and prison reform efforts and made resources available to grassroots organizations to have a greater role in criminal justice policy-making.

In 2003 – Overdose prevention
SB 1144, An Act Concerning the Prevention Of Deaths From Drug Overdose. Allows licensed health care practitioners to prescribe, dispense, or administer nalozone to a drug user in need of intervention without being civilly or criminally liable. In this bill, an "opioid antagonist" is naloxone hydrochloride or any other similarly acting and equally safe drug approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration for treating a drug overdose.

In 2004, ABWF organized the Connecticut Alliance (CT Alliance), a coalition with over 2,300 members consisting of representation from white progressive legislators, Black/Puerto Rican Caucus members, the State Democratic Party, local/national researchers, local/national media, the Department of Corrections, Mental Health/Addiction services, law enforcement, jail diversion programs, faith based institutions, juvenile justice advocates, Governor’s staff, and republican legislative/local elected officials. This coalition increased our ability to get legislative reform from 2005 through 2007 and continues to be our watershed organization. ABWF/CT Alliance legislative successes over the last 5 years includes:

Consequently, in 2004, our work resulted in the largest single reform to Connecticut prisons in decades, as part of the building bridges campaign.

HB 5211, An Act Concerning Prison Overcrowding This bill combines the Board of Pardons and Board of Parole into the Board of Pardons and Paroles and resulted in the largest decrease in state prisoners in the state. It allowed the board and Department of Correction (DOC) to transfer certain inmates to facilities other than prisons under certain circumstances, and alters some release provisions that apply to parole and DOC.

In 2005 – Racial Justice and Treatment services
HB 6975, An Act Concerning the Collection Of Certain Unpaid Fees, Funeral Service Contracts And The Illegal Sale Or Possession With Intent To Sell Of Cocaine. This act eliminates the disparity in the minimum amounts of crack and powder cocaine that a non-drug dependent person must possess to be guilty of selling or manufacturing, distributing, prescribing, compounding, transporting, or possessing cocaine with intent to sell by increasing the minimum amount of crack cocaine from .5 of a gram to a ½ ounce (14 grams) and decreasing the minimum amount for powder cocaine from one ounce (28 grams) to ½ once (14 grams).

Expansion of the Access To Recovery (ATR) Program to include crack and methamphetamine users - a three year, $22.7 million award from the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment to Connecticut through the Office of the Governor. ATR is a collaborative effort among five service provider networks, the Judicial Branch and the Departments of Children and Families, Correction, Mental Health and Addiction Services, and Social Services.

2007 – Pardons reform and Treatment services
SB 170: An Act Concerning Pardons. To authorize the Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant pardons to persons convicted of violations that can result in imprisonment. This act specifies that the Board of Pardons and Paroles can grant a pardon to someone convicted of a violation that carries a prison term in the same manner as it can for someone convicted of an offense. The act also allows the board to accept pardon applications; three years after a person's conviction of a misdemeanor or violation and five years after a person's felony conviction. The act allows the board to accept an application before these dates in extraordinary circumstances. Under board policy, the board does not accept applications until five years after a person completes the sentence for the crime.

Renewal and expansion of Access To Recovery (ATR) funding: Approximately $14.5 over three years from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The ATR Program will continue to provide opportunities for comprehensive community based clinical treatment and recovery service. The new Connecticut ATR Program will further strengthen Connecticut's ability to support and sustain a statewide, comprehensive clinical and recovery system at the local community and state levels. Connecticut’s existing clinical and recovery service system includes more than 117 providers, and the state plans to expand the service array to close gaps in its continuum of care.

Although the passage of the following legislation were not part of ABWF’s issue agenda, we collaborated with Connecticut Against Gun Violence to pass: Lost and Stolen Firearms: gun violence legislation that strengthened prosecution of high level gun traffickers in Connecticut rather than low level gun offenders; and the Juvenile Justice Alliance on Raise the Age: juvenile justice reform that raises the age of jurisdiction so that people must be 18 years old to be charged as an adult in Connecticut.

In 2008 A Better Way Foundation provided resources, support and research to community residents opposing Connecticut's Three Strikes and your out proposals. Also, we successfully advocated Connecticut to pass the Racial Impact Study. This study is a report of the racial impact on residents in Connecticut that must be attached to all future criminal justice proposals.

A Better Way Foundation has released and/or disseminated reports on the following issues:
Three Strikes - Contact ABWF for information
Medical Marijuana - Contact ABWF for information
Drug Free School Zones - (Disparity by Design) - http://www.justicestrategies.net/?q=node/47
Jail Diversion - (Diversion Works) - http://www.drugpolicy.org/docUploads/DiversionWorks.pdf
Opiate Overdoses - Keeping Connecticut Healthy - http://www.ct.gov/dph/lib/dph/hisr/pdf/drug_overdose_report_2004.pdf

A Better Way Foundation's 2009 priorities include:
Expanded pardons reform
Reversing the unintended consequences of Connecticut's criminal justice system
Dissemination of the first Law and Justice public education report
Release of new report on the ineffectiveness of Drug Free School Zones

 

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All Contents © 2005, A Better Way Foundation, New Haven, Connecticut, USA