From Racism.org
Creators of the new Manhattan Felony Alternative-to-Incarceration Court (“ATI Court”) believe that public safety comes from connecting people with services they need, rather than incarcerating them. Some of the people who help run and shape this court aim to replace prison with social service provisions as the default response to crime, even for felonies of the highest levels, and some of them even seek to end the criminal sanctioning system as we know it. This Article is the first exploration of this previously unstudied and little-known court, an experiment in unsettling the dominance of prison in our society.
For as long as incarceration has been the main mode of punishment in the United States, alternatives to it have proliferated and evolved. Variations have included probation, pre-trial diversion, and specialized (also called problem-solving) criminal courts, all of which keep people charged with crimes in their communities under state supervision. These approaches often exclude people charged with violent felonies. The alternatives are premised on the view that certain people and certain crimes should be carved out of the traditional criminal system so that incarceration is reserved for serious crimes.
Defendants charged with serious or violent crimes are the very population served by the latest variation, the Manhattan Felony Alternative-to-Incarceration Court. Defendant-participants in this court are charged with felonies, and many with crimes that involve violence, including assault, robbery, sex offenses, and attempted murder. Continue reading >>>
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