Moving from Awareness to Urgent Action: A Call for Relevant Data and a Human-Centered Reentry Approach

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162221119058
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Community Perspectives

ANNALS, AAPSS, 701, May 2022 209

DOI: 10.1177/00027162221119058

Moving from

Awareness to

Urgent Action:

A Call for

Relevant Data

and a Human-

Centered

Reentry

Approach

By

TERESA Y. HODGE

1119058ANN THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYMOVING FROM AWARENESS TO URGENT ACTION

research-article2022

The U.S. criminal legal system has become

an increasingly popular topic of conversa-

tion. More people are discussing the budgets

and actions of police forces, the impact of

judges and lawyers, the conditions of prisons,

and how citizens land in jails across America. In

recent years, many Americans have become

keenly aware of the fact that the United States

has 5 percent of the world’s population but 25

percent of the world’s prison population.1

Books like The New Jim Crow (2010,

Michelle Alexander) and Just Mercy: A Story

of Justice and Redemption (2014, Bryan

Stevenson) awakened millions of people to this

shameful reality. Likewise, Susan Burton’s ele-

vation as a CNN Hero (2010) helped engage

mainstream America in the dialogue. Susan’s

story connects the dots between trauma, grief,

and substance use and shows how citizens who

live in certain zip codes are penalized for crimi-

nal transgressions, while similar Americans in

other zip codes are rehabilitated. These stories

give everyday people not directly impacted by

the legal system access to the firsthand experi-

ences of millions of Americans who have been

involved with our justice system.

I am a beneficiary of this narrative shift. The

new public discourse put me on Forbes maga-

zine’s inaugural Women’s 50 Over 50 list. I was

the only woman on the list who was directly

impacted by the criminal legal system, some-

thing I doubt would have been possible a few

years ago. Yet as we continue to acknowledge

Teresa Y. Hodge is the president of Mission: Launch,

Inc., a nonprofit supporting reentering people. As a

visiting fellow at Harvard University Carr Center for

Technology and Human Rights, she coauthored the

paper “The Urgent Need for Accurate and Transparent

Criminal Background Check Data in the era of Artificial

Intelligence.”

Correspondence: teresa@mission-launch.org