Kristin Houle is one of the hardest-working, most competent and effective people working to abolish the death penalty in the U.S. She recently became a Soros Justice Fellow, and is working in the office of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty to conduct public education around the intersection of the death penalty and severe mental illness.
That's a tough issue, and an important one. Estimates vary as to how many of the approximately 3,350 people on death rows across the U.S. are severely mentally ill, but most experts I know would put the figure at five to ten percent.
Kristin, who used to be Program Associate for Amnesty International USA's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, is currently building a coalition of criminal justice reform, anti-death penalty, and mental health advocates to further explore this issue. She also is developing and disseminating resource and educational materials, reaching out to faith communities, waging clemency campaigns for severely mentally ill death row inmates, and promoting alternatives to the death penalty for mentally ill offenders.
Somehow, in addition to all this, she recently launched a blog called Prevention Not Punishment: Educating the public on the intersection of the death penalty and severe mental illness
Check it out. And go Kristen!
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Urge Equal Justice USA to Choose Texas to Participate in Their Important Retreat Against the Death Penalty
We need everyone's help to persuade Equal Justice USA to choose a team from Texas for their upcoming retreat to plan a new strategy for ending the death penalty in Texas. This is a vitally important opportunity for Texas to move forward with an effective strategy against the death penalty. We held several meetings and conference calls to put together our application. We have already submitted the application. Now, we need people like you to send emails to EJUSA in support of our application. If EJUSA knows that lots of people want them to choose Texas for this retreat, then they are more likely to pick us.
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