From examination of conscience to an examination of culture

by Alex Mikulich Ph.D.

The Failure of Punitive Crime Policy

By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.

It’s obscene.

The obscenity is not only in the increasing rate of homicide in New Orleans—up 14 percent from 2010 to 2011—or the loss of innocent lives, or the senselessness of the murders committed. The height of obscenity arrives when we, as a city, acquiesce to the loss of life as if those who died do not matter, or as if “they got what they deserved.”

The collective failure to mourn the loss of every life and failure to recognize how every victim is one of our own marks our own inhumanity.

Dr. Alex Mikulich of JSRI and Sophie Cull of the Louisiana Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty recently published an extensive study on the Death Penalty in Louisiana. The full text of the study and a short brief are available through the Catholic Mobilizing Network.

Read the full text of the study: Diminishing All of Us: The Death Penalty in Louisana

On Monday, March 5, 2012 from 6:45 to 8 pm there will be a an Interfaith Evening of Prayer to Abolish State Killings hosted by Archbishop Gregory Aymond at St.

On December 19, 2011, Alabama religious leaders called upon Governor Bentley to lead the repeal of Alabama’s 2011 anti-immigrant law. “We pray that you will show great political courage and leadership and support the repeal of this unfortunate piece of legislation that has brought such heartache to our State.” The letter was signed by Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, Bishop Robert J. Baker of the Catholic Diocese of Birmingham, Bishop Henry N. Parsley, Jr., of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama, Bishop William H.

Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of Death Penalty joins Louisiana for Alternatives to the Death Penalty in a campaign to reform jury selection in death penalty cases. 

It's not very often that you can have an impact on criminal justice reform in little more than 60 seconds. You can do just that by recording your testimony for a campaign that aims to reform jury selection in death penalty cases.

A recent study by the Manhattan Institute that heralded the “the end of residential segregation”—a claim that was widely celebrated in mainstream press, has also been found to mask important demographic and economic trends. The study is entitled “The End of the Segregated Century: Racial Separation in America’s Neighborhoods 1890-2010.”

Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty and the Jesuit Social Research Institute have collaborated on a study that addresses the death penalty through a Roman Catholic theological lens – aiming to “demonstrate the ineffectiveness and arbitrariness of our death penalty system as a public policy, including the ways it is unfairly administered across racial, social and economic lines.” The study – co-authored by Alex Mikulich of Louisiana Catholics Committed to Repeal of the Death Penalty and Sophie Cull of the Louisiana Coalition for Alternativ

Persistent High Unemployment for African Americans and Latinos in Gulf South States

by: Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.