A gun store opened in McLean, VA, – an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C. – its back door 40 feet from an elementary school, its front door 60 feet away. It sells the full range of weapons, from small handguns to large-clip assault weapons. The store had been kicked out of Arlington, VA, a neighboring […]

Given the rise in crime, and the resulting alarm – “Murder Rates Rising Sharply in Many Cities: Years of Decline End,” (New York Times headline, 9/1/15) – it is time to put this in perspective. Rhetoric could scuttle significant reforms, scrap promising efforts and resuscitate old draconian policies, namely, an overreliance on arrests and incarceration. […]

Over the course of my four decades of working to keep young people safe and helping them to thrive, I’ve always known that nothing is more important than seeing the entire picture, the whole child. If a child is disruptive in school, the teacher and school social worker may know only that they have a […]

I met Dr. Jeremy Richman and Nelba Marquez-Greene at a conference on July 22nd.  They met in Newtown’s firehouse barely able to breathe as they awaited word about the fate of their children immediately following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.  Twenty children and six educators slain. Were their children among the murdered?  They were. […]