Changing views on crime, from Central Asia to the South Pacific

1. United States

A college program for formerly incarcerated students is giving graduates a meaningful path forward after prison. Project Rebound, a California State University program, began in 1967 at San Francisco State University and expanded to eight more schools in 2016, after a massive philanthropic push. Today 15 Cal State Universities offer the program, which provides reintegration support in addition to higher education. In the academic years 2016-2023, 749 formerly incarcerated students have earned degrees, including two doctorates. Statewide, about 10,000 inmates are in college.

Project Rebound students have a recidivism rate of less than 1% within three years of release, compared to 46% for the entire state. This year a majority of the students – 66% – are funding their education through Pell Grants, 65% are first-generation college students, and 38% are parents of minor children.   

“When you get that first ‘A,’ for those of us who feel pretty bad about ourselves, sometimes for the first time in our life, that’s a moment of like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m not as bad as I thought,’” said Travis Durbin, a graduate of the program. “Then you get another success, and another success and another success.”
Sources: PBS, Project Rebound Consortium

2. Cook Islands

Cook Islands has decriminalized sex between men. Parliament amended the Crimes Act of 1969, which made same-sex relations a crime punishable by up to seven years in prison, although it was rarely enforced. The legislation also strengthens rape laws by eliminating marriage as a defense.

The small nation of 15,000 people joins the Marshall Islands, Fiji, Palau, and Nauru in eliminating colonial-era sodomy laws – but homosexual acts remain illegal in six other Pacific Island nations.

Supporters have worked toward this legislation for more than a decade and say the rollback represents changing views on privacy and consensual relationships. Their next step is to advocate for same-sex marriage and adoption rights.  

“Our older generation have conservative views, our younger generation have more liberal views,” said Prime Minister Mark Brown. “Every country in the world at some stage has had to deal with this matter of removing discriminatory laws that criminalize people.”
Sources: Benar News, Radio New Zealand, Reuters

3. United Kingdom

A wiggly beck has returned salmon to a river in northwest England and reduced the risk of flooding downstream. In the 19th century, the path of the Swindale Beck in Cumbria county was straightened to increase farmland. But faster-moving water resulted in the erasure of small habitats that shelter fish and enable spawning, and more sediment was carried to the Haweswater reservoir, the drinking water source for more than 2 million residents. Higher banks also prevented excess water from flowing from the floodplain back to the river. But after the half-year project was completed in 2016, salmon were observed in the beck within three months.      

Re-meandering the 1 kilometer beck to include its original twists and turns cost more than a quarter-million dollars, paid for by conservation nonprofits, the regional water utility, and the government. Interest is high in related U.K. land management programs, which include assistance for farmers who can apply for funding to achieve environmental objectives alongside food production.

“It’s like a living thing moving through the valley now, while the old, straightened river was just like a sad canal,” says ecologist and senior site manager Lee Schofield.
Sources: BBC, Wild Haweswater

4. Uzbekistan

Domestic violence is now a crime in Uzbekistan, where gender-based abuse is entrenched. Among other things, the legislation criminalizes domestic abuse, stalking, and harassment; eliminates early release for offenders; establishes a child sex abuse registry that bars convicted offenders from holding jobs that bring them into contact with children; and criminalizes sex with a minor, even when the offender claims not to know the victim’s age.  

Lawmakers worked closely with women’s rights groups to craft the legislation, which the parliament passed unanimously. It comes on the heels of public outcry over the abuse of children at an orphanage, for which the convictions came with light sentences.

Government tallies from 2021-2022 show that law enforcement received more than 72,000 complaints of violence against women and girls, and that 85% of the incidents took place within families. In 2022, Amnesty International reported a deterioration in human rights as they said governments in Eastern Europe and Central Asia increasingly equated women’s rights with a loss of traditional values and culture. But Uzbekistan now joins Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Ukraine in making domestic violence a separate criminal offense.

Sources: Eurasianet, International Partnership for Human Rights, Amnesty International

5. Kenya

Kenya’s first operational Earth satellite went into orbit, and with it the potential to gather data that guides decisions about land use and food and water security. The 3.5-kilogram Taifa-1 – which means “one nation” in Swahili – was launched with 50 other payloads on a SpaceX rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on April 15.

Engineers from SayariLabs worked on Taifa-1 with the Kenyan Space Agency and Bulgarian aerospace manufacturer Endurosat, which specializes in the smallest weight category of satellites. Rose Wanjiku, aerospace engineer and project lead at SayariLabs, sees the work as helping to grow Africa’s space industry.

“We would like to demystify space for the young ones and hopefully increase the human resources for the incoming generation,” said Ms. Wanjiku.

A 2021 World Economic Forum and Digital Earth Africa report stressed the importance of Earth observation to management of natural resources and socioeconomic development, with potential benefits including savings in the agriculture sector, the regulation of gold mining, and the business of Earth observation itself. Since 2019, a dozen other African countries have also launched satellites.
Sources: AfricaNews, Semafor, World Economic Forum