Commentary: Community investment, not punishment, is key to reducing violence

For more than four decades, our national approach to addressing crime and violence has focused on punishment.

Police forces have grown larger and more militant, prosecutors have become more aggressive, and criminal justice policies have gotten increasingly harsh. As a result, the United States has unprecedented rates of incarceration. There are almost 7 million Americans under the supervision of the criminal justice system - in jails, in prisons, on