On the evening of Tuesday, October 6th, the Institute for Policy Studies awarded Daryl Atkinson and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice the Domestic Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award. The award was in recognition of Daryl and the organization’s work with reforming the criminal justice landscape.
Daryl’s work focuses on those who are released from prison and helping them have greater opportunities to find work and rejoin society. One of his current projects to help former inmates find work is the Ban the Box initiative. It seeks to ban the box on job applications that ask about criminal records.
A Washington Post article cited this quote from Daryl’s speech that evening. “There are a lot of diamonds in the rough who, if they had access to opportunity, could be amazing contributors to this country.”
Read more about the award ceremony and other awardees here