Criminal justice news and developments.
Inadequate resources like group homes, trained social workers, and qualified foster parents have contributed to a broken foster care system.Â
read more911 was created in part to thwart demands for racial justice. That’s why groups around the country are creating new infrastructure to deal with emergencies.
read moreParticipatory defense promotes the agency of the families and communities of people facing criminal charges.
read moreThe prison system tolerates and creates sexual violence against incarcerated people. The pervasive nature of this violence led to legislation like the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
read moreConversations around police reforms sometimes highlight specific illegitimate acts by police officers. But law enforcement ignoring the law en masse raises deeper questions about the legitimacy of an institution with a long history of racism and brutality.
read morePope Francis has joined Congressional Representatives Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II to encourage Missouri governor Michael Parson to halt the execution of Ernest Lee Johnson, a Black man with disabilities.
read moreHistorically, drug policy has been written with racist intentions and fueled by hysteria over the war on drugs. This has led to racial disparities in sentencing for crack cocaine possession.
read moreIn the U.S., it’s legal to be kidnapped and incarcerated without being convicted of any crime. You haven’t confessed. You aren’t considered dangerous or liable to flee before your court date. You have not been proven guilty so you must, by this country’s legal code, be considered innocent. You are nonetheless told you will be incarcerated indefinitely. Your trial date may be scheduled for a few weeks from now – – or, it may not arrive for years.
read moreThe U.S. positions itself as a just country with a superior legal system where people are always considered innocent until proven guilty and always granted the right to a trial before a jury of their peers. Except this isn’t true at all. Despite the promise of the Sixth Amendment, we do not have an effective right to trial because today, the overwhelming majority of cases will never see a judge.
read moreIf you’ve participated or watched protests unfold in cities across the country this past year, you may have noticed that law enforcement looked more like members of our military than neighborhood police. And that’s intentional, as, over the past decades, the U.S. has made it easier for law enforcement to access surplus military equipment for everyday use.
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