465 Search results for "criminal justice"

I hate the term “privilege”. Its flatness allows it to facilitate spurious claims masquerading as the work of liberation, which is why it’s so overused in neoliberal social justice spaces. It promotes dangerous assertions lacking any sort of nuance whatsoever, like “third-party voting is the height of white privilege” or “refusing to vote for Clinton […]

On Monday night, Vice Presidential candidates Mike Pence and Tim Kaine took to the stage to defend their candidates for President, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, respectively. Mike Pence handily won in style, but America lost on substance: Pence blatantly and repeatedly lied about the statements and positions of Donald Trump.

By Liz Adetiba and Jordie Davies   The Oakland-based organizer and activist Alicia Garza, who is also the originator of the Black Lives Matter rallying cry and one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter Network, thinks Black people have a lot to talk about outside of police violence. In this interview, we discussed with […]

Last Thursday, 42-year-old Bayna-Lehkiem El-Amin was sentenced to nine years in prison plus three more under supervision for his role in an altercation in 2015. His case is a cautionary tale about just how well white gay men and white women have cultivated progressive language around gender and sexuality to mask the violence of their […]

President Obama spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus last week, making headlines when he told his audience that if African Americans did not turn out for Hillary Clinton, he would consider it a personal insult and an insult to his legacy. While President Obama is right to push people to participate, it is unsettling that […]

Since 2004, Chicago has spent $642 million on police-related legal claims. Between 2012 and 2015, the City paid out a total of $210 million to settle police misconduct lawsuits, many on the receiving end of the settlements were Black and Brown folks. This is now the same city that will be hiring more police officers, […]

President Obama appears to be taking full advantage of his victory lap as he’s in the home stretch of his presidency. Earlier this month, he granted commutations to 214 non-violent offenders to offer them a second chance to rejoin society. While he already had a lead and granted the most commutations out of any recent […]

Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer who was convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman, will be let off early after serving only half of his six month sentence. This case highlights the incredibly problematic way the criminal justice system deals with those who commit and are convicted of sexual assault. Only focusing on retribution (defined as “length […]

Florida State Attorney Angela Corey has lost her reelection bid, making her the first incumbent state attorney in modern history to lose a contested election, according to The Florida Times Union. Corey was the attorney who failed to convict George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin. Corey also brought aggravated assault charges against Marissa […]

Governor Terry McAuliffe is working to reinstate the voting rights of 13,000 formerly incarcerated people in Virginia in order to ensure that they are able to vote in the presidential election this November. The move is his second this year and is an important step towards ensuring that all people have the right to vote […]

On Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates announced in a memo that, over time, the DOJ will end its contracts with private prison companies that operate 13 facilities within the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). While this is a significant move given the times we live in, these contracts, with Corrections Corporation of America and GEO […]

According to the New York Times, a new study from the Vera Institute of Justice shows that the number of women in jails in the United States is increasing more quickly than the number of men in jails. The majority of these women are black or Hispanic and many are also low-income. The study suggests the increasing […]