283 Search results for "criminal justice system"

*A note from our editor Sherronda J. Brown: January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and our theme at Black Youth Project is Human Trafficking and Slavery. We are interested in publishing works that address these topics and the things surrounding them.* This post contains spoilers for season four of How to Get Away With Murder. […]

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, which recently reached the eighth anniversary of its original publication date in 2010, was banned from New Jersey state prisons by its Department of Corrections even though by their own admission the book was being used in prison curriculum. In a letter to the Department of Corrections, the American […]

 by Stephanie Younger About a year ago, I had the amazing and unforgettable opportunity to meet legendary activist and prison abolitionist Dr. Angela Y. Davis.  We met at the Afrikana Independent Film Festival where I was volunteering at as a youth ambassador. This Black film festival prides itself on celebrating cinematic arts through a “global […]

Editor’s Note: This post contains discussions of sexual and domestic violence. It also contains spoilers of the Netflix film One of Us. I’ve been thinking a lot about growing up Black in the Hare Krsna community lately, owed primarily to the fact that I am currently working on a memoir. But I was most recently […]

Where I grew up, Black was the end of discussion. People clung to what law professor Juan Perea deemed the “black/white binary paradigm of race,” a bare-bones conception that acknowledged only whiteness or Blackness but did not allow for meaningful engagement with ethnicity. In college, I learned about different kinds of Black people. I met […]

One of the reasons that the United States has such a disproportionately high prison population is that a lot of people just can’t afford to avoid jail once they are accused of a crime. Although it’s law in most states that judges should set bond that defendants can actually afford, this isn’t often the case. Cook […]

John Crawford III was fatally shot by a police officer after he picked up a pellet gun from the toy section of Walmart. Store security footage even shows Crawford walking around the store with the gun while on his phone before Beavercreek Police Officer Sean Williams shot him dead. Despite all of this, Williams will not […]

A man in Kansas City, Kansas has been released after spending 16 years in prison over a botched purse snatching that he didn’t even commit. 

“Am I not human?” This one of the questions Marlon Peterson, a human rights activist and writer, asked during his recent TED Talk. Peterson connects his experiences coming from an immigrant community and family and the ways he was systematically criminalized in the United States. Following his arrest and incarceration, Peterson reflects on how his […]

Black Lives Matter activists have come together to free more than 30 mothers from jail in what will hopefully become a holiday tradition: National Mama’s Bail Out Day. Black women represent a disproportionate 44% of women in jails across the United States. For many of them, the only reason they’re still in custody is because they […]

The United States Supreme Court has denied the state of Arkansas the right to execute two prisoners out of 8 slated to be put to death this month. This decision was made before the state’s lethal injection drugs expire. These would be the state’s first executions in 12 years, since Eric Nance in 2005.

HBO’s The Wire, which many consider to be one of the best television series of all-time, was a certifiable masterpiece. Not only did it offer never-before-seen perspective into the lives of its mostly black characters, but it painted a vivid picture of how the legal system operates from top to bottom. Everyone along the chain […]