Kira Lerner

The reform would be a historic step for national efforts to end felony disenfranchisement. Prison is not about “the loss of citizenship,” said one incarcerated advocate.

Proposition 17 will enable people who are currently on parole to vote. It’s the latest in a wave of nationwide reforms that have narrowed or ended felony disenfranchisement.

The group is seeing real challenges posed by the pandemic, voter suppression tactics, and threats of intimidation.

A coalition of organizations is hoping Michael Toomin, who is also unwilling to implement diversion programs, loses his retention election.

DA Jackie Lacey and challenger George Gascón outlined diverging visions for the top prosecutor’s office in the nation’s most populous county.

Proposition 17 would allow people with felony convictions to cast ballots while they are on parole.

In a typical election, Natives face multiple forms of voter suppression. With more than one-third of Americans expected to vote by mail this year, Native communities are facing a new set of problems.

Members of Congress have introduced a bill that would create a National Center on Anti-Racism in Health.

A state investigation found that Detroit police officers fabricated evidence that helped convict a 14-year-old boy. A judge threw out his conviction after he spent nine years in prison, but the officers are still on the job and haven’t been flagged as unreliable to testify in court.

They can either make necessary voter registration and ballot materials accessible to people in their custody, or make them impossible to obtain.

Governor Kim Reynolds’ executive order restores the voting rights of tens of thousands of people. But it will also leave many Iowans disenfranchised, and little time remains before the November election.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has taken a hardline approach toward people sentenced to life without parole as minors. Her challenger says no children should be sentenced to life.

Washington, D.C., is joining Maine and Vermont in allowing incarcerated people to vote.

This year’s presidential contest will be the first since a federal judge lifted a decades-old consent decree barring the Republican National Committee from engaging in “ballot security,” or voter intimidation at the polls.

About 20 people in the prison’s Badger section have been on hunger strike for the past few days, three people incarcerated there say.

Voting rights groups want states to stop requiring that voters get a witness or notary to sign their ballots, at least during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The country’s homeless population was already struggling to access services during the pandemic.

Advocates question why Chicago judges continued to order people to home detention instead of releasing them on their own recognizance.

For weeks, two houses in Illinois’ Vienna Correctional Center ran on generator power and had intermittent failures, multiple prisoners told The Appeal. The outages made it harder to use the shared bathroom, one of the few places they could wash their hands.

Criminal justice reform advocates question why the BOP plans to move people around rather than reduce prison populations.

The Bureau of Prisons could send those without homes to alternative halfway houses far from D.C. or back to prison at the end of the month.

Louisville, Kentucky judges are ordering people with COVID-19 who have allegedly defied quarantine to wear GPS ankle monitors, raising ethical questions about the government’s role in a pandemic.

‘We literally held an election during a pandemic.’

Bail will be set at $0 for most misdemeanors and low-level felony offenses.

Public defenders in Fairfax County say their clients are being sent into harm’s way.

Up to 1,000 people will have their sentences delayed or suspended.

The state Department of Corrections confirmed two staff cases of COVID-19. No prisoners have been confirmed to have the virus, the department said.

How California, which is home to more than half of the country’s unsheltered homeless population, is addressing the needs of the unhoused.

The individual had no contact with people in custody for at least the past month, according to the DOC.

Advocates worry the widespread confusion may have a chilling effect on eligible voters.

The U.S. representative said her husband helped her realize that when one person is incarcerated, many more are affected.

In Travis County, thousands of people continue to be prosecuted for low-level drug possession charges that reform-minded district attorneys elsewhere have committed to dropping.

The court found that a law that critics described as a poll tax violates the Constitution.

Advocates say junk science was used to convict Jimenez. DA Margaret Moore has not yet decided whether she will drop charges or retry her.

A year after Alfonzo Riley returned from prison, he’s helping to vet innocence claims.

Garza has promised to end cash bail and address racial inequities in the legal system.

The bill would disproportionately affect the 140,000 people whose voting rights were recently restored.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez of Texas told The Appeal about her vision for a complete overhaul of her state’s legal system.

In a federal lawsuit, Hardel Sherrell’s mother accuses the staff at a Minnesota jail of allowing her son to die.

The incumbent in the race, Jones’s former boss Kim Ogg, will not support a blanket refusal to prosecute sex workers, her office says.