Kira Lerner
Kira Lerner
Kira Lerner is a staff reporter based in Washington, D.C. She is currently a Lipman Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
More from The Appeal:
Kira Lerner is a staff reporter based in Washington, D.C. She is currently a Lipman Fellow at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
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.
Kira Lerner Jan 25, 2021
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.
Kira Lerner Oct 20, 2020
A coalition of organizations is hoping Michael Toomin, who is also unwilling to implement diversion programs, loses his retention election.
Kira Lerner Oct 16, 2020
DA Jackie Lacey and challenger George Gascón outlined diverging visions for the top prosecutor’s office in the nation’s most populous county.
Kira Lerner Oct 09, 2020
Proposition 17 would allow people with felony convictions to cast ballots while they are on parole.
Kira Lerner Oct 06, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Sep 24, 2020
Members of Congress have introduced a bill that would create a National Center on Anti-Racism in Health.
Kira Lerner Sep 04, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Aug 19, 2020
They can either make necessary voter registration and ballot materials accessible to people in their custody, or make them impossible to obtain.
Kira Lerner Aug 10, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Aug 05, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Jul 22, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Jul 02, 2020
About 20 people in the prison’s Badger section have been on hunger strike for the past few days, three people incarcerated there say.
Kira Lerner Jul 01, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Jun 17, 2020
The country’s homeless population was already struggling to access services during the pandemic.
Kira Lerner Jun 10, 2020
Advocates question why Chicago judges continued to order people to home detention instead of releasing them on their own recognizance.
Kira Lerner Jun 02, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner May 08, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Apr 23, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Apr 09, 2020
'We literally held an election during a pandemic.'
Kira Lerner Apr 07, 2020
Bail will be set at $0 for most misdemeanors and low-level felony offenses.
Kira Lerner Apr 06, 2020
Public defenders in Fairfax County say their clients are being sent into harm’s way.
Kira Lerner Apr 02, 2020
Up to 1,000 people will have their sentences delayed or suspended.
Kira Lerner Mar 23, 2020
The state Department of Corrections confirmed two staff cases of COVID-19. No prisoners have been confirmed to have the virus, the department said.
Kira Lerner Mar 20, 2020
How California, which is home to more than half of the country’s unsheltered homeless population, is addressing the needs of the unhoused.
Kira Lerner Mar 18, 2020
The individual had no contact with people in custody for at least the past month, according to the DOC.
Kira Lerner Mar 16, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Mar 04, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Mar 02, 2020
The court found that a law that critics described as a poll tax violates the Constitution.
Kira Lerner Feb 19, 2020
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.
Kira Lerner Feb 06, 2020
Garza has promised to end cash bail and address racial inequities in the legal system.
Kira Lerner Jan 28, 2020
The bill would disproportionately affect the 140,000 people whose voting rights were recently restored.
Kira Lerner Jan 21, 2020
Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez of Texas told The Appeal about her vision for a complete overhaul of her state’s legal system.
Kira Lerner Jan 09, 2020
In a federal lawsuit, Hardel Sherrell’s mother accuses the staff at a Minnesota jail of allowing her son to die.
Kira Lerner Dec 12, 2019
The incumbent in the race, Jones’s former boss Kim Ogg, will not support a blanket refusal to prosecute sex workers, her office says.
Kira Lerner Dec 11, 2019
District Attorney Margaret Moore continues to face accusations that her office mishandles the prosecution of sex crimes.
Kira Lerner Dec 04, 2019
The Appeal spoke with the lawmaker about her “entirely new blueprint for a just society.”
Kira Lerner Nov 19, 2019
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and MacArthur Justice Center are filing a class action lawsuit against Doug Evans on behalf of every potential Black juror in the district.
Kira Lerner Nov 18, 2019
Under the proposal, localities would be incentivized to significantly decrease prison populations.
Kira Lerner Nov 14, 2019
A claimed victory in Kentucky and wins in Virginia mean hundreds of thousands of people could have their right to vote restored.
Report attempts to discredit decades of research on the adolescent mind.
Kira Lerner Nov 01, 2019
A Prisoner Review Board memo released in July requires a minimum of 12 hours of movement with ankle monitors, but some people say they’re still being given far less.
Kira Lerner Oct 18, 2019
An EEOC complaint documents allegations against Owens, former managing attorney in the Jackson office of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Kira Lerner Oct 11, 2019
The Brooklyn Community Bail Fund said it doesn’t want to ‘prop up an unjust system.’
Kira Lerner Sep 30, 2019
A series of victories for advocates reflects a shift in the ‘popular narrative’ around bail.
Kira Lerner Sep 26, 2019
Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala has gotten into the surveillance game, but advocates say that raises questions about his role.
Kira Lerner Sep 20, 2019
Advocates warn that overuse of ankle monitors and other forms of electronic monitoring produce consequences of their own.
Kira Lerner Sep 05, 2019
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is partnering with a technology nonprofit to expunge tens of thousands of minor marijuana convictions. Other jurisdictions could follow.
Kira Lerner Aug 30, 2019
A lawsuit is challenging Mohave County’s practice of charging certain people for mandatory GPS monitoring before trial.
Kira Lerner Aug 23, 2019
In the wake of the Dayton shooting, Gov. Mike DeWine proposed creating more space in psychiatric hospitals by removing some people who are court-ordered to be there.
Kira Lerner Aug 14, 2019
A new report shows that a progressive approach, like the one advanced by Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, can help decrease jail populations—and crime.
Kira Lerner Aug 05, 2019
Lawyers and advocates in Miami-Dade County will roll out a new plan to counter the disenfranchisement of people with felony convictions.
Expert reports in a 2017 federal lawsuit explore an alleged pattern of discrimination against men perceived to be gay.
Kira Lerner Jul 12, 2019
A company in Cleveland County exemplifies how for-profit legal services affect poor and vulnerable individuals.
Kira Lerner Jun 26, 2019
Right now, only the whitest states—Maine and Vermont—allow prisoners to vote. Washington, D.C., could change that.
Kira Lerner Jun 12, 2019
Critics say that Arlington County Commonwealth Attorney Theo Stamos, who is being challenged in a June primary, has a pattern of treating children too harshly.
Kira Lerner Jun 04, 2019
U.S. attorneys in D.C. have opposed the resentencing of all 14 people who have petitioned for early release under a local law.
Kira Lerner May 23, 2019
A civil rights lawsuit claims officers pepper sprayed him, stripped him naked, and then surrounded him and beat him to death.
Kira Lerner May 17, 2019
‘The bill forces attorneys to choose between violating our ethical mandates or going to jail for following them.’
Kira Lerner May 10, 2019
Florida is poised to pass a law that imposes a ‘poll tax’ on thousands of formerly incarcerated people.
Kira Lerner May 01, 2019
The Orleans district attorney has said that violent youth are the city’s biggest crime problem.
Kira Lerner Apr 26, 2019
The legislation is part of a wave of bills across the country meant to criminalize mistakes in the name of voter fraud.
Kira Lerner Apr 12, 2019
Cook County has a new contract for juvenile ankle monitors that critics say are an invasion of privacy.
Kira Lerner Apr 08, 2019
Lawmakers are redefining certain crimes in order to carve out broad exceptions to who can regain the right to vote.
Kira Lerner Mar 20, 2019
There are more than 2,700 people on electronic monitoring in Cook County, Illinois, alone.
Kira Lerner Feb 28, 2019
A lawsuit challenging cash bail in St. Louis could help close a notorious jail.
Kira Lerner Feb 19, 2019
Lawmakers are debating whether to let people with felony convictions vote—but there could be a catch.
Kira Lerner Feb 07, 2019
The state uses solitary at one of the highest rates in the nation.
Kira Lerner Jan 29, 2019
Federal defenders say the shutdown is hurting poor people stuck in jail.
Kira Lerner Jan 24, 2019
But more than 1,100 others are still serving sentences that voters decided were too harsh.
Kira Lerner Dec 19, 2018
Muslim prisoners, meanwhile, say they were starved during Ramadan and deprived of religious texts.
Kira Lerner Dec 06, 2018
In Travis County, detectives refused training that would have helped them interview victims of trauma.
Kira Lerner Nov 09, 2018
Dozens of former detainees at the Gwinnett County jail in Georgia claim they were subjected to brutality at the hands of its Rapid Response Team.
Kira Lerner Oct 01, 2018
Attorney General Jeff Landry has taken a number of extreme positions on policing and sentencing in response to reform.
Kira Lerner Sep 06, 2018
Taking electronic monitoring to the next level.
Kira Lerner Aug 07, 2018
But after a spree of commutations, the governor recently put down his clemency pen amid tough-on-crime fear mongering.
Kira Lerner Jul 09, 2018