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The governor has rolled back bail reform, not released enough prisoners during the pandemic, and failed to rein in police abuses, advocates and prisoners say.
As the potential demise of Roe v. Wade looms, past and current prosecutions of pregnant women illustrate what lies ahead.
For five days, 47-year-old Shannon Daves sat in solitary confinement in a Dallas County jail because she couldn’t afford to pay $500 bail. Daves, who is unemployed and homeless, was isolated because she is transgender — allegedly to protect her from the jail’s general population. She faces a misdemeanor property theft charge. She and five other indigent plaintiffs are […]
A little-known New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision policy has limited access to books in at least nine prisons for years.
Faith Johnson’s recent indictment of a Mesquite police officer for shooting an innocent man follows years of work by community activists.
A new report from The Sentencing Project offers a blueprint for putting an end to a deadly epidemic.
Alameda County Superior Court reversed license suspensions for 54,000 people who were punished for their inability to pay fines.
Fifteen men had their tainted convictions vacated by State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office, but this isn’t the norm when it comes to prosecutors.
The five states that have done away with commercial bond outlets still struggle with inequity when it comes to cash bail.
A new project chronicles the myriad alternative visions of justice taking place in the U.S. and Canada.
“I always thought there had to be some sweet spot between 15 months and forever.”
A new app seeks to liberate people from more than “liberal malaise.”
A pattern of scandals, misconduct, and federal reversals seem to plague the state’s district attorneys.
Community members are cautiously optimistic, but wary of the program’s emergence during election season.
A Louisiana man’s request for a “lawyer dog” was deemed unclear by the state’s Supreme Court.
A law that results in disproportionate arrests and prosecutions of black and Latino New Yorkers will stand.
Alameda and Santa Clara County jail detainees round out the first week of a hunger strike for better conditions.
A movement to oust Cyrus Vance gains steam.
In New York City, many demographics are eligible for subsidized MetroCards, which allow them to access the increasingly expensive and dysfunctionalsubway system at a lower cost. Transit benefits are available to the elderly, disabled, and schoolchildren, and many companies offer their employees pre-tax MetroCards as part of their benefits package. But one group of New Yorkers is conspicuously left out […]
Salt Lake County, Utah residents are experiencing déjà vu. Their District Attorney, Sim Gill, announced last week that he would not bring charges against the police officer who fatally shot Patrick Harmon in the back. The announcement comes just over a year after Gill declined to bring chargesagainst the officer who shot then 17-year-old Abdi Mohamed, a choice […]
North of the New Mexico border sits Alamosa Municipal Court. An unassuming brick building with a terra cotta roof, the local court looks like a sleepy place you might duck into to pay a traffic ticket. Yet the mostly poor Alamosa residents who appear before Judge Daniel Powell are routinely denied counsel, face jail because […]
At a town hall in Oakland, California, organized by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the two candidates for Alameda County District Attorney challenged each other on their progressive approaches to criminal justice. Civil rights attorney Pamela Price took incumbent Nancy O’Malley to task for what she said were racial disparities in the […]
Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg made good on a central campaign promise this week, announcing that her office will no longer prosecute “trace cases” that involve trivially small amounts of drugs, or drug residue. In an interview with the Houston Press, Ogg said that although there is still no formal policy prohibiting these prosecutions, her office stopped […]
The fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Justine Damond, a white Australian native, by police officer Mohamed Noor in July reignited a local debate about the use of body-mounted cameras. Noor and fellow officer Matthew Harrity didn’t have their body cameras on when Damand was killed, a revelation that spurred interim Police Chief Medaria Arradondo to […]
Just ten weeks after Alameda County officials moved all in-custody arraignments to a new courthouse in Dublin, California, the controversial experiment came to an end. Court officials announced this week that arraignments would move back to an Oakland courthouse on September 25. The initial move to Dublin’s East County Hall of Justice sparked outrage from public defenders and Oakland […]
In what can be seen as a natural extension of Jeff Sessions’ already-evident disdain for Obama-era criminal justice policies, the Attorney General announced Friday that the Department of Justice would scale back its Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The COPS program was known in part for investigating the work of local police departments and issuing reports on […]
At the ballot box in Ontario County, New York this week, Republican voters chose candidate Jim Ritts as the primary candidate for district attorney. Ritts won with 55 percent of the vote, beating Kristina “Kitty” Karle, a former assistant prosecutor in neighboring Monroe county. Karle’s loss comes after an appellate court criticized her for prosecutorial misconduct in […]
Kelly Davis remembers it clearly. It was early May 2015, and she was standing in the waiting room of her doctors’ office. On the radio, the voice of Baltimore’s new State’s Attorney, Marilyn Mosby, rung out. Mosby announced that Freddie Gray’s death had been ruled a homicide, and her office would bring criminal charges against the […]
As residents of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas prepare themselves for the destructive impact of Hurricane Irma over the weekend, one county sheriff has decided to the seize the opportunity to arrest more people. On Wednesday, Polk County, Florida Sheriff Grady Judd took to Twitter to warn his followers that his deputies would be checking IDs at […]
When Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods learned the county’s Superior Court would move all in-custody criminal arraignments from Oakland to a new courthouse in Dublin, California, he knew it would be a disaster. Now, eight weeks into the move, his prediction has proven correct — and it’s even more chaotic than he imagined. “It’s a nightmare […]
In Bedford-Stuyvesant’s historic Mount Pisgah Baptist Church on Tuesday night, candidates vying for the Democratic nomination in the race for Brooklyn’s next district attorney gathered to compare their progressive track records and reform-driven plans. The forum, hosted by Faith Over Fear, a “faith and justice coalition,” focused heavily on police accountability, the protection of immigrants, […]
On August 13th, corrections officers at Portland, Oregon’s jail found 37-year-old Dee Glassmann dead in her cell during their routine morning “wake up” call. If you’re wondering what happened, you’re not alone: Multnomah County officials won’t release any information about the circumstances of her death for up to eight more weeks, when her toxicology report will be […]
After 10 years under the reign of Mark Peterson, the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s office will finally get a much-needed facelift. In September, the county’s Board of Supervisors will have a chance to pick an interim district attorney who might better represent the interests of the California’s seventh largest county. It might seem an […]
Tens of thousands of people are dying every year. The President recently declared it a national emergency. Yet most politicians in the U.S. are still shying away from an empirically proven way to save lives claimed by the ever-growing opioid epidemic: supervised injection facilities. Sixty-six cities across the world have opened these facilities, which permit intravenous […]
UPDATED Aug. 22, 2017, 3:00 p.m. On Tuesday afternoon just hours before Marcellus Williams was scheduled to be executed in Missouri, Governor Eric Greitens issued a stay pending an investigation into new DNA evidence presented by Williams’ attorneys. Greitens announced that he would appoint a board of inquiry to review Williams’ case and issue a report. “A […]
On August 15, Victor Alonzo King of Raleigh, North Carolina was arrested and accused of child abuse. His offense? Allegedly leaving his five children under the age of eight unattended while he went to work. King’s employer says he left the children with a neighbor, who then left them alone, according to ABC 13. In court on […]
If there’s a chance you could wind up in jail, you have the right to an attorney whether or not you can afford one. The U.S. Supreme Court has reaffirmedand clarified this right more than once, in doing so making clear that it applies to both misdemeanor and felony offenses. Yet in Nashville, Tennessee, defendants in misdemeanor courts aren’t […]
On Thursday, President Trump announced that his administration will soon declare the opioid crisis a national emergency, following the interim recommendation of his Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. “We’re going to spend a lot of time, a lot of effort and a lot of money on the opioid crisis,” said Trump. “We are going to […]
Twenty years ago, a brutal murder in a red state like Mississippi would likely guarantee a death sentence for a defendant. But as last week’s sentencing of Scotty Lakeith Street illustrates, juries in the South and across the country continue to shift away from capital punishment. In 1997, four people inMississippi were sentenced to death; last year, 2016, not one person […]
Last year, Portland, Oregon Mayor Ted Wheeler successfully ran on a platform that championed police reform as a major priority. But since he took office, Wheeler has repeatedly drawn the ire of local criminal justice reform activists and organizers. On Monday, Wheeler took a step that could begin to heal his relationship with concerned Portlanders by appointing Danielle Outlaw, a 19-year veteran […]