Criminal Justice Reform

McAuliffe is running to become Virginia governor a second time. If he wins, he would be the only active Democratic governor to have carried out executions in office.

A concerted effort to review, resentence, and release is the right thing to do for those who have been unjustly sentenced. It is also the right thing to do for our community.

Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman has jumpstarted the state’s pardons process, while Attorney General Josh Shapiro’s self-styled progressivism isn’t winning over advocates.

None of the Austin City Council members who voted to cut police funding lost their elections, but a police union vice president who fearmongered about the defund movement did.

A growing body of evidence suggests that it’s possible to reduce or even eliminate the use of money bail without increasing crime.

In North Carolina, Attorney General Josh Stein’s Republican opponent painted him as soft on crime. Voters re-elected him anyway.

Voters decided to keep Adel in charge of the third-largest prosecuting agency in the country. She is recovering from emergency surgery for bleeding in her brain.

Law enforcement organizations have long treated mass incarceration as a job creation program. In 2020, the tide began turning against them.

Los Angeles County, with the country’s largest jail system and largest local prosecutor office, is considered a crown jewel in a nationwide push for criminal justice reform.

The LA County supervisors are poised to tackle a wide range of criminal justice reforms, including moving children and people struggling with mental health issues out of the criminal legal system, and redirecting millions of dollars away from law enforcement and back into communities.

Jones has vowed to support expansion of the Supreme Court, back the Green New Deal, and push for criminal justice reform.

“I have always had a focus on public service, always a desire to make sure that I’m using my skills and talents to help people and to make the community around me a little bit better,” she said.

Hollins’s ‘very personal’ decision to run was sparked in part by the Trump administration ‘catching everything on fire.’ Now she wants to advocate for subsidized child care, police reform, and more.

Houston area voters re-elected Gonzalez after he supported bail reform, cleaned up the county jail, and provided aid to incarcerated people living with opioid use disorder.

The ballot initiative would have bloated prisons and jails in the state and undone important criminal legal reforms, advocates say.

Simmons, an attorney, is fighting to give people “a first chance so they won’t need a second chance later on in life.”

Bowman has also advocated for an eviction moratorium and for rental payments to be cancelled for the duration of the pandemic.

Bush’s victory in Missouri’s First Congressional District makes her the first Black woman elected to represent Missouri in Congress.

If Democrats win control of the Senate, allowing this archaic tradition to survive will make everything of significance the party hopes to accomplish virtually impossible.

Sanchez is running for one of the state House seats that Democrats are hoping to flip.

Quezada has supported progressive policies since starting out in the state legislature in 2012. He’s now running for his final term, which could be his most important, given the state’s changing power dynamics.

Incumbent Maricopa County Attorney Allister Adel is backed by police unions and has declined to charge officers in high-profile killings. Challenger Julie Gunnigle says she wants to create an independent unit to review police use-of-force cases.

In the midst of a national debate about changing the criminal legal system, Barrett is set to take a lifetime seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Advocates see her addition as a potential setback to creating a more fair system.

The Board of Supervisors wields enormous power over a county government apparatus that includes the DA’s office, probation department, and sheriffs.

If she wins her bid for office in November, Bush will become the first Black woman elected to represent Missouri in Congress.

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.

Allister Adel paints herself as a reformer, but her record shows otherwise.

Research has shown only that police can be sufficient, not that they are necessary.

Through a series of maneuvers, state legislators narrowed the ambitious scope of Senate Bill 14.

California just made it a tiny bit easier for formerly incarcerated people to become civilian firefighters. But the law still leaves many obstacles in their path.

Experts say Black and Native children are disproportionately jailed either for status offenses or for technical violations of probation or parole—and that incarcerating them has far-reaching negative consequences.

Nelson’s attorneys had sought to have his death sentence reversed, citing critical errors by his original trial attorneys.

Administrative subpoenas—which do not require a judge’s approval—are typically used for the department’s internal investigations, but The Appeal has learned that they are being used in criminal cases.

Taewon Wilson and Candace Chavez-Wilson are part of a growing movement to end life without possibility of parole and other harsh sentences.

The law, known as SB 402, eliminates the use of signature bonds for a number of felonies, putting poor people who might not be able to afford cash bail at a disadvantage.

If the bill is signed into law later this month, about 20 percent of the state’s prison population could see their sentences reduced to fight the spread of the novel coronavirus, including some people who have served lengthy sentences for violent crimes.

Julie Gunnigle, who is running in Maricopa County, says she supports alternatives to incarceration. But a decade ago in Illinois, she prosecuted a woman for recording phone calls and helped put her in jail for 18 months. 

Sixteen-year-old William Haymon has spent more than 500 days in an adult jail in rural Lexington, Mississippi. There are no state rules governing how long a person can be incarcerated without being formally charged with a crime.

Studies show that 95 percent of the nation’s prosecutors are white and that the lack of Black and brown representation in courts negatively affect outcomes for people of color.