Criminalizing Poverty

Jenkins won’t charge the security guard who shot Banko Brown to death. That’s precisely why San Franciscans elected her in the first place.

The ACLU of Southern California is suing the city of Lancaster and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department for excessively citing people living at desert homeless encampments in the Antelope Valley.

The city is ramping up a cleanup program that activists fear will worsen the criminalization of homelessness.

There’s a cynical local-to-national news pipeline designed to mock the powerless under the guise of “odd” news stories.

A new effort to reduce arrests and summonses is criticized as continuing to criminalize homelessness.

With Appeal reporter Josh Vaughn

The criminal and juvenile legal systems are drivers of poverty. Presidential candidates should recognize that.

Heavy reliance on pretrial incarceration in Berks County subjects people to poor medical care and unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

The criminalization of poverty in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, has led to a staggering increase in incarcerated people, all at a huge cost for defendants and taxpayers alike.

Josie and Clint talk with Sara Totonchi, the Executive Director of the Southern Center for Human Rights.

In a wide-ranging interview, Boudin, a progressive reform candidate, told The Appeal he wants to redefine ‘public safety’ to encompass the rights of both victims and defendants.

Supporters hope the passage of Prop C may herald a more compassionate—and effective—approach.

Terrance has been jailed repeatedly over court debt for fishing to feed his family.

A judge’s decision could end the practice of jailing people for soliciting money along streets and highways, but DA Spencer Merriweather has been slow to embrace the change.

“It’s illegal to stand still, it’s illegal to sit down, it’s illegal to lay down, it’s illegal to eat,” said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project. “You’re breaking the law as soon as you stop walking.”

The landslide election of Phil Murphy to be the new governor of New Jersey is likely to put the Garden State at the forefront of criminal justice reforms in the United States.

Phil Murphy has promised marijuana legalization, end of cash bail and will look at ending minimum mandatory sentences

New Jersey has become a national leader in criminal justice reform, particularly around the hot button issue of requiring cash bail. When it passed the Bail Reform and Speedy Trial Act last year, it became one of only three locations in the United States that have virtually eliminated bail as a condition for release when someone is charged with a crime. Yet the state literally stumbled into these efforts, almost by accident, in 2012.

Talk of bail reform in Nashville is getting an assist from recently released data showing that the majority of individuals arrested for misdemeanors remain in jail until their cases are concluded.

Mecklenburg, North Carolina District Attorney R. Andrew Murray doesn’t seem to understand the problem with the county’s deferred prosecutions system, even after a group of faith leaders held a press conference Monday morning, arguing that the current system discriminates against the poor most in need of help. The protest was timed with a hearing in the case of Charlotte […]

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 […]