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Prison Reform

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)

Spotlight: Cory Booker’s New Sentencing Reform Bill Is About Redemption

Editor’s Note: The Daily Appeal is occasionally examining the 2020 presidential contenders’ records, platforms, and rhetoric on issues relating to criminal justice. You can find past installments here. An article by Campbell Robertson in the New York Times today looks at the case of Angelo Robinson, in prison in Ohio since 1997 for the murder of […]

‘Worse Than Guantánamo’

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.

Against Innocence

In the wake of Nia Wilson’s murder, it’s critical that calls for justice in response to anti-Black violence are not contingent upon appeals to white-approved notions of innocence and respectability.

A Letter to Jay-Z: Don’t Keep This Promise

Dear Jay-Z, We need to talk. I want to understand how funding your new app, “Promise,” is going to dismantle what you’ve called the “exploitative bail industry.” The Black Youth Project, among others, has rightly criticized the profiteering possibility of Promise. I’m down with liberty and justice for all. And I know you are too. So let […]

Can Police Opposition Overturn Parole Reform?

On March 14, Herman Bell learned that after 45 years behind bars, he would soon be released from prison. The 70-year-old former Black Panther was convicted in the 1971 shooting deaths of two New York police officers. Since 2004, he appeared before the state’s parole board seven times; each time, he was denied parole because of the nature of […]

Commentary: Attorney General Sessions Says He Wants To Target Gangs, But In The Federal Bureau of Prisons Gangs Find A Home Base, And A Place To Flourish

With the Department of Justice targeting national gangs like MS-13, the Trump administration has declared a war on national gangs. “MS-13 members brutally rape, rob, extort and murder,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the International Association of Chiefs of Police at a conferencein Philadelphia in late October. “Just like we took Al Capone off the streets […]

Louisiana sheriff’s comments reflect more than racism

At a press conference on October 5th, Sheriff Steve Prator of Caddo Parish, Louisiana decried the state’s new policy that would lead to the release of some prisoners in the upcoming months. Sheriff Prator’s comments that the reforms would contribute to the release of “good” prisoners as well as “bad ones” have been roundly critiqued for “evoking […]

Plans for new Los Angeles jail frustrate criminal justice reform advocates

A planned jail expansion in Los Angeles has generated intense opposition and protest from civil rights and criminal justice reform organizations. Last month, 100 protestors challenged the city Board of Supervisors to redirect funds earmarked for new locked facilities toward community services and other “alternatives to incarceration.” The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors first approved the plan to […]

The normalization of preventable jail deaths

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 […]

ACLU of FL urges reforms to reduce Escambia County’s high incarceration rate

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida is highlighting the need for bail reform in Escambia County, which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the Sunshine State. In a recently released report, the ACLU asserts that Escambia County’s “jail is crowded, expensive, and houses many non-violent, pretrial defendants who could safely reside in the community […]

In Mississippi, a Lost Second Chance for Gerome Moore

That’s what officers told then 17-year-old Gerome Moore when they interrogated him following the 2015 shooting of Carolyn Temple. Moore ultimately confessed to driving the getaway car for two friends who robbed and shot Temple in her boyfriend’s driveway; she died a week later from the gunshot wound.

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