There Is No Rule Requiring the Criminalization of Immigrants — Trump Created It
Today we bring you a conversation with Eve Stotland, the director of legal services at the New York-based nonprofit youth organization The Door — A Center of Alternatives. Stotland breaks down recent...
View ArticleThe Delusion of Deporting the Country’s Troubles Away by Banishing “Criminal...
On April 17 the Supreme Court handed down a ruling that limited some of the excuses the government can use for deporting people. At issue in the case, Sessions v. Dimaya, was the meaning of “crime of...
View ArticleIf You’ve Got Hepatitis C, Spitting Can Be a Felony
Last week, an Ohio man who has the hepatitis C virus was sentenced to 18 months in prison for spitting at Cleveland police and medics. Matthew Wenzler, 27, was reportedly lying on a Cleveland street...
View ArticleWhy Turning Homelessness Into a Crime Is Cruel and Costly
Increasingly, local laws punish Americans who are homeless. By severely restricting or even barring the ability to engage in necessary, life-sustaining activities in public, like sitting, standing,...
View ArticleMigrant Smuggling: Preying on the Most Vulnerable
The publication of the first-ever Global Study on Smuggling of Migrants on June 13 by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) could not have been timelier. Almost 200 deaths of migrants attempting to...
View ArticleTrump’s Marijuana Task Force Ordered to Ignore Data That Show Positive Impacts
New documents reveal that, despite President Donald Trump saying in June that he would support a bipartisan bill which would allow states that have legalized marijuana to continue doing so without the...
View ArticleAnti-Terrorism Laws Increasingly Used to Target Indigenous Activists
The images flew around the world. The teepees. The tear gas. The Indigenous water protectors’ camps. The boots advancing in unison as security forces cracked down on protests at Standing Rock against...
View ArticleFinally, Clemency for Sexual Violence Survivor Cyntoia Brown
Cyntoia Brown was granted full clemency by Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam on Monday after serving 15 years in prison. The decision follows months of intense public pressure and outrage over...
View ArticleActivists Face Jail Time for Providing Aid to Migrants Crossing Desert
As the longest government shutdown in US history heads into its 25th day and President Trump continues to crack down on immigrants, we look at how the Trump administration is criminalizing humanitarian...
View ArticleOutsourcing Police Investigations to Google Risks Privacy and Justice
In December, Jorge Molina was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Joseph Knight, an airport worker who was shot dead as he cycled home in the early hours of March 14, 2018, in Avondale, Arizona. The...
View ArticleMy Mother Has Been Homeless for 45 Years. Why Isn’t Housing a Right?
Not long ago, I received a letter from my mother. It said, “I am homeless, again. I may be dead before you are released from prison. Love mom.” It felt like some cruel force punched through my chest...
View ArticleThe Crisis of Violence Against Transgender People Is Not a “Myth”
I learned a lot about myself while sitting in the first U.S. congressional hearing about the Equality Act this week. As debate about the act—which would extend federal nondiscrimination laws to LGBTQ...
View ArticleCriminalizing Sex Workers Drives Rape and Gender-Based Police Violence
Mainstream feminism too often puts ‘police violence’ and ‘male violence against women’ into different conceptual categories — if, indeed, it considers police violence to be a topic of feminist concern...
View ArticleLawsuit: Trans Woman Jailed Because She Didn’t Pay a $15 Seatbelt Fine
On March 28, 2018, Sierra Castle called the police. She wanted to report to the Cobb County Police Department that her car had been damaged a week earlier. When she met an officer in the parking lot...
View ArticleEuropeans Criminalized for Helping Migrants as Far Right Aims to Win Elections
Five months ago, at 10 o’clock in the morning, German police arrived at the home and parish of Christian Hartung, a pastor in Rhineland-Palatinate. At the same time, they descended on the residences of...
View ArticleAbortion Bans and the Beast the GOP Would Feed Us To
From last year’s protests against the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the ongoing fight against abortion bans in southern states, the image of the red-clad “Handmaid” — an allusion to Margaret...
View ArticlePot Industry Owes Reparations to Those Criminalized for Drug Use
Pot, grass, marijuana, cannabis — call it what you will, its recreational use is already legal in 10 states and the District of Columbia, with many more soon to follow. Among other things, that means...
View ArticleTransgender Women Challenge State Laws Blocking Name Changes
Eisha Love, a 30-year-old trans woman living in Chicago, was incarcerated for nearly four years after she and a friend were attacked at a gas station in 2012 by men hurling transphobic slurs. One...
View ArticleThe US’s Immigration Crackdown Began Decades Ago Under Clinton
The scenes at the southern border — of terrified families and isolated children huddled in dreary makeshift jails — suggest that the federal immigration regime is reaching an unprecedented level of...
View ArticleInstead of Criminalizing Individuals, Let’s Take Down the Gun Industry
It is an odd feature of U.S. political life that after mass slaughters like those in El Paso and Dayton last week, liberal gun control advocates focus their arguments overwhelmingly on regulating the...
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