We Must Abolish Prisons to Rebuild Communities Fractured by Mass Incarceration
It is sometimes said that we can’t be what we cannot see, so are we able to imagine a world without jails and prisons? The U.S. is the world’s leader in incarceration. We’ve read about the atrocities...
View ArticleHIV Prison Activists Are Leading a Freedom Movement in the Face of COVID-19
When AIDS hit prisons and jails in the 1980s, incarcerated people organized. They developed peer education programs to counter stigma and slow transmission, established buddy programs to provide mutual...
View ArticlePolice Are Using Implications of Drug Use to Justify Killing
Protests continue to escalate throughout the country in the weeks after Officer Derek Chauvin from the Minneapolis Police Department knelt on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds —...
View ArticleA Prosecutor Called Jail Time for Renters Who Fall Behind “Cruel.” He Got Fired.
An Arkansas prosecutor has been fired after speaking out against the state’s criminal eviction statute in an October ProPublica story. Garland County deputy prosecutor Josh Drake was let go from his...
View ArticleRepublicans Are Using Capitol Breach as Excuse to Promote Anti-Protest Bills
On the heels of the U.S. Capitol breach, Republican lawmakers in five states are capitalizing on unrest and anxiety about further violence planned for the upcoming inauguration to propose and pass...
View ArticleIllinois May Be First State to Eliminate Money Bail, But the Fight Isn’t Over
On January 13, the Illinois legislature passed the Pretrial Fairness Act (as part of HB 3653 SFA2). Once signed, this bill will make the state the first to completely eradicate the use of money bail....
View ArticleLegalizing All Drugs Is Just the Beginning of a Compassionate Drug Policy
President Joe Biden has shifted some of his positions on drug policy in recent years: He’s now against mandatory minimums for certain offenses. He’s open to commutations for people serving long drug...
View ArticleEven When Marijuana Is Legal, Young People Are Locked Up for It
As more states legalize recreational cannabis use, a large group is continuing to face marijuana-related criminalization: anyone under 21. Similar to alcohol laws, recreational adult-use cannabis laws...
View ArticleMy Sister Died of an Overdose. Defunding the Police Might Have Saved Her.
My little sister Keeley died of a heroin and fentanyl overdose in February 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning to descend on the United States. Keeley was the mother of a young child. She was...
View ArticleSocial Workers Can No Longer Remain Silent on Oppression of Palestinians
In October, the State of Israel criminalized six Palestinian human rights organizations, designating them as “terrorist groups,” which effectively outlawed their work, and put their workers (human...
View Article700,000 US Teens Navigate School Without Family Support or Permanent Housing
Luisa, age 19, was fed up with her mom’s demand that she complete all the household cleaning, from scrubbing the toilets, to washing the dishes, to doing the laundry. “I couldn’t take it anymore,” she...
View ArticleBlack Sexual Violence Survivors Are Telling Their Stories — Only to Be Punished
On December 15, 2021, 10 days before Christmas, DeBraca Harris sat in a Chicago, Illinois, courtroom to learn whether the legal system would recognize the sexual violence she had endured and allow her...
View ArticleDrug Decriminalization Is Working in Oregon. Other States Should Follow.
As COVID-19 continues to rage, another health crisis persists — one that is decades long. In the first year of the pandemic, the United States hit the devastating milestone of 100,000 overdose deaths,...
View ArticleTexas Abortion Funds Work to Reduce Looming Harms of Post-“Roe” Criminalization
Abortion support networks in Texas, including nonprofit organizations that provide abortion funding to low-income and marginalized people in the state, already know what it’s like to live a post-Roe v....
View ArticleOverturning “Roe” Would Immediately Activate Abortion Penalties in 13 States
Fueling widespread anguish over this week’s revelation that Roe v. Wade will likely be overturned in the coming weeks is the reality that the end of Roe would immediately activate civil and criminal...
View ArticleEven Abortion Rights Opponents Are Aghast at Brutality of GOP Bill in Louisiana
Louisiana’s leading anti-abortion organization does not support a bill set for a Thursday vote that would qualify abortion as murder under state law. “Our long-standing policy is that...
View ArticleThe Drug War Drives Exploitation. We Need Drug Regulation, Not Criminalization.
With more than a million lives lost in the United States in the two decades since the drug overdose crisis began and more than 103,500 in 2021 alone, some would have us believe that we are at a...
View ArticleNow Is the Time to “Aid and Abet” Abortion
As reproductive rights organizers have long anticipated — and as a leaked memo all but confirmed last month — the Supreme Court has ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The...
View ArticleGrassroots Defense Committees Support Criminalized Survivors of Violence
Bayley Pitts believed that she would receive help when she went to the police as a teenage victim of sexual violence at the hands of her biological father. She did not — and now, Pitts faces the...
View ArticleFederal Judge Blocks Arizona Law Giving “Personhood” Rights to Fertilized Eggs
A federal judge on Monday barred enforcement of a so-called “personhood” law in Arizona that advocacy groups warned would be used to criminalize abortion across the state. The Center for Reproductive...
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