Unhoused Activists Are Fighting a Surge of Bills Criminalizing Homelessness
As soaring rents force many out of their homes, advocates across the country are battling a slew of state and local measures that criminalize homelessness and imperil those living on the street. Police...
View ArticleFacebook Is Collaborating With Cops to Criminalize Pregnancy Outcomes
Celeste Burgess, a 17-year-old girl, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, now face felony charges in their home state of Nebraska after Celeste Burgess allegedly self-managed an abortion after Nebraska’s...
View ArticleOklahoma’s “Child Abuse” Law Doesn’t Protect Children — It Criminalizes Mothers
Karina had been looking forward to Christmas. In November, she had reunited with her 6-year-old daughter, who had been staying with Karina’s sister after Karina was evicted. That month, the family...
View ArticleLet’s Abolish Systems That Criminalize and Punish Survivors of Abuse
Content warning: This article describes domestic and sexual abuse, as well as violence committed by prison guards. Thousands of the women and trans and gender nonconforming people who are doing time in...
View ArticlePeople With HIV Are Still Being Criminalized in 25 States
In 2008, Robert Suttle’s life was upended. The 30-year-old had been working as an assistant law clerk at the Second Circuit Court of Appeal in Shreveport, Louisiana, when police arrested him in front...
View ArticleWoman Arrested in South Carolina for Allegedly Taking Abortion Pills in 2021
A woman in South Carolina was arrested and charged this week for allegedly taking abortion pills in 2021. As first reported by The State, the woman sought medical care associated with labor pains in...
View ArticleProposed Florida Bill Could Allow “Legal Kidnapping” of Trans Children
Florida’s unrelenting assault on trans livelihood has extended itself to criminalizing close supporters of trans individuals seeking gender-affirming care. On March 13, Florida’s Senate Committee on...
View ArticleNew Memphis Program Would Arrest Kids for Playing Music, Dancing, Selling Candy
Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) new Juvenile Crime Abatement Program, which was announced on Friday, has been paused for more discussion after community organizations decried the program as a racist...
View ArticleGeorgia Anti-Abortion Law Adds “Unborn Dependents” to Tax Code
This story was originally published in English at Prism. This tax season in Georgia, some people were asked an unexpected question: “Were you pregnant in 2022?” It’s the first time anyone in the U.S....
View Article3 Tennessee Teens Overdosed and 2 Died. Now the Survivor Is Charged With Murder.
An estimated 109,680 people died of a drug overdose in 2022. Police and policy makers at all levels of government spent billions of dollars over the past decade attempting to contain this crisis, but...
View ArticleCriminalized Survivors Face Judgement and Abuse From Their Own Defense Attorneys
“They’re offering you 40, I think you should take it.” This was Kwaneta Harris’s first interaction with her lawyer. Forty years in prison for protecting her life from a man she once cared for deeply....
View ArticlePregnant Black Woman Wrongly Arrested in Detroit Using Facial Recognition
Recent reports have revealed that the Detroit Police Department wrongly arrested a pregnant Black woman for a crime she did not commit after she was misidentified by the city’s facial recognition...
View ArticlePolish Government Develops Test That Can Detect If Someone Took Abortion Pills
Polish scientists have developed lab tests that can detect if a person has taken abortion pills and are reportedly using the tests to investigate pregnancy outcomes in the country, according to a...
View ArticleNearly 80 Percent of All Pregnancy-Related Arrests Occur in 5 Southern States
A new report released by Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that defends pregnant people from criminalization, has found that nearly 1,400 people in the U.S. were arrested for actions related to their...
View ArticlePolice Further Traumatize Sexual Assault Victims by Turning Them Into Suspects
Sequestered in a small interrogation room, sipping an iced coffee, Nicole Chase was trying to explain just how dysfunctional things had become at Nodine’s Smokehouse Deli and Restaurant, a family-owned...
View ArticleCriminalized Survivor Tracy McCarter Discusses the Movement to Free Her
October is National Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, and we look at how Black and Brown survivors of domestic abuse are further criminalized by police and prisons — and how activists...
View ArticleMother Sues Alabama Jail After Being Forced to Give Birth Alone in a Shower
Attorneys for an incarcerated mother in Alabama say she experienced nothing less than “torture” when she was jailed while pregnant, denied prescribed psychiatric medication and forced to give birth...
View ArticlePregnancy Criminalization in the US Is an “Avoidable Human Rights Crisis”
A new report from legal reproductive justice group If/When/How found that between 2000 and 2020, 61 people, including seven minors, were criminally investigated or arrested for allegedly ending their...
View ArticleSouth Carolina Is Ripping Infants Away From Their Mothers Over Pot Use
Imagine toiling on your feet throughout an entire pregnancy, trying desperately to gain weight despite debilitating nausea, surviving domestic violence while pregnant and finally giving birth to a...
View ArticleChallenging the Criminalization of Trauma Survivors
What do successful alternatives to policing, prosecution and prison actually look like? And how would they work? A group of Chicago’s leading public safety, health and justice innovators gathered at...
View Article