Last week, Assemblymember Corey A. Jackson (D-Riverside) introduced Assembly Bill (AB) 742, legislation that would prohibit the use of police canines for arrests, apprehensions and crowd control.
Landlords can resume eviction proceedings after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued clarifications to a previous executive order from President Donald Trump.
A study conducted by Harvard University’s Department of Housing Studies revealed that half of Americans who rent are either severely rent-burdened or moderately rent-burdened. For African Americans and Hispanics, researchers at Harvard determined a triple pandemic for those communities. Black and Hispanic households were “much more likely to contract COVID-19, suffer lost income, and face housing insecurity as a result of the pandemic,” the researchers concluded.
The cascade of protests against racism and police brutality in response to the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd sent a shockwave through the consciousness of America. The grief, love, and solidarity on display seems to be on a larger scale than ever before. When our brothers and sisters marched in Ferguson in 2014, they lacked the groundswell of support across the country that we’re witnessing now. Even still, we have a long way to go until African Americans can truly enjoy, “equal justice under law,” a promise etched in stone on the Supreme Court building but not yet fulfilled in daily life.
Hordes of protestors have taken to streets all across the U.S. proclaiming that “Black lives matter” in wake of the death of George Floyd. Videos show that the Black Minneapolis man died after being pinned down beneath three police officers for several minutes.
Support for police and criminal justice reform have made recent headlines but, for Equal Justice Now’s Co-founder Tony Smith and national spokesperson Attorney Benjamin Crump, this fight has been long awaited.
The people who are jailed or threatened with jail often are the most vulnerable Americans living paycheck to paycheck, one emergency away from financial catastrophe, according to a 2018 report from the American Civil Liberties Union.
U.S. Senators Kamala D. Harris (D-CA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chris Coons (D-DE), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Brian Schatz (D-HI), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) last week introduced legislation to reduce the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) use of solitary confinement and improve conditions for inmates separated from the general prison population.
Members of Congress from both parties have come together recently, to approve a prison reform bill that will allow for employees to store their firearms securely at federal prisons, restrict the use of restraints on pregnant women, expand compassionate release for terminally ill patients, place prisoners closer to family in some cases, authorize new markets for Federal Prison Industries, mandate de-escalation training for correctional officers and employees, and make improvements to feminine hygiene in prison, among other things.
The Senate passed a sweeping criminal justice bill Tuesday that addresses concerns that the nation’s war on drugs had led to the imprisonment of too many Americans for non-violent crimes without adequately preparing them for their return to society.
Prop 64 not only promised to reduce or expunge certain past convictions, it also presented employment opportunities in the newly legalized cannabis industry as a gateway to the middle class for many underserved communities.
California’s new law is the latest development in the nationwide debate over bail, which many people say unfairly punishes people for being poor. Other states including New Jersey, Alaska and New Mexico have overhauled their bail systems, although no other state has completely eliminated bail.
Civil rights beacon and ACLU veteran Laura Murphy laughed when she said that one of her co-workers called her, “The Olivia Pope of the Tech World.”
Trump has been on a clemency kick of late, using his near-limitless power to pardon a growing list that includes a former White House aide, a conservative commentator and a former sheriff convicted of violating a judge’s orders who campaigned with Trump in 2016.
A new report by the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) says the time is ripe to change drug laws.