Archive Topic
Every Anti-Racism Daily issue filed under Criminal Legal System, newest first.
67 issues · 2020–2023
The latest genre of TV programming, incarcerated reality, monetizes the continued exploitation of incarcerated people.
Examining the role of qualified immunity and the U.S. judicial system in keeping law enforcement from facing accountability.
Learn about the Graduated Reentry Program and how prison reform legislation isn’t meaningful without accountability and oversight.
The five-day Attica prison uprising was a fight against inhumane conditions and racial and religious injustices, which still resonates today.
In the wake of violence, the DOJ repeatedly fails to protect Black and other marginalized communities, often incriminating them instead.
Solitary confinement is the go-to solution for handling any issue brought on by a system that breaks down those within its confinement.
Prison sexual abuse isn’t limited to a single institution or a handful of “bad apples,” but a nationwide systemic issue.
Although Congress passed the VOCA Fix Act to restore the Crime Victims Fund, domestic and sexual violence crisis centers are still struggling to recover.
A report on the Minneapolis Police supports protesters' claims and calls for overhaul, but current police reform promises have fallen short.
De facto residential segregation is increasing today, creating segregated hospitals, schools, and transportation systems—the very things permitted by Plessy v. Ferguson.
The 1992 Los Angeles riots were sparked by a series of injustices by the criminal justice system against marginalized people that remain unaddressed 30 years later.
If you were designing a system that ensured those leaving prison returned, you’d end up with something similar to the current U.S. prisoner reentry landscape.
The differences between the Central Park Five and the Donald Trump indictments highlight the disparities and bias in the legal system.
Most people in pretrial detention in the U.S. are incarcerated because they cannot afford to pay their cash bail.
The RICO Act was initially passed to prosecute the Mafia but has since been used against protesters, doctors, and artists.
Immigrants in two for-profit detention centers in California are on a hunger strike against the "abhorrent" conditions in the facilities.
The world's largest carceral system oversees an aging prison population as incarcerated elders are condemned to a lifetime of confinement.
Amplifying the work of Just Detention International, an organization committed to those that experience sexual abuse while incarcerated.
An explainer on President Biden's marijuana pardon and its impact on drug incarceration and decriminalization efforts.
Activists call for the closure of the Rikers Island jail complex amid its ongoing "humanitarian crisis" that has seen a rise in deaths.
The school-to-prison pipeline introduces students to the criminal legal system, affecting their mental health, academic potential, and livelihoods.
In an unjust criminal legal system, the exclusion of marginalized people on juries enables an inequitable system to prosper.
Despite the end of slavery, forced labor practices continue in prisons and jails across the country, exploiting incarcerated people
Examining the harms of criminalizing sex work and why decriminalization, not legalization, is the solution.
With Jim Crow-era origins, curfew laws fail to protect public safety; instead, they ensure marginalized young people are criminalized.
The cash bail system works within a flawed structure that forces people, mainly Black and Brown, to pay for their freedom.
Due to policies and the staff culture in prisons, racial segregation and oppression are used to subjugate minority groups.
Despite its intentions, deinstitutionalization resulted in people with mental illness being moved from one carceral institution to another.
Ending mass incarceration in prisons must be accompanied by creating “mass integration” for those released.
"Criminal justice system” is used in the U.S to reference the broad, complex system that addresses criminal activity, but rarely are marginalized people afforded justice.
The prison grievance system in the U.S. fails incarcerated individuals by failing to address complaints and incidences of misconduct and abuse of power that is rampant in the corrections system.
Despite 420 celebrations and growing support to legalize it, people of color continue to be incarcerated for marijuana and excluded from the cannabis industry.
Sharing graphic videos of police brutality may raise awareness, but also cause harm and obfuscate the real effort needed to create change.
The opening of the first legalized safe consumption site in New York is allowing people who use drugs a safe place to consume drugs in the hopes of preventing overdoses.
Sentencing enhancements are often used to coerce defendants out of their constitutional right to a trial. Advocates are working to eliminate the exploitative practice.
Two years after being murdered by the police and the focus of protests, the fight to get justice for Breonna Taylor continues.
Defunding the police allows communities to reinvest in other forms of community support while dismantling a system rooted in racism and white supremacy.
Privatizing prison technology and communication add a costly financial burden on incarcerated people and their families.
Seeking convictions for violence, while understandable, legitimizes a system that disproportionately harms communities of color.
The deaths of Black women and girls are often missing from the headlines, despite routinely being victims of violence. Bias stereotypes and racial disparities in the media coverage further victimize Black women and girls by tarnishing their names and repetitions, hindering justice.
No-Knock warrants allow police to legally break into people's homes unannounced, often resulting in fatal outcomes like the deaths of Amir Locke and Breonna Taylor.
Upon the announcement of Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement, discussions on who will be his successor highlight a need for more Supreme Court representation.
Incarcerated workers risk exposure to COVID in prisons, fearing added time if they refuse to work in hazardous conditions.
For many marginalized communities in America, being patriotic means ignoring a history of violence and oppression that continues to this day.
It's been over a year since one of the largest movements in U.S. history, yet the American justice system is far from being reformed.
Vigilantes and law enforcement groups have long worked together to create and protect the racial order in the United States.
Inadequate resources like group homes, trained social workers, and qualified foster parents have contributed to a broken foster care system.
911 was created in part to thwart demands for racial justice. That’s why groups around the country are creating new infrastructure to deal with emergencies.
Participatory defense promotes the agency of the families and communities of people facing criminal charges.
The prison system tolerates and creates sexual violence against incarcerated people. The pervasive nature of this violence led to legislation like the Prison Rape Elimination Act.
Conversations around police reforms sometimes highlight specific illegitimate acts by police officers. But law enforcement ignoring the law en masse raises deeper questions about the legitimacy of an institution with a long history of racism and brutality.
Pope Francis has joined Congressional Representatives Cori Bush and Emanuel Cleaver II to encourage Missouri governor Michael Parson to halt the execution of Ernest Lee Johnson, a Black man with disabilities.
Historically, drug policy has been written with racist intentions and fueled by hysteria over the war on drugs. This has led to racial disparities in sentencing for crack cocaine possession.
The U.S. positions itself as a just country with a superior legal system where people are always considered innocent until proven guilty and always granted the right to a trial before a jury of their peers. Except this isn’t true at all. Despite the promise of the Sixth Amendment, we do not have an effective right to trial because today, the overwhelming majority of cases will never see a judge.
If you’ve participated or watched protests unfold in cities across the country this past year, you may have noticed that law enforcement looked more like members of our military than neighborhood police. And that’s intentional, as, over the past decades, the U.S. has made it easier for law enforcement to access surplus military equipment for everyday use.
Law and Order. CSI. Hawaii-Five-Oh. American Sniper. TV shows and movies about law enforcement and the police permeate the screens of Americans across the country. Media portrayals about police officers, detectives, judges, crime fighters, and more firmly implemented into the cultural lexicon. Just because they are on TV does not mean that these shows exclusively exist for entertainment. Many shows actively depict criminal justice without showcasing the many ways it harms the lives of communities of color. These shows often work to bolster law enforcement in the eyes of white supremacy while simultaneously reducing compassion for the disproportionately Black victims of its system.
For the past month, Derek Chauvin has been on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Finally, the verdict is out. Chauvin faced three charges: second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. To convict Chauvin, the prosecution needed to show each charge beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecution did not need to prove that Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd to convict him of the charges.
The death has been referred to as an “accidental discharge.” But there is nothing accidental about the death of an unarmed Black man by law enforcement. Our system is designed to maximize interactions between Black and brown people and police officers, which all but ensures that harm will happen. This is enforced through the practice of over-policing, initiatives that have justified increased levels of policing for the sake of the greater good, but often with adverse consequences (Scientific American).
5,805 workers at an Amazon facility in Alabama will decide whether they wish to be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. If they vote yes, they would be the first Amazon warehouse in the United States to unionize.
Pervis Payne, a Black man who was convicted for murder 33 years ago, will be executed in December, despite DNA evidence that could prove his innocence (CNN). While the execution of an intellectually disabled person is unconstitutional, the court didn’t recognize Payne’s disability at the time of his trial (Tennessean). The Innocence Project, a legal organization that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted, is trying to stop Payne’s execution. As of today, “375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row” (The Innocence Project).
It happened. Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court Monday evening (NPR). Judge Barrett, who is 48 years old, is likely to serve on the court for decades, solidifying a 6-3 conservative majority. It also gives her immediate power in several upcoming hearings this November that disproportionately impacts the livelihood of communities of color. This is the first time a Supreme Court nominee has been confirmed without a single vote from a major minority party since December 1869 (WSJ). Now that it’s official, inquiries on whether or not Biden, if confirmed, could expand the court, have snowballed into comprehensive calls for action.
The Texas Rangers law enforcement agency is mythologized in popular media as moral defenders of the law, ignoring a long history of violence.
Police face criticism for their use of ketamine in the arrest of individuals they mislabel as "aggressive" following the death of Elijah McClain.
The impact of the “war on drugs” campaign in the ’70s and ’80s continues to the mass incarceration of Black and Brown people today.
Facial recognition software is increasingly becoming integrated into society and policing despite coded racial bias.