Archive for the ‘Criminal Justice’ Category

In prison reform, money trumps civil rights

The legal scholar Derrick A. Bell foresaw that mass incarceration, like earlier systems of racial control, would continue to exist as long as it served the perceived interests of white elites. Thirty years of civil rights litigation and advocacy have failed to slow the pace of a racially biased drug...

May 16th, 2011 | Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More

The war on drugs is an unconstitutional war on African-Americans

By Renay Patterson-Scott, Public Policy Journalist Student, The Ohio State University, While President Barack Obama is busy signing bills into law that will improve life overall for Americans, his administration is completely ignoring one of the most pressing issues affecting African-Americans, the...

May 12th, 2011 | African Americans, Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More

More Black men now in prison system than were enslaved

By Dick Price, originally published on LA Progressive, “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday, the...

March 31st, 2011 | African Americans, Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More

A “war on drugs” or a war on people of color?

When the head of the California division of the NAACP spoke out in support of that state’s Proposition 19 this summer, there seemed to be an equal amount of immediate praise and backlash. Alice Huffman labeled the drug war as a “civil rights issue” getting attention both on a state and national...

October 21st, 2010 | Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More

Face the truth about racial profiling

“I’ve seen a lot in my life but to be degraded… not just stripped of my clothes, being stripped of my dignity, was what I had a problem with.” Kurdish American Karwan Abdul Kader was stopped and stripped by local law enforcement for no reason other than driving around in the wrong neighborhood....

September 29th, 2010 | Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More

In defense of indigent defense-how the broken public defense system exacerbates racial disparities

The 6th Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to representation when accused of a criminal offense. While Supreme Court decisions have clarified this to mean “effective” representation, the system has often failed to live up to this standard. With the majority of criminal...

September 24th, 2010 | Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More

Racial discrimination should not trump voting rights

By Dorsey E. Nunn The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco will hear argument today (Tuesday, Sept. 21, 2010) in a lawsuit challenging the State of Washington’s denial of the right to vote from people with felony convictions. The legal issue in the case is whether the Voting...

September 21st, 2010 | African Americans, Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More

Native Americans believe there are dual systems of justice

There are disparities in the system of justice in South Dakota that can only be found in other states with large Native American populations. The incarceration ratio for Native Americans in South Dakota is far out of proportion with the total state population. The main prisons in the state are top...

September 20th, 2010 | American Indians, Criminal Justice, Featured | Read More