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criminal justice

SOURCE: NBC News
4/14/2021

Virginia Police, Army Lt. Caron Nazario and America's Bloody Traffic Stop Catch-22

by Matthew Guariglia

The incident of Lt. Caron Nazario illustrates the argument of 1960s Black radical activist Robert Williams that violence against Black people has always been part of maintaining the social order; recognizing nonviolence as a tactic of civil rights activism should not obscure the constancy of violence from the other side.

2/28/2021

Is Virginia's Move to Abolish the Beginning of the End of the Death Penalty in America?

by Rick Halperin

Virginia's move to abolish capital punishment is long overdue, and other states and the federal government should follow suit to restore American legitimacy on global human rights.

SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
2/12/2021

Criminal Justice Reform Won’t Work Until it Focuses on Black Women

by Talitha L. LeFlouria

The history of mass incarceration is also the history of control and exploitation of Black women through the criminal justice system. Reforms need to recognize the impacts of the system on women to advance justice.

SOURCE: The Marshall Project
5/14/2021

I Survived Prison During The AIDS Epidemic. Here’s What It Taught Me About Coronavirus

by Richard Rivera

Like the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, imprisoned people at risk of COVID-19 find that suspicion, paranoia and isolation have taken the place of meaningful support.

SOURCE: The Nation
12/14/2020

Unequal Before the Law

Sara Mayeux's history of public defenders shows how the liberal reform movement that established a system to provide counsel to the poor buttressed the systemic slant of the justice system against them.

SOURCE: NPR
12/11/2020

Biden Made Big Promises On Juvenile Justice. Activists Worry It's Not Enough

Historian David Stein argues that social movements can't expect the Biden administration to voluntarily commit to deep reforms of juvenile justice systems; they must organize and exert pressure to force those changes.

SOURCE: The Hill
12/2/2020

Democrats Introduce Legislation to Strike Slavery Exception in 13th Amendment

The proposal would eliminate a loophole written into the 13th Amendment that allows involuntary servitude to be imposed on persons convicted of a crime. Some recent scholars have argued that this exemption is a foundation of the current system of mass incarceration.

SOURCE: Made by History at The Washington Post
10/21/2020

Disenfranchisement in Jails Weakens our Democracy

by Charlotte Rosen

Because the pretrial population is disproportionately non-White, this kind of “de facto disenfranchisement” constitutes an abhorrent form of racist voter suppression, despite rarely gaining the headlines and outrage that long voting lines do.

SOURCE: The City
10/20/2020

Unions Seize on Ex-Cop’s Academic Flap in Push to Keep NYPD Misconduct Records Secret

St. John’s University students posted adjunct professor Richard Taylor’s police complaint history after what they called a racist lesson. The school suspended him — fueling cops’ latest argument for keeping their records under wrap.

SOURCE: Places Journal
10/15/2020

“Nothing Stirred in the Air”

by Stephen Dillon

The architecture of the "supermax" prison targets the senses and emotions of the incarcerated as a means of control in the wake of political organizing inside and outside of prisons in the 1960s and 1970s.

SOURCE: Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina's Death Penalty
10/5/2020

“The Death Penalty Is Another Confederate Monument We Must Tear Down.”

A collaborative project examines the history of capital punishment in North Carolina, beginning with an introduction by death penalty litigator Henderson Hill.

SOURCE: JSTOR Daily
9/28/2020

How Mass Incarceration Has Shaped History

Political forces pushing for mass incarceration have been closely connected to those restricting the power of labor and pressing to keep wages low.

SOURCE: Nursing Clio
8/6/2020

News From the Dead

by Eileen Sperry

The experiences of convicted women who were "resurrected" after being unsuccessfully hanged illuminate the precarious legal and social standing of women in early modern England.

SOURCE: The New York Times
6/17/2020

The Rape Kit’s Secret History

This is the story of the woman who forced the police to start treating sexual assault like a crime.

SOURCE: Washington Post
6/17/2020

Bail Funds are Having a Moment in 2020

by Melanie Newport

Activists have supported protestors by contributing to bail funds, but it's time to follow through on the longstanding call of social movement leaders to abolish cash bail as a symbol and symptom of unequal justice.

6/7/2020

Interconnected Histories of Race, Violence, and Policing in America

by Michael J. Pfeifer

A historian of criminal justice contends that two conceptual boundaries--between North and South and between lynching and police force--help conceal the racist violence in the American system of justice.

SOURCE: Jacobin
4/16/2020

“Prisons Are Microcosms of the Broader Society”: An Interview with Heather Ann Thompson

"The COVID-19 outbreak is essentially a reaping of what we’ve sown with mass incarceration, from a public health perspective."

9/3/19

Thou Shalt Not Ration Justice

by Pamela Metzger and Andrew Davies

The Norman Lefstein legacy: passionate, tireless efforts for indigent defense reform.

SOURCE: Diverse Education
8/23/19

Historian Carl Suddler's New Book Probes Black Youth, Criminal Justice

Dr. Carl Suddler, an assistant professor of history at Emory University, puts the intersection of race, gender, youth and incarceration under a searing spotlight in his new book, Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York.

SOURCE: Vox
6/20/19

The controversial 1994 crime law that Joe Biden helped write, explained

The 1994 “tough on crime” law remains a big topic of debate in 2020 Democratic debates. Here’s what you need to know.