All defendants need the opportunity to raise complaints with their representation before appeal. Reserving this for only those who were already able to hire counsel of their choice operates to further disenfranchise the most vulnerable people charged with crimes.
The failure to hold police accountable for their toxic culture has and continues to threaten the safety and Constitutional protections of vulnerable communities and disfavored groups.
Incarceration deprives communities of their immediate histories. Victims of incarceration often never learn what happened a generation ago that led to the conditions they experience, and if you are never taught your history, you’re being stripped of it.
Announcing our latest symposium on the criminal legal system and the current movement to transform it.
Black Americans have endured police violence since the nation’s founding. The origins of American policing have been traced to slave patrols. Today, Blacks are more likely than whites to encounter police, to be stopped by police, and to be fatally wounded by police. In recognition of this history and ongoing experience of violence, the Movement for Black Lives (“M4BL”) has called for the defunding of the police; community control of policing; and the development of nonpunitive, noncarceral institutions for resolving social conflict, among other transformative changes.
In this watershed moment when policymakers feel liberated to embrace noncarceral responses to the behaviors that laws label crimes, one question rings out: “What about rape and domestic violence?” The pro-policing contingent intends this as a rhetorical “gotcha.” But many progressives open to meaningful reform genuinely worry about the demise of gender crime law, which they see as a formidable legal tool against the patriarchy.
Survey data suggests that the recent protests in support of Black lives constitute the largest movement in U.S. history. The Blog interviewed five law students about what it is like to be a law student right now.
We are assured Amna will have more to say here at the Blog, but for now check out her account of the abolitionist movement has developed into the type of coalition that can make real change in this moment.
Fiscal structures and funding priorities that local public finance experts have long taken to be intractable are being challenged by a new generation. Although the scale of these actions certainly is new, community groups and local activists have long used tax and budget advocacy as a means for abolitionist organizing.
George Floyd’s family will almost certainly bring a lawsuit against Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, the three officers on the scene who stood by, and the City as a whole. Assuming Floyd’s family prevails, who will foot the bill? And who should?
Cities across the country are in turmoil after the cold-blooded killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. While the protests are motivated by and calling for a range of solutions to the ongoing problem of police brutality, the loudest call is for accountability in the form of criminal charges against the officers involved in Floyd’s death. Already, these calls have born fruit.
There is a distressing disconnect between the ringing demands for justice on the streets and the suite of “police reform” proposals that many experts say satisfy these demands.
Over the past week, there has been unprecedented acknowledgment of the physical violence that Black people in America have faced, for generations, at the hands of police. While this is an important development, the work to eradicate police violence will not be complete if the public remains concerned only with the most visually and viscerally jarring forms of police violence, and those for which police seem most responsible. The public must realize that violence—not only of the physical sort, but also the structural and symbolic variety—is endemic to much of the routine work police do in communities across America.
This week, we’re sharing two discussions on John Whitlow’s recently published article reflecting on New York’s right to counsel in evictions proceedings. Our contributors share visions of right to counsel that move beyond due process rights. The contributors show that right to counsel campaigns are part of broader movements that seek to address the material deprivation underlying the…
Ending money bail will not itself produce justice because we have been using money bail, and the detention it produces, to meet a host of social needs. Forsaking it will require us to find better ways to meet them.
