criminal justice 
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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SOURCE: Salon
1/3/19
Criminal justice reform in the U.S. has a long history of repressive outcomes
by Tony Platt
A decade from now under the First Step Act, expect that incarceration will be not so much reduced as diversified.
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