criminal justice

Former Alabama Governors: We Regret Overseeing Executions

As evidence mounts of the number of wrongful convictions in capital murder cases, one Democrat and one Republican former governor argue that it's time to stop capital punishment and reform the prosecutorial immunity that allows unfair prosecutions to proceed. 

Despite Popular Opposition, The Death Penalty Marches on Unabated

by Rick Halperin

A commitment to human rights cannot coexist with capital punishment. Political leaders must heed the growing public opposition to the death penalty and move to abolish it. 

Tyre Nichols's Death and America's Systemic Failure

by Peniel E. Joseph

Nichols's killing, like other police killings, emphasizes the need for what W.E.B. DuBois called "abolition democracy," meaning the "eradication of the institutions, vestiges, and badges of racial slavery and new investments in Black citizenship and dignity." This is more than "reform." 

A Former Inmate Reviews an Oral History of Riker's Island

by John J. Lennon

"Leaving Rikers feels like a better chapter of your life is about to begin—even if that next chapter is a prison sentence."

An Oral History of Riker's Island

An oral history of New York's notorious jail is chaotic and difficult, but could an account of the place be any different and be true? 

NY Mayor's Proposal to Lock Up Mentally Ill Has Long History

by Elliott Young

The impulse to heal the mentally ill has long battled the impulse to lock them up as a threat to the society. Eric Adams is trying to do the latter while claiming to do the former. 

Social Pressures and Prejudices Shape Perceptions of Who is a Child

by Bill Bush and Erin Mysogland

The contrasting treatments of a 19 year-old white Capitol rioter and a Black 13 year-old charged with first degree murder and facing trial as an adult highlight a longstanding problem: age in the law is interpreted subject to social norms about race, gender and social class.

Fighting Incarceration from the Inside: Prison Litigation as Resistance

by Charlotte Rosen

The Prison Litigation Reform Act has cut incarcerated people off from their rights to access the court system to seek personal relief from abuse and cruel punishment and systemic change to the mass incarceration regime. 

Life Sentences for Arbery's Killers Nothing to Celebrate

by Joseph Margulies

A defense attorney and legal expert warns that the harsh sentences imposed on perpetrators of a racist killing help to validate a punitive system of incarceration that overwhelmingly harms people of color. 

50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It's Time to Revive it, Permanently

by Rick Halperin

Fifty years ago this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty violated the Constitution, opening a de facto moratorium as states legislated new capital punishment statutes. It's time to make this brief victory for human rights permanent. 

How the Public Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Wiretapping

by Andrew Lanham

Brian Hochman shows that the white backlash to civil rights and racial justice protests helped to undermine longstanding civil libertarian opposition to electronic surveillance and normalize the idea of the government spying on Americans. 

T. Thomas Fortune: The Forgotten Founder of Abolition Democracy

by Robin D.G. Kelley

T. Thomas Fortune's critique of Reconstruction is a radical intellectual document that has valuable lessons for the activists and scholars associated with the prison abolition movement. 

Introducing “Disciplining The Nation”

by Matt Guariglia and Charlotte Rosen

"Rooted in racial slavery, settler colonialism, and U.S. empire, policing and incarceration in the United States were slowly and meticulously built over time for the purpose of subordinating, punishing, and exploiting populations –and historians have the documents to prove it."

Facial Surveillance Has Always Been Flawed

by Amanda Levendowski

Today, artificial intelligence startups are scraping the web to build massive face-recognition databases, without any pretense of consent by the public. The technology may be new, but the intrusive assertion of surveillance has a long history. 

Philadelphia DA: Prosecutors Hid Evidence for Years in a 2003 Murder Case

Prosecutors in Philadelphia are accused of withholding evidence that undermined the credibility of key witnesses in the case, a pattern that critics argue has been widespread.

Kyle Rittenhouse's Trial Will End in a Verdict. The Nation's Trial By Ordeal Won't

by Thomas Lecaque

"A trial by ordeal was not about miracles or superstition. It was, in effect, about the community making a decision on the innocence or guilt of the party, and then bringing it about." Kyle Rittenhouse's trial prompts an uncomfortable reckoning with the continuity of some medieval practices of justice.

Historically, Black Distrust of Police is About More than Acts of Violence

by Christopher Hayes

The Harlem rebellion against the NYPD in July 1964 was sparked by a police killing of a teenager (and a grand jury's refusal to indict him), but reflected the role of the police in maintaining a profoundly unequal social order that affected everyday life in Black neighborhoods, a situation that has changed little. 

Let the Punishment Fit the Crime

by Ben Austen and Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Tough-on-crime laws that forbid discretionary parole emerged in the 1970s. A historical perspective suggests they've failed, keeping people in prison long after doing so protects society. 

The Martinsville Seven, Executed for an Alleged Rape, Pardoned by Virginia Governor 70 Years Later

"Northam granted the pardons after a meeting with the descendants of the Martinsville Seven. He said the pardons do not address whether the men were guilty, but rather serve "as recognition from the Commonwealth" that they were tried without adequate due process."

Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance State

by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber

Landlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis.