criminal justice

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  6/14/2021
  

  Supreme Court Rejects Sentence Reductions for Minor Crack Offenses

  Justices disagreed about what lessons to draw from the history of the 1986 Crime Bill that created the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine offenses. Does the fact that some Black organizations at the time supported the law excuse its racist impact? 

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• SOURCE: The New Republic
  5/27/2021
  

  The Lies Cops Tell and the Lies We Tell About Cops

  by Stuart Schrader

  "The core of policing is not safety. It is social control. All the other lies obfuscate this function."

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• SOURCE: Vox
  5/20/2021
  

  Why Firing Squads are Making a Comeback in 21st-Century America

  South Carolina's proposed return to execution by firing squad reflects the facts that, while the Roberts Court is very protective of capital punishment, it is increasingly difficult for states to acquire the drugs needed to perform lethal injections. It remains to be seen if firing squads will turn public opinion against capital punishment. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  5/3/2021
  

  An Artist on How He Survived the Chain Gang

  Winfred Rembert spent seven years on a chain gang in Georgia for his civil rights activism. His art commemorates the experience. 

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• 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. 

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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. 

• 
• 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. 

• 
• 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.

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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.