One of the most important battles of criminal justice today should be changing incarcerated laborers’ classification to legal workers. This would provide the same rights and benefits as non-inmate labor and allow prisoners to earn a “livable wage."
Two bills, currently under consideration in Tennessee, could change sentencing rules that keep many inside prisons for too long.
“We don’t look at the crime. We are looking at predetention when you have not been convicted of a crime. We didn’t make the system. The system says, ‘You are innocent until proven guilty.’”
Reform advocates condemn raft of measures expected to pass under new far-right governor
The African American perfectionists offered “faith” instead of “hope”—emphasizing the struggle to realize a vision of justice rather than passive assurance that it would prevail.
The 2018 Farm Bill okayed the production of hemp, removed it from the DEA's list of Controlled Substances and changed the marijuana landscape — that doesn’t erase criminalization’s disastrous impact on the working class.
These inspiring developments serve as powerful reminders that by working together in pursuit of progress, we can manifest meaningful criminal legal reform that makes our country more humane, more just, and more democratic.
A draconian legal doctrine called felony murder has put thousands of Americans—disproportionately young and Black—in prison.
“This is not the solution to mass incarceration,” Rep. Ryan Clancy stressed. “This is harm reduction to the incredible damage that we do inherently when we incarcerate people.”
Reshaping the Kansas Technical Institute’s campus into an actual prison provides a perspective on what it means when, over time, whole populations are functionally criminalized.
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