Social Movements & the Law

A Chicago Cook County Jail chaplain and mass-incarceration sociologist examines the lifelong realities of a criminal record, demonstrating how America's justice system is less about rehabilitation and more about structured disenfranchisement.

Documents the true story of one of the longest wrongful imprisonment cases in U.S. history, detailing how three African-American men were incarcerated for nearly four decades before a questionable witness recanted his testimony.;"From award-winning investigative journalist Kyle Swenson, the true story of one of the longest wrongful imprisonments in the United States to end in exoneration, and a critical social and political history of Cleveland, the city that convicted them. In the early 1970s, three African-American men--Wiley Bridgeman, Kwame Ajamu, and Rickey Jackson--were accused and convicted of the brutal robbery and murder of a man outside of a convenience store in Cleveland, Ohio. The prosecution's case, which resulted in a combined 106 years in prison for the three men, rested on the testimony of a twelve-year-old boy from the neighborhood. Almost four decades later, the eyewitness recanted his testimony, and the convictions of Wiley, Kwame, and Rickey were overturned. But while their exoneration may have ended one of American history's most disgraceful miscarriages of justice, the corruption and decay of the city responsible for their imprisonment remain. Interweaving dramatic details of the case with his own research into Cleveland's history, award-winning journalist Kyle Swenson reveals how decades of bad policy and policing were often catastrophic for the city' most vulnerable citizens. Good Kids, Bad City is a work of astonishing empathy and insight: an immersive exploration of systemic racism in America, the struggling Midwest, and how lives lost to incarceration can be recovered."--Jacket.

The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the organization is now an independent nonprofit. Our work is guided by science and grounded in anti-racism.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom.

Attendees will learn strategies for broadening Banned Books Week (BBW) programming through the inclusion of Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) BBW materials a...

"Rapping urges us to understand that meaningful criminal justice reform requires a cultural transformation, and that public defenders, serving as the voice of impacted communities, must be at the center of this effort"--

We speak with acclaimed scholar and activist Kimberlé Crenshaw about her new book #SayHerName, which honors the stories of 177 Black women and girls killed by police between 1975 and 2022 whose deaths received little media coverage or other attention. “We can’t give these women back to their families, but we can make sure that they are not lost to history,” Crenshaw tells Democracy Now! She also discusses the ongoing right-wing “attack on Black knowledge,” such as Florida’s new education curriculum that claims slavery had “personal benefit” for enslaved people, as well as the recent death of civil rights scholar Charles Ogletree.

"In the United States today, one in every 31 adults is under some form of penal control, including one in eleven African American men. How did the "land of the free" become the home of the world's largest prison system? Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration's War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society at the height of the civil rights era. Johnson's War on Poverty policies sought to foster equality and economic opportunity. But these initiatives were also rooted in widely shared assumptions about African Americans' role in urban disorder, which prompted Johnson to call for a simultaneous War on Crime. The 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act empowered the national government to take a direct role in militarizing local police. Federal anticrime funding soon incentivized social service providers to ally with police departments, courts, and prisons. Under Richard Nixon and his successors, welfare programs fell by the wayside while investment in policing and punishment expanded. Anticipating future crime, policy makers urged states to build new prisons and introduced law enforcement measures into urban schools and public housing, turning neighborhoods into targets of police surveillance. By the 1980s, crime control and incarceration dominated national responses to poverty and inequality. The initiatives of that decade were less a sharp departure than the full realization of the punitive transformation of urban policy implemented by Republicans and Democrats alike since the 1960s"--Provided by publisher.

The family of Tyre Nichols, who died in January after being severely beaten by five Memphis police officers, has filed a $550 million federal lawsuit against the city of Memphis over his death. The five officers charged with second-degree murder have pleaded not guilty. Geoff Bennett discussed the latest with Nichols' mother RowVaughn Wells and attorney Ben Crump.

"In this powerful and insightful book, Andrea D. Lyon explicates what is wrong with the criminal justice system through clients' stories and historical perspective, and makes the compelling case for the need for reform at the center of the system; not just its edges. Lyon, suggests that we need someone who represents the poor and disenfranchised. Someone who has a seat at the table for any discussions of policy, funding, or priorities in the administration of justice. The United States needs a Defender General"--

This week marks the second anniversary of the police murder of George Floyd. We speak with Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa, wh...

"In March of 2011, Howard University sponsored an Alternative Spring Break trip to Chicago where law students worked with me to create several lessons in constitutional law for middle schoolers. The lesson on policing teaches civilians the constitutional limits on police power. Sometimes referred to as "Street Law," I call the training Know Your Rights. It was a huge hit with middle school students and teachers, and became the genesis for Know Your Rights trainings in other venues. I will never forget Raven and Stanley, the two Howard students volunteering in Chicago who wrote the first drafts of skits we performed, and found ways to connect with the middle school students we taught. When another teacher brought her class to hear the two firebrands, doubling Raven and Stanley's class size, Raven even stood on a chair to be heard"--

Provides a critical understanding and evaluation of police tactics and the use of force Police violence has historically played an important role in shaping public attitudes toward the government. Community trust and confidence in policing have been undermined by the perception that officers are using force unnecessarily, too frequently, or in problematic ways. The use of force, or harm suffered by a community as a result of such force, can also serve as a flashpoint, a spark that ignites long-simmering community hostility. In Evaluating Police Uses of Force, legal scholar Seth W. Stoughton, former deputy chief of police Jeffrey J. Noble, and distinguished criminologist Geoffrey P. Alpert explore a critical but largely overlooked facet of the difficult and controversial issues of police violence and accountability: how does society evaluate use-of-force incidents? By leading readers through answers to this question from four different perspectives--constitutional law, state law, administrative regulation, and community expectations--and by providing critical information about police tactics and force options that are implicated within those frameworks, Evaluating Police Uses of Force helps situate readers within broader conversations about governmental accountability, the role that police play in modern society, and how officers should go about fulfilling their duties.

An unusually intimate, year-long journey across the stubbornly violent landscape of our cities through the eyes of those fighting to sow peace and security.

"The problem is not police training, police diversity, or police methods. The problem is the dramatic and unprecedented expansion and intensity of policing in the last forty years, a fundamental shift in the role of police in society. The problem is policing itself"--Cover.;"Recent years have seen an explosion of protest and concern about police brutality and repression--especially after long-held grievances in Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in months of violent protest following the police killing of Brown. Much of the conversation has focused on calls for enhancing police accountability, increasing police diversity, improving police training, and emphasizing community policing. Unfortunately, none of these is likely to produce results, because they fail to get at the core of the problem. The problem is policing itself--the dramatic expansion of the police role over the last forty years. This book attempts to jog public discussion of policing by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control and demonstrating how the expanded role of the police is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice--even public safety. Drawing on first-hand research from across the globe, Alex Vitale shows how the implementation of alternatives to policing, like drug legalization, regulation, and harm reduction instead of the policing of drugs, has led to reductions in crime, spending, and injustice"--Provided by publisher.

"In 2002, the Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, opening the door to the Court's application of the Eighth Amendment on an almost annual basis - Roper v. Simmons (2005), Kennedy v. Louisiana (2007), Baze v. Rees (2008), Graham v. Florida (2010), Brown v. Plata (2011), Miller v. Alabama (2012), Hall v. Florida (2014), Glossip v. Gross (2015), Moore v. Texas (2017), Bucklew v. Precythe (2019), Timbs v. Indiana (2019), Kahler v. Kansas (2019-20 term), and Mathena v. Malvo (2019-20 term). These decisions generated a number of interesting conversations and papers by many of the contributors to this book. Some particularly memorable conversations included a SEALS panel in the summer of 2011 in Hilton Head, South Carolina, with John Stinneford and Corinna Lain; a Law & Society panel in Boston, Massachusetts in 2013 with Rick Bierschbach and Beth Colgan; a Law & Society panel in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2014 with Richard Frase; an AALS panel in 2016 in New York City with Corinna Lain, Debby Denno, and Eric Berger; and a Law & Society panel in Washington, DC in 2019 with Corinna Lain and John Bessler. And of course, we should mention the SEALS panel we had in August 2018 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with many of the contributors in preparation for this volume: Rick Bierschbach, Mike Mannheimer, Debby Denno, John Bessler, Corinna Lain, John Stinneford, and Cara Drinan"--

"Driving While Brown is a saga and a warning. Two investigative journalists spent several years chronicling the human consequences of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's relentless immigration enforcement in Maricopa County, Arizona. They tell the tale of two dueling movements--Arizona's restrictionist cause embraced by Joe Arpaio and the Latino resistance that rose up against him. This inside story of the wrenching battles that embittered and divided Arizonans offers a fresh perspective on the roots of the Trump administration's national crusade against immigrants. The narrative follows activist Lydia Guzman, who paid a steep personal price for gathering evidence in a landmark racial-profiling lawsuit that took surprising twists and stunned the nation. The daughter of a Mexican immigrant, Guzman was one voice in the Latino-led resistance--a coalition of men and women of different generations united in their unfaltering resolve to stop Arpaio, reform unconstitutional law enforcement, and fight for their civil rights. Driving While Brown documents Arpaio's transformation from 'America's Toughest Sheriff,' who forced jail inmates to wear pink underwear, into the nation's most notorious immigration enforcer. A polarizing figure in recent American history, the sheriff was celebrated by a national fan base even as he became a symbol of white supremacy to his foes. After being found guilty of a crime tied to disobeying a federal judge, Arpaio was pardoned by his friend, Donald Trump. In Driving While Brown, Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block immerse readers in the lives of people on both sides of this tense narrative. The result of tireless investigative reporting, their book provides critical insights into effective resistance to entrenched, institutionalized racism in law enforcement"--

'Doing Justice, Preventing Crime' lays normative and empirical foundations for building new, more just, and more effective systems of sentencing and punishment in the 21st century. The overriding goals are to prevent crime while treating people convicted of crimes justly, fairly, and even-handedly; to take sympathetic account of the circumstances of peoples' lives; and to punish no one more severely than he or she deserves. Michael Tonry discusses philosophy and punishment theory, surveys what is known about the deterrent, incapacitative, and rehabilitative effects of punishment, and explains what needs to be done to move from an ignoble present to a better future.

On April 27, the Brookings Policy 2020 initiative and the Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary policy hosted an online discussion with William “Sandy” Darity and Kirsten Mullen on their new book, "From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century" (University of North Carolina Press). https://www.brookings.edu/events/webinar-reparations-for-black-americans-whether-why-and-how/ (transcript available) Subscribe! http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=BrookingsInstitution Follow Brookings on social media! Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/Brookings Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/BrookingsInst Instagram: http://www.Instagram.com/brookingsinst LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/com/company/the-brookings-institution

"Powerful, wry essays offering modern takes on a primitive practice, from one of our most widely read death penalty abolitionists"--

Since 1996, death sentences in America have declined by more than 60 percent, reversing a generation-long trend toward greater acceptance of capital punishment. In theory, most Americans continue to support the death penalty. But it is no longer seen as a theoretical matter. Prosecutors, judges, and juries across the country have moved in large numbers to give much greater credence to the possibility of mistakes - mistakes that in this arena are potentially fatal. The discovery of innocence, documented in this book through painstaking analyses of media coverage and with newly developed methods, has led to historic shifts in public opinion and to a sharp decline in use of the death penalty by juries across the country. A social cascade, starting with legal clinics and innocence projects, has snowballed into a national phenomenon that may spell the end of the death penalty in America.

This vital addition to carceral, prison, and disability studies draws important new links between deinstitutionalization and decarceration Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the twentieth century: the closure of disability institutions and psychiatric hospitals. Decarcerating Disability provides a much-needed corrective, combining a genealogy of deinstitutionalization with critiques of the current prison system. Liat Ben-Moshe provides groundbreaking case studies that show how abolition is not an unattainable goal but rather a reality, and how it plays out in different arenas of incarceration-antipsychiatry, the field of intellectual disabilities, and the fight against the prison-industrial complex. Ben-Moshe discusses a range of topics, including why deinstitutionalization is often wrongly blamed for the rise in incarceration; who resists decarceration and deinstitutionalization, and the coalitions opposing such resistance; and how understanding deinstitutionalization as a form of residential integration makes visible intersections with racial desegregation. By connecting deinstitutionalization with prison abolition, Decarcerating Disability also illuminates some of the limitations of disability rights and inclusion discourses, as well as tactics such as litigation, in securing freedom. Decarcerating Disability's rich analysis of lived experience, history, and culture helps to chart a way out of a failing system of incarceration.

The Black Lives Matter group has been fighting to be heard since 2013 - and the phrase itself is now being seen on streets and screens all around the world after the killing of George Floyd. But how did the movement get here? And how did it begin? (Subscribe: https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe) ------- Watch more of our explainer series here - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXjqQf1xYLQ6bu-iixvoFTVsiXQVlVniX Get more news at our site - https://www.channel4.com/news/ Follow us: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Channel4News/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/Channel4News

From the author of the national bestseller Dead Man Walking comes a brave and fiercely argued new book that tests the moral edge of the debate on capital punishment: What if we’re executing innocent men? Two cases in point are Dobie Gillis Williams, an indigent black man with an IQ of 65, and Joseph Roger O’Dell. Both were convicted of murder on flimsy evidence (O’Dell’s principal accuser was a jailhouse informant who later recanted his testimony). Both were executed in spite of numerous appeals. Sister Helen Prejean watched both of them die.As she recounts these men’s cases and takes us through their terrible last moments, Prejean brilliantly dismantles the legal and religious arguments that have been used to justify the death penalty. Riveting, moving, and ultimately damning, The Death of Innocents is a book we dare not ignore.

Selected letters from Incarcerated Persons requesting books from Books to Prisoners, a Prison Book Program

In 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became the spiritual advisor to Patrick Sonnier, the convicted killer of two teenagers who was sentenced to die in the electric chair of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison. In the months before Sonnier’s death, the Roman Catholic nun came to know a man who was as terrified as he had once been terrifying. She also came to know the families of the victims and the men whose job it was to execute—men who often harbored doubts about the rightness of what they were doing. Out of that dreadful intimacy comes a profoundly moving spiritual journey through our system of capital punishment. Here Sister Helen confronts both the plight of the condemned and the rage of the bereaved, the fears of a society shattered by violence and the Christian imperative of love. On its original publication in 1993, Dead Man Walking emerged as an unprecedented look at the human consequences of the death penalty. Now, some two decades later, this story—which has inspired a film, a stage play, an opera and a musical album—is more gut-wrenching than ever, stirring deep and life-changing reflection in all who encounter it.

"The job of the exert witness is to offer opinions about a case based on a subjective understanding and analysis of the evidence. It is the nature of litigation that the opposing side will always dispute those opinions and offer their own counter-opinions. The opinions offered in this book about the cases discussed have all previously been disclosed in publicly available expert witness reports and court documents. They are just that, opinions. Only a Judge or Jury can rule on the ultimate issue of guilt or innocence"--

Dead Certainty is about the challenge of judging matters of public concern without a common sense of the good or other shared criteria that validate final decisions. Examining both the philosophical and the practical aspects of this challenge, this book focuses on United States Supreme Court opinions that authorize and regulate the practice of sentencing people to death. Unlike other books that discuss capital punishment, it does not argue for or against the death penalty. Instead, Dead Certainty contributes to a larger project in contemporary political and legal philosophy: re-imagining how people in today's world give coherence and meaning to their shared experience. Culbert's work will be of interest to scholars of political theory, jurisprudence, law and society, rhetoric, continental philosophy, and ethics.

Regarder cette vidéo en français ici: https://youtu.be/10IfuOWhhpk Mira este video en español aquí: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W258VJEtNk Watch a conversation with human rights defenders working on police violence and/or systemic racism! Along with discussing the specific country-contexts including how patterns of systemic racism affect women and LGBTI+ persons, they discuss the implementation of the Human Rights Council resolution 43/1 that mandated the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights with preparing a report on systemic racism and police violence against Africans and people of African descent. Panellists: - Salimah Hankins, U.S. Human Rights Network - Mireille Fanon-Mendès France, Fondation Frantz Fanon - Douglas Belchior, Uneafro Brasil and Coalizão Negra por Direitos - Rodje Malcom, Jamaicans for Justice - Esther Mamadou, Implementation Team for the International Decade for People of African Descent Spain - Deji Adeyanju, Concerned Nigerians + Videos by Dayana Blanco Acendra,Founder and Director General of Ilex Acción Jurídica (Colombia), and Mothers against Police Brtuality (USA) More information: https://www.ishr.ch/anti-black-racism-police-brutality-human-rights-defenders-expectations-un-human-rights-council