The most popular statistic regarding the United States’ prison system is that there are 2.5 million people incarcerated. However, this figure significantly under-represents the number of people [...]
Kimberly King woke up at 5 a.m. on a February morning in 1997 to her phone ringing. Her mother was on the other end, calling to tell her that her brother, Damani Carter, had been shot in the head [...]
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has ignited a firestorm of criticism, from both the left and the right as well as the mainstream media, for calling US immigrant detention centers [...]
By Emily Nagisa Keehn and Dana Walters, Theconversation.com -
In a country with mass incarceration, horrific prison conditions and a penal system suffused with racism, some American prison reform activists wistfully look to Scandinavian [...]
My fellow college graduates: Integrity is not an inherited trait. It is not conferred by privilege or status or wealth. It cannot be bequeathed by elite schools or institutions. It is not a [...]
Prison reform is now in vogue, but police power remains as brutal as ever. Policing in the US continues to include the power to cage as well as the power to kill — a reality that is spectacularly [...]
This summer we witnessed a prisoner-led struggle for justice on a scale never seen before. Catalyzed by a massacre at Lee Correctional Institution in South Carolina that took the lives of at [...]
By Ruth Delaney, Ram Subramanian, Alison Shames, and Nicholas Turner, Vera.org -
This document—unlike anything we have ever produced at the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera)—is about the possibility of radical change. It asserts a dramatic reconsideration of the most severe [...]
Black activist groups marched on the National Mall and Justice Department in Washington, D.C. on Saturday to raise awareness about the injustices black women face. The march’s goal was [...]
Everything from finding a job to renting an apartment can be challenging when a criminal record is disclosed. As a result, formerly incarcerated people often struggle to get back on their feet [...]
A vote by Sacramento County supervisors this week to end a contract allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to rent local jail beds is being celebrated by immigration activists as a [...]
17-year-old Lew Blank was fiddling around with the Weldon Cooper Center’s Racial Dot Map when he discovered something disturbing about Wisconsin, where he lives: More than half of the [...]
Our current historical moment demands a radical re-imagining of how we address various harms. The levers of power are currently in the hands of an administration that is openly hostile to the [...]
If mass incarceration were an effective way to fight crime, then one would expect to see a strong correlation between higher rates of incarceration and reduced crime. States have been running a [...]
It's long been a given that racial disparities plague the nation's criminal justice system. That's still true—black people are incarcerated at a rate five times higher than that of white [...]
