New Jersey’s Prisons and the Coronavirus
New Jersey just took a major step toward protecting the public from the coronavirus. It ordered the release of nearly 1,000 low-level offenders in county jails – which represents about one-tenth of the jail population. This makes good sense. Jails and prisons are breeding grounds for viral diseases. People in prison live on top […]
The Death Penalty Lottery
Colorado’s Governor Jared Polis has announced he will sign a state bill to abolish capital punishment. Lawmakers in Colorado decided to end the death penalty because it was expensive, arbitrary, rarely used, and risked the execution of the innocent. It is also unnecessary. Offenders who commit murder can be sentenced to other severe penalties, such […]
Nineteen Prison Deaths in Two Months
This past Wednesday, Omar Beard died in a Mississippi prison of “natural causes.” He was only 36-years-old. Beard is the nineteenth death to occur in a Mississippi prison in the last two months. People in Mississippi prisons have died from homicide, suicide and what the State describes as “natural deaths.” They have died from neglect, […]
What Impeachment and Voting Bans Have in Common: The Fear of Too Much Truth
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Republican Senate’s decision to close the impeachment trial without witnesses. There will be no evidence at what has now become a “trial” in name only. Their decision reeks of fear. If the evidence had shown what Democrats said it would, the Republicans would have been hard-pressed to […]
My Speech About Felony Disenfranchisement at the 2020 Official NYC Women’s March in Foley Square
It’s 2020. In 1920 – just 100 years ago — the 19th Amendment was ratified and women of the day finally won the right to vote. The right to vote is one we hold dear. The right to vote means everything to so many of us. How many of you — like me — are […]
Four Steps You Can Take Right Now to End Felony Disenfranchisement
Step One: Learn about felony disenfranchisement. An informed electorate is a powerful electorate. The Sentencing Project has a number of publications about felony disenfranchisement, including this primer from June 2019. Check out this interactive map from the ACLU. See where your favorite Democratic presidential primary candidate stands on the issue. Step Two: Let Florida know […]
Top 10 Criminal Justice Wish List for 2020
This past year brought glimmers of hope for criminal justice reformers, from the decision to close Riker’s Island jail facility in New York City to the continued election of progressive prosecutors. But 2020 presents an array of issues that we need to keep tackling if we are ever going to achieve a fair and equitable […]
When the Wrongly Convicted Plead Guilty for Freedom
*Originally published in Medium 10/28/2019. Elvis Brooks spent forty-two years in a Louisiana prison — nearly two-thirds of his life — for a murder he always insisted he did not commit. Arrested in 1977 at the age of nineteen, Brooks was charged with robbery and murder. No physical evidence connected him to the crime. At […]
How Corruption in Forensic Science is Harming the Criminal Justice System
*Originally published in The Conversation 01/25/2019. Television crime dramas like “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and its many spin-offs have fostered the popular belief that forensic science, or the use of science to solve crimes, is infallible. Yet, as forensic scandal after forensic scandal sweeps the nation, a competing truth has emerged. Forensic science is only […]
The Innocence Plea Problem
*Originally published in the University of California Press Blog 11/12/2018 in conjunction with the meeting of the American Society of Criminology. On August 12, 2019, Cody Gregg, a homeless man from Oklahoma, was stopped by the police for the crime of riding a bicycle without a working rear headlight. When the police searched his backpack, […]