Latest criminal justice news, updates and commentary 8.15.24
Hello to all and thanks for your patience as I took some vacation time! Here’s another round of updates on what’s happening around the country. I welcome any feedback or suggestions in the comments!
Top reads/views: the All People’s Health Collective on what’s at stake in the California this fall: an attempt to roll back one of the most successful reforms in the country, aka prop 47; revealing the horrors of the private ‘troubled teen’ industry; Netflix released a new documentary called Daughters, about four girls connecting with their fathers in prison.
Media
Organizer, MacArthur Genius Award winner, and community trainer Raj Jayadev just released his book on the incredible potential of participatory defense. It’s called Protect Your People: How Ordinary Families are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration. I’m excited to check it out! Raj wrote in Inquest about the book and the participatory defense model.
A new documentary called Daughters was released today on Netflix. It follows the stories of four young girls prepping for a “daddy / daughter dance” with their incarcerated fathers. This may be the only time they get to hug their dads during their entire sentence. The film won the ‘festival favorite’ award and audience award at Sundance.
A new film set in prison called Sing Sing, in theaters now, earned a glowing review from the New York Times.
This October we will see the first ever San Quentin Film festival.
I recently heard about a documentary that came out earlier this year about the mass hunger strike led by California prisoners to protest the horrific conditions in solitary confinement. It’s called The Strike.
The Laura Flanders & Friends show did an episode on work to address over incarceration in L.A.
I finally picked up a book that I’ve been meaning to read for over a year, City of Inmates, by professor Kelly Lytle Hernández. It’s about the history of jailing in Los Angeles, and I’m finding it to be very readable so far. I was struck by the book’s description of how the jail was predominantly used in the early days to incarcerated Native people charged with public order offenses such as vagrancy. The use of the jail was so lopsided that the city council described the jailer’s monthly salary as payment for “boarding Indians as city prisoners,” and described the chain gang overseers salary as covering “superintending Indians on public works.” The book describes various distinct eras of the jail, where jailing was focused on different ‘undesirable’ groups in L.A. Recommended!
Solutions and Wins
Civil Rights Corps has won its lawsuit in New York saying that those who bring complaints against lawyers in discipline cases have a First Amendment right to attend hearings and view documents on the cases. This is especially important for misconduct claims against prosecutors.
President Biden signed Senator Ossoff’s prison oversight bill, which will increase health and safety inspections and oversight in all 122 federal prisons around the country.
Arvel Marshall was finally released from a New York prison after 16 years of wrongful incarceration. At trial, he had pleaded with the judge to review video footage, but the judge told him to “shut up.” Thanks to Scrutinize and CCA, that judge is off the bench now. Scrutinize recently launched a judicial database with useful information on 1200+ judges.
New research finds that a program to install high-speed wifi in community centers reduced crimes committed by children by 14% and victimization by at least 8%.
Inquest profiled The Remedy Project, which trains volunteer students and formerly incarcerated people to file administrative remedies for people in prison who are facing cruel conditions.
The office of Melinda Katz, elected DA in Queens, cooperated with defense attorneys to get over 100 cases dismissed where the police officers were found to have lied in court. This is a really good development for the office, which under past DAs was extremely shady.
Reports and Research
Here’s a research roundup on studies showing that even short jail stays lead to immediate and long-lasting harms. The majority of people in jail haven’t been convicted of anything, but are there because they can’t pay bail.
The ACLU of Louisiana and the Fund for Guaranteed Income released a report on their program to provide $1000 a month for a year to people who were victims of police violence. Wellbeing measures increased across the board.
A study found that heightened levels of incarceration negatively affect birth outcomes for all residents at the county level, while increasing Black-White disparities in infant mortality.
Wall of Shame
Jessica Valenti describes efforts by states to criminalize pregnancy.
Former Kentucky governor Bevin was caught in the spotlight for abandoning his kid at a private and abusive ‘troubled teen’ camp. These places are worse than juvenile detention as the kids effectively disappear and have no advocates or records. Over 50,000 kids are effectively incarcerated in these unregulated and dangerous places right now, costing billions of dollars.
Even when prosecutors realize that a conviction was wrong, it can be nearly impossible to reverse. Here’s ProPublica with a devastating story of a father convicted of killing his baby based on now debunked expert testimony. The Nashville Banner also did a good article on this case.
In a recent survey, over 56% of Phoenix police officers said they were thinking of quitting the department if the city did not fight the DOJ from having oversight over the troubled department.
Missouri voters statewide narrowly passed a referendum to require Kansas City to spend 25% of its budget on policing, regardless of what the voters in Kansas City want to say about it. Moreover, the police department is controlled by the state.
The state of Oregon mistakenly held a woman in prison nearly two years after her release date.
Keri Blakinger investigated shady tactics by the LA Sheriff who has been directing his deputies to improperly ‘investigate’ his political rivals.