News & Commentary

Or so at first it seemed. I’d been named valedictorian of my class at Pennsboro High School.

The United States’ war with al-Qaida has gone on so long, and has metastasized into so many different uses of U.S. armed forces around the globe, that it may be surprising to learn that the federal courts have only addressed the legality of a very small piece of it. After the 9/11 attacks, Congress passed a statute authorizing the executive branch to use military force agains

In 2012, I founded an organization called Mission: Launch with my mom. Based out of Baltimore, Mission:Launch helps formerly incarcerated individuals become self-sufficient faster. For us, this means helping individuals earn a more livable wage by obtaining an occupational license through our program, LaunchPad. The biggest thing my mom and I have learned since starting Mission:Launch is

Menstruation is a basic biological fact of everyday life for billions of women and girls across the planet. But for women behind bars, having your period can be a living nightmare. Prisons can make maintaining well-being and dignity a monthly struggle. That’s what’s happening in Arizona, where women receive scant hygiene products at great risk to their health and in violation of their human rights. Imagine having to plead for each sanitary napkin you need from a corrections officer. Now imagine the officer

A federal judge in Boston has stayed the deportation of a Rhode Island woman pending his review of a petition challenging her detention and the government’s efforts to remove her. The judge, Mark L. Wolf, is one of a growing number of judges across the country who are looking closely at the government’s increasingly aggressive detention and deportation practices. Lilian Calderon, who was detained last month by Immigration and Customs Enforc

This piece first appeared in Privacy SOS. In December 2016, the Boston City Council held a

Thirty seconds. That’s how long it took for a Cook County judge to eyeball the silenced woman standing before him and set the price of her freedom. Thirty seconds. It was early March and 45-year-old Lavette Mayes

A recent draft report from the Department of Homeland Security called for the discriminatory surveillance of Sunni Muslims in the United States. The report

In my memories of prison, there are no colors. It was a dark, cold, and gray place. Incarceration, for me, was defined by deprivation — not just deprivation of freedom, opportunity, and safety, but deprivation of the senses. On the day of my release, I stepped off a bus at Port Authority and walked out into t