News & Commentary

Police arrest more people for drug possession than any other crime in America. Every 25 seconds someone is arrested for possessing drugs for their own use, amounting to 1.25 million arrests per year. These numbers tell a tale of ruined lives, destroyed families, and communities suffering under a suffocating police presence. For the past year I have been investigating how the law enforcement approach to personal drug use has failed.

Tucked into Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s presentation on his $100 billion plan to invest in the state’s infrastructure last week was an initiative that will put New Yorkers’ privacy in peril. Part of Cuomo’s plan to “reimagine New York’s crossings for the 21st century” calls for installing controversial adva

For the past six months, at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri Rivers, history has been made at one of the largest international gatherings of indigenous people in recent history. Representatives from well over 100 indigenous nations and thousands of people have camped, prayed, and taken action in solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on and near the tribe’s sovereign land in North Dakota. And for the past six weeks, history has repeated itself as the Morton County Sheriff’s Office has dramatically

IMAGINE HIRING A BABYSITTER who you have every reason to trust to watch your toddler while you are at work. One day you return to pick up your child and you’re told that she has been taken into custody by the police because the babysitter became inebriated during the day. Fortunately, your child is fine and you are ready to take her home. But, instead, you learn that the police have turned your daughter over to Social Services, and the caseworker refuses to return her to you. You explain the situation, but it makes no difference. The county prosecutor then files a petition for temporary custody against you. Two days later, a ju

In a critical step towards accountability, a federal judge has ordered that former high-ranking CIA officials will have to sit for depositions in the lawsuit against the two psychologists who designed and implemented the CIA torture program. Two of the officials are John Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez, who both held top positions when the torture program w

Interactions between young people and police don’t occur just on the streets of America — they’re happening in our nation’s K-12 schools, too. Increasingly police have become “embedded” in schools, in many cases working there full-time. Many are considered school staff and have daily authority over students, even in situations that have traditionally been seen as everyday disciplinary matters. Little is known about the day-to-day practices of school-based police and about the rules under

A version of this article originally appeared in STAND Magazine, a publication for ACLU members and supporters. FOR MORE THAN HALF

This August, the Justice Department made history when it announced that the Bureau of Prisons would curtail — and eventually end — its use of private prisons. As the Justice Department noted, this change was made possible by criminal justice reforms that reduced its prison population. Now the ACLU is releasing a policy paper that calls on the Department of Homeland Security to follow suit by reducing its detention population and then ending its own use of private prisons. The paper, “

In 2004, University of Virginia football player Marquis Weeks returned a kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown. After the game he described how he did it: "That was just instinct," Weeks said with a laugh. "Kind of like running from the cops, I guess you could say."  It’s funny until it isn’t. The “instinct” exists for a reason. Black and brown people have been running fro