News & Commentary

Jena Faith’s experience in the Steuben County Jail was a living nightmare. The military veteran spent four weeks in the jail awaiting tri

Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that the Commonwealth of Kentucky was liable for $224,000 for the actions of Kim Davis, who refused to do her job and issue marriage licenses (to same-sex or different-sex couples) as county clerk. While Davis’ story made national headlines, her case isn’t the only one in th

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In March 2011, a tactical team of guards at a state prison in Lincoln, Illinois gathered 200 women and ushered them into a gymnasium, where they were brought in small groups into a separate room nearby. Inside that room, they were told to strip naked in plain view of other guards, cadets, and civilians, without any explanation. Women on their periods were ordered to remove their tampons and sanitary pads. One-by-one, each woman was ordered to lift her breasts, cough and squat, and display her vaginal and anal cavities. Those who refused were threatened with punishment. In total, the ordeal lasted nearly four hours. When used by combatants in war and armed conflict, these tactics

In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed defendants to strike the death penalty from their cases if they could show that racial discrimination was a factor in their prosecution. The law came as a response to a series of exonerations of Black people who were falsely convicted of crimes they did not commit by all-white or nearly all-white juries. The legislature took a bold step to address was what suspected to be deeply troubling evidence of racism infecting the death penalty—but no one knew for sure what evidence uncovered by the RJA would find. In 2010, people on death row began filing RJA claims. Four had hearings, and the evidence uncovered was indeed stark, troubli

Ramon Torres had been a U.S. citizen for nearly ten years when he was detained for four days on an immigration hold – despite having a U.S. passport, a Louisiana driver’s license, and a Social Security card, and despite that fact that a court ordered his release.  Torres’ ordeal began in August 2018, when he was pulled over and arrested on suspicion of driving while intoxicated. Torres

A pillar of our democracy is the presumption of innocence: before a person has been convicted of a crime, they are considered completely innocent under the law. Yet across the country, people who have not been convicted are punished—both explicitly and implicitly—based on the mistaken assumption that they are dangerous, purely on the basis of an accusation. We do not live in a society where you can be incarcerated or monitored simply because you have been accused of a crime. Doing so violates constitutional rights, fuels mass incarceration, and impedes a fair and functioning justice system.   Arguably, the most important moment in one’s case is the dec

The budget for Trump’s turbo-charged immigration enforcement and border militarization is now larger than ever. And just last week, we learned that ICE plans to redirect even more money to further expand immigration detention and enforcement. The request is currently pending approval by congressional appropriators. This comes on the heels of the Mississippi ICE raid — the largest single-state raid in history. Children were separated from their families on the first day of school and nearly 700 people were detained by ICE.  Worse still, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard