Race and Incarceration in America

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“University of Chicago Police Department officers will begin using body-worn cameras in April, as part of an ongoing commitment to the safety of officers and the people the department serves.”

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Rikers killed Kalief Browder

The brother of Kalief Browder, who took his own life after his unjust imprisonment at Rikers Island, talks about the ordeal.

(tw sa) I found an interview with Akeem Browder, one of Kalief’s brothers. He tells a different story from Jennifer Gonnerman and Paul Prestia, which is interesting. Like this for example: “And they harassed him after he got out. Cops would sit outside my mother's house, watching Kalief come and go. They sent him threatening text messages. They would point at him in a threatening way. They watched him all the time. So of course he became paranoid--they made my brother paranoid. Rikers created this other Kalief.” Gonnerman and Prestia just said he had paranoia about being followed. Akeem thinks he actually was. 

[raceandincarceration]

Debatable

How an outsider became the vanguard of a movement that made everything about debate debatable.

GUYS. An episode of Radiolab about debate and blackness and systematic exclusion. So on topic! 

[raceandincarceration]

Desensitization Lines

Photo by Femi Matti | Words By Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela The goal of the job was one I could get behind: close the case. About ten years ago, I had a social s

let’s keep this tumblr alive

[raceandincarceration]

IRC releases annual report on UCPD complaints

The eight complaints that were reviewed by the IRC focused on racial profiling, unprofessional or rude behavior, and unwarranted search or damage of property.

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Legal Scholar: Jim Crow Still Exists In America

Michelle Alexander says that many of the gains of the civil rights movement have been undermined by the mass incarceration of blacks in the war on drugs.

[raceandincarceration]

Google gives $1M to Bryan Stevenson's racial justice effort

Google.org is giving the Equal Justice Initiative $1 million and a platform for its public education mission to get America to confront its violent racial history.

In case anyone is interested in what Bryan Stevenson is up to... 

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For those of you voting in Cook County, this looks like a pretty reliable guide to determine what judges are qualified.

[raceandincarceration]

The Community Bond Fund

This revolving fund was recently established to help people pay bond and work for the abolition of money bond in Cook County.

[raceandincarceration]

[raceandincarceration]

Datafloq - Connecting Data and People

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A new Illinois law is going to cost Cook County $5 million in revenue each year. But the politician who pushed the law says those profits were being taken out of the pockets of the poorest residents.

[raceandincarceration]

These are some links for bondsmen in Louisville, Kentucky, a state where bail bonds are illegal. I am so confused.

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The American Bail Coalition response to the Justice Policy Institute’s proposals for bail reform. This is written by Dennis Bartlett, who is mentioned in the Bauer reading for Week 9.

[raceandincarceration]

This is George B. Kaiser’s giving pledge. He founded the George B. Kaiser Foundation that funded the Women in Recovery program in Tulsa that the New Yorker article referenced. This is not really relevant to our class but it’s sort of interesting and a little weird.

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Atheist Group Sues to Stop State Funding for Religious Halfway Houses

On Wednesday afternoon, the Leon County Circuit Court will begin hearing oral argument in a case filed by atheist group Center for Inquiry against Lamb of God and Prisoners of Christ, two ministries that are also drug and substance abuse rehab centers. The CFI filed a motion for summary judgement last...

My impression was that halfway houses are mostly run by religious organizations, particularly Christian ones and particularly in the South, but I wasn’t able to find any hard information on this. Still, religiously affiliated halfway houses associated with the criminal justice system raise an important question of church-state interaction. Everyone may not feel/be safe in a Christian halfway house, but if churches get to be the only ones left with the funding or the motivation to provide the “wraparound services” and something of an ethic of care for this work, what are we left with?

[raceandincarceration]

New halfway houses could be coming to your neighborhood

More halfway houses could be coming to your neighborhood. In the next 4 years, Oxford House plans to open 20 new clean and sober living houses across Eastern North Carolina.

This is a North Carolina local news piece that seems to illustrate some of the NIMBY sentiment around halfway houses and other institutions of the criminal justice system that could be doing necessary work. People who live in the neighborhood already don’t want the halfway house to come to them because they are worried about property values and safety.  “Despite concerns from the neighborhood that halfway houses decrease property values, commissioners said that Federal Fair Housing laws protect certain classes of people, including those recovering from substance abuse. The adjusted ordinance is an effort to balance federal housing requirements with property owners concerns. Commissioners passed additional restrictions requiring a certain distance between halfway houses, to prevent any one neighborhood from being overrun.