TJC BLOG
The Role of Prosecutors in Reforming our Criminal Legal System [Video]
Our expert panelists on this webinar spoke about the power of prosecutors to make decisions that affect peoples lives thousands of times a day. Despite the enormous power prosecutors wield and the fact that a vast majority are elected officials, many of us dont know their names, when theyre up for election, or…
Read MoreMississippi’s Harmful Habitual Offender Laws [Video]
How did a Mississippi man end up getting sentenced to serve 60 years in prison for purchasing cold medicine and batteries? Blame the states ineffective and unjust habitual offender laws Mississippis version of a three-strikes law which continue to ruin lives with extreme prison sentences for relatively minor crimes. Our panel discusses the…
Read MoreJournalists’ Guide to Reporting on Crime and Public Safety
Alec Karakatsanis Book Talk [Video]
Civil rights lawyer Alec Karakatsanis joins The Justice Collaborative to discuss his recently published book, Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System. Karakatsanis, executive director of Civil Rights Corp, explores nagging questions of who we choose to punish, how we punish them, and for what crimes, while concluding that the alignment…
Read MoreFrom Innocence to Redemption: Perspectives on Ending the Death Penalty [Video]
Since its formalization, the death penalty has been marked by racial bias, wrongful convictions, soaring costs, and disproportionate impacts on the most vulnerable people. From innocence to redemption, the reasons for ending the use of the death penalty are many, and the longer the practice persists, the more injustice flourishes. Eliminating the death penalty ensures…
Read MoreJail Churn [Video]
How many people are really booked into local jails each year? And for what crimes? Our panel digs into a recent Prison Policy Initiative report that examines the data to help explain the problem of jail churn in cities and jurisdictions across the U.S. Panelists include: Ethan Corey, Senior Fact Checker & Researcher, The Appeal…
Read MoreTreat All Kids Like Kids [Video]
Kids should not be in the adult criminal legal system. But every year in the United States, close to 100,000 youth are put into the adult system, most of them for non-violent offenses. The school environment created by constant policing through the use of school resource officers has significant social, psychological, and even physical impact…
Read MoreEnding Cash Bail [Video]
During the webinar, panelists discussed how the cash bail system criminalizes poverty, as well as pretrial incarcerations impact on a persons later sentencing (especially for people of color and low-income communities) and the myths behind bail as a legitimate form of accountability. Our panelists explored the social and legal contexts of the countrys bail system…
Read MoreExtreme Sentencing: How States Drive Mass Incarceration [Video]
As of 2016, there were 206,268 people in the United States serving a life-sentence or a de-facto life sentence of over 50 years. It would take an 80% reduction in incarceration to get us to the level of other Western democracies. There is no way to make a significant reduction in incarceration without addressing these…
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