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2022-02-02
Pew Research Center;
The U.S. Supreme Court, which typically attracts only modest attention from the American public, is about to occupy the national spotlight with the possibility of a history-making change among the court's justices and a series of highly anticipated rulings on matters ranging from abortion to gun policy.The court enters this pivotal period with its public image as negative as it has been in many years, as Democrats – especially liberal Democrats – increasingly express unfavorable opinions of the court.In a national survey by Pew Research Center, 54% of U.S. adults say they have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court while 44% have an unfavorable view. The survey was conducted before Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement from the court and President Joe Biden reiterated his pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court to replace Breyer.Over the past three years, the share of adults with a favorable view of the court has declined 15 percentage points, according to the new survey, conducted Jan. 10-17 among 5,128 adults on the Center's American Trends Panel. Looking back further, current views of the court are among the least positive in surveys dating back nearly four decades.
2022-03-31
Bridgespan Group;
Bridgespan's experience and relationships working with institutional foundations and philanthropists created an opportunity to dive into the common challenges we've heard funders navigate: What role could philanthropy play in movement building in criminal justice reform? How might mindset and practice need to shift to enable effective giving to movement?The purpose of this report is to provide guidance for some of those common challenges by offering the perspectives and wisdom of those doing the work. Our research included interviews with more than 40 movement leaders, funders, and others across the ecosystem seeking transformative change of our criminal legal system, as well as a review of literature to understand how social movements can achieve equitable change.Bridgespan recognizes that this research is indebted to the work of many others who have long been thinking about these issues deeply. We hope to contribute to that ongoing conversation and the fight for equity and justice.
2022-02-17
ACLU of Northern California;
Over the past decade, the California Legislature enacted a trio of critical laws intended to protect people from collusion between state and local law enforcement agencies and agencies engaged in immigration enforcement. Certain sheriffs and local law enforcement agencies, however, have circumvented these laws and undermined the protections envisioned for California immigrants — at times in consultation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As a result of these unlawful practices, sheriffs facilitate the reincarceration of noncitizen community members, whom ICE then forces to sit in prison-like detention awaiting trial, often without counsel. Collaboration between sheriffs and ICE are particularly destructive to the communities of the Central Valley: an expansive rural region with a large immigrant population, high poverty levels, and a dearth of legal services providers.This report exposes the different tactics used by Central Valley sheriffs to divert their resources to immigration enforcement and funnel noncitizen community members into the hands of immigration enforcement authorities. This report also reveals new details about the mechanisms developed by Central Valley sheriffs and law enforcement agencies in close partnership with ICE to evade pro-immigrant state laws. Notably, the practice of funneling people in Central Valley communities to ICE custody has continued even during the COVID-19 pandemic, which threatens particularly dangerous results in the congregate settings of ICE detention centers, which have been plagued by outbreaks.A two-year bill that was introduced in 2021 (AB 937, VISION Act), if enacted, would strengthen prohibitions on entanglement between state and local law enforcement agencies and ICE. This report demonstrates the need for such a bill: to sever sheriff entanglement with immigration enforcement and better protect all California residents.
2022-01-25
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law;
In 2019–20, state Supreme Court elections attracted more money — including more spending by special interests — than any judicial election cycle in history, posing a serious threat to the appearance and reality of justice across the country.Thirty-eight states use elections to choose the justices who sit on their highest courts, which typically have the final word in interpreting state law. Over the past two decades, the Brennan Center has tracked and documented more than $500 million in spending in these races.This unparalleled spending speaks to the power and influence of state supreme courts, which often fly below the public's radar. The current political moment only heightens the stakes. In 2020 alone, state supreme courts ruled on everything from ballot access and challenges to election results to governors' emergency orders concerning the Covid-19 pandemic. Looking ahead, state courts are playing a crucial role in the ongoing redistricting cycle, including resolving disputes about racial discrimination and partisan gerrymandering and even drawing electoral maps in some states.States have a wide range of tools to mitigate the harms documented in this report, including eliminating Supreme Court elections or limiting justices to a lengthy single term in office, providing judicial candidates with public financing, strengthening disclosure rules, and adopting recusal and ethics reforms. The 2019–20 cycle underscores that the challenges posed by modern supreme court elections are not going away — and that the need for action is urgent.
2022-11-08
Loyola University New Orleans;
This report provides targeted recommendations for foundations and philanthropy as a supplement to research and findings presented in our 2022 report, "Louisiana Justice: Pre-trial, Incarceration, & Reentry." That report provides a high-level overview of the criminal legal system in Louisiana based on original statistical research and focus group interviews.
2022-11-14
Annie E. Casey Foundation;
Restorative justice models present an alternative way for communities and lawmakers to understand and respond to crime. These models give people who have been harmed the opportunity to be heard, ask questions, seek restoration and gain closure. At the same time, individuals responsible for the crime gain an opportunity to apologize and make amends.This report, produced by the National Conference of State Legislatures, examines restorative justice as a promising approach to juvenile justice reform. The document describes various restorative justice models and how they work to repair harm caused by delinquent acts while balancing the needs of the victim, the individual who committed the offense and the community at large.
2022-08-31
Urban Institute;
With increased attention on and awareness about the rights of incarcerated people, their reproductive rights and other health issues are also gaining traction in national discourse. Reproductive health care is critical for incarcerated people, especially as approximately half are parents of minor children (Ghandnoosh, Stammen, and Muhitch 2021) and 3 to 4 percent of women have been reported to be pregnant upon admission to state and federal prisons (Maruschak 2008). Furthermore, prisons have violated people's reproductive freedom and physical autonomy with inhumane practices such as forced sterilization and the restraining of pregnant people* during labor. Despite its importance, research on reproductive health care access in prisons is limited. In this brief, we provide an overview of what is known about reproductive health care in carceral settings and explore opportunities for further research.
2022-07-14
Juvenile Law Center;
Courts began ordering youth restitution in the 1960s as a less restrictive sanction than probation or incarceration for mostly white youth. Since then, restitution has been linked to higher recidivism rates and heightened racial and economic disparities in the juvenile justice system. This report provides an overview of the historical and current landscape of restitution imposed on youth, the impact of restitution on youth, victims and communities, and provides recommendations for how jurisdictions can reimagine restitution.
2022-08-15
Albuquerque Justice for Youth Community Collaborative;
This report documents the first year of an ambitious, long-term effort by the Albuquerque Justice for Youth Community Collaborative, to reduce and eventually eliminate dependence on the juvenile justice system and to build a culturally grounded alternative that keeps youth out of institutions. The Collaborative is made up of local grassroots oranizations, youth justice advocates, and young people and families who have een directly affected by the juvinile justice system.
2022-09-22
Diamond Research Consulting;
This is the third in a series of evaluation reports for a three-year formative evaluation of the Greater Hartford Reentry Welcome Center (GH-RWC) comprising both process and outcome findings. The purpose of this formative evaluation is to identify what is and what is not working well and to provide strategic recommendations for areas needing improvement and to leverage emergent promising practices. This Year Three report provides the data and findings from CPA's RWC database, observations, surveys, and interviews for the period starting September 17, 2020 through September 17, 2021. The report also includes supplemental findings for the first two quarters of 2022, as the GH-RWC administration began to expand staffing and programming, and to prepare for moving to a new location that could accommodate the growth of the Center. The challenges that were experienced in Years Two and Three are being actively addressed by CPA, so many of the recommendations listed in the Year Three evaluation are already underway in Year Four.
2022-04-21
Human Rights First;
Today, the United States operates the world's largest immigration detention system—a system the Biden administration uses to jail people seeking refugee protection. While this administration is not currently detaining families and has requested a reduction in detention funding, its policy has led the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to target adult asylum seekers as priorities for detention. DHS has perpetuated a punitive immigration detention system—converting former family detention centers to jail adults and expanding other existing facilities. As the administration restores compliance with U.S. refugee law at the southern U.S. border and ends Trump policy that illegally prevented people from seeking asylum, it should not substitute one rights-violating policy for another. Instead, it should set an example of global leadership by ending mass detention of asylum seekers and providing a true humanitarian welcome to people seeking refugee protection at the border.This report is based on information about 270 asylum seekers and immigrants held in detention, including direct interviews with 76, information received from dozens of attorneys and detention center visitation programs, DHS data, government records received through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and visits to three ICE detention centers where researchers spoke with detained individuals and ICE officials. Requests to visit five additional facilities were denied by ICE. Human Rights First interviewed or received information from asylum seekers, attorneys, and other monitors related to asylum seekers and immigrants held at 49 facilities in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. The report is also informed by Human Rights First's decades of experience providing pro bono representation to asylum seekers, including those held in immigration detention, and its prior research and reporting on U.S. detention and parole of asylum seekers, including reports issued in August 2015, July 2016, February 2018, June 2018, and January 2019. A full description of Human Rights First's research methodology is included at the end of this report.
2022-07-13
Center for American Progress;
Each year, hundreds of thousands of individuals fleeing persecution arrive in the United States and begin the process of claiming asylum, while other undocumented immigrants in the United States encounter Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Although many of these individuals end up in ICE detention, a large subset of them are released and enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program as they await a decision on their case or deportation. As opposed to remaining in a physical detention center, those enrolled in the ATD program are electronically monitored through ankle monitors, telephone calls, and smartphone applications.As the Biden administration has worked to reform an immigration system impeded by Trump-era policies that criminalized undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers and expanded immigration detention, the ATD program has rapidly grown. In fact, as of June 2022, a record number of almost 280,000 undocumented immigrants and asylum-seekers have been enrolled in ATD, and the Biden administration plans to double this number by the end of 2023.This is an important step toward reducing the country's costly reliance on immigration detention, which severely harms immigrants and asylum-seekers by separating them from their families, communities, and critical services as they fight their legal cases to remain in the country.However, the expansion of the ATD program raises a new set of privacy and civil liberty concerns. Namely, there is growing concern that enrolled immigrants and asylum-seekers may experience the program as "e-carceration," or a different form of detention, due to its invasive surveillance measures and mobility restrictions.To address this, the Biden administration must reconsider how it implements the ATD program as it works to build a more fair, humane, and functional immigration system that respects due process and the dignity of immigrants and asylum-seekers. Specifically, less restrictive, community-based approaches to administering the ATD program hold the most promise for providing immigrants and asylum-seekers with support, while also promoting voluntary compliance with immigration authorities. Instead of relying on electronic monitoring, which has become synonymous with the ATD program, the alternatives detailed in this report operate using case management models that offer wraparound social and legal support to immigrants and asylum-seekers as they resolve their cases.
