Faith Rising: The Death Penalty and the Quest for Community Justice. A death penalty panel discussion on race and class in the American Criminal Justice System 40 years after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
Transformative Justice and Mass Incarceration: Can Faith Communities Help Create a New Frame?
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Rev. Peter Laarman: A safe society is first and foremost a just society. In that respect we have an awfully long way to go. Let’s not waste any more time.
U.S. Death Row Survivors Are One For Ten
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David Love: Many would be surprised at the high odds of innocent people being executed, which speaks to a criminal justice system riddled with problems, including witness misidentification, prosecutorial misconduct, incompetent lawyering, raw racism and class bias.
Rich Justice Poor Justice
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Jazz Hayden: Just stand outside the criminal courts, traffic courts, and civil courts on any day of the week and you will see long lines of poor people of color — black, brown, and beige — receiving “poor people injustice”.
Rape, American Style
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Sikivu Hutchinson: Last month’s barbaric gang rape and murder of a 23-year old female student on a bus in Delhi, India was a stark reminder of this violent silence and the global expendability of poor women of color in so-called democratic societies.
Passing Prop 34 Means California Never Executes an Innocent Person
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FRanky Carrillo: Most people can’t imagine being found guilty of a crime they didn’t commit. I never expected that my youth would slip away in prison after I was wrongly convicted.
Urban Issues Forum Welcomes Jackie Lacey — September 28th
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Anthony Samad’s Urban Issues Breakfast Forum welcomes Jackiet Lacey, Candidate for LA County District Attorney, Friday, Sept. 28, at The Regency West, Los Angeles.
California’s Death Penalty: 366 Days Down, 68 More to Go
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Jeanne Woodford: Support for Prop 34 continues to grow because people understand that California’s death penalty is broken beyond repair. California has only executed 1% of those sentenced to death in 34 years.
Farm Worker Heat Death: California’s Harvest of Shame
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Peter Dreier: Last week the temperature in California’s Central Valley went above 110 degrees. Can you imagine laboring in weather like that with the searing sun beating down on you for 8-10-12 hours a day?
LA’s Sheriffs Department, DA Rig Game Against Criminal Defendants
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Marisol Orihuela: We have n oidea how many guilty pleas and guilty verdicts have stemmed from these illegal practices, but we have to stop this before it goes any further.
The Senate Needs to Rein in Brutal Prison Practices
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Jeremy Kuzmarov: While railing against social welfare programs and excessive government spending, law-and-order hawks have presided over an unprecedented prison boom funded by taxpayer dollars, and allowed prison conditions to deteriorate significantly in many states.
Innocense Matters Courageous Truth Award – June 28th
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Attend Innocense Matters’ Second Annual Courageous Truth Award and learn more about one courageous leader’s determination to follow the truth in all circumstances.
Fault Lines in the Plutocracy and the Police Harassment State
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Mark Naison: In gentrifying cities like New York, Chicago, and Oakland , police harassment greets young people of color wherever they turn, from the schools they attend, to the neighborhoods they live in, to downtown business districts, to the public transportation systems they use.
Executed Man Innocent: It Could Have Been Me
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Franky Carrillo: I was wrongfully convicted when I was 16 years old and served 20 years in prison before proving my innocence. That mistake took two decades from me; but it took Carlos De Luna’s life.
6 Rules for Becoming a Prosecutor
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Bruce Reilly: Hardly any new prosecutor will get a made-for-TV movie case, write a book, and get on the speaking circuit. The real job is very repetetive, threatening to jade and bleed your soul.
How the Trayvon Martin Case Has Divided America
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David Love: The killing of Trayvon Martin has brought many people together, but has exposed the various divisions along racial, political and media lines as well.
America’s Top Lobbyists on Criminal Justice Reform: Legal? Proper?
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Bruce Reilly: For years I watched the full-time lobbyist of the Attorney General, their legislative specialist, testify against practically every attempt to reform the criminal justice system.
Should We Crash the Prison System by Demanding Trials?
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Bruce Reilly: If everyone refused a plea bargain and went to trial, the system would crash. This maneuver is not new. I could have never organized these men to refuse plea bargains and go to trial for several reasons.
Racial Justice in the Criminal Justice System
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Sharon Kyle: While most Americans are cognizant of the disproportionate representation of Black and Brown men in our prisons, fewer are aware of criminal justice system’s selective enforcement of laws and selective use of penalties which often results in racially biased outcomes.
Dead Under the “Custody and Care” of…
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Bruce Reilly: Christian Gomez was one of thousands in California struggling for things such as food, sunlight, and changes to the segregation policies — the everyday torture in America’s prisons.
Hawaii’s Radical Drug Use Experiment
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Kevin Sabet: A revolutionary program in the Pineapple State is shattering myths about how to deal with drug offenders who violate probation. If only the rest of the country would catch on.
Mom Jailed for Not Checking “Felony” Box
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Bruce Reilly: The cages of America look a lot more like Anita McLemore than most would believe. And the criminal justice system far too often endeavors to ensure that the ripples of a criminal conviction never stop.
How Pasadena’s Implements “Secure Communities”
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Justin Chapman: In reality, Secure Communities has not only identified criminals, it has identified everyone who come through the criminal justice system, a lot of whom have done nothing wrong.
Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons
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Victoria Law builds upon her earlier prison abolitionist critique by discussing practical alternatives for effectively confronting gender violence without using the prison system.
Duane Buck: Tolerating Racism In Capital Cases
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Andy Love: After we we take a collective sigh of relief that Hank Skinner obtained a last minute stay so that his lawyers can once again seek to have key evidence DNA tested, we must then sigh in despair over the result of another Texas death penalty case.
California’s Death Penalty Prevents True Community Justice
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Aqeela Sherrills: The great irony, of course, is that while the state props up a failed system that discriminates against African-Americans and Latinos and anyone who is poor, it fails to provide justice to victims.
Our Fellow Felons
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Hannah Petrie: Even though the rates of drug-dealing and drug-using occurs equally among different races – (think weed here) whites deal to whites, blacks deal to blacks, Hispanics to Hispanics – it’s the people of color who get busted. And once you’re labeled a felon – and denied access to employment, housing, and other rights — your chances of returning to a straight and normal life are extremely low. It is a system designed to keep felons felons.
Geronimo ji-Jaga Dies at 63
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Geronimo ji-Jaga, also known as Geronimo Pratt, passed away on June 2, 2011 at the age of 63. He was known in most circles as Geronimo Pratt a high ranking member of the Black Panther Party but actually changed his name to Geronimo ji-Jada in 1968. In an interview with Tavis Smiley (see video below), [...]
More Black Men Are in Prison Today Than Enslaved in 1850
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Dick Price: “More African American men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began,” Michelle Alexander told a standing room only house at the Pasadena Main Library this past Wednesday
PCL offers monthly Open House Events on the 2nd Saturday at 2pm and 3rd Thursday at 6pm. Click here to learn more.
Confronting California’s In-Justice System with Michelle Alexander
Come Let Us Reason Together: Faith Communities Confronting California’s In-Justice System — with Author Michelle Alexander — Thursday, May 10 — New Philadelphia AME Church, Rancho Dominguez, California