By Tiera Rainey The past decade has seen a handful of significant victories for the criminal justice reform movement, including the election of so-called progressive prosecutors across the country, a proposed overhaul of California’s cash bail system, the elimination of Jim Crow jury laws in Louisiana, and the […]
By Caroline Isaacs, AFSC-AZ Program Director | This week, in a move that seemed to shock even themselves, the Denver City Council voted against renewing two multimillion-dollar contracts with GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two largest private prison companies in the U.S. What may surprise many is that the contracts in […]
by James Kilgore, Guest Blogger | When I was released by the California state prison system way back in 2009, I was told that, if I wanted to parole to Illinois where my family lived, I would have to be on an electronic monitor. I thought nothing of it. […]
by Joe Watson Our friends at the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) – the Florida-based, nonprofit publishers of Prison Legal News and Criminal Legal News – announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) upheld objections last week filed by CoreCivic and the GEO Group that challenged shareholder resolutions […]
This week, the Private Corrections Institute (PCI), a non-profit citizen watchdog organization based in Tallahassee, Florida, announced the 2018 awardees for individual activism and organizational advocacy against the for-profit prison industry. PCI opposes the privatization of correctional services, including the operation of prisons, jails and other detention facilities […]
by PENIEL IBE, AFSC Policy Fellow This week, a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill known as the First Step Act (S.756) advanced out of the U.S. Senate, with broad support from across the political spectrum. It’s tremendous to see the conversation on criminal justice reform take center stage, […]
In 1998, I was a budding anti-prison activist, volunteering for the American Friends Service Committee in Arizona (AFSC-AZ). I was fortunate enough to attend the very first Critical Resistance gathering in Oakland and learn that I was actually part of a movement—a vibrant, fierce, and committed group of people who, […]
