July 2014

White House Recognizes Commission Member Daryl Atkinson for his Program for the Formerly Incarcerated at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice

 

Study Finds Racial Disparity in Criminal Prosecutions

 

Brooklyn Prosecutor Limits When He’ll Target Marijuana

 

 

June, 2014

Southern Civil Rights Leader Atumbles into NJ Bail Reform Debate: Editorial

 

Wake County Board of Education Creates New Memorandum of Understanding for School Resource Officers

 

May, 2014

New ACLU-NC Report Recommends Strengthening Data Collection Laws to Combat Racially Biased Policing

 

February, 2014

President Obama Announces a 5 year, $200 Million Initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, to Help Black and Latino Youths

 

January, 2014

Federal Complaint Alleges School Resource Officers in Wake County Schools Target Black and Disabled Students

September 18, 2013

Senate Judiciary Hearing on Mandatory Minimums

http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/091813RecordSub-Durbin.pdf

           

August 28, 2013

Attorney General Holder announces that federal government will not interfere with state’s marijuana legalization efforts as long as certain conditions are met.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/eric-holder-marijuana-washington-colorado-doj_n_3837034.html

 

August 28, 2013     

Newark mayor (and then senatorial candidate, now U.S. Senator) Corey Booker, unveils ambitious plan to overhaul nation’s criminal justice system as part of his platform.

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/cory_booker_calls_for_widespread_prison_reform_on_anniversary_of_march_on_washington.html

 

August 12, 2013

Attorney General Holder’s speech to the ABA:  In this historic speech the Attorney General talked about the need to reform a broken system and to fight for sweeping systemic changes.  He spoke of the need to reconsider mass incarceration and to reduce the racial disparities that plague our criminal justice system.

http://www.justice.gov/iso/opa/ag/speeches/2013/ag-speech-130812.html

 

August 12, 2013

Federal District Judge Scheindlin’s opinion, Floyd v. City of New York, ruling New York’s infamous Stop and Frisk tactics unconstitutional.

http://ccrjustice.org/floyd

 

August 1, 2013

State of Washington v. Saintcalle: Supreme Court decision from State of Washington in which the court bemoans the inadequacy of Batson in addressing racial discrimination in jury selection because Batson appears to have created a “crippling burden making it difficult to prove discrimination even where it certainly exists.”

The Court talks about the changing face of discrimination in that while it is now socially unacceptable to be overtly racist, we all live our lives with stereotypes that endure despite our best efforts to eliminate them:  “racism now lives not in the open but beneath the surface – in our institutions and our subconscious thought processes – because we create it anew through cognitive processes that have nothing to do with racial animus.”

http://www.eji.org/node/806

        

July 17, 2013      

Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System report released:  In late October of 2012, a group of criminal justice experts including judges, defense attorneys, scholars, community advocates and formerly incarcerated activists came together for a conference in New York City on race and criminal justice.  It was a 2½ day event.  All the organizations came together under the premises that racial and ethnic disparities do exist in the criminal justice system.  They sought to examine best practices from around the country that seek to remedy those disparities.  On July 17, 2013, the sponsoring agencies released Criminal Justice in the 21st Century: Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System.  The report is a summary of the various remedies that may advance the goal of purging disparate impact from American criminal justice system.

http://www.nacdl.org/reports/eliminatedisparity/

 

June, 2013

ACLU’s report, Marijuana in Black and White: Billions of Dollars Wasted on Racially Biased Arrests, was the first ever to examine state and county marijuana arrest rates nationally by race.  According to the report, in 2010 African-Americans was arrested for marijuana possession in North Carolina 3.4 times the rate of whites despite comparable usage rates.  Fifty percent of people arrested for marijuana use in North Carolina were African-American even though they comprise only 22% of the State’s population.  North Carolina’s 20,983 marijuana arrests in 2010 were the 10th most in the nation.

https://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform/war-marijuana-black-and-white-report

 

February 25, 2013

 Justice Sotomayor’s statement related to the improper use of race in a criminal prosecution in Calhoun v. U.S., 568 U.S._____, 2013.

http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/youve-got-african-americans-youve-got-hispanics/?_r=0