Blog of Rights
Rachel
Myers

Rachel Myers is a senior communications strategist at the ACLU focusing on criminal justice issues. She worked previously at the ACLU of Maine and the Portland (ME) Education Partnership, where she trained teachers, students and community organizations to use service learning in the public schools. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin.

04/02/2012
Solitary Confinement

ACLU Calls for Tamms Closure

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 1:29pm

In a new podcast, former Tamms prisoner Brian Nelson talks about the 23 years he spent in solitary confinement.

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03/20/2012
Drug-Testing Welfare Recipients

Editorial: Drug-Testing Welfare Applicants Nets Little

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 4:00pm

An editorial in yesterday's USA Today takes a hard look at the recent push to drug-test applicants for public assistance across the country. The verdict? "Until states can come up with a smarter way to ferret out the abusers while protecting children, the testing craze will be just another program that appeals to stereotypes in hard economic times while producing little value in the real world."

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03/08/2012
Private Prisons

Stop Incarceration for Profit in Your State

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 3:28pm

A private prison company, Corrections Corporation of America, wants to buy your state's prisons and keep them full. Help us stop them.

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02/29/2012
Prosecutorial Misconduct

Editorial: We Need Reforms to Increase Confidence in the Justice System

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 5:40pm

An excellent op-ed in the Times-Picayune (New Orleans) today begins, "Our justice system makes two promises to its citizens: a fundamentally fair trial and an accurate result. As Justice Cochran of Texas' highest criminal court observed, 'If either of those two promises are not met, the criminal justice system itself falls into disrepute and may eventually be disregarded.'"

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02/02/2012
NYPD

NYC Marijuana Arrests Still Too High

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 3:43pm

The New York City Police Department made a near-record number of low-level marijuana arrests in 2011, surpassing 2010 and making 2011 the second-most prolific period for marijuana arrests in NYC history. The 50,684 arrest occurred despite the fact that possessing a small amount of marijuana is not a crime in New York unless it is in public view.

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02/02/2012

VIDEO: African-Americans Excluded From Capital Case Juries

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 1:54pm

Laverne Keys, a longtime North Carolinian who wished to do her civic duty by serving on a jury, believes she was excluded from service because she is black. “It made me feel like I was back in 1960, that racism is still very much alive. It makes you wonder whether all these people are being given a fair trial or given a fair consequence so far as the death penalty,” she says in a new video out today from the ACLU.

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01/27/2012
Solitary Confinement

Overincarceration in America

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 11:35am

We believe that America’s criminal justice system should keep communities safe, treat people fairly, and use fiscal resources wisely. But more Americans are deprived of their liberty than ever before - unfairly and unnecessarily, with no benefit to public safety. It’s a problem that affects people of color most of all. In the latest issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik tackles the subject of mass incarceration in America, and takes on questions many of us in the criminal justice world as every day: how did we get here, and where do we go now?

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01/25/2012
Solitary Confinement

Podcast: Billy McCarthy of We Are Augustines talks about Solitary Confinement and Mental Illness

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 9:51am

Many of singer / songwriter Billy McCarthy's songs were inspired by his brother James, who suffered from mental illness and took his own life after spending five years in solitary confinement in a California prison.

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01/23/2012
Solitary Confinement

Legislators Join the Call to Reform Solitary in Virginia

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 1:23pm

The overuse of solitary confinement concerns some members of the Virginia legislature. According to Senator Adam Ebbin and Delegates Charniele Herring and Patrick Hope, there are simply too many prisoners in solitary for too long.

The three visited Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison over the summer and were moved to write an opinion piece in the Washington Post calling for reform of the system. They describe witnessing prisoners “confined in an 80-square-foot cell 23 hours a day, seven days a week.” As the legislators go on to explain, many of the 1800 prisoners kept in such conditions “have been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses.” Often they are isolated for years on end, including one prisoner the legislators spoke with who had been in solitary for more than 12 years.

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01/18/2012
L.A. County Jail

ACLU Lawsuit Challenges Violence in Baca's L.A. County Jails

By Rachel Myers, ACLU at 3:25pm

The lawsuit filed today charges L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca and his top commanders condoned a longstanding, widespread pattern of violence by deputies against inmates in the county jails.

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