Blog of Rights

Vanita
Gupta

Vanita Gupta is a Deputy Legal Director at the ACLU and director of the organization’s Center for Justice, which addresses systemic problems in the U.S. criminal justice system, including the treatment of prisoners, the death penalty and the policies of over-incarceration that have led the United States to imprison more people than any other country in the world. In addition, she is an adjunct clinical professor at NYU School of Law, where she teaches and oversees a racial justice litigation clinic. Vanita is a graduate of Yale University and New York University School of Law.

Georgia Chooses Path Toward Criminal Justice Reform; Oklahoma Misses an Opportunity

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice & Inimai Chettiar, ACLU at 1:51pm
This year, both Georgia and Oklahoma took up criminal justice reform, but ended up in two quite different places. Read More

Fighting for "Too Much Justice"

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice at 4:22pm
In the last 40 years, this country's "tough on crime" policymaking has sacrificed the lives and rights of people of color at the altar of politics. Read More

Criminal Justice Reform 2011 – The Good, the Bad, and the Work Ahead

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice at 2:37pm
As 2011 comes to end, we’re taking a look back at the year in criminal justice. Over the next few days, we’ll run a series of blog posts on the ... Read More

A Way Toward Balancing Government Budgets While Promoting Justice: Break Our Addiction to Incarceration

By Inimai Chettiar, ACLU & Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice at 12:44pm
A new ACLU report shows how several states have enacted cost-effective laws cutting their unnecessary overreliance and massive spending on prisons while continuing to ... Read More

The 40-Year War on Drugs: It's Not Fair, and It's Not Working.

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice at 4:13pm
June 2011 has the unfortunate distinction of marking the 40th anniversary of the "war on drugs" — a war which has cost $1 trillion but produced little ... Read More

Georgia Prison Strike an Outgrowth of Nation's Addiction to Incarceration

By Chara Fisher Jackson, ACLU of Georgia & Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice & Chara Fisher Jackson, ACLU of Georgia at 2:49pm
Business as usual ground to a halt December 9 at nine prisons across the state of Georgia. In what is being called the largest prison strike in American history, tens ... Read More

From Incredible to Inevitable: How the Politics of Criminal Justice Reform May Be Shifting

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice at 3:17pm
Yesterday, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act into law. Though this new law retains an unjustifiable federal sentencing disparity between crack and ... Read More

End Policing for Profit

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice at 5:18pm
(Originally posted on Huffington Post.) Imagine a police officer pulls you over and tells you he believes the cash you're carrying was used to in some illegal ... Read More

Achieving the Ideals Embodied in the CRC

By Summer Lacey, Racial Justice Program , Racial Justice Program & Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice at 4:58pm
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the most comprehensive treaty on children’s rights. The convention has been ... Read More
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