“Tough on crime” rhetoric – especially when it comes to perceived threats against our nation’s children – has been a political focal point in recent years. Local prosecutors and law enforcement agencies are often judged by how many convictions they can score, especially in cases that involve potential harm to a child. This undercurrent in our criminal justice system, instead of promoting public safety, too often serves to compound already tragic events, as was the case recently with a mother and her young child in Georgia.
Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it's ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we've spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.
By Brian Stull, ACLU Capital Punishment Project at 12:55pm
Is it that the State of Georgia executed an innocent man last month? Is it the dawning realization that the risk of executing an innocent person exists in many cases beyond Troy Davis? Is it that race cannot help but to seep into the consideration of who gets executed and who gets to live? Is it that the quality of the lawyering and not the seriousness of the crime determines who gets executed? Is it that many family members of murder victims have said not to execute in their names? Or is it the simple realization that the state killing people does not teach its citizens not to kill?
Paul Bridges, the Republican mayor of Uvalda, Georgia, is as Southern as it gets. Growing up in a small town of a few thousand people in southeast Georgia, Mr. Bridges drives a pick-up truck, keeps 15 goats on his small dairy farm and speaks with a classic Southern drawl. It just so happens that Mr. Bridges is also a passionate advocate for immigrants' rights and is one of our plaintiffs in our case against Georgia's discriminatory anti-immigrant law, the "Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act," or H.B. 87.
Last weekend, on the day designated to celebrate the abolition of slavery, an anti-abortion group decided to exploit the observance of Juneteenth to spread a demeaning and insulting message to the black community. Through billboards erected throughout the Atlanta area, the group makes the outrageous assertion that a black woman's private health decision is more harmful than slavery. These billboards accuse black women who have made the difficult and personal decision to end a pregnancy of making slavery "seem overly generous."
This year, both Georgia and Oklahoma took up criminal justice reform, but ended up in two quite different places.
In Georgia, Gov. Nathan Deal signed a bill this week that takes a smart approach to criminal justice. The new law creates less severe penalties for drug crimes, expands drug courts, and provides alternatives to incarceration for low-level, non-violent offenses. The package is projected to save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars over the next five years by reducing the prison population.
Skyrocketing corrections budgets have fixed state lawmakers' attention on the problem of mass incarceration, and smart reform — reducing prison populations and spending while keeping communities safe — is starting to happen. Nonetheless, some states have been slow to respond. In the early months of 2012, a number of states' chief justices told their legislators to wake up to the growing problem and suggested reforms that would be good for both budgets and public safety.
By Rebecca McCray, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project at 4:20pm
Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.
By James Clark, ACLU of Southern California at 7:00pm
Next week, the state of Georgia plans to execute Troy Davis despite lingering doubts about his guilt. Today is a Global Day of Solidarity when people all over the world stand together to proclaim that there is too much doubt to execute Troy Davis. Davis finds himself facing death for the fourth time on Wednesday, September 21.
