Poverty should not be criminalized. New York lawmakers seek to eliminate court fees, parole, probation, and other fines implemented by the criminal justice system in an effort to lessen the high rates of incarceration at Rikers Island jail,…
Bexar County, Texas, has implemented some major criminal justice reform that will help protect the rights of indigent defendants. Those who are indigent don’t have money to pay for a lawyer and instead get a court-appointed attorney. Indigent…
Connecticut’s Division of Criminal Justice had released an interesting study that highlights the reality of racial disparities within the state’s criminal justice system. The findings tell us that Black and Hispanic defendants who have no prior convictions are…
Yolo County, California is doing its part to remove racial bias within its criminal justice system. The District Attorney’s Office has partnered with the Stanford Computational Policy Lab on computer software that redacts all identifying information from cases…
One past mistake shouldn’t dictate the direction of your future. House Bills 4219 and 4220 will grant deserving Michiganders a second chance at a clean criminal record by allowing certain first-time drunk driving convictions to be expunged five…
Many people don’t realize that if they’ve been arrested but weren’t formally convicted, that arrest record still remains. Anyone can see it, from landlords to neighbors to employers. Even if those records mean nothing about you or your…
The legalization of recreational cannabis is no longer a matter of moral opinion—it’s just common sense. A Missouri petition in support of cannabis legalization is forcing the state to acknowledge several topics that have been swept under the…
North Carolina is seeing the most significant expansion of voting rights since the 1960s with a new policy that restores voting rights to roughly 55,000 North Carolinians on parole or probation for a felony conviction. However, if the…
In a controversial move, Governor Ned Lamont modified Connecticut’s criminal background policy by allowing judges to access juvenile criminal records anytime, including after hours. The state’s increase in car thefts influenced the decision by the Governor, but statistics…