The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that it plans to resume the executions of people who are awaiting the death penalty in federal prisons, ending nearly two decades in which the federal government had not imposed capital punishment.
Across the country, police are using a tool called civil asset forfeiture to seize millions of dollars in cash and property they claim have been involved in criminal activity.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards signed two bills into law this week that will improve transparency in police activities and save taxpayer money by eliminating lengthy sentences that are not warranted.
After decades of constructing a system of mass incarceration, it appears that our nation is beginning to turn the tide.
The Louisiana Legislature this week passed legislation that will help ensure schools are complying with federal anti-discrimination laws, and, in a separate bill focused on law enforcement agencies, create a task force that will improve collection and reporting of data on basic law enforcement activities.
The Alabama House of Representatives this week passed House Bill 380 (HB 380), which would give the governor more control over the state parole board and set minimum sentences that incarcerated people must serve before they can be released on parole.
The SPLC and its allies filed a federal class action lawsuit challenging Florida’s use of solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.
The lawsuit...
Admire Harvard has spent nearly 10 years locked up in solitary confinement in the Florida prison system.
Nearly two years after a federal judge deemed mental health care for Alabama’s prisoners “horrendously inadequate,” the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) is again the subject of a scathing court order in the SPLC’s long-running Eighth Amendment case against the department.
Louisiana once again has the highest incarceration rate, imprisoning 719 of every 100,000 residents, according to a report released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
