This Thursday, April 12th, 2012 , residents of San Francisco will have an opportunity to discuss the impact of the war on drugs in the city and make recommendations as to what should be done to address it. The San Francisco Human Rights Commission is holding a public hearing on The Human Rights Impact of the War on Drugs in City Hall room 416, at 5:30 pm to discuss the impact of drug policy on the city’s individuals and families. Interested members of the public are encouraged to attend…
A new Pew research poll released last week shows that voters across the U.S. are overwhelmingly in favor of reducing prison spending and support shifting resources to community supervision rather than incarceration, specifically for low-level offenders. The national poll also shows that voters prioritize reductions in recidivism as the primary “end goal” of corrections, even if it means offenders spend less time behind bars and more time in rehabilitative programming. Public…
During the March 22 California Senate Budget Subcommittee on Public Safety , the Ventura Youth Correctional Facility was repeatedly discussed in testimony and public comment. For many of California’s reform-minded criminal justice advocates, the facility is both a paragon of dysfunction and demonstrates a need as well as an opportunity for meaningful change. CJCJ and others have previously condemned the institution for its inability to address inhumane living conditions, and a culture of…
While commentators led by no less than President Obama have blamed violent crime on “the entire generation of young men in our society” and have warned us to fear young black men in particular, those Americans more thoughtful than politicians running for office, exploitative interest groups, sensationalist reporters, and racist fear-mongers know that “entire generations” don’t commit violence; individuals do. If the individual approaching you is a black teenaged male, how much more likely are…
Blog Apr 2, 2012
Who has the right to “stand your ground”?
Florida teenager Trayvon Martin had been dead for a month and the national furor over his shooting by vigilante George Zimmerman was into its third week before anyone, to my knowledge, asked that fundamental question. Law enforcement officials, experts, and commentators across the spectrum had assumed that the only issue was whether Zimmerman was entitled to use Florida’s “stand your ground” law to justify shooting Martin. MSNBC commentator Melissa Harris Perry finally declared what the…