Fairness and Justice

Abstract The school to prison pipeline refers to the practice of pushing students out of educational institutions, primarily via zero tolerance and harsh disciplinary policies, and into the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems. The pipeline has emerged in part as a response to the media panic over youth violence and the need to keep […]

“I write to record what others erase when I speak, to rewrite the stories others have miswritten about me, about you.” — Gloria Anzaldúa Photo by Mary Glen Fredrick 8/12/2014 Every time someone at school asks me about my city and its “chaos,” I ask them about their line of thinking: “What’s so chaotic about […]

Abstract The shooting and killing of Mike Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, drew national attention to issues of discrimination, police brutality, and the growing divide between communities and their local law enforcement agencies. Compounding this with the grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer responsible, the need for police reform became […]

Abstract Early on New Year’s Day in 2009, a police officer investigating a disturbance at the Fruitvale BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Station in Oakland, California, shot and killed Oscar Grant. The officer was White, and Grant was Black. At every stage of the process that followed, Bay Area residents responded with protests, some engaging […]

Abstract This paper presents the findings of ArchCity Defenders’ study of municipal courts; documents challenges to that system following the death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; and proposes next steps for comprehensive reform. The paper shows how the poor and communities of color are disproportionately stopped, fined, and jailed for nonviolent traffic stops in […]

Background Recent events that have taken place in Florida, Missouri, New York, and Texas all have one common theme: an unnecessary killing due to racial profiling. The history of law enforcement in America is deeply embedded with a presence of racial profiling, often used to maintain the status quo through practices that were biased against […]

The Protest I was thumbing through my Facebook timeline on my cell phone on a warm summer weekend afternoon when I first saw it. The picture of Mike Brown’s dead body, his blood on the concrete in a long red line. It made me sick to my stomach. My mind started playing the song “Strange […]

On 5th July 2014, a group of three sisters got on a night train after visiting their family. They were scheduled to reach Bangkok the next morning. However, the oldest sister woke up to find that her 13-year-old sister had gone missing, her bed in disarray. The two sisters searched the whole train but came up empty-handed. After notifying the officers and their parents, search teams were set up along the train route and police began investigating those […]

BY DAVEDE ALEXANDER and JUSTIN OSSOLA America has been made very aware of the difficult, polarizing dynamics that can exist when the social experience of leadership and authority skews so drastically from those being served. Tinderbox situations between communities and law enforcement – such as that in Ferguson and, to a lesser extent, the current […]

Given the criminal justice system’s racist history, the failures of  grand juries to indict Officer Darren Wilson and Officer Daniel Pantaleo are unsurprising and show the need for dismantling, not reforming.  BY REETU MODY First a St. Louis grand jury failed to find enough evidence to indict Officer Darren Wilson for firing six shots that […]

BY MIGUEL GUEVARA On September 26th, students from the rural teacher training college of Ayotzinapa traveled to Iguala – 120 miles south of Mexico City. The students needed to raise money for a trip to Mexico City, and consequentially asked drivers from Iguala for donations to fund their trip to the capital. While the students’ […]

BY JOHN BERTETTO On 23 July 2014, Isaac Lara wrote a piece that appeared in the Kennedy School Review titled Crime Square: How Advances in Criminal Justice Policy Can Improve Public Safety in New York City. Mr. Lara suggests that reductions in crime may come via Place Theory, and suggests a three-pronged approach: (1) increasing […]