News & Commentary

A comprehensive report released today by the ACLU of California and sent to officials in every county across the state urges local jurisdictions to fundamentally shift criminal justice policies toward “smart-on-crime” alternatives to incarceration. The new report, Community Safety, Community Solutions, offers guidelines and tools for county governments scrambling to implement the Governor’s new public safety realignment legislation, AB 109. The bill requires counties to take on new responsibilities for low-level non-violent offenders. Those inmates will no longer be sent to state prison beginning October 1.

The ACLU of Southern California is calling for an end to Secure Communities (S-Comm), a federal immigration enforcement program that threatens public safety, undermines civil liberties and leads to deportation of people with minor offenses and no criminal convictions at all.

Todo pasa por alguna razón. A veces hacemos planes con la esperanza de seguirlos, pero no los cumplimos. De repente se puede presentar un cambio o una oportunidad en nuestro camino y si una nueva oportunidad toca nuestra puerta: le damos una bienvenida o la dejamos ir.

In a nation defined by the concepts of justice, due process, and the rule of law, police must obey the law while they enforce the law. So who polices the police?

Late

The Pelican Bay hunger strike has ended, but the conversation about solitary confinement must continue. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) must change its policies on solitary confinement for many persuasive reasons. 

The Obama administration’s Justice Department took a swing at the rights of all Americans this week.

Demanding to know when, why, and how police are using mobile phone location data and deploying other surveillance technologies to track the people they are responsible for protecting and serving, the ACLU of California sent requests to more than fifty law enforcement agencies across the state today.