America has the highest incarceration rate of any nation, with almost 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Statistically, nearly one in 100 Americans is doing time, and, according to the prison reform group, The Sentencing Project, “More than 60% of … Continue reading
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This month, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released two reports with updates on city and county jail populations nationwide: Jail Inmates in 2019 and Impact of COVID-19 on the Local Jail Population, January-June 2020. After a year of upheaval due to the pandemic, the first report is already out-of-date and mainly useful as a historical document. The second report, however, answers some important questions about the decisions local officials made when the high stakes of jail incarceration – for individual and public health – were put into stark relief by the pandemic. Their decisions, and the resulting jail population changes in the first half of 2020, hold important lessons for ongoing and future decarceration efforts; here we outline some of those lessons – the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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Eager to resolve a federal civil rights lawsuit, Texas’ most populous county over the past two years has stopped requiring most people accused of low-level crimes from putting up cash to get out of jail on bond.
Tens of thousands of people accused of misdemeanors not involving some specific circumstances, like domestic abuse or previous bond violations, have been freed without cost while awaiting trial.
Letting them out does not appear to increase the chances they will be arrested for new crimes, according to researchers who have been tracking changes made to the Harris County misdemeanor bail system. In fact, the percentage of defendants arrested for new crimes within a year of their original arrest went down after the county changed its bail practices.
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Maryland holds itself up as a progressive state when it comes to criminal justice, but a recent report highlights a stark reality: Maryland incarcerates Black people at more than twice the national rate. Until recently, the horrifyingly unjust reality of America’s mass incarceration system has not been a central concern in popular political discourse. In […]
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Even amid a deadly pandemic, in the U.S., there are over 37,000 children currently detained or incarcerated in environments where social distancing is impossible. The most recent update from Chicago’s Juvenile Temporary Detention Center was in November, when the chief judge’s office announced that at least 63 youth and 73 adult staff had been infected with the coronavirus.
Those who have managed to avoid this deadly disease are still forced to endure the torturous conditions that are inherent to incarceration and are exacerbated by the lockdown conditions imposed to stop transmission of the coronavirus.
Unfortunately, the state of Illinois seems poised to continue incarcerating children for a long time to come. In early February, it was announced that policymakers plan to spend millions on a new youth prison, even as they gesture toward the important themes of restorative justice that have been developed by grassroots movements and directly impacted individuals.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton were elected as progressive reformers, so they use the language of reform and transformation even as they entrench the same systems of criminalization and incarceration that have proven time and again to be completely ineffective and traumatically harmful. When announcing his “21st Century Transformation Model” for the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ), an ostensibly smaller, community-based and “restorative” model, Governor Pritzker highlighted the shameful reality that 70 percent of all Illinois’s incarcerated youth are Black even though they make up just 15 percent of the total youth in the state. Pritzker also pointed out the fact that youth incarceration and probation have no positive effect on recidivism rates. Nevertheless, Pritzker is poised to continue this failed practice of incarcerating youth.
When announcing their plan for a newly renovated youth prison, Lieutenant Governor Stratton stated, “The new Illinois Youth Center Lincoln will be a bright, life affirming, trauma-informed, and restorative place for some of Illinois’ most vulnerable youth,” despite the fact that there is absolutely no way that separating children from their families and communities and locking them in cages can be “life-affirming” or “restorative.” Incarceration is traumatizing for every child who is forced to experience it, even if the facilities are smaller and closer to home. We must stop incarcerating youth altogether, and instead invest in the life-giving resources that eliminate the root causes of harm and “crime.”
By calling his prison-building plan the “Transformation Model,” Governor Pritzker is invoking language often used by abolitionists to justify a path that is antithetical to abolition. According to Generation Five, an organization that works to interrupt and repair the harms of child sexual abuse, the following are the three main principles of transformative justice:
It is clear that the “21st Century Transformation Model” falls far short of achieving any vision of transformative justice. The “Illinois Youth Centers,” or child prisons, by definition cannot be restorative. This has been demonstrated time and again in Illinois and across the country, traumatizing and shortening the lives of countless children in the process.
The extent of this carceral trauma was illuminated in November 2020, through a report produced by Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center, which held convenings in Illinois “youth centers” to ask those held there what they thought about their current conditions. The report’s author, Denzel Burke, was himself formerly incarcerated in an Illinois youth prison, and he writes that, “The physical and emotional conditions of Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) facilities — combined with the racial disparity visible in the youth prison population — create a traumatizing setting for children. Young people in prison described conditions of constant surveillance: they are locked in their rooms with a total lack of privacy, ever-glaring lights, and little to do ‘but stare at the walls.’”
One youth reported that, “People get beat up every day. We can’t ever get clean because there’s mold dropping on us and mice crawling in your bed…. We wake up in the morning and have bad food, but at least we don’t have lice anymore.”
Further, even before the coronavirus locked down the prisons, most youth reported feeling lonely and depressed. Even the IDJJ staff recognized the trauma inflicted by incarceration, with one interviewee noting that, “a lot of these youth are really hurting,” and another employee stating that the conditions of IDJJ facilities ensure that they are “not a place that makes you want to change [but instead] a place that makes you more mad.” Both the incarcerated youth and the staff recognize that incarceration always makes the situation worse, and yet the state of Illinois asserts that this multimillion-dollar trauma machine is the only option to address what is really a complex problem of youth poverty, not “crime.”
Governor Pritzker and Lieutenant Governor Stratton should listen to these directly impacted individuals who know that the answer is not further investment in the failed model of incarceration, but instead investment in true community resources like housing, mental and physical health care, education, jobs, and much more. As Burke writes in the Northwestern report:
Participants indicated that various forms of community investment and addressing human needs could prevent future harm. Their ideas included job training, affordable housing, educational programming, mental health resources, revamped parks and recreation, and food banks. As one young man shared, “My mom got in a car accident and couldn’t work, so we had no money, and I had to steal. That’s why I’m here. Just needed some support. I just needed somewhere with food that was warm, couches — it doesn’t have to be all that, just somewhere to be.”
Thanks to the efforts of organizers and people directly impacted by the trauma of youth criminalization and incarceration, Illinois has reduced its youth incarceration rate by 41 percent between 2001 and 2011. In addition, the state has closed three youth prisons since 2013, due to the efforts of groups like Project NIA, a grassroots organization committed to ending youth incarceration that was founded by the abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba. The Final 5 Campaign is another such group dedicated to the closure of the final five youth prisons in Illinois. When Governor Pritzker announced the plan for the new youth prison in Lincoln, which is expected to cost at least $21 million, the campaign immediately released a statement in opposition. Crucially, the authors ask:
Imagine if Governor Pritzker divided up this $21 million to provide comprehensive mental health resources for Illinois youth who have suffered the loss of a family member due to gun violence. Imagine if he decided to build shelters for youth without houses in the winter throughout the state. Imagine if he invested this money in organizations already doing the work of restorative justice, harm reduction, and reentry support such as GoodKids MadCity, Circles & Ciphers, or Free Write, or invested in high school student groups doing similar work within their schools such as PEACE Group at Urbana High School. Imagine if he gave vulnerable youth direct cash payments to help provide for basic essentials. Imagine if he invested that money in public schools in low-income neighborhoods to ensure that youth in these communities have access to comprehensive extracurricular programs.
There may still be time to stop this disastrous plan before it is finalized, and the Final 5 Campaign will be at the center of that fight. The campaign will continue to call for the closing of all youth prisons, including the “Illinois Youth Center Lincoln,” if it ends up being opened.
While the past year’s uprisings have bolstered the struggle against criminalization and incarceration, youth continue to be separated from their families and locked in cages in Illinois and throughout the country. This system has been built and fortified over many years, and it continues to be protected by entrenched interests, such as corrupt police unions and racist politicians. Therefore, the struggle continues, and those of us dedicated to true justice must continue to protest and fight for a world where no child is locked behind bars.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
I’m R87914. Even though I’m no longer in prison, that number, just like my social security number and name, will never change. I’m also a proud mom and a new one at that. There were no balloons or cards, no flowers or family allowed in the delivery room at the time of my daughter Aniela’s birth.
The prison where I was incarcerated wouldn’t allow mothers-to-be to go into labor naturally. Too inconvenient. Each birth was scheduled ahead of time. Mothers were not told until the morning of their scheduled labor day that they were being taken to the hospital and induced. Families of the women were not told until after the baby was born; a three-minute phone call was allowed after the birth, per discretion of the officer.
During my 36 hours of labor, an officer would sit on the couch, and watch me, and make occasional small talk and sometimes even pretend like they cared. Their shift, just like any other person’s, would end and eager to go home, they would leave, a new officer would walk in.
Pregnant women in Illinois and a few other states are not allowed to be shackled, only handcuffed. I can’t imagine having to waddle in shackles eight or nine months pregnant. But so many of the guards in Illinois complain about not being able to use the shackles during pregnancy.
After birth, women can be shackled — regardless of any pain from stitches one may have, or the women with C-sections. Once the baby is born, all restraints are once again an option, per discretion of the officer.
So, there I was. Still in tears, both from being happy and also in pain, with my first born in my arms, an officer still on the couch and my feet shackled to the hospital bed, all the time knowing that in less than 48 hours my daughter would be taken from my arms and I would be driven back to the prison, handcuffed and shackled the entire ride.
I cried the whole drive back to the prison after I was pulled away from my daughter. I closed my eyes and just tried to keep seeing her face.
Although I could not breastfeed my daughter, I was the first person in my prison to be able to pump milk while incarcerated. Before that, the Illinois Department of Corrections said that any kind of breastfeeding or pumping by inmates was out the question. They said a breast pump was a safety risk. But after a struggle, activists finally got the Department of Corrections to allow breast pumps in Logan Prison. Until I started last year, using a breast pump in an Illinois prison without the baby being at the facility had never been done.
Still there was no funding for a breast pump. Further efforts led to the donation of three breast pumps, along with the other supplies needed to save and freeze milk.
So, when I got back to prison, there were two of us women who had just given birth the day before. I chose to use a breast pump and send home milk. She decided against it when we found out that if we used the breast pump, we would be restricted to staying only in the health care unit of the prison until further notice. (In some ways, that was kind of living in a prison inside of a prison.)
For the next month and a half, I stayed in the health care unit and pumped every two to three hours — that is, of course, after we were done mixing up pieces to the different pumps and finally got one of them set up correctly. I had a picture of my daughter that had been taken at the hospital, and I looked at it while I pumped. I labeled bags of breast milk with the time and date, and every two weeks my family would have to drive four hours to the prison and pick them up, which ended up not really being possible. Milk would be wasted if it was brought out before visitors were allowed to leave. All visitors need to be escorted in and out of the prison at set times, and no coolers can be brought in to help preserve the milk, so some of the milk was spoiled. On top of this, for most women, it is not possible for their families to come and pick up breast milk.
I was taken out of the health care unit after a month and a half. The breast pump stayed in the health care unit. I was allowed to go there every three hours during the day, but I was not allowed to go at night. That meant I couldn’t pump at night. A month after that happened, I stopped being able to produce milk, not long before I went home to my baby. That felt like a lot of pumping for no reason. In the end, I was not able to breastfeed my daughter when I came home.
Here’s another thing that’s important to mention: After I was taken out of health care, one day they called me back in. Another woman was about to start using the breast pump. They called me in to find out how to put the second breast pump together. It wasn’t because I knew a lot about setting up a breast pump — it was because they knew so little. There was no one at the prison who could really support people in using the pump.
So, it’s a good thing that breast pumps are now allowed at the prison, but it’s not enough. If they even had one person in the prison who knew what they were doing, and knew what was going on, it would make a difference. It wouldn’t need to be someone’s full-time job. More people just need to know what’s going on. When I told the male guards, “I need to use the breast pump,” they laughed at me and had no idea what I was talking about. Also, prisons need reliable pumps that are not old, donated pumps with scattered pieces, and mothers need to have access to the pump at all times.
But also, when it comes down to it, my question is why we need to be thinking about breast pumps in prison in the first place. Why are all these moms sitting in prison when their babies are on the outside missing them?
If new mothers are incarcerated, they need to have access to breast pumps. But really, no breast pump can replace being with your baby. No one should ever have to be handcuffed, shackled and pulled away from their newborn child.
Note: This essay was written in 2014.
Truthout has launched the Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize, which will be awarded to a formerly incarcerated writer. More information is here.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On January 13, the Illinois legislature passed the Pretrial Fairness Act (as part of HB 3653 SFA2). Once signed, this bill will make the state the first to completely eradicate the use of money bail.
Once fully implemented in 2023, the Pretrial Fairness Act will make Illinois’s pretrial system a national model. In addition to ending money bail, a variety of other provisions will improve the fairness of the state’s pretrial system and ensure that the vast majority of people are released before trial. The bill creates a limited detention eligibility net and mandates pretrial release in the majority of cases; reforms the way people are treated when they miss court dates; ensures sentencing credit for time spent and movement permissions for people on electronic monitoring; regulates the use of risk assessment tools, such as Cook County’s Public Safety Assessment; and ensures transparency and accountability through mandatory data collection and publication. Together, these changes move the state’s orientation toward a real presumption of pretrial freedom and an understanding that public safety comes from investment and resources rather than incarceration.
The passage of this historic legislation was made possible by long-term community organizing, but catalyzed by last summer’s uprisings in response to the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. While lifting up the cries to defund police and refund communities, movement leaders demanded a new vision of community safety that relies not on militarized policing and violent punishment, but instead on resources like living wage jobs and fully funded schools and social services. The Illinois Legislative Black Caucus understood the protests as a mandate to bring sweeping changes to the state’s criminal legal system.
Over the past 40 years, courts have jailed increasing numbers of people — disproportionately Black — who are awaiting trial and presumed innocent, simply because they cannot afford to pay money bail. This pretrial incarceration often lasts for months or even years, making it much harder for accused people to fight their cases, increasing pressure to accept plea deals, and leading to longer sentences. Pretrial jailing can lead to the loss of jobs, homes and even custody of children. By destabilizing people’s lives, pretrial detention makes us all less safe.
Since 2016, the Coalition to End Money Bond and the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice (of which our organizations have served as anchors) have been organizing to bring an end to money bail. The Coalition’s 14 member organizations brought together a range of complementary capacities, including policy advocacy from organizations like Chicago Appleseed and the Illinois Justice Project; Black-led racial justice organizing by Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL); and broad-based community and electoral organizing by The People’s Lobby (TPL). The newly formed Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF) brought a laser-like focus on this issue. This enabled the coalition to engage in a mix of “inside game” and “outside game” strategies. Our impact litigation and policy work complemented the grassroots work building power to move elected decisionmakers.
We used a variety of strategies in our organizing, ranging from courtwatching, data analysis and report writing, and direct actions, such as the one in which TPL and SOUL occupied the George N. Leighton Criminal Court Building for five hours in an act of civil disobedience. Media and art were also essential tools in our campaign. CCBF led this effort, working with volunteers, videographers and graphic designers to produce compelling, original educational materials like videos, animations and infographics. Our policy experts wrote legislation that became the Pretrial Fairness Act and talked to dozens of legislators about how courts could achieve their goals while respecting the presumption of innocence and freeing the vast majority of people before trial.
Uplifting the voices of people directly impacted by money bail and pretrial incarceration was a core element of Coalition activities. CCBF paid bail regularly for people and supported them in processing and analyzing their experiences. Many of them went on to share their stories with media, decisionmakers and community leaders. In Illinois, personal testimonies from members of CCBF, SOUL, TPL and others were key to changing the public conversation about wealth-based incarceration. Advocates can state hard facts until they are blue in the face, but personal stories from people impacted by pretrial incarceration move legislators, media and others without personal experiences in a completely different way. Over the past five years, the Coalition made money bail a widely understood and unpopular policy failure — and a litmus test for candidates and officials claiming to support racial justice.
At several key points, The People’s Lobby and other groups used electoral organizing to move the campaign forward. In 2016, reform candidate Kim Foxx defeated incumbent Anita Alvarez in an election for Cook County state’s attorney with a platform that included bail reform and a broader repudiation of “tough-on-crime” policies. Robert Peters, TPL’s political director and former Coalition organizer, was appointed and then elected to the Illinois Senate, where he became a leading champion for bail reform. These elections showed widespread public support for ending money bail, changed the political calculus for other elected officials and added important new voices to decisionmaking bodies.
Passing state legislation required uniting a diverse and statewide base of support. In 2019, the Coalition recruited dozens of additional organizations to form the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice (INPJ), of which our organizations have served as anchors. Together, we then engaged thousands of people to take action in Chicago, its suburbs, and throughout the rest of the state. To build this broad base, we centered Black leadership because Black people are by far the most impacted by money bail. At the same time, we also pushed people in other communities to recognize that we all have a stake in ending white supremacy and the criminal policies that perpetuate it.
By early 2020, the Coalition had secured Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s support in ending money bail, but the COVID-19 pandemic quickly brought the 2020 legislative session to a halt. The Black Lives Matter uprisings that began in May agitated and inspired a broader array of legislators to make criminal legal reform a priority. Soon, the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, led by Sen. Elgie Sims and Rep. Justin Slaughter, began working on a package of reforms to policing and incarceration. Senator Peters and Representative Slaughter, the sponsors of the Pretrial Fairness Act, advocated for the Black Caucus to include ending money bail in this package.
Meanwhile, we built relationships with key organizations working to end domestic and sexual violence and negotiated their support for the Pretrial Fairness Act. Faith leaders organized through The People’s Lobby, Community Renewal Society, SOUL, A Just Harvest, Trinity United Church of Christ, United Congregations of Metro East, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism of Illinois and Believers Bail Out also played an important role in lifting up the voices of members impacted by bail, moving a number of legislators outside Chicago, and securing media coverage at key moments. Ultimately, INPJ members organized thousands of people to call and email their legislators in late 2020 and early 2021.
Immediately upon its passage on January 13, Governor Pritzker congratulated the sponsors and the Coalition, and is expected to sign the bill.
Our organizing has not always gotten everything right. Our actions were often too centered in Chicago, and we need to increase our power-building efforts in the suburbs and across the state. There were times when very specialized discussions of legal policy questions took over our coalition meetings, and the grassroots organizers and leaders did not always feel empowered to fully participate. The process of our movement building, however, elevated and centered the voices of directly impacted people, built a powerful and united statewide network, laid the groundwork for significant divestment from jails — starting with a $26 million reduction in the budget of the Cook County Sheriff in 2021 — and won the farthest-reaching overhaul of pretrial systems in the country.
Our push to end money bail is not over. Police, prosecutors and their allies have shown that they are going to fight these reforms and attempt to stoke the kind of backlash that has rolled back efforts in places as diverse as New York, Atlanta, Alaska and California. The Pretrial Fairness Act will ramp up over a two-year period, so we’re going to need to keep up the fight and push hard to make sure the state follows through on the ambitious goals set by the bill’s passage.
Illinois organizers have sent a resounding message to the rest of the country that we must bring an end to the criminalization of poverty and the targeting of Black communities. The passage of the Pretrial Fairness Act signals a new era in how we must continue to reimagine safety and justice in our communities: by providing people with resources instead of caging them for ransom. In Illinois, we have shown that when movements open new windows of possibility, community organizing can push through transformational changes.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
February is Black History Month, and so we asked the Innocence Project’s staff to share books that have inspired them to reflect on Black history. The powerful books they selected below touch on everything from how the legacy of slavery in the U.S. has contributed to mass incarceration to exploring what it means to be a young Black person in America today — plus some interesting reads by talented Black authors touching on other forms of injustice.
Throughout this month, we’ll be highlighting the disproportionate impact of mass incarceration on Black people, including on death row, and honoring icons of the civil rights movement and pioneers of change. These essential reads get to the heart of many of these issues, so if you’re looking for a way to learn more this month check our recommendations. And tell us what you’re adding to your reading list in the comments below.
Over 30 years, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Les Payne spoke to anyone he could find who knew Malcolm X. What resulted is this incredible biography of the civil rights leader, which paints a portrait of Malcolm X unlike any other. The winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Non-Fiction, this biography is a must-read. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
In this memoir, Mr. Laymon writes about growing up in Jackson, Mississippi. He poignantly discusses his struggles with his weight, abuse and family, and contemplates the dynamics of race and America’s fraught racial history on his life and the lives of those around him. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
Co-authored by Yusef Salaam, a member of the Exonerated Five and the Innocence Project’s board of directors, this moving young adult novel tells the story of a wrongly convicted boy. Ms. Zoboi told NPR that the main character is inspired by Mr. Salaam because, “I write books for children, and I wanted the world to remember that Yusef was a child when this happened to him and I was a child as well.”
Innocence Project supporters will receive a free shipping discount when they purchase Punching the Air with this link.
While arrests of girls between the ages of 13 and 17 have declined overall, Black girls are coming into contact with the juvenile justice system at disproportionately high rates. That has to do with the way society treats young Black girls, Dr. Morris argues. In this work of nonfiction, she examines the unique experiences of young Black girls in school, interrogating the ways in which today’s schools and systems dehumanize and criminalize Black girls from an early age, leaving life-long impacts. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
Celebrated Black feminist writer and professor bell hooks frequently writes on the intersection of race, gender and society. But in All About Love: New Visions, hooks examines the foundation of love and the ways in which cultural norms have shaped how we love one another. In less than 200 pages, hooks lays out her framework for understanding love and becoming more open to giving and receiving love, and in doing so advancing justice and humanity. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
No list of great Black literature would be complete without Mr. Baldwin’s work. In this 1962 novel, Mr. Baldwin paints a portrait of New York City’s Greenwich Village and Harlem neighborhoods as he saw them. He challenges the characterization of New York City as a harmonious “melting pot,” and instead highlights the ways in which continued racism can become internalized and affect interpersonal relationships. Another Country was criticized by many and banned in some places, including New Orleans and Australia, at the time of publishing. But, today, is considered an important and influential writing. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
In her first novel, Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi traces the details the slave trade’s impact on two continents over eight generations. Focusing on two half sisters and their descendants, Homegoing highlights the ways in which the legacy of slavery has shaped race dynamics and changed lives over hundreds of years, and still does to this day. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
Garrett Felber examines the history of the Nation of Islam, a Black political and religious movement, and its struggle against policing and prisons as part of the Black Freedom Movement. The book also looks at the ways in which the Muslim community’s organizing during the civil rights era paved the way for the modern-day prison abolition movement. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
“I am invisible because people refuse to see me … When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination — indeed, everything and anything except me,” Mr. Ellison wrote in Invisible Man.
The novel follows the life of an unnamed narrator, a Black man who grows up in a small Southern town, attends a Black college, and moves to New York where his life takes a turn. The celebrated work of fiction considers issues of race and social structures still relevant today. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
Ms. Wilkerson’s book draws its title from a poem by celebrated author Richard Wright, in which he wrote that he had left the South and moved to Chicago in the hopes of feeling “the warmth of other suns.”
In Ms. Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, she tells the powerful, true stories of three Black Americans who, like Mr. Wright and millions of others, left the South between 1915 and 1970 to seek opportunity and freedom from Jim Crow rule elsewhere in the U.S. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
In the first installment of Jemisin’s sci-fi trilogy, Essun, the protagonist, must hide her supernatural abilities as she searches for her kidnapped daughter in an apocalyptic world where natural disasters occur regularly and without warning. If her abilities are discovered, she risks discrimination and even death. The three books in the series deal with themes of oppression, power and revolution. Ms. Jemisin became the first Black woman to win the Hugo Award, the most prestigious award for science fiction and fantasy writing, in 2016. She went on to win the prize the following two years for the subsequent installments of the trilogy. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
Ms. Ward’s novel is set in a fictional town in Mississippi, but much of it takes place in the very real Mississippi State Penitentiary, modeled after a slavery era plantation, and tells the story of a family impacted by mass incarceration, racism, drugs and poverty. Ms. Ward won the National Book Award for her moving book. Get it here or at your local bookstore.
What’s on your reading list? Let us know in the comments below.
The post 14 Books to Read During Black History Month and Beyond appeared first on Innocence Project.
This post was originally published on Innocence Project.
The census is approaching, but experts warn the count will be inaccurate. From the controversial citizenship question to a flawed online rollout, we look at why the census is struggling and whether efforts to save it will work.
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This post was originally published on Reveal.