Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.
Fighting Overincarceration in the States
California:
• Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail, the largest and most violence-plagued in the nation, can be shut down by the end of 2013, according to a new reportcommissioned by the ACLU and endorsed by the LA County Sheriff. Sheriff Lee Baca his new outlook to this report, written by corrections expert James Austin, which found that LA’s jail population could be safely reduced through use of alternatives to incarceration. As a court-appointed monitor of jail conditions, the ACLU for years has documented unjustified force by deputies, retaliation against inmates for lodging complaints, and severe overcrowding and mistreatment of the mentally ill in Men’s Central Jail.
• The state’s “realignment” plan needs companion tools to safely reduce its incarcerated population. The ACLU has responded by championing a pair of bills that passed out of a Senate committee last month. The would use evidence-based tools to safely release low-risk individuals from jail before trial. The would make simple possession of drugs a misdemeanor.
Colorado:
• California isn’t the only state thinking that drug possession doesn’t warrant hard time. The ACLU is backing , currently before a Colorado Senate committee, that would make small amounts of certain drugs a misdemeanor.
Florida:
• The ACLU and every major Florida newspaper Gov. Rick Scott for vetoing a bill that would have provided treatment to low-risk prisoners with drug addiction after completing half their sentences. The Florida legislature the bill almost unanimously.
Louisiana:
• Recognizing that life without parole doesn’t make sense for some prisoners, the Bayou State is considering to lift the prohibition on parole for prisoners convicted of nonviolent, non-sex crimes. The bill, introduced with the support of the ACLU, passed a House vote by a wide margin and is now before the Senate.
Maryland:
• The ACLU is the Baltimore City Police Department for failing to comply with a in the ACLU’s lawsuit challenging the improper arrests of thousands of individuals each year who were not and could not be prosecuted.
• In more positive news, the ACLU worked diligently to help enact two bills. Gov. Martin O’Malley signed into law that grantsearned time credit to people on parole and that reduces sentences for simple marijuana possession.
Massachusetts:
• State lawmakers are still negotiating the details of that would reduce mandatory minimums for some drug offenses and reduce the “school zone” for drug offenses. However, the bill also creates several severe three strikes penalties. The ACLU is fighting to protect what’s good in this bill and is vigorously opposing what’s not.
Missouri:
• The Missouri House passed to reduce the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine from an abysmal 75-to-1 to 5-to-1. This bill is the product of much advocacy and groundwork by the ACLU and other organizations. The House also passed that would send fewer people back to prison for technical parole violations.
Ending Racial Profiling
• ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero testified before a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee to discuss “Ending Racial Profiling in America.” Read the ACLU’s testimony and watch the on the End Racial Profiling Act (ERPA). If passed, ERPA would provide robust safeguards against racial profiling by revising federal guidelines and requiring state and local agencies to collect data and implement policies to prevent profiling. To raise awareness, the ACLU and other advocates hosted End Racial Profiling Day on Capitol Hill and ran a series of blog posts by victims of racial profiling.
Ending the Death Penalty
• First Racial Justice Act Challenge is a Success: In light of powerful statistical evidence of racial bias in North Carolina jury selection, a state judge commuted ACLU client Marcus Robinson’s sentence from death to life without parole. The decision, the first under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, is an historic step towards fairness in the administration of capital punishment. You can read more about the case here, including the final opinion.
• Connecticut Repeals the Death Penalty: When Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed legislation to repeal the death penalty on April 25, the state became the 17th in the nation to do so. The helped harness the support of a wide coalition to support this bill, including murder victims’ families, law enforcement, and ACLU members.
• The 25th Anniversary of McCleskey v. Kemp: In a series of blog posts, the ACLU commemorated the U.S. Supreme Court’s shameful decision in McCleskey, which held that a defendant cannot rely upon statistical evidence of systemic racial bias to prove his death sentence unconstitutional, no matter how strong that evidence may be. A blog post by the ACLU’s Vanita Gupta explains the wide-reaching impact of that decision, and the creative strategies advocates are using to reform our criminal justice system despite it.
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
Free Speech
National Security
ACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok BanACLU and Partners Urge Supreme Court to Block TikTok Ban
WASHINGTON — Today, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to block the enforcement of a law that would effectively ban people in America from using TikTok as soon as January 19, 2025. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected TikTok’s challenge to the law. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court for a temporary injunction to prevent the app from being banned while the court considers whether to take the case, saying that unless the justices intervene, the law will “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration.” “The Constitution imposes an extraordinarily high bar on this kind of mass censorship,”said Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU’s National Security Project. “The Supreme Court should take up this important case and protect the rights of millions of Americans to freely express themselves and engage with others around the world.” The brief argues that the D.C. Circuit failed to fully address the law’s profound implications for the First Amendment rights of the 170 million Americans who use TikTok. While the lower court’s decision correctly recognized that the statute triggers First Amendment scrutiny, it barely addressed users’ First Amendment interests in speaking, sharing, and receiving information on the platform. The court also perplexingly attempted to cast the government’s ban on TikTok as a vindication of users’ First Amendment rights, which it is not. The rights groups also explain that the law was intended to suppress certain content and viewpoints that many legislators believe could be amplified on TikTok, including the risk of foreign “propaganda.” But under the First Amendment, the government must meet a very high bar to restrict speech based on concerns about its “motivating ideology” or “perspective,” and the government has not come close to meeting that bar here. “The government should not be able to restrict speech, especially to the extent here, based on guessing about the mere possibility of uncertain future harm,” said David Greene, civil liberties director at EFF. “The Supreme Court should put the TikTok ban on hold while it considers the DC Circuit’s erroneous ruling.” Finally, the brief underscores that the government can’t impose this type of sweeping ban unless it’s necessary to prevent extremely serious and imminent harm to national security. But the government has not provided evidence of impending harm, or evidence that banning TikTok is the only available way to address its concerns. As the brief explains, the D.C. Circuit improperly treated the government’s invocation of “national security” as a trump card and failed to hold the government to its burden. “Restricting citizens’ access to foreign media is a practice that has long been associated with repressive regimes, and we should be very wary of letting the practice take root here,” said Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “It would do lasting damage to the First Amendment and our democracy if the Supreme Court let this ban go into effect even temporarily.” You can find the brief online here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24A587/335380/20241217144322392_24A587%20TikTok%20v%20Garland%20Amicus%20Brief%20pdfa.pdf -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Religious Liberty
ACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter IslamophobiaACLU Statement on New White House Strategy to Counter Islamophobia
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration today released the first-ever national strategy to counter Islamophobia and related forms of bias and discrimination, including hate against Arab, Sikh, and South Asian Americans. In advance of the strategy, American Civil Liberties Union and its partners had urged the administration to overhaul government programs that reflect anti-Muslim discrimination. In particular, we have called for urgent action to constrain governmental agencies from continuing to exercise their authorities and technology to wrongly surveil and investigate, watchlist, and question and detain Muslims at the border, as well as deny immigration benefits to people from Muslim-majority countries. While the White House raised expectations that many of these issues would be addressed, the final strategy ended up falling far short. The following is a statement from Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project: “While this strategy acknowledges discrimination and its harms, it does little to end them and is a squandered opportunity. For decades, American officials have invoked national security to pass laws and implement programs that disproportionately harm Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim. A serious anti-discrimination strategy would concretely address multiple bias-infused government practices that deny our communities equal participation in civic life and our democracy, like federal watchlisting, surveillance, and investigation. We’re profoundly frustrated that the administration didn’t take even the basic, overdue step of recognizing that anti-Muslim discrimination is uniquely normalized and embedded in government policies.” -
VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
Trabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted ManTrabelsi v. Crawford, et al. – Lawsuit Challenging Unlawful Detention and Inhumane Treatment of Acquitted Man
Our client, Nizar Trabelsi, is in the United States against his will. The federal government brought him here from Belgium more than a decade ago and charged him with terrorism-related crimes. At trial, the government’s case failed: a federal jury found Mr. Trabelsi not guilty. But instead of allowing Mr. Trabelsi to return to Belgium after his acquittal, the United States placed him in highly restrictive immigration detention and began an ongoing effort to force him to Tunisia, where he was born and where he will very likely be tortured. Mr. Trabelsi’s detention violates the Constitution, immigration law, and the extradition treaty between the United States and Belgium. Through this lawsuit, he seeks to return to Belgium, and he demands an immediate improvement of his detention conditions. -
Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
Federal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is UnlawfulFederal Judge Rejects Acquitted Man’s Argument That His Immigration Detention Is Unlawful
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — This week, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that the court does not have jurisdiction to decide whether the government can continue to detain Nizar Trabelsi, a Tunisian national who was brought to the United States against his will for prosecution and was cleared of all charges last year. The ruling means the United States will be able to continue to detain Mr. Trabelsi while it attempts to deport him to Tunisia, where he was born and where, as an immigration judge ruled earlier this year, he will likely face torture. The court also concluded that even if it did have jurisdiction over Mr. Trabelsi’s case, his claims challenging the government’s detention of him would fail. “Reviewing claims that the government is holding someone unlawfully is at the core of the judicial function, and we’re heartbroken for our client that the court got this so wrong,” said Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Center for Democracy. “The government’s arguments in defense of Mr. Trabelsi’s detention makes a hash of the Constitution, immigration laws, and its own extradition treaty.” In 2013, the United States forcibly extradited Mr. Trabelsi from Belgium to face criminal charges in the United States. In July 2023, after almost 10 years of highly restrictive pretrial detention, a federal jury cleared Mr. Trabelsi of all charges. But instead of releasing Mr. Trabelsi or returning him to Belgium, the U.S. transferred him to immigration detention, wrongly treating him as an applicant for admission and placing him in the deportation process. Over the years, the Belgian government has issued multiple formal diplomatic requests asking the U.S. to facilitate his return, but the U.S. has refused to send him back. Mr. Trabelsi filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to detain him. He also sought immediate improvements to his detention conditions. Those claims were not part of the court’s ruling today, and will continue to be litigated on a separate track. “Mr. Trabelsi only wants to return to Belgium after being illegally extradited to the United States, held for ten years, and then acquitted by a jury of any crimes,” said Nicole Hallett, clinical professor of law and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “He cannot be held indefinitely and we will continue to fight to make sure that justice ultimately prevails.” Mr. Trabelsi is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the University of Chicago Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, the ACLU of Virginia, and Professor Jonathan Hafetz of Seton Hall Law School. The complaint in Trabelsi v. Crawford was filed against Jeffrey Crawford, warden of the Farmville Detention Center where Mr. Trabelsi is being held; Liana Castano, ICE field office director for the Washington Field Office; Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general.