Archive

The American Civil Liberties Union of California is encouraged by Sen. Darrell Steinberg's proposal, announced today, to reject Gov. Jerry Brown's call for prison expansion and to instead seek lasting solutions to California's overincarceration crisis that will also make our communities safer. As several members of the Senate Democratic Caucus acknowledged at a press conference this morning, mass ... Read More

Taxpayers spend more on the criminal justice system than what it would cost to educate every young person in California. AB 420 addresses the school-to-prison pipeline and will keep more kids in front of a blackboard instead of behind bars. Read More

California must follow the Attorney General’s lead. We must abandon the failed and costly policies of the past that have left far too many people locked up for far too long who don’t need to be kept behind bars to keep our families and communities safe. Now is the time to focus on front end sentencing reforms, especially for low-level, nonviolent drug crimes, that will reduce wasteful spending on ... Read More

Solitary confinement completely isolates immigration detainees: They are generally confined to a small jail cell for twenty-three hours a day, with little to no human contact, and a slot in the door through which officers pass their meals. In some Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities, their one hour of daily “rec” time takes place in a human-size cage or in a narrow concrete yard o... Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court today rejected a request from the state of California for a stay of the federal court order that the state reduce its prison capacity to 137.5 percent of capacity.The following statement was issued this afternoon by the ACLU of California:"Today's Supreme Court ruling makes plain that state leaders can no longer avoid the urgent need to enact the kinds of reforms that will c... Read More

As the mother of an African-American boy, the tragic, unnecessary death of Trayvon Martin and the trial and subsequent acquittal of George Zimmerman have me heartbroken and filled with unanswerable questions. Does this verdict mean that some people view my son's (or my husband's or my father's) life as disposable? And how do parents like me protect our sons from people whose perceptions, unconscio... Read More

As a black man living in Oakland, I'm not immune to racist policing. I've experienced it repeatedly. Fruitvale Station reminded that like Oscar Grant, I may never come home. Read More

This week, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California issued a terrific decision in our lawsuit against the FBI for records about surveillance of the Occupy movement. We hope that this decision will lead to the shining of some much-needed light on the FBI and its surveillance of political protest movements. Read More

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California this week was forced to file a lawsuit against Sacramento County officials after they failed to respond to requests for public documents. It's a case that underscores why it was so important that the state legislature last month backed off plans to weaken the California Public Records Act: the fact is that even with the law intact, it often... Read More

Oakland city officials yesterday announced that the City Council had taken initial steps toward approving a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the National Lawyers Guild against the City of Oakland and the Oakland Police Department (OPD) for use of excessive force against Occupy Oakland Protestors in October and November 2011. Read More