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Criminal Justice Reform blog
The 1996 Laws That Built Today's Deportation System Two 1996 laws widened the crimes that trigger deportation, mandated detention and stripped judges of discretion. How they work and why they outlasted reform. Why Prosecutors Hold the Most Power in American Criminal Justice A forged check worth less than a hundred dollars became a life sentence in 1978. That case explains how charging and plea bargaining put prosecutors at the center of the system. Attica in September 1971 and the Prisoners' List of Demands What the men who took D Yard at Attica asked for in September 1971, how the state answered with gunfire, and why the lawsuits and cover-up fights lasted into this century. Bryan Stevenson and the Memorial to Lynching Victims in Montgomery How a death penalty lawyer in Alabama came to build a memorial to thousands of lynching victims, and why he insists the history of racial terror and today's prisons belong in one story. Clarence Earl Gideon's Pencil Petition and How a Case Reaches the Supreme Court Follow one handwritten petition from a Florida prison cell to a unanimous ruling, and learn how cert petitions, conferences, oral argument and opinion day really work. Clean Slate Laws Spread From Pennsylvania to Red and Blue States Pennsylvania made record sealing automatic in 2018, and states from Utah to New York followed. Here is the case for clean slate laws, the objections, and why the idea crosses party lines. Furman, Gregg and the Four Years the Death Penalty Stopped How Furman v. Georgia emptied America's death rows in 1972, how states rewrote their laws in four years, and why the questions Gregg v. Georgia claimed to answer in 1976 never went away. George Floyd's Murder and the Police Reform Laws That Followed From a Minneapolis street corner on May 25, 2020, to statehouses and a stalled Senate deal: what changed in American policing law after George Floyd, and what was left by 2026. George W. Bush and the Second Chance Act for People Leaving Prison How a Republican president, an evangelical ex-convict and a Chicago Democrat built the 2008 Second Chance Act, what reentry money pays for, and why the law keeps getting renewed. Gideon v. Wainwright and the Handwritten Petition From a Florida Cell How a drifter's pencil petition from a Florida prison led a unanimous Supreme Court in 1963 to promise every poor felony defendant a lawyer, and why that promise is still unfinished. How Exonerations Happen and What DNA Evidence Changed How wrongful convictions are discovered and overturned, what DNA testing revealed about eyewitnesses, confessions and forensic science, and the reforms that make mistakes less likely. How Illinois Became the First State to Abolish Cash Bail How the Illinois Supreme Court's July 18, 2023 ruling cleared the way for the end of money bail, what pretrial detention hearings look like now, and what other states can learn from it. How Texas Republicans Chose Treatment Over New Prisons in 2007 In 2007 a Republican engineer from Plano and a Houston Democrat persuaded Texas to fund treatment and probation instead of new prisons. Here is how the deal worked and what it changed. How the First Step Act Passed a Divided Congress in 2018 How a federal prison and sentencing bill won 87 senators and a Republican president in 2018, what it changed, what it left out, and what the coalition behind it teaches now. How the First Step Act Shortened Federal Sentences A plain guide to the 2018 First Step Act: the sentencing changes, earned time credits and good-conduct fix that cut federal prison terms, and the limits and fights that followed. Miranda v. Arizona and the Warning Every Officer Learned to Recite How a 1963 Phoenix confession produced the 1966 Miranda warnings, how they work in an interrogation room today, and how a long line of later rulings narrowed what they protect. New York's 2020 Bail Law and the Fight Over What Happened Next How New York ended cash bail for most lower-level charges in 2019, what the evidence says happened after it took effect in 2020, and why the state rolled parts of it back three times. Qualified Immunity, the Court-Made Rule That Shields Officers How a 1967 case about clergymen arrested in a Jackson bus station grew into a doctrine that blocks civil-rights suits, and why critics on the left and right want it gone. The 100-to-1 Crack Disparity and the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 How a 1986 law punished crack cocaine a hundred times more harshly than powder, why the gap fell hardest on Black defendants, and how the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act narrowed it to 18 to 1. The 1994 Crime Bill and the Long Argument Over What It Caused A clear accounting of what the 1994 crime bill actually did, from police grants and prison money to the assault weapons ban, set against the larger story of mass incarceration it is often blamed for. Why Public Defenders Carry Caseloads No Lawyer Can Handle What the 2023 National Public Defense Workload Study found about how long a real defense takes, and how chronic underfunding quietly turns the right to counsel into a rushed guilty plea.