For decades, the New York Police Department has arrested people, the vast majority people of color, for carrying so-called gravity knives, meant to open with a flick of the wrist. The problem is, it's not always clear what is and isn’t a gravity knife, and many workers use knives on the job. Our guest, Appeal contributor Jon Campbell, discusses the latest efforts in New York State to reform the laws, and prevent this questionable offense from sending people to prison.
Apr 11, 2019•16 min
As more and more states seek to abandon cash bail, a system widely seen as unjust and discriminatory, a question has emerged: What should replace it? Increasingly, the answer involves some sort of “risk assessment”––tools designed to predict an arrestee’s likelihood of fleeing prosecution or committing another crime. They're also being used in parole and sentencing decisions. Today we are joined by Hannah Sassaman, policy director of Media Mobilizing Project, and Matt Henry, chief technologist a...
Apr 04, 2019•45 min
In March 2018, police in Sacramento, California killed Stephon Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old, in his grandparents' backyard. A year later, District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert's announcement that charges would not be filed against the two officers responsible for his death became the latest flashpoint for the Black Lives Matter movement. This week, we are joined by Appeal staff reporter Aaron Morrison, who will provide the latest on the protests in Sacramento and how activists are working to ho...
Mar 14, 2019•21 min
States throughout the U.S. have recently expanded voting rights to millions of people with felony records previously barred from participating in elections. After a brief moment of celebration, two of them, Iowa and Florida, are now experiencing backlash from Republican lawmakers advocating for policies that would curtail those rights. This week, we are joined by The Appeal’s Kira Lerner to discuss the hurdles these movements still face and the forces pushing back against the wave of increased e...
Mar 07, 2019•19 min
Elected in 2017 to much fanfare from progressives, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba promised to transform Jackson, Mississippi, into the “most radical city on the planet.” But almost immediately, one of Lumumba's signature reforms—an effort to hold police more accountable for on-the-job shootings—was met with tremendous opposition. This week, we are joined by Jackson reporter and Appeal contributor Ko Bragg to discuss this conflict, the promise and limits of reform, and what lessons can be learned fro...
Feb 28, 2019•20 min
In the public mind, incarcerated people are often better left in the dark––unseen and unconsidered. That's especially true when it comes to prisoners with disabilities, who suffer from both the routine cruel conditions of America’s prisons and a widespread non-compliance in those prisons with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Our guest this week, Appeal contributor Keri Blakinger, joins us to discuss an ongoing lawsuit in New York State and the broader movement across the country to give pris...
Feb 21, 2019•15 min
A primary demand of the Black Lives Matter movement is more transparency into police misconduct. When an officer improperly arrests, unduly harms, sexually assaults, or kills someone, any previous record of misconduct ought to be a matter of public record. To that end, the state of California recently passed Senate Bill 1421, legislation designed to make police records more readily available to media, civil rights groups, defense attorneys, and the public. But as our guest, Appeal contributor Da...
Feb 14, 2019•20 min
About 1,000 people die in U.S. jails every year. But Erie County, New York, is an outlier, with 24 such deaths since Timothy Howard took over as sheriff in 2005. This week, we’re going to talk with Appeal contributor Raina Lipsitz about what's happening in Erie County and what it tells us about the broader problem of people dying in jail.
Feb 07, 2019•23 min
As the government shutdown drags on, a number of media outlets––from NBC News to USA Today to the Washington Post––have run stories claiming that federal prisoners are eating elaborate steak dinners while prison guards go unpaid. This narrative, while obviously bogus, initially went unchallenged. This week, we are joined by two people who will help debunk it: Amy Ralston Povah, a prison reform advocate and formerly incarcerated person, and Craig Cesal, a federal prisoner in Terre Haute, Indiana,...
Jan 24, 2019•27 min
Following the Alton Sterling shooting in the summer of 2016, the national media briefly turned its attention to Baton Rouge—a city marked by a long history of segregation and racist policing. After the killing, local politicians promised reform but two-and-a-half years on there’s been little to no progress—some say the situation has only gotten worse. This week's guests, Appeal contributors Clarissa Sosin and Daryl Khan, join us from Baton Rouge to discuss recent cases of police brutality and ho...
Jan 17, 2019•26 min
In the past few years, criminal justice reformers have focused on city police departments and prosecutors. What might be gained from focusing on sheriffs' departments? Sheriffs wield a tremendous amount of power in our criminal justice system but largely fly under the radar. Often running on tough on crime platforms, once elected, they are largely unaccountable to city councils and other elected officials. Appeal writer Jessica Pishko has recently written an explainer on the subject, and joins t...
Jan 10, 2019•27 min
With the swearing in of President Trump in January 2017 came an aggressive rightward shift in America’s immigration policy, specifically with regard to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Our guest, Appeal senior reporter Debbie Nathan, has been documenting how municipalities throughout the United States, especially those in deep red Texas, are pushing back using everything from mass protests to direct action to lawsuits.
Dec 13, 2018•22 min
It's been over four years since the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO and the issue of racism in the criminal legal system remains as stark and urgent as ever. Our guest, professor at American University College of Law, Appeal contributor and author, Angela J. Davis, recently edited an anthology on race and the US criminal system called 'Policing the Black Man' that lays out, in no uncertain terms, just how wide the gap is between the experiences of white and black Americans in everything...
Dec 06, 2018•23 min
We’ve watched the scene play out in countless police dramas: slick scientific experts with the latest gadgets and technology finding the Bad Guys with forensic pattern matching: Bite marks, fingerprints, a marking on a fired bullet or handwriting on a note. But how scientific are these methods? And how much do prosecutors and judges wildly oversell their reliability? This week, we are joined by Jessica Brand, Legal Director at The Justice Collaborative and Appeal contributor to discuss some of t...
Nov 29, 2018•20 min
“Criminal justice reform” as a general label has become trendy in recent years and, for many prospective Presidential candidates it will be a major 2020 litmus test. But what do people mean when they use the term? What are the policies being advanced and what are some of the dangers of surface-level reformist language unattached to specific, activist-led initiatives? This week, we are joined by The Appeal’s Josie Duffy Rice to discuss how one can separate real reform from the dangers or faux-ref...
Nov 15, 2018•34 min
Most people know that the healthcare situation in the United States is one of most precarious in the world, but what’s never talked about is the status of healthcare for America’s 2.2 million incarcerated persons––which is lightyears worse. One prison in particular, Angola in Louisiana, rates at the very bottom of even this group, with mortality rates almost double the national average for prisons. Our guest, Mercedes Montagnes of the Promise of Justice Initiative, is a lawyer helping people inc...
Nov 01, 2018•19 min
This fall, thousands of incarcerated people in dozens of states went on strike to protest harsh and exploitative conditions in America's prisons. Prisons, and the cruel conditions they foster, are often the last thing with which the public wants to be confronted about. But incarcerated people throughout the country are using the only leverage they have—their personal labor—to force the issue. Our guest, Appeal staff reporter Raven Rakia, joins us to talk about these efforts and what the future h...
Oct 25, 2018•21 min
Two pieces of news have rocked Chicago: the announcement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that he will not seek a third term and the conviction of a white police officer, Jason Van Dyke, of the killing of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald. Both events were the result of years of activism, work that often goes unseen and unsung. This week's guest, writer Kelly Hayes, talks about the lessons Chicago holds for activists throughout the country.
Oct 11, 2018•28 min
The United States is alone in the world in pursuing two modes of prosecution: giving life sentences to children under 18, and giving life sentences for murder to people who never murdered anyone. Even if one doesn’t pull any trigger, or even have prior knowledge of a crime, they can be treated as if they are a murderer--if a killing occurs pursuant an underlying felony like robbery or carjacking. Appeal contributor Katie Rose Quandt joins us to discusses why felony murder laws are unjust and how...
Oct 04, 2018•16 min
“Police accountability” is a term that gets thrown around a lot in conversations about criminal justice reform. But how do we make sure police officers who break laws or department rules are held to account? The reality––even four years after Ferguson––is that little progress has been made in creating structures that discipline police officers for bad behavior. Our guest, Appeal reporter George Joseph, has been doing deep dives into police discipline in cities across America. The findings? A sys...
Sep 27, 2018•25 min
This week we're doing the first of a recurring series on how activists and organizers on the ground are trying to move the needle with regard to District Attorney races. Our first installment: Dallas County. An appointed conservative DA, Faith Johnson, has flown mostly under the radar in the notoriously red state as activists there, including our three guests–Dominique Walker of ACLU Texas, Reverend Edwin Robinson of Faith in Texas, and Joe Estelle of The Texas Organizing Project––have been work...
Sep 20, 2018•33 min
You’ve likely heard of the school-to-prison pipeline, but what you likely haven’t heard is the prison-to-school pipeline––efforts in recent years to help the incarcerated and formerly incarcerated receive a quality education. Our guest, activist and educator Danny Murillo, has been spearheading such initiatives for over five years. After spending 14 years in Pelican Bay supermax prison he co-founded the Underground Scholars Initiative at University California Berkeley which is dedicated to makin...
Sep 13, 2018•34 min
'He was a straight-A student', 'a loving husband', 'she worked 60 hours a week'––we often hear how victims of police and white supremacist violence didn't deserve to be killed due to their shiny records. But what if this is the totally wrong approach to discussing violence visited upon oppressed communities? Our guest, Appeal contributor Zoé Samudzi, argues that the notion of “innocence” as a condition for empathy is an outdated, puritan mode of thinking that implies those with messy, so-called ...
Sep 06, 2018•33 min
As prison reform efforts begin to have an effect on how many people end up behind bars, a reliance on electronic monitoring increasingly serves as a pseudo-solution to keep people out of cement and steel cages––by putting them into electronic ones. Our guest, Appeal contributor Kira Lerner, talks about the moral hazards presented by this approach and why it’s important prison reform efforts expand beyond cement walls to include those composed of house arrest and monitoring technologies....
Aug 16, 2018•22 min
Shoplifting is traditionally seen as a petty crime unworthy of serious punishment, much less prison time. But under an increasingly popular theory of crime, DA's––with the help of retail lobbyists––are throwing the book at people for stealing as little as $39 worth of goods, claiming they burgled a public store. Our guest, Appeal contributor Jessica Pishko, discusses this punitive trend and what public defenders are doing to push back.
Aug 09, 2018•29 min
State child protective courts are an under-reported element of our criminal legal system, but their impact on communities of color and the poor is felt as much, if not more, than other aspects of it. One case, that of the Hart family, caught national attention after a seemingly "normal" white couple adopted African-American children taken from the mother by a corrupt and likely racist judge in Texas––only to end in a grisly murder-suicide. Our guest, Appeal contributor Roxanna Asgarian, joins us...
Aug 02, 2018•28 min
1 in 5 people incarcerated in this country have not been convicted of any wrongdoing. Their crime? Being poor in a country that tethers pre-trial freedom to one's wealth. In this episode we discuss with journalist Bryce Covert emerging efforts––from New York to New Orleans to Chicago––to bond people out of jail as both a temporary form of relief, and a long term strategy of undoing the cash bail system entirely.
Jul 26, 2018•26 min
By now you've probably heard of the family separation crisis at the US-Mexico border. What you may not know is how exactly we got to this tipping point. On today's show we talk with Appeal writer Max Rivlin-Nadler, who's been following President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions's ramped up "zero tolerance" approach to immigration. While President Obama had harsh immigration policies as well, Trump's approach goes much further––animated by a toxic mixture of racism, for-profit incarcerati...
Jul 19, 2018•47 min
We didn't always have police and prisons as we know them today—in fact, they're fairly recent inventions. Abolitionists like William C. Anderson ask us to radically rethink the necessity of police, and our practice of throwing people in cages. Anderson traces the origins of modern punishment from slavery to debt peonage to Jim Crow to the co-called War on Drugs.
Jul 12, 2018•32 min
Despite recent Supreme Court rulings curtailing the practice, the United States remains the only country on earth that enforces life without parole sentences for crimes committed when they were minors. Our guest, Victoria Law, explains efforts by prosecutors in Louisiana to continue keeping dozens of men, most of them Black, in state prison for crimes committed when they were 16, 17 years old in the 1960s and 1970s––typifying a prosecutorial ethos of punishment for punishment's sake.
Jun 28, 2018•23 min
