President ending contracts with federal private prisons âa step in the right directionâ
Kalamazoo activist and Univ. of Michigan Ann Arbor law professor applaud President Biden for taking huge step toward criminal justice reform Videos
and last updated 2021-01-27 20:50:15-05
MICHIGAN â Tuesday afternoon, President Joe Biden signed an executive order requiring the Department of Justice not to renew contracts with private prisons and facilities. Biden said he did it an effort to address and fix systemic racism in America.
Activist Ed Genesis of Kalamazoo was excited to see it.
âI feel hopeful just seeing this,â Genesis said during a Zoom interview on Wednesday afternoon. âPrivate prisons was just wrong, period; just for somebody to be able to invest or build something for the pure gain of capitalism.â
SHARE:
It took about two days of constant phone calls, emails with friends and acquaintances and social media posts for Margo Schlanger to figure out how to successfully secure a COVID-19 vaccine appointment for her 82-year-old father. The first day he became eligible for a vaccine, the Westchester resident filled out a form on the state website that pulled up a list of possible vaccination sites. But calls to each location proved unsuccessful – they were confused why they were listed, had no doses at the time or didn’t respond. He couldn’t get through to the state’s hotline for advice.
Dec 14, 2020 12:42 PM EDT
President-elect Joe Biden will face pressure when he takes office to make swift changes to the Department of Justice. But while he’ll be able to implement some reforms on his own, expected pushback from Congress and legal fights could make it hard for Biden to deliver many of the sweeping criminal justice reforms that advocates say are necessary.
Coming off a presidential campaign revived by the support of Black voters in a year marked by national protests against racial injustice and police brutality, Biden is expected to address systemic racism and discrimination that persists in the criminal justice system.
Federal court could tell Alabama how to fix its prisons
Updated Dec 14, 2020;
Posted Dec 13, 2020
A dorm at Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest, Ala., is shown in April 2016 holding 300 prisoners.Julie Bennett/AL.com.
Facebook Share
Gov. Kay Ivey has consistently said that “an Alabama solution” is the way to fix the state’s overcrowded, understaffed, and violent state prisons, but that won’t happen without new input from a federal court.
The U.S. Department of Justice sued the state in U.S. District Court in Birmingham on Wednesday, alleging that Alabama violates the constitutional rights of prisoners by failure to protect them from assaults and sexual abuse from other inmates, excessive force by correctional officers, and failure to provide safe and sanitary conditions.