This report asks us to face the impact centuries of systemic racism and economic inequality in Philadelphia have had on our criminal legal justice system. It puts numbers to a problem. It is a starting point for all people of good will to think together and work together to defeat racism in criminal justice.

On the numbers, there are staggering disparities in outcomes by race that often connect to race discrimination and to economic inequality. The District Attorney is sworn to seek justice, which clearly requires fighting against racism. But the results of centuries of oppression cannot be understood much less undone by any single actor. In releasing this report, and the different outcomes it highlights, I am calling on all Philadelphians to try to understand these disparities, to determine their causes and effects, and to work together to fix them.

The child welfare system, more accurately referred to as the family policing system, employs extensive surveillance that disproportionately targets marginalized families, subjecting them to relentless oversight. Scholars observe that this ongoing surveillance obstructs effective parenting, exacerbates existing injustices, and contradicts its stated protective purpose. Instead of safeguarding, surveillance transforms into a tool of control against the families it should assist, particularly those who are already vulnerable. This Article extends the analysis of the family policing system’s surveillance practices to encompass parents with disabilities and their children, revealing the unique consequences of continuous observation. The system’s ableism amplifies scrutiny of disabled parents, disregarding their disability-related needs and causing harm under the guise of protection. The culmination of this persistent surveillance results in heightened systemic harm, trapping families in an inescapable cycle of perpetual scrutiny.

Most local governments spend more on policing and incarcerating local residents than on proactive investments in residents’ well-being. Access to safe and affordable housing, health care, public transportation, and other community services like libraries and parks are essential to residents’ overall quality of life. Yet many communities invest less in these vital activities than in surveilling, arresting, and jailing residents.

This dashboard examines the 2022 budgets of 20 locales across the country. In most of these places, residents pay taxes to and are governed by both a city and county government. Therefore, the dashboard analyzes both the city and county budgets to give a fuller picture of local spending on police, sheriffs, detention, housing, health, and more.

Do investors anticipate that demands for racial equity will impact companies? We explore this question in the context of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement—the largest racially motivated protest movement in U.S. history—and its effect on the U.S. policing industry using a novel dataset on publicly traded firms contracting with the police. It is unclear whether the BLM uprisings were likely to increase or decrease market valuations of firms contracting heavily with police because of the increased interest in reforming the police, fears over rising crime, and pushes to “defund the police”. We find, in contrast to the predictions of economics experts we surveyed, that in the three weeks following incidents triggering BLM uprisings, policing firms experienced a stock price increase of seven percentage points relative to the stock prices of nonpolicing firms in similar industries. In particular, firms producing surveillance technology and police accountability tools experienced higher returns following BLM activism–related events. Furthermore, policing firms’ fundamentals, such as sales, improved after the murder of George Floyd, suggesting that policing firms’ future performances bore out investors’ positive expectations following incidents triggering BLM uprisings. Our research shows how—despite BLM’s calls to reduce investment in policing and explore alternative public safety approaches—the financial market has translated high-profile violence against Black civilians and calls for systemic change into shareholder gains and additional revenues for police suppliers.

A Report by Maurice MP-Weeks & Brendan McQuade, this is a resource on criminalization, manufactured panic, and how the narrative of a “shoplifting surge” by corporations and the media is copaganda. This report discusses the rise of private security, the politics of crime data, the informal economy, and the need for decommodification and to end market dependence in order to build the world where we all have what we need.

Hosts speak with Albert Fox Cahn and Sarah Roth of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or S.T.O.P., about the increasing use of surveillance technology to track students. Claiming their technology can predict who will be a threat to themselves or the school, companies market programs that report to school officials on students’ keystrokes, words, and behaviors. School officials can provide it to law enforcement or parents.