Resources

This report covers FBI surveillance of political activity over roughly the past decade. It find that the FBI has repeatedly monitored civil society groups, including racial justice movements, Occupy Wall Street, environmentalists, Palestinian solidarity activists, Abolish ICE protesters, and Cuba and Iran normalization proponents. Additionally, FBI agents conducted interviews that critics have argued were designed to chill protests at the Republican National Convention or intimidate Muslim-American voters.

An interactive graphic of data on the many costs of broken windows policing.

If we want a just and humane world, we must create one in which apparatuses of oppression are no longer considered reasonable. This week on For The Wild, we are joined by Mariame Kaba for an expansive conversation on Transformative Justice, community accountability, criminalization of survivors, and freedom on the horizon. Mariame addresses punishment as an issue of directionality while reminding us why it is vital to have the prison abolition movement in conversation with the movement for climate and environmental justice. When we engage with these issues and shape our actions out of a commitment to removing violence at its core, we are working to transform our world beyond recognition into something teeming with possibility, beauty, and life.

This report provides a brief overview of what Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) is and what assumptions drive CVE programs. Given the illusive nature of CVE (and the ways that practitioners intentionally distance themselves from critiques of CVE), it also describes local CVE programs currently underway in Illinois and identifies the key players advancing this anti-terrorism project. Because CVE programs often are rebranded under different names and funding sources, this report also details ways to identify CVE. Lastly, this report shares the experiences of community partners across the country to illustrate the nature and impact of CVE, and how people have been exposing and resisting CVE.

This zine is a primer on what Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs are, what they look like, their dangers, and how to combat them in your community.

While federal law enforcement agencies involved in Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) paint the program as a community outreach initiative dedicated to stopping people from becoming violent extremists, the reality is that these programs, which are based on junk science, have proven to be ineffective, discriminatory, and divisive. This report shares what you need to know about the dangers of CVE programs and why the framework should be abandoned rather than rehabilitated.

This is a brief collection of information on how and why false confessions occur and why instituting policies of recording interrogations can help protect individuals being interrogated. It also highlights states and federal agencies that already have this policy in place.

This report examines false confessions, and in particular the misunderstood typology of “coerced-internalized” false confessions. These confessions are made by individuals who falsely confess, but truly believe in their guilt despite objective evidence to the contrary. The case example of Billy Wayne Cope will be discussed at length, including the reported South Carolina Court of Appeal case, the transcripts of experts and the accused from trial, as well as an discussion of the extensive television documentary highlighting the possibility that Cope was wrongfully convicted. By looking at the specific words and reasoning of Billy Wayne Cope, this paper attempts to examine the impact of one of the
most unique and misunderstood forms of false confessions, and to suggest what needs to be done differently in the future to prevent further miscarriages of justice.

Recent DNA exonerations have shed light on the problem that people sometimes confess to crimes they did not commit. Drawing on police practices, laws concerning the admissibility of confession evidence, core principles of psychology, and forensic studies involving multiple methodologies, this White Paper summarizes what is known about police-induced confessions. This review identifies factors that influence confessions as well as their effects on judges and juries. This article concludes with a strong recommendation for the mandatory electronic recording of interrogations and considers other possibilities for the reform of interrogation practices and the protection of vulnerable suspect populations.