Resources

A toolkit on the “Addressing Law Enforcement Violence as a Public Health Issue” policy statement made in 2018 by the American Public Health Association (APHA) that shares ideas about the action steps, organizing talking points, and a worksheet for implementing the APHA statement where you are.

Police in Alabama made 2,351 arrests for marijuana possession in 2016. This study analyzed demographic data about the people arrested, along with arrest locations, in addition to examining broader impacts. The report also includes an economic analysis of the cost of marijuana prohibition, conducted by two economists at Western Carolina University.

This report briefly contextualizes the issue of decriminalizing sex work, discusses how this is a part of effective anti-trafficking policy, and presents a local and state-based platform for decriminalization. Decriminalization includes amending penal codes and divesting from the criminal legal system (both police and prosecutors). Decriminalization is the first step toward expanding labor protections and funding services that address the needs of people in the sex trades.

This report offers data about juvenile justice specific to Illinois, Cook County, and Chicago, to analyze ways in which the juvenile justice system disproportionately targets youth of color, including through arrests.

This video short shows the process of “critical mapping” used to represent the cumulative and uneven impact of hot spot policing across New York City – every NYPD police stop, every hour, for the entire year of 2011. The process is called “critical mapping” because researchers use maps to interrogate and speak back to the “official” maps that label neighborhoods a “hot spot” of crime.

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 blueprint, developed by TJC’s attorneys and criminal justice policy experts, outlines concrete steps to address the country’s mass incarceration crisis and provides actionable solutions to creating a fairer and more equitable justice system.

A collection of written and audio resources around various topics related to policing, prisons, and criminal justice reform and abolition. Author’s note: In general, I’ve tried to list shorter pieces, articles, and listening/viewing material. Though the sources are organized thematically, there is no issue in the carceral state that doesn’t intersect with another; therefore, most of the categories are necessarily false divides used for purposes of organization. In places where I’ve listed books, I include a link to the book or to an interview with the author.

Over the course of 2019, Local Progress engaged local elected officials and community leaders in a range of communities to evaluate their localities’ policing practices using the Reform/Transform toolkit. Those evaluations have produced the first results of the Reform/Transform toolkit in 12 cities: Chicago, Dallas, Durham, Louisville, Madison, Minneapolis, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C.