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In light of concerns that the technologies employed by the digital welfare state exacerbate inequality and oppression, this article considers contemporary shifts in the administration of social assistance. Specifically, it examines the surveillance of recipients of government income support focusing on marginalized peoples in two jurisdictions: social security recipients subject to the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) in Australia, many of whom are Indigenous, and persons under the purview of the Lebanon One Unified InterOrganizational System for E-Cards (LOUISE) in Lebanon, many of whom are Syrian refugees. Taken together, the cases illuminate embedded ideologies and adverse experiences associated with the financialization of social assistance and the digitization of cash. Through a dual case study approach, this analysis draws out patterns as well as contextual distinctions to illustrate how technological changes reflect financialization trends and attempt neoliberal assimilation of social welfare recipients through intensive surveillance, albeit with disparate outcomes. After considering how these dynamics play out in each case, the article concludes by reflecting on the contradictions that emerge in relation to the promises of empowerment and individual responsibility through financialized logics and technologies.

Informants are the foot soldiers in the government’s war on drugs. By some estimates, up to 80% of all drug cases in America involve them, often in active roles. For police departments facing budget woes, untrained informants provide an inexpensive way to outsource the work of undercover officers. “The system makes it cheap and easy to use informants, as opposed to other, less risky but more cumbersome approaches,” says Alexandra Natapoff, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and a leading expert on informants. “There are fewer procedures in place and fewer institutional checks on their use.” Often, deploying informants involves no paperwork and no institutional oversight, let alone lawyers, judges, or public scrutiny; their use is necessarily shrouded in secrecy.

Every day, offenders are sent out to perform high-risk police operations with few legal protections. Some are juveniles, occasionally as young as 14 or 15. Some operate through the haze of addiction; others are enrolled in state-mandated treatment programs that prohibit their association with illegal drugs of any kind. Many have been given false assurances by the police, used without regard for their safety, and treated as disposable pawns of the criminal-justice system.

Since the historic passage of AB 392, which sets a higher standard for deadly use of force by officers in California, police special interest groups have spread a misinformation campaign to undermine the new law.

This timeline walks through damning communications and training materials uncovered by our litigation efforts in Gente Organizada v. Pomona Police Department.

In collaboration with Rutgers Graduate School of Education and the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Institute for Leadership, Equity & Justice, this report highlights the disproportionate arrests of Black and Latinx youth by the Pomona Police Department (PPD). Our goal is to center the malpractices of a police department that does not receive the same attention as a large metropolitan police department yet suffers from similar systemic issues of racial injustice and police brutality. In response to the question “Where is justice needed most?” justice is needed most for Black and Latinx youth in Pomona, California. We honor the work of youth, parents, and community activists, as well as a social action nonprofit organization, Gente Organizada, who together have demanded accountability from its city leaders and PPD for the mistreatment of youth.

In 2021, Gente Organizada released a first-of-its-kind report on racial profiling practices in local law enforcement in the City of Pomona. Pomona Police Department’s Crusade Against Black and Latinx Youth presents clear evidence of the Pomona Police Department (PPD)’s longstanding history of discrimination and harassment focused on BIPOC youth.

The report also includes a list of demands featured in the report, including the establishment of an independent civilian body with oversight over PPD; the creation of a new city fund dedicated to investing in Black Lives and Black Futures; and a commitment from the City to shift funding from PPD and reinvest in true evidence-based community safety.

Over the past four years, the data collected under the Racial and Identity Profiling Act (“RIPA”) has provided empirical evidence showing disparities in policing throughout California. This year’s data demonstrates the same trends in disparities for all aspects of law enforcement stops, from the reason for stop to actions taken during stop to results of stop. Specifically, the 2023 Report analyzes the RIPA stop data from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2021, collected and reported by 58 law enforcement agencies, including the 23 largest law enforcement agencies in California. The Report also explores the negative mental health impacts of adverse law enforcement interactions on individuals and communities and contains a new focus on youth interactions with law enforcement both inside and outside of school. Additionally, the report continues to examine the data and research on pretextual stops and consent searches. In this Executive Summary, the Board highlights specific findings, analyses, and research discussed in more detail in the body of the Report.

In this report, we present the findings of a combined quantitative/qualitative data analysis of over 200 incidents of police assaults between 2011 and 2021. This analysis dramatically illustrates how school policing places students, especially Black students, at a significant risk of criminalization and assault, as evidenced by the heartbreaking, far–too–frequent videos of school police officers using physical force on children. Our analysis of these #AssaultAt incidents helps us better understand the extent to which school policing jeopardizes the physical safety and health of Black and Latine students, girls and young women, students with disabilities, and students attending predominately low-income schools.

More than 300 individuals on a leaked membership list of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers described themselves as current or former employees of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Members were employed at DHS components such as the Border Patrol, Coast Guard, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Secret Service, according to a review by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).

POGO’s review appears to be the first significant public examination using the leaked records to focus on employees in DHS — an agency with the mission of countering domestic violent extremism — and it comes only months after the March 2022 publication of a DHS study which found that “the Department has significant gaps that have impeded its ability to comprehensively prevent, detect, and respond to potential threats related to domestic violent extremism within DHS.”

In the aftermath of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration launched the global “War on Terror,” capitalizing on public fears and calls for retaliation to justify military intervention and Islamophobic violence across the world. This war demonized and targeted Muslims, both abroad and in the United States. In 2002, the administration founded the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), forcibly reframing federal immigration services, emergency response, and data analysis under a mission to “secure the homeland.” This reorganization codified the false link between immigration and terrorism. Instead of making people safe, DHS and its corporate partners used “counterterrorism” to expand policing and surveillance in neighborhoods across the country, targeting immigrant and Muslim communities and intensifying the War on Terror at our doorsteps.