Departments

;

policing

  • SOURCE: Public Books
    8/18/2021

    Prison Tech Comes Home: Tenants and Residents in the Surveillance State

    by Erin McElroy, Meredith Whittaker and Nicole E. Weber

    Landlords have combined technologies developed for screening tenants in the 1970s with more recent digital surveillance and facial recognition systems developed in prisons to dramatically increase control over their tenants during an affordable housing crisis. 

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    8/6/2021

    Did Last Summer's BLM Protests Change Anything?

    by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

    A commission convened by the Mayor of Philadelphia exemplifies the American preference for symbolism over substance in recently proclaimed "racial reckonings." 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    8/9/2021

    Can School Discipline Be Fixed?

    by Campbell F. Scribner

    "One might reasonably ask, 'By what right do schools punish students in the first place?' Unfortunately, Americans have never really been able to answer that question."

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    7/29/2021

    Addressing Gun Violence Means Looking Beyond Policing

    by Menika Dirkson

    Between 1969 and 1976, Philadelphia saw success with a program to connect youth to social services, education and work opportunity, but turned toward militarized policing in the 1970s. This history should guide urban leaders away from the "tough on crime" approach.

  • SOURCE: Electronic Frontier Foundation
    7/29/2021

    It’s Time for Police to Stop Using ShotSpotter

    by Matthew Guariglia

    Surveillance systems intended to detect the auditory signature of a gunshot are inaccurate, meaning "police officers routinely are deployed to neighborhoods expecting to encounter an armed shooter, and instead encounter innocent pedestrians and neighborhood residents."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    6/14/2021

    Supreme Court Rejects Sentence Reductions for Minor Crack Offenses

    Justices disagreed about what lessons to draw from the history of the 1986 Crime Bill that created the sentencing disparity for crack cocaine offenses. Does the fact that some Black organizations at the time supported the law excuse its racist impact? 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    6/8/2021

    The U.S. War On Drugs Helped Unleash The Violence In Colombia Today

    by Kyle Longley

    Counternarcotics operations have been a pretext for funding a buildup of the Colombian security forces, allowing a US-friendly rightist government to avoid dealing with the economic and social causes of unrest. 

  • SOURCE: Boston Review
    4/26/2021

    Police Reform Doesn’t Work

    by Michael Brenes

    Liberal calls for police reform operate within an ideological context where preserving order and enforcing private responsibility for social problems suppresses considering inequality. Minneapolis, the site of Derek Chauvin's trial and the killing of Daunte Wright, is an illustrative example. 

  • SOURCE: NBC News
    4/14/2021

    Virginia Police, Army Lt. Caron Nazario and America's Bloody Traffic Stop Catch-22

    by Matthew Guariglia

    The incident of Lt. Caron Nazario illustrates the argument of 1960s Black radical activist Robert Williams that violence against Black people has always been part of maintaining the social order; recognizing nonviolence as a tactic of civil rights activism should not obscure the constancy of violence from the other side. 

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    2/12/2021

    Criminal Justice Reform Won’t Work Until it Focuses on Black Women

    by Talitha L. LeFlouria

    The history of mass incarceration is also the history of control and exploitation of Black women through the criminal justice system. Reforms need to recognize the impacts of the system on women to advance justice. 

  • SOURCE: Black Perspectives
    2/1/2021

    Law Enforcement’s Double Standards for Black Radical Activists

    by Denise Lynn

    Those puzzled at the FBI's inability to monitor white supremacist and right-wing extremist groups like those involved in the Capitol rioting should consider how the bureau has historically worked to surveil and harass radical Black organizations like the Sojourners for Truth and Justice. 

  • 2/7/2021

    Weaponized Whiteness: Invisible Hand and Iron Fist

    by Fran Shor

    There is a link between the summer's BLM protests and the Capitol riots. Both reflect a crisis of a political order based on the maintenance of white supremacy and nonwhite subordination through the "invisible hand" of institutions.