News and Events
November 5, 2009
Fred Hampton, Police Violence, Racism & the Law: A Retrospective. Come to this important panel discussion hosted by the Northwestern University School of Law and featuring an excellent panel including Salim Muwakkil of WVON, In These Times, Martha Bondi, Northwestern University, Adam Green, University of Chicago and several others (see flyer for complete details). Moderated by Bernardine Dohrn, Northestern University School of Law, and featuring a reading by the author of The Assassination of Fred Hampton, Attorney Jeff Haas.
February 22-25, 2010
Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference - Revival for Survival: Bringing Good News to the Poor. Be sure to hold this date for the annual conference for Clergy and Lay Leadership to be held in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Sarah Kruzan:
Sentenced to Life Without Parole at Age 16
October 20, 2009
Juvenile Life Without Parole: This is one of the issues of our time. Here in Illinois we have 105 people currently in prison serving this sentence. While the majority are for murder convictions, there are also many for other crimes like driving a get-away care, or serving as a look out. In all cases they were convicted as children and the system has determined that they will never change and are beyond hope, even though medical science is clear in their estimation that a child's brain has not fully developed as a teenager, and as a result is prone to bad decisions. Keep in mind that those of us that are working to remove this punishment from our legal code are not trying to remove punishment for these crimes, but merely trying to assure the courts/prisons recognize that these children will change as they grow older and that they should at the very least be considered for parole at a reasonable future date.
For more information on the effort in Illinois, check out the Illinois Coalition for Fair Sentencing for Children by clicking here.
Overcrowded and Going Broke: A Look Inside California Prisons
September 9, 2009
California has the most prisoners in the nation with some 160,000 people behind bars. California jails hold more than double the designed capacity and are so overcrowded that a federal court last month ordered the state to reduce the prison population by more than 40,000 in the next two years. The ruling comes as California is in the midst of a severe budget crisis. This is a conversation with University of California, Berkeley professor Jonathan Simon, author of Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. From the interview by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. Read More or Watch Video.