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Betsy Bartholet,
Southern Prisoners Defense Committee (SPDC).
“capital punishment means ‘them without the capital get the punishment.’
Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center.
The prison population has increased from 300,000 people in the early 1970s to 2.3 million people today.
There are nearly six million people on probation or on parole. One in every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison; one in every three black male babies born in this century is expected to be incarcerated.
nearly three thousand juveniles have been sentenced to die in prison.
There are more than a half-million people in state or federal prisons for drug offenses today, up from just 41,000 in 1980.
Spending on jails and prisons by state and federal governments has risen from $6.9 billion in 1980 to nearly $80 billion today.
Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.
the opposite of poverty is justice.
Finally, I’ve come to believe that the true measure of our commitment to justice, the character of our society, our commitment to the rule of law, fairness, and equality cannot be measured by how we treat the rich, the powerful, the privileged, and the respected among us. The true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.
The evil tendency of the crime [of adultery or fornication] is greater when committed between persons of the two races.… Its result may be the amalgamation of the two races, producing a mongrel population and a degraded civilization, the prevention of which is dictated by a sound policy affecting the highest interests of society and government.
Plessy v. Ferguson
Loving v. Virginia,
The legislature shall never pass any law to authorise or legalise any marriage between any white person and a Negro or descendant of a Negro.*
Even though the restriction couldn’t be enforced under federal law, the state ban on interracial marriage in Alabama continued into the twenty-first century. In 2000, reformers finally had enough votes to get the issue on the statewide ballot, where a majority of voters chose to eliminate the ban, although 41 percent voted to keep it. A 2011 poll of Mississippi Republicans found that 46 percent support a legal ban on interracial marriage, 40 percent oppose such a ban, and 14 percent are undecided.
Attica Prison riots
Lourida Ruffin
I couldn’t stop thinking about how at risk young kids are when they get stopped by the police.
Michael Donald in Mobile,
Since 1976, judges in Alabama have overridden jury sentencing verdicts in capital cases 111 times. In 91 percent of these cases, judges replaced life verdicts from juries with death sentences.
judge overrides tend to increase in election years.
Atkins v. Virginia,
Horace Dunkins was killed in a botched execution that made national news.
