By The Editors
The lawsuit claims that the city’s policing practices in its public housing developments – most notably, its “vertical sweeps” of buildings — “routinely” subject residents and those who visit them to illegal stops and false arrests that serve no lawful purpose.

By Ryan P. Haygood
The 2010 Census affords a unique opportunity to harness the momentum of African-American civic engagement that was forged in the 2008 Presidential election — this time, to ensure complete African-American inclusion.

By Eisa Nefertari Ulen
What does a woman do after coming-of -age in Birmingham in the 1950s, after losing two friends in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four little girls in the 1960s, after helping free her very high-profile sister from the clutches of the FBI’s Most Wanted List during the height of Black Power in the 1970s? What does she do after advocating for the end to Apartheid in the 1980s, after working as a Civil Rights trial lawyer through the 1990s?

By Joseph Robinson
A decent job is a critical building block for a successful life. If it cannot be attained, how can there be hope of attaining others, like adequate housing and financial stability? At the time of their incarceration, many people with prison in their past were the family breadwinners. Their return home usually spikes expectations that the family’s financial struggles will be over. Instead, the struggles often worsen.

By Amy Alexander
In 2003, Kamala Harris became the first African-American woman to be elected District Attorney in San Francisco. Re-elected in 2007, Harris continued the innovative law enforcement work she’d begun while serving as managing attorney in the Career Criminal Unit in the SF DA’s office.

By Liz Webster
Thomas McGowan, a Texas exoneree who was released in April 2008, recently had the opportunity to meet the rape victim who had misidentified him nearly a quarter-century before.

By Desiree Cooper
With many states considering closing their prisons in order to balance their budgets, it’s time to ratchet up the national conversation about what to do with a growing number of ex-felons, especially those who are sincerely trying to re-integrate into society

By Jin Hee Lee, Vincent Southerland and Christina Swarns
Dissenting opinions — offered not by liberal advocates but by moderate, if not conservative, law-and-order judges — stand as a strong rebuke to the presumed effectiveness of the death penalty system. And they also confirm longstanding concerns about how abuses of power, under-resourced defense counsel, and racial bias undermine both the accuracy and judiciousness of death penalty convictions.

By Matt Kelley
An exhaustive report published this week in the New Yorker shows that Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004, was innocent.

By TaRessa Stovall
This independent national litigation and public policy organization was established at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in New York City, to free the wrongfully convicted and reform the criminal justice system.