In a sweeping order, a judge has ruled that the bail system in Harris County, Texas, including the city of Houston, is unconstitutional. Because of the decision, “we are on the road to eradicating the notion of wealth-base human caging,” said Alec Karakatsanis, executive director of the Washington-based Civil Rights Corps. The ruling affects defendants charged with low level offenses. “On any given night in this country there are about 450,000 human beings who are sitting in a cage because they can’t come up with a particular amount of money that’s been required for their release,” said Karakatsanis.
Orisanmi Burton is an assistant professor at American University’s Department of Anthropology.
Shannon Jones is a member of the Spirit of Mandela’s Peoples' Senate Coordinating Committee.
The Supreme Court has always been a political institution. Racism, political expediency, and outright corruption have always dictated its decisions.
A poem from the late Amiri Baraka questions the myths of U.S. exceptionalism that engulfed the nation after 9/11 attacks, contextualizing them with a history of the West’s centuries-long…
A UN "peacekeeping" mission continues operations in Somalia.
