Everyday Injustice

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk with Johanna Lacoe, research director at the California Policy Lab on a recent study that looked at the short-term impacts of bail policy on crime in Los Angeles. There has been an emergency bail schedule instituted twice in Los Angeles since 2020. Lacoe also co-authored a report for California Policy Lab on the effect of bail reform in San Francisco after...

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk with Katie Dixon, head of Closure is Possible campaign, and Renae Badruzzaman project director at Health Instead of Punishment nonprofit about the problems facing women who are incarcerated at women’s prisons. The Crisis to Care Report ( https://humanimpact.org/hipprojects/healthnotwomensprisons/) was released in February 2023, and represented a collaborati...

The November 2024 Election was a wipeout for progressives on criminal justice reform. Joining Everyday Injustice to discuss it is Michael Collins from Color of Change. Listen as Michael Collins discusses the recall of Pamela Price in Alameda County. What it means for criminal justice reform. The larger picture formed by the results of the national election and the loss of George Gascon in Los Ange...

Elizabeth Hinton along with several other esteemed academics and scholars recently agreed to serve as advisors for the Vanguard Carceral Journalism Guild. Ten incarcerated writers will be trained and platformed as part of the guild. Hinton is a Professor of History and African American Studies at Yale University and a Professor of Law at Yale Law School. She is the Co-Director of the Institute on...

This week on Everyday Injustice, we talk with Alissa Skog, who was lead author on the October report that found that nearly 2.5 million Californians are eligible to have their convictions automatically relieved under a little know law that allows for automatic expungement. “A criminal record can have profound and lasting impacts on people, affecting key areas of their life such as employment, pare...

In 2015, Jill Leovy wrote a book: Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America.” “Ghettoside,” a blend of street reporting and scholarship, introduced and elaborated the idea that high-crime communities are simultaneously under-policed and over-policed. It further broke ground by locating the causes of urban violence in problems of law, not in family structure, culture, psychological differences...

This week on Everyday Injustice we talked once again with Amika Mota of the Sister Warriors. This past election saw the defeat of Prop 6 which would have ended forced labor in carceral institutions. We also talked about the passage of Prop 36 which rolled back some of the criminal justice reforms under Prop 47. What went wrong from Amika’s perspective? What needs to be done differently in the futu...

In October, Jose Olivares, a 39-year-old man wrongfully incarcerated for 13 years in the death of his girlfriend’s son was released after a Los Angeles County judge vacated his conviction. Lawyers from two Innocence Projects and a unit of the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office had filed together to overturn his conviction. Olivares was arrested in 2011 following the tragic death of his girlfri...

On October 10 and 11, San Quentin held its first ever Film Festival. 150 people from the outside, including Everyday Injustice, got to go inside San Quentin and hang out with around 100 or so incarcerated people, many of them intimately involved in the production of various films. Incarcerated Films competed with films submitted from the outside. One of the big winners was The Strike, which was a...

This week on Everyday Injustice we have a conversation with Louis Baca, who as a youth committed a murder and was sentenced to Life without Parole. Baca discusses how he came to commit a crime, and also how he has been able to address his childhood trauma and educate himself without any promise that he will ever get out. He talks about what we have learned about juvenile brain development and how...

On November 5, 2024, the California voters passed Prop 36 by an overwhelming margin, partially rolling back Prop 47 passed a decade ago. Everyday Injustice discusses with Sikander Iqbal of the Urban Peace Movement exactly what this means for California and the future of criminal justice reform. As Iqbal told us, a key factor in the passage of Prop 36 was the role of viral videos of smash and grabs...

In July 2024, a woman died from a heat-related illness while incarcerated at the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla, California. According to California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), the woman's death was due to heat stroke and prison neglect. However, CDCR claims the cause was related to pre-existing health conditions. Elizabeth Nomura, state membership organizer for...

This week on Everyday Injustice we talk to McCracken Poston about the story behind Zenith Man - Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom. Poston, was a four term member of the Georgia House of Representatives who got caught up in the shift of Georgia Politics and lost a bid for the US Congress. Poston found himself representing a most unusual client - a man once revered as a natural TV r...

This week Everyday Injustice talks with Kevin Cosney, the Associate Director and Co-Founder of the California Black Power Network. The CA Black Power Network is a united ecosystem of Black grassroots organizations working together to change the lived conditions of Black Californians by dismantling systemic and anti-Black racism. They have launched the Million Voters Project - a multi-racial, multi...

This week on Everyday Injustice we interview our incarcerated writer, Ghostwrite Mike who is incarcerated at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California. We talk about the importance of prison journalism and our ongoing project with Ghostwrite Mike and other incarcerated writers. Listen as we discuss the importance of shining a light at what is going on behind the walls of prisons and all the wo...

This week on Everyday Injustice we talk with Nicole Lee, a 4-generation Oakland native the Executive Director of Urban Peace Movement (UPM), and Sikander Iqbal, the Deputy Director of Urban Peace Movement. The UPM is a grass-roots racial justice organization in Oakland that builds youth leadership to transform the social conditions that drive community violence and mass incarceration. UPM has thre...

A July ruling in New York marked a victory for the public and transparency. Federal judge Victor Marrero held that the public has a First Amendment right to know what authorities have done with allegations of prosecutorial misconduct. The court issued its July 22 decision in the case CRC v. Cushman, finding that the Second Department and Grievance Committees can no longer conceal from public view...

For years, Preston Shipp served as an appellate prosecutor in the Tennessee Attorney General’s office. While serving as a volunteer and teaching college classes for a conservative Christian College in Tennessee prisons, he became good friends with many people who were incarcerated, one of whom he had actually prosecuted. These relationships caused Preston to wake up to the many injustices that are...

Decades of allegations of sexual abuse at the women’s prison at FCI-Dublin led to the stunning decision by the Bureau of Prisons to shut down the prison altogether. A special master was appointed by the judge, who noted, “that some of the deficiencies and issues exposed within this report are likely an indication of systemwide issues within the BOP, rather than simply within FCI-Dublin.” Everyday...

This week on Everyday Injustice, we have UC Berkeley Sociologist Stephanie Canizales - Faculty Director of the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative. Born and raised in Los Angeles – Canizales is herself the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants whose experiences growing up as unaccompanied youth in Los Angeles. She just published her first book: Sin Padres, Ni Papeles: Unaccompanied Migrant...

Joining Everyday Injustice Podcast this week is Beth Shelburne, a journalist and writer with more than 25 years of experience. In 2023, a podcast series she created, reported and wrote called “Earwitness,” the story of Tofest Johnson. As described: Toforest Johnson is a father, a son, a brother. He was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. He has been on Alabama’s death row since 1998 for a crim...

This week on Everyday Injustice we have Erik Altieri, the Interim Director of Campaigns for the Clean Slate Initiative. The Clean Slate Initiative passes and implements laws that automatically clear eligible records for people who have completed their sentence and remained crime-free, and expands who is eligible for clearance. Their vision: “People will no longer be defined by their records and wi...

This week on Everyday Injustice we have Insha Rahman, the Director of Vera Action, a non-profit organization that harnesses the power of advocacy, lobbying, and political strategy to end mass incarceration, protect immigrants’ rights, restore dignity to people behind bars, and build safe and thriving communities. Listen as Rahman talks about Prop 36 in California – the effort to roll back Prop 47...

This week on Everyday Injustice we are joined by Ludovic Blain and Michael Daly of the California Donor Table. Ludovic was hired as CDT’s first full time staff-person in 2009. Michael Gomez Daly is the Senior Political Strategist for the California Donor Table. California Donor Table is a statewide community of donors who pool their funds to make investments in communities of color so they have th...

In July, the book - Dismantling Mass Incarceration was released edited by Premal Dharia, James Forman, Jr and Maria Hawilo. The book, which is an anthology of literature on mass incarceration and criminal justice reform, offers a variety of approaches to confronting the carceral state. Everyday Injustice was joined by Maria Hawilo, one of the co-editors, and a former public defender who is a disti...