TOPIC: PRISONS ACLU's New Report Highlighting Ways to Reduce State Budgets and Prison Populations Smart Reform Is Possible: States Reducing Incarceration Rates and Costs While Protecting Communities details how several states with long histories of being “tough on crime” have enacted bipartisan reforms relying on alternatives to incarceration, underscoring that reform is   politically and fiscally viable. These six states – Texas, Mississippi, Kansas, South Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio – experienced declines in their crime rates while these new policies were in place. Read a blog post about the report Read the ACLU’s press release Combating Mass Incarceration - The Facts The war on drugs has helped make the U.S. the world's largest incarcerator, but our addiction to incarceration is unfair, costs too much and doesn't make us safer

ACLU Lawsuit Charges That Jail Policy Banning Books and Magazines Is Unconstitutional

UPDATE! On April 12, 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it would join the lawsuit that the ACLU filed in October 2010 challenging a policy at the Berkeley County Detention Center in Moncks Corner, S.C. that bars all books, magazines and newspapers – except for the Bible – from being sent to prisoners as unconstitutional. Filed on behalf of Prison Legal News, a monthly journal on prison law distributed across the nation to prisoners, attorneys, judges, law libraries and other subscribers, the lawsuit charges that jail officials violate the rights of Prison Legal News under the speech, establishment and due process clauses of the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution by refusing to deliver copies of the journal and other magazines and books to detainees.
Read the October 6, 2010 press release on the filing of the suit >>
Read the April 12, 2011 press release announcing the action of the DOJ >>
Berkeley jail's lawyer disputes Bible case >>
Read more about the lawsuit >>

ACLU Calls on South Carolina to End Discriminatory Segregation of Prisoners with HIV

March 28, 2011. The ACLU of SC called on the state's correctional officials to end an illegal and discriminatory state policy requiring all prisoners with HIV be segregated from the rest of the state's prison population. The ACLU and the ACLU of Alabama today filed a federal class action lawsuit against Alabama, the only other state in the nation to maintain a segregation policy, charging that it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. Download the press release PDF >>