Three New Bills Could Advance Immigrant Justice in Maryland
Blog Post
Annie Chen
Melissa Garlick
Related Work
A Monumental Shift: Restoring Access to Pell Grants for Incarcerated Students
After 26-year ban lifts, incarcerated students can once again receive this federal financial aid
In December 2020, Congress lifted a 26-year ban on Pell Grants for incarcerated students. The ban, enacted amid a slew of “tough-on-crime” policies in the 1990s, stripped people in prison of access to this federal financial aid. Incarcerated people earn pennies per hour for the work they do in prison, making it next to impossible for them to afford ...
Incarcerated Students Will Have Access to Pell Grants Again. What Happens Now?
Incarcerated people earn pennies per hour for the work they do in prison, so Pell Grants, their primary source of need-based financial aid, had made it possible for students to access higher education. The 1994 crime bill stripped incarcerated students of Pell Grant eligibility, making a college education practically unattainable. In the following ...
Blog Post
Juan Martinez-Hill
Ruth Delaney
Immigration Courts Are Acting Like Business as Usual During the Pandemic, with Dire Consequences
Protecting the rights of immigrants facing deportation has always been challenging. But the pandemic has made it harder to communicate with clients, coordinate witnesses, and obtain evidence. Immigration courts and detention facilities have failed to provide adequate technology, time, and support to ensure due process. “They've seen it as business ...
Blog Post
Erica Bryant
What Jails Cost
Close the Atlanta City Detention Center and Deliver Long-term Public Safety
In September 2020, the City of Atlanta engaged the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) to chart a path to close the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC). Vera met with key justice system stakeholders, service providers, and community advocates; analyzed data; and brought to bear evidence and examples from across the country to develop a strategy to re ...
Vaccine Hesitancy Is Fueling the Pandemic in Jails, Prisons, and Communities
There have been at least 101,785 cases of COVID-19 among prison staff nationwide—who are 3.2 times more likely to contract the virus than the general public—and at least 377,497 cases and 2,400 deaths among incarcerated people. Jails and prisons also represent the 15 largest coronavirus clusters in the country. In California, Connecticut, Iowa, Ma ...
Blog Post
Aaron Stagoff-Belfort
Clinique Chapman
Even after I Won My Case, ICE Wouldn’t Let Me Go until My Lawyer Intervened
Illinois Bill Makes History, Highlights Criminalization-to-Homelessness Pipeline
Blog Post
Jacqueline Altamirano Marin
Destiny Carter
Empire State of Incarceration
February 18, 2021
The Impact of New York Bail Reform on Statewide Jail Populations
A First Look
New York’s recent bail reform law, which was passed in April 2019 and amended on July 2, 2020, was expected to reduce the footprint of jail incarceration by limiting the use of money bail. The new law mandated pretrial release for the vast majority of nonviolent charges and required that judges consider a person’s ability to pay bail. A comprehensi ...
Immigrants Facing Deportation Do Not Have the Right to a Publicly Funded Attorney. Here's How to Change That.
Who would benefit from these legal defense services? Immigrants who are facing deportation but can’t afford an attorney would benefit from these legal defense services. Of the more than 1.25 million people with pending cases in the immigration court system, 500,000 lack representation. The lack of representation is particularly staggering for peopl ...
Blog Post
Erica Bryant