Around the world and increasingly in the United States, there’s a growing consensus that solitary confinement of incarcerated persons is, at best, an ineffective and inhumane practice with little or no carceral benefit and, at worst, outright torture.
If Louisiana were a country, it would have the second-highest incarceration rate in the world, behind only Oklahoma.1
Why should we care about racial profiling?
Marijuana prohibition costs the state and its municipalities an estimated $22 million a year, creates a dangerous backlog at the agency that tests forensic evidence in violent crimes, and needlessly ensnares thousands of people – disproportionately African Americans – in the criminal justice system.
Detainer requests are a controversial tool that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used to detain people and push them into the deportation machine.
On the campaign trail and in the White House, President Trump has promoted harsh immigration policies by rhetorically criminalizing whole communities of people.
The primary factors immigration judges should consider in bond proceedings are similar to those in the criminal justice system. The law instructs detained immigrants to show the court he or she does not pose a public safety risk and is not a flight risk warranting confinement.
As Mateo’s story demonstrates, immigrants held at immigration prisons struggle to receive the health care they need.
