Prison Capital of the Universe
Dr. Sue Weishar, PhD
The Public Space: Confrontations and Controls
2016 has been a year of protest. From Charlotte to my own Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the news has been rife with images of ordinary people taking to the streets to express their discontent with the current state of affairs. There have been clashes with the police. There has been bloodshed. And there have been bodies laid on the pavement. American society is in state of conflict and the site of these conflicts are the public spaces.
In Defiance of Hidden Deaths
BLACK LIVES MATTER AS A LIVING PHILOSOPHY
By: Nicholas E. Mitchell, Ph.D.
Noted political philosopher Charles Mills argues, in order to understand the current state of race relations, one must first accept the following premise: White Supremacy is one of the most consequential ideologies in human history and the modern world is a direct consequence of it.[1] It
Still Separate, Still Unequal
by Jeanie Donovan, M.P.A., M.P.H. and Fred Kammer, S.J., J.D.
Across the country, schools are opening and students returning to their classrooms. Despite the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision to desegregate schools “with all deliberate speed,” too many classrooms are still segregated.
A Slave on the Fourth
by Bill McCormick, SJ, Ph.D., JSRI Summer Associate
Get Smart Louisiana: Reforms open way for smarter, comprehensive sentencing in the future
A collective sigh of relief emanated from the statehouse at 6:00 pm on June 11, 2015. The Louisiana legislature passed a last-minute budget-bill that appears to avoid fiscal disaster—at least for now. Legislators performed political acrobatics that enable the Governor to claim this budget is revenue neutral when in fact, and by necessity, businesses will pay more taxes.[1]
What is Louisiana #1 in?
by Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
“The criminal justice system is out of control,”[1] proclaimed Pope Francis to the International Association of Penal Law on October 23, 2014.
Francis laments how societies have become overly punitive, thereby losing the capacity to practice the “primacy of life and the dignity of the human person.”
Sadly, Louisiana is a prime example of a criminal justice system out of control, as the state “locks up more of its people than anywhere in the world.”[2]
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Becoming maladjusted for the beloved community
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
In Praise of Newcomers
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
A major criticism leveled against recent newcomers to the United States is that they are “takers” creating an economic drain on the nation. Not only are they takers, critics lament, but also categorically “illegal,” echoing past racist associations of criminality with African-Americans and many other people of color.
Gutting the Voting Rights Act
U.S. Supreme Court Removes Key Enforcement Provision
By Alex Mikulich, Ph.D.
On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gutted the enforcement provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act in Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder, Attorney General et al. In the words of Congressman John L. Lewis, who risked life and limb in the struggle for Civil Rights, the Court struck a “dagger in the heart” of the Voting Rights Act. [1]