News & Commentary

The brutal and dangerous conditions that men are living in at Miami Correctional Facility shock the conscience and violate the Constitution.

In just the first week of the 2021 Indiana Legislative Session, several pieces of legislation have been introduced in an attempt to take power and oversight of local police departments away from the very communities' police departments are meant to serve.  

Last Thursday, IMPD proposed its 2021 budget to the Indianapolis City-County Council Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee. During the committee meeting, IMPD leadership broke down their $261,245,103 budget line by line. The main takeaway being that IMPD seeks more officers and more equipment.  

Police across the country are enforcing laws that restrict or prohibit behaviors of people experiencing homelessness, including panhandling, sleeping, sitting or lying down, and living in vehicles within public spaces. These laws criminalize poverty, fuel prejudices and stereotypes, and spur further criminalization and community divide. 

When students are sick, stressed, acting out, or may hurt themselves or others, counselors, nurses, social workers, and psychologists—not police—should be on the frontlines helping these students. Typical adolescent misconduct is not criminal behavior, but when schools lack adequate resources, teachers may call on police for behavioral support. This results in hyper-criminalization of our youth, particularly students of color. Students of color experience an incre

The ACLU of Indiana was encouraged by Mayor Hogsett’s recent press conference in which Indianapolis officials discussed the importance of restructuring policing in our city. Recognizing that the underlying problem with policing isn't the result of a few failed policies or a couple of bad apples, but rather the problem is the outsized and ever-expanding scale of policing that leads inevitably to officers’ unlawful use of excessive force – is an important first step.

According to the new report, A Tale of Two Countries Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform, Indiana ranks 24th in the nation for largest racial disparities in marijuana arrests. The new ACLU report details marijuana possession arrests from 2010 to 2018, updating our unprecedented national report released in 2013, The War on Marijuana in Black and White.

In 2018, more than half of the people in Indiana county jails were awaiting trial and had not been convicted of a crime according to Indiana Criminal Justice Institute. Many of them are in jail simply because they cannot afford to buy their way out.

The confluence of the opioid epidemic and the relocation of low-level offenders to Indiana county jails, among other factors, have left jails dramatically overcrowded, understaffed, and lacking adequate resources to appropriately house and care for the individuals incarcerated there.