Renewed War on Drugs, harsher charging policies, stepped-up criminalization of immigrants — in the current climate, joining the NACDL is more important than ever. Members of NACDL help to support the only national organization working at all levels of government to ensure that the voice of the defense bar is heard.
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NACDL is committed to enhancing the capacity of the criminal defense bar to safeguard fundamental constitutional rights.
NACDL harnesses the unique perspectives of NACDL members to advocate for policy and practice improvements in the criminal legal system.
NACDL envisions a society where all individuals receive fair, rational, and humane treatment within the criminal legal system.
NACDL’s mission is to serve as a leader, alongside diverse coalitions, in identifying and reforming flaws and inequities in the criminal legal system, and redressing systemic racism, and ensuring that its members and others in the criminal defense bar are fully equipped to serve all accused persons at the highest level.
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2023 marks the 50th year since the U.S. prison population began its extraordinary surge. As advocates mark 50 years of mass incarceration, what is needed to meaningfully decarcerate our nation’s jails and prisons?
22nd Annual State Criminal Justice Network Conference August 16-17, 2023 | Held Virtually
Law enforcement has increasingly turned to Google to identify criminal suspects by using digital dragnets that search millions or billions of people at once.
Explore the mechanisms that incentivize police to engage in pretextual traffic stops and examine state and local efforts to stop law enforcement from enforcing minor traffic infractions.
Despite assurances that, “[I]n our society, liberty is the norm, and detention prior to trial…the carefully limited exception,” over 75 percent of those detained in local jails have not been convicted of a crime.
As movements to reform flaws in the criminal legal system resulted in a growing number of states passing impactful bipartisan measures, the justice reform movement also faced swift backlash, as the 2020 uptick in homicides was utilized to stoke fear around recent policy changes and to push regressive proposals that would walk back the move toward greater justice, equality and authentic safety.
The United States constitutes less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet is prisons house 25 percent of the worldwide prison population. This phenomenon is due large to the War on Drugs.
This month David McKnight reviews Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration by Reuben Jonathan Miller.
The decades-long war on drugs distorted evidence law in drugs and guns cases leaving it littered with landmines for defense lawyers. This presentation will provide an approach for tackling the pervasive challenges defense lawyers face in drugs and guns cases such as co-conspirator statements, prior bad acts, and questionable government expert evidence.
While often justified as a way to deter violence inside facilities, solitary confinement is more often used to punish non-violent transgressions such as dress code violations, refusal to work, or lack of respect toward correctional officials. Despite the failure of the U.S. Supreme Court to find that solitary confinement per se violates the Eighth Amendment, increasing numbers of stakeholders, including correctional officers, have called for its abolition.
NACDL is a leader in the movement to end America’s unjust, discriminatory, and ineffective policy of mass incarceration – a policy which in 2023 commemorates 50 years of failure. This page presents information to shed light on how mass incarceration makes communities less stable and safe, along with some examples of how NACDL, with your support, pushes back against half a century of this misguided policy failure.
Prison Reform: Learning from AMEND’s Research and Reform Approaches. Presented by David Cloud, AMEND at UCSF, San Francisco, CA and Jerry Buting, moderator, Buting, Williams & Stilling, S.C., Brookfield, WI
With election day around the corner, Nicole Porter of the Sentencing Project discusses the movement to guarantee ballot access for people in jails and prisons and ensure newly eligible individuals can participate in the franchise.
“The Constitution doesn’t stop at the jail door, shouldn’t stop at the prison door.” Nicole Porter of the Sentencing Project discusses the challenges and opportunities of the movement to end felony disenfranchisement.
Hear Marlon Chamberlain explain how permanent punishments create a maze of barriers for returning citizens, and how the Fully Free Campaign fights for change.
Ahead of election season, Nicole Porter of the Sentencing Project discusses strategies to restore and expand ballot access to formerly and currently incarcerated individuals in different political environments across country.
