The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that overcrowding in California prisons, which has led to grossly unsanitary conditions and inadequate access to medical and mental health care, violates constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

Use of excessive force, racial and ethnic profiling, and under-enforcement of violence against women are just a few of several constitutional and federal law violations made by the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), according to a report recently released by the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights is calling on Rep. Peter King, R. N.Y., to cancel a hearing scheduled for Thursday on "radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorists." The hearing is a "disservice to the seriousness of the topic of 'domestic terrorism,'" the coalition said.

The Council of State Governments Justice Center recently released recommendations on lowering crime rates, reincarceration and corrections spending.

The National Summit on Justice Reinvestment and Public Safety focuses on providing solutions for a correctional system in crisis.  The U.S. prison and jail population reached a record 2.3 million in 2008.   More than seven million people, or one in every 31 Americans,  are under some form of correctional control, with rates substantially higher in minority populations.  Corrections spending is one of the fastest growing line items in state budgets, second only to medical care.  Despite this, rates of recidivism remain unchanged, with almost 40 percent of released prisoners returning to jail within three years. 

Controversial federal statute 287(g), an immigration policy that allows the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to delegate local authorities to enforce federal immigration laws, is doing more to harm than to help communities, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).