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From Prison to Silicon Valley – The Atlantic

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From Prison to Silicon Valley – The Atlantic

Jesse Aguirre’s workday at Slack starts with a standard engineering meeting—programmers call them “standups”—where he and his co-workers plan the day’s agenda. Around the circle stand graduates from Silicon Valley’s top companies and the nation’s top universities. Aguirre, who is 26, did not finish high school and has so far spent most of his adulthood in prison; Slack is his first full-time employer. But in the few years he has been writing code, he has cultivated what is perhaps the most useful skill in any software engineer’s arsenal: the ability to figure things out on his own.

Ex-Cop Reveals How NYPD Forced Officers to Arrest Black & Latino Men | Democracy Now!

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Ex-Cop Reveals How NYPD Forced Officers to Arrest Black & Latino Men | Democracy Now!

A retired New York police officer has revealed the police department’s Transit District 34 in Brooklyn encouraged officers to arrest black and Latino men in exchange for rewards. The testimony is part of a discrimination lawsuit filed by Sgt. Edwin Raymond and three other officers, who say they were forced to apprehend more black and Latino men than other racial and ethnic groups. The former officer Pierre Maximilien also said Asian, Jewish and white people — who were referred to as “soft targets” — were not to be cuffed and that all officers in that district were required to fill a “collar quota.” Maximilien retired in 2015 after being retaliated against for not following these orders.

PAC Targets Upstate District Attorneys on Bail Reform

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PAC Targets Upstate District Attorneys on Bail Reform

A national political action committee is targeting two Upstate district attorneys for their stance on New York's new bail rules.

The ads are being promoted on Facebook apparently funded by an organization called Real Justice PAC. The targets are the prosecutors in Erie and Albany counties, John Flynn and David Soares, who are both Democrats.

According to the PAC's website, its goals is to elect county prosecutors with platforms focused on ending discriminatory policing, ending cash bail, and rolling back practices that lead to mass incarceration. The digital ads accuse the DAs of leading the charge to roll back the state's elimination of cash bail for most crimes by "using fear-mongering tactics based on lies and racist rhetoric."

Why New York should eliminate cash bail for smaller crimes | CSNY

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Why New York should eliminate cash bail for smaller crimes | CSNY

Money should not be the determining factor for someone’s freedom. That’s why our bail bill carefully balances public safety concerns with the need for fairness and justice, and protects the presumption of innocence.

The bill eliminates cash bail for all nonviolent felonies and almost all misdemeanors. Instead of setting cash bail, judges would have the authority to release people with non-monetary conditions, such as having someone check in with pretrial services agencies.

It levels the playing field by eliminating the shameful practice of imprisoning persons simply because they are too poor to pay their way out of jail. This change will go a long way towards advancing equal justice and making pretrial release the norm and pretrial detention the exception.