Blog

This season on Freedom Dreams we’re amplifying community-led solutions to violence and harm. We called on some of the boldest people we know to learn lessons from what they’re building. And of course, we asked them what their freedom dreams are. Our new season begins tomorrow, February 22nd! On our first episode of season two of Freedom Dreams we’re talking to Mike Milton of the Freedom Community Center in St.Louis about his work in violence prevention and interruption. Listen to the full version wherever you listen to podcasts! Listen Now!Read More

Once again we are joined together in a cycle of grief and rage at police violence. The conditions under which Black people live under threat in this country seem to have no end. Tyre Nichols should be alive today. Our hearts ache for his family, for his child and for his loved ones. He was a son, a father, an artist, and skateboarder. Tyre Nichols was also Black and disabled living with Crohn’s disease. Fifty percent of people killed by police are disabled, and more than half of Black and disabled people living in America have been arrested by the time they are 28 years old—double in comparison to white disabled people. We must acknowledge who Tyre was in totality if we are to ensure that all Black lives matter and that all Black lives are safe from state sanctioned violence. We know the race of the officers makes no difference as the institution of policing is in and of itself anti-Black. Black officers in a racist institution can and will still inflict harm on our Black and brown communities. We know that prosecuting individual police officers only reinforces the idea that the system can give us justice and will...Read More

The contents of this report are a source of h o p e, reminding us how far we’ve come in our fight to shrink jails, prisons, and policing and realize true safety for our communities. Thousands of supporters have partnered with us in the last nearly 5 years to advance the movement for abolition. Thank you for your support of our groundbreaking work to transform the justice system: It will always be one of our greatest sources of hope. Check out what you’ve helped us accomplish! Ground yourself in the tangible change we make when we come together and center the needs of those most impacted by mass incarceration. Thank you for helping us bring Detroiters’ freedom dreams to life.Read More

Detroiters have made themselves clear to City Council: we want to live in safe and vibrant communities with proven solutions for public safety, not bogus ones like more surveillance and policing. Today, the Detroit Justice Center, Sugar Law Center for Economic and Social Justice, and Schulz Law PLC filed a lawsuit against the Detroit City Council’s unlawful Shotspotter expenditures, an unproven and wasteful surveillance technology. Our statement:Read More

ID: Amanda Alexander smiling in the DJC Office in front of a yellow wall with the DJC Logo on it. She is wearing a dark blue patterned dress and has dangly earrings. Dear friends, I moved back to Michigan almost a decade ago to serve families like mine that had been divided by incarceration. At the time, I’d only recently begun to be able to talk about my father’s incarceration without my voice shaking. He went to prison when I was in elementary school, but the trauma of our separation and all that flowed from it still vibrated in my body.  As a new attorney, I represented incarcerated mothers and fathers at risk of losing their parental rights. Together we worked to get their children out of foster care and placed with relatives until they could come home. I also represented parents and caregivers trapped in cycles of police stops, tickets, mounting fines and fees, warrants for missed court dates, nights in jail, evictions, and CPS cases. I came to know Detroiters who were holding families and communities together against all odds: grandparents raising grandchildren after their own sons and daughters were locked up; faith groups renting buses so that...Read More

Detroit Justice Center Calls on City Council to Halt Expansion of ShotSpotter Detroit City Council voted last week to uphold the contract for ShotSpotter in the two neighborhoods where it is already in operation. The Detroit Justice Center opposes the use of this surveillance technology and argues that it should not be expanded across the rest of the city. ShotSpotter is being touted by some as a preventative measure when it does not actually keep us safer. There is no data to prove that ShotSpotter keeps neighborhoods safe, and instead, it’s been shown that the technology cannot differentiate between gunfire and other loud noises. This reality means that investing in ShotSpotter is simply shoveling more money into DPD’s surveillance apparatus, which will lead to more racial profiling and a deterioration of the relationship between the community and police. “It defies logic why City Council is so adamant about spending money on a piece of surveillance technology that study after study has shown does not work.  It is ineffective and any miniscule benefit that may hypothetically arise, is unequivocally outweighed by the myriad of real costs that Detroit residents will be forced to bear the brunt of.  People are demanding real...Read More

View the most up-to-date list of resources on the Metro Detroit Restorative Justice Network website.Read More

The Detroit Justice Center (DJC) is celebrating a recent win. Last week, the Michigan Supreme Court outlawed automatic life sentences for young people convicted of first-degree murder that transpired when they were 18 years old (People v. Parks). The MI Supreme Court also published two opinions and an order that assists with extending the U.S. Miller protections that deem mandatory life without parole unconstitutional for juveniles.Read More

By emphasizing political prisoners, Black August draws our attention to both a long legacy of Black folks’ resistance to oppression and the role of the prison in suppressing that resistance.Read More