z 16.3 Law & Justice - ReadySetGooo/Sustainable-Development-Goals GitHub Wiki

Promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all

To see information on police, see 8.7, Trafficking.

United States

Lay Person Tasks

  • Learn your rights. Here are examples: legal rights (police/court setting) constitutional rights, housing rights, health/mental health rights, squatters rights.
  • If someone has violated your rights, take them to court if possible. There's different types of courts: small claims courts for small issues, for regular cases theres local, state, and federal courts, supreme courts, you can also file a class action suit. While it is helpful to have a lawyer for cases you are starting yourself (ex. suing someone), you don't always need one, so if you can't find someone to represent you you can still make a case. If you don't have a lawyer, courts have advisors who can assist you with the process. Lawyers get their education to learn how to read legal language- you can learn to do it too!
  • If you can, attend jury duty, especially if you are a minority. Many people on juries are financially well-off and white. Attending jury duty is important so people can get fair trials. Educate yourself on systemic factors that lead to crime, as well as unfair or inadequate sentencing, so you can be a fair jury member.
  • If you are in the selection process for jury duty, look dumb. People are selected to be the jury on a case based on if they can be easily swayed and don't have a strong moral compass.
  • Learn about international law and international courts- this can help you identify violations in your own community.
  • Do research on voting for local sheriff, attorneys, and judges. Do research on individuals, and vote for them based on if they've made fair decisions in the past.

Resources

Informational Resources

Activist Resources

Books (Prison, police, prohibition)

  • Alexander, Michelle. 2012. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.
  • Goffman, Alice. 2014. On The Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. New York: Picador.
  • Maynard, Robyn. 2017. Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. Black Point, NS: Fernwood Publishing.
  • Mullins, Garth, Sam Fenn, Ryan McNeil, Alexander Kim, and Lisa Hale. 2019. Crackdown (Podcast). British Columbia Centre on Substance Use.
  • Ralph, Laurence. 2017. “Becoming Aggrieved: An Alternative Framework of Care in Black Chicago.” Pp. 93–110 in Unfinished: The Anthropology of Becoming, edited by J. Biehl and P. Locke. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  • House, Jordan Lorne. 2020. Making Prison Work: Prison Labour and Resistance in Canada (PhD Dissertation)

Stocks

  • Levels of accessibility to become a police officer: The law enforcement application process is not accessible to most people, due to its focus on grammar, which is unreasonable with spell check, poor public education, and dyslexia and related disorders.
  • Police officers
  • Judges
  • Attorneys
  • Lawyers
  • Prosecutors
  • Jury members

Flows

  • Abusive people are attracted to positions in law enforcement. 40% of police officers commit domestic violence.
  • Violence increases when law enforcement experience staff cuts/shortages in a way that reduces the number of hours law enforcement is available

Courts:

  • People who show competency or ability to think critically are removed as prospective jurors
  • People are swayed by emotions, not evidence. Juries rarely make decisions based on evidence.
  • Culture in the United States is narcissistic, so many people have interest in incarcerating a person to achieve personal satisfaction

Systems & Archetypes

Current system traps

Law Enforcement:

  • People who want to become police officers and have good intentions experience violence or other barriers at the hands of police officers with bad intentions, thus increasing the percentage of people with bad intentions when they leave, never apply in the first place, or are killed
  • Police brutality against citizens also prevents people from becoming officers
  • People contact law enforcement to resolve trivial matters because they are afraid people can’t handle conflicts, the trauma that ensues when they are called decreases a person’s ability to handle conflicts, thus decreasing trust that trivial conflict can be resolved without law enforcement Courts:
  • Judges and lawyers don’t want to go to court, so they make up a lot of charges so people with plead guilty with a plea deal, which leads to innocent people having records, which leads to lost trust in the system

Potential Organizations

  • Sign up to be a Campaign Zero advocate and help end police violence. https://campaignzero.org/
  • https://initiatejustice.org/
  • LGBTQ Freedom Fund - legal advocacy organization - works to free queer people from imprisonment and carceral injustice. https://www.lgbtqfund.org/
  • Donation options for over 70 community bail, mutual aid, and racial justice efforts - actionable - organized in the aftermath of George Floyd's state-sanctioned murder by police, this page collects a large list of local efforts for justice, as well as offering a single location to contribute donations to each of them simultaneously by splitting a larger donation.
  • https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bail_funds_george_floyd
  • Solutions Not Punishments - advocacy organization - efforts for justice for Black queer people in the Atlanta area. Trans and queer led. https://www.snap4freedom.org/home

Paradigms

  • Reduce the amount of cases in courts by prioritizing prosecution on root-cause crimes, including class-action suits and systemic injustices

Delays

Stock-and-flow structures

  • Increase capacity to prosecute sexual crimes and crimes made against children and domestic violence victims/survivors
  • Increase capacity to prosecute hate crimes and discrimination

Books

  • Abolishing Policing and Prisons
  • We Do This Til We Free Us - information - this book is an excellent collection of essays by Mariame Kaba. In it, she covers a broad swath of abolition-related ideas and issues, ranging from why abolition is important, to what abolition is (and is not), as well as practical advice for actually helping to bring about a world where "premature death and organized abandonment" (her words) are no longer our go-to tools for seeking justice. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1664-we-do-this-til-we-free-us
  • The End of Policing - information - this is a book that I have not personally read but is on my list as being a useful introduction to prison-abolition and related causes.