News & Commentary

Ten years after the state legislature mandated that the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing create a risk assessment tool to be used at sentencing, the commission finally voted on and passed a proposal in early September.

It has been said that the definition of insanity is repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome. This week, the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing may be approaching their own brand of madness.

On June 27, after analyzing over 30 incidents involving state police stops and interactions that impacted over 150 people, the ACLU of Pennsylvania and a team of volunteer attorneys filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Pennsylvania State Police and seven troopers.

After more than a year of gathering data and urging Philadelphia bail judges to follow the letter of the law, in early July, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court announced that it would launch an investigation into the use of cash bail in Philadelphia.

Imagine a world in which you can be detained by police and thrown in jail for taking a phone call from a family member. Or for walking down the same street in your neighborhood that you’ve been taking for years. Or for getting laid off from your job.

From Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” on radio to John F. Kennedy’s mastery at the televised debate, politicians have made use of the latest communications technology to reach people with their message. Today, elected officials as different as Donald Trump and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have mastered social media as a platform.

The Frankel-Adair scholarship provides $1,500 in support of post-secondary education to an LGBQ&T student residing in the greater Philadelphia area. The scholarship honors the late Larry Frankel, former executive and legislative director of the ACLU-PA, and the benefactor, Thomas T. Adair. 

The job of a police officer is to serve and protect the community, no matter the racial, ethnic, religious, or socio-economic status of that community. Real justice is blind, and police officers are the front-line arbiters of justice in America.

On May 9, with less than two weeks to go before the first contested district attorney primary in Allegheny County in 20 years, ACLU-PA co-hosted a candidate forum to give voters the opportunity to hear from the incumbent, Stephen Zappala, and the challenger, Turahn Jenkins.