
Akua
Amaning
Director, Criminal Justice Reform
We focus on developing policies to shrink the justice system’s footprint, improve public health and safety, and promote equity and accountability.
Our work is centered around developing and supporting policies that will end unjust punishments and reduce the social and economic harms of mass incarceration, which have disproportionately devastated Black people and other communities of color.
We are working to advance measures that will increase police transparency and accountability, overhaul harmful police practices, and prioritize community-based solutions to public safety.
We are working to drastically reduce the criminalization of drugs in America while restoring communities that have been most affected by harsh drug enforcement measures.
We advocate for policy options that remove obstacles and barriers for people affected by the criminal justice system while simultaneously highlighting the leadership of affected people in the reform movement.
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The Criminal Justice Reform team collaborates with a number of justice reform partners at the national, state, and local levels to help build a more progressive justice system.
The Justice Roundtable is a broad-based coalition of more than 100 organizations working to reform federal criminal justice laws and policies.
Justice Roundtable
The Clean Slate Initiative is a national bipartisan coalition advancing policies to automatically clear all eligible criminal records across the United States and help state partners provide people with a fresh start.
Clean Slate Initiative
The Marijuana Justice Coalition is a broad coalition of national advocacy organizations, convened by the Drug Policy Alliance, who have joined forces to advocate for federal marijuana reform through a racial and economic justice lens.
Drug Policy Alliance - Marijuana Justice Coalition
There is no evidence linking bail reform to the rising rates of violent crime in the United States.
Leaders around the nation should prioritize community-based violence intervention programs to reduce gun violence and violent crime more broadly.
Community-based violence intervention programs have proved to reduce homicides and shootings.
How civilian offices of violence prevention can curb gun violence by supporting community-driven solutions.
Akua Amaning and Sheena Meade write about how second chance policies can help lift millions of women out of poverty.
Jurisdictions can take several steps to eliminate the financial barriers imposed by fines and fees, which would help system-impacted individuals clear their records and reenter society.
The federal government has the opportunity to look to agencies beyond the Department of Justice to advance progressive criminal justice reforms.
The U.S. Department of Justice seems poised to restore pattern-or-practice investigations to promote constitutional and effective policing.
Bipartisan momentum for clean slate and fair chance licensing policies—which remove barriers to economic opportunity for people facing the stigma of a criminal record—has grown significantly in the states in recent years.
With the U.S. Department of Justice beginning to collect data pursuant to the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013, Congress and state legislatures should take the initiative to ensure the dependability of the forthcoming data.