Research & Publications

Read our 2020 report, ‘A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform’

Over-Policing: Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million pot arrests in the U.S. That’s one bust every 37 seconds and hundreds of thousands ensnared in the criminal justice system.

Wasted Time and Money: Enforcing marijuana laws costs us about $3.6 billion a year, yet the War on Marijuana has failed to diminish the use or availability of marijuana.

Staggering Racial Bias: Marijuana use is roughly equal among Blacks and whites, yet Blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.

Update (09/11/2013): In the original version of this report, the Minnesota dollar figure under “Money spent enforcing marijuana possession laws in 2010” on page 158 was mistakenly printed as $94,838,792. The correct figure is $42,071,288. We apologize for the error and have made the correction in the online version of the report.

Solitary confinement destroys lives. Over the past four decades, prisons across the country have increasingly relied on solitary confinement—isolating prisoners in small poorly-lit cells for 23-24 hours per day—as a disciplinary tool for prisoners who are difficult to manage in the general population. But research has shown that these conditions cause serious mental deterioration and illness. Prisoners in solitary confinement hallucinate, they deliberately injure themselves, and they lose the ability to relate to other human beings. When these prisoners are eventually released from solitary confinement, they have difficulties integrating into the general prison population or (especially when they are released directly onto the streets) into life on the outside.

A Joint Publication of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Transgender Equality

All too often parents who have transitioned or come out as transgender after having children have seen their gender transition raised by their ex-spouse or partner as a basis to deny or restrict custody or visitation. Transgender people who formed families after transitioning have faced challenges to their legal status as parents, often based on attacks on the validity of their marriages. This guide provides information to transgender parents and their attorneys to help them protect parent-child relationships and assist them when faced with disputes over child custody issues.

If you would like to order hard copies of the publication, please contact the ACLU LGBT & HIV Project at (212) 549-2627.

Additional Resources

• Discrimination Against Transgender People
• LGBT Rights – ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender Project

The economic crisis of 2008, which was devastating for the nation’s economy as a whole, was nothing short of disastrous for communities of color. The decades of progress toward full inclusion in the American dream that the civil rights laws of the 1960s enabled disappeared virtually overnight, stripping communities of color of their homes and their financial futures.

In this report, Justice Foreclosed, we look at how Wall Street’s demand for loans encouraged predatory lending in communities of color; how that in turn fueled the housing crisis, and how the bust will continue to affect these communities for years, if not generations, to come.

Every day, in jails and prisons across the United States, young people under the age of 18 are held in solitary confinement. They spend 22 or more hours each day alone, usually in a small cell behind a solid steel door, completely isolated both physically and socially, often for days, weeks, or even months on end. Sometimes there is a window allowing natural light to enter or a view of the world outside cell walls. Sometimes it is possible to communicate by yelling to other inmates, with voices distorted, reverberating against concrete and metal. Occasionally, they get a book or bible, and if they are lucky, study materials. But inside this cramped space, few contours distinguish one hour, one day, week, or one month, from the next.

A new report from the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, “Growing Up Locked Down: Youth in Solitary Confinement in Jails and Prisons Across the United States,” is based on interviews and correspondence with more than 125 young people in 19 states who spent time in solitary confinement while under age 18 as well as with jail and/or prison officials in 10 states.