Legislation

We supported a variety of legislation which proposed to decriminalize certain drugs entirely or to change the threshold for which the possession of a certain amount of a controlled substance becomes a crime.

We testified in support of a bill which would have granted legal immunity to individuals engaged in commercial sexual activity who report a crime that they are either a victim of or witness to.

We opposed legislation which would have authorized a civil action against parents who demonstrate “willful or wanton disregard” in their exercise of “supervision and control” over a child who has committed the offense of cyberstalking or cyberharassment.

At a meeting of a state legislative commission designed to examine the impact of the criminalization of sex work, we testified in favor of decriminalization of these offenses and provided a number of other policy recommendations on the topic.

We urged rejection of the sections of this bill which put in place criminal records checks that could broadly disqualify justice-involved individuals seeking to become Medicaid personal care attendants or high-risk providers.

Noting that “life without parole” sentencing robs incarcerated individuals of any rehabilitative hope, is a type of sentencing with a racially discriminatory impact, and is a wasteful use of public resources, we supported legislation to eliminate this criminal sentence in Rhode Island.

We supported this legislation which would have repealed the state "civil death" statute as a matter of cleaning up this unjust and unconstitutional law from the books.

In an important piece of criminal justice reform legislation, this bill would have slightly redefined in two ways the definitions of “felony” and “misdemeanor” in Rhode Island law.

We supported legislation which would have generally prohibited the detention of a juvenile under the age of 14 at the Rhode Island Training School.