Legislation

According to a report from the General Accountability Office released in the spring of 2016, RI was set to become one of 18 states in the process of negotiating MOUs with the FBI to facilitate their access to driver’s license images for purposes of facial recognition matching.

This misnomered legislation from the Attorney General would make it a crime to electronically transmit nude or sexually explicit images without the person’s consent, regardless of the sender’s intent.

Every year numerous bills are introduced into the General Assembly that seek to expand the use of background checks in professions and or volunteering opportunities that rather than promote public safety, further push ex-offenders outside of a positive community atmosphere.

Under the proposed legislation, juveniles who are sentenced as adults would automatically come before the parole board after fifteen years, regardless of the length of their sentence, giving these young adults the chance to prove their fitness to return to society.

After a great deal of political maneuvering, the General Assembly passed a package of bills aimed at improving the criminal justice system.

In February the ACLU and the Urban Justice Center testified on a bill that has some laudable provisions designed to address the scourge of human trafficking, but that also had a number of problematic provisions.

In February, the ACLU testified in front of the House Judiciary committee stating that treating crimes against police officers as hate crimes devalues the discrimination that truly marginalized communities such as members of the LGBTQ community and people of color have faced for decades.

In June, the ACLU testified in the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of legislation which sought to expand that law by prohibiting shackling pregnant women in their third trimester while they were being transported to or from a court proceeding.

Women have historically been charged more for the same health insurance as men, solely because of their gender, leaving women less able to purchase vital health care coverage.