News & Commentary

The ACLU of Rhode Island today filed a federal lawsuit to challenge the constitutionality of a 106-year-old statute that declares inmates serving life sentences at the ACI to be “civilly dead.” The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by ACLU volunteer attorney Sonja Deyoe, is on behalf of two ACI inmates and the women who have been barred from marrying them because of the “civil death” law. Rhode Island apparently remains one of only three states that still has on the books a law like this, whose origins date back to ancient English common law.

Racial disparities in suspensions at Rhode Island’s schools reached their highest rates in a decade last year, according to a new report issued today by the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island. The report, “Blacklisted: 2013-2014,” found that while white students experienced a ten-year low in suspensions during the 2013-2014 school year, the combined suspension rate for Hispanic, black and Native American students was at its highest level.

By Hillary Davis, Policy Associate

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island is urging the Pawtucket Police Department to conduct an in-depth examination of some of its policies and procedures in light of “disturbing” allegations of racism among its officers described in a recent news article.

Over the past few months, we've shared quite a bit of data about the school-to-prison pipeline and its disproportionate impact on Rhode Island's communities of color. We recently sat down with Jordan Seaberry, of the Univocal Legislative Minority Advisory Committee and Jim Vincent, president of the NAACP-Providence Branch to discuss the far reaching impact of these racial disparities and how the state must act to improve the lives of all Rhode Islanders.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island has raised deep concerns about the hiring practices of the City of East Providence and the East Providence School Department’s failure to address allegations of discrimination against minority employees and applicants.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island today issued a report calling on state and municipal leaders to examine policies, practices and procedures that lead to discriminatory treatment of black Rhode Islanders, from elementary school through adulthood. The ACLU report, titled “The School-to-Prison Pipeline in Black and White,” offers a brief but systematic examination of racial disparities in Rhode Island, and how those interconnected disparities can lead to a lifetime of unequal treatment. The report, presented in a series of twelve charts, comes as the nation celebrates Black History Month, and grapples with recent events that have pushed racial disparity issues back into the forefront.

As part of an ongoing analysis of racial disparities in Rhode Island, the ACLU of Rhode Island today announced that racial disparities in searches during motor vehicle stops appear to be increasing.