Publications

This joint report from ACLU NorCal and Catalyst California (formerly Advancement Project California) highlights strategies Sacramento County leaders should make to improve community safety and reduce systemic racial inequity in the criminal legal system. An analysis of 2019 data collected under California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act (RIPA) found that the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office ... Read More

California prisons systematically profile and report suspected immigrants to ICE, a new public record act investigation reveals. Read More

In 2021, we partnered with the Black Bill of Rights to develop a community toolkit for people seeking to address systemic oppression and anti-Black racism. The Black Bill of Rights is a resource hub that provides education, templates, and data for communities to take action and develop policies and practices that restore freedom and opportunity for Black people in the United States. It is an ever-... Read More

Over the past decade, the California Legislature enacted a trio of critical laws intended to protect people from collusion between state and local law enforcement agencies and agencies engaged in immigration enforcement. Certain sheriffs and local law enforcement agencies, however, have circumvented these laws and undermined the protections envisioned for California immigrants — at times in consul... Read More

Sacramento County is an important jurisdiction for reform of the laws and policies that produce mass incarceration. The county incarcerates roughly 10,000 people between county jails and state prisons. The DA, Sheriff’s Department, Probation Department, and courts consume 64 percent of the County General Fund, yet the county’s crime rate — though slightly higher than the state and federal average ... Read More

California and the United States as a whole incarcerate more people than anywhere else in the world, in both absolute and per capita terms1 District attorneys (DAs) in California can have a powerful role in curbing mass incarceration and hold tremendous discretion within the criminal legal system, but they have historically been subject to limited accountability. This report outlines the practices... Read More

California District Attorneys (DAs) have historically used their legal discretion to prioritize aggressive “tough-on-crime” prosecution, which has caused incarceration rates to skyrocket and destroyed lives Even though they are elected officials, DAs are often not held accountable for these practices, in part, because their role is not well understood, and much of their work is hidden from the pub... Read More

The plight of people who are unhoused has reached horrific proportions in California, but instead of embarking on a resurgence of affordable housing, communities have instead instituted policies and regulations that target unhoused people by harassing, citing, segregating, banishing, and even imprisoning them. Read More

California district attorneys (DAs) have historically played a central role in driving incarceration. Although they are elected officials, DAs have not typically been held accountable by the public for policies and practices that perpetuate racial disparities and criminalize poverty, mental illness, and other social issues. This 2021 report outlines the policies and practices of the Orange County ... Read More

Over the past few decades, police have become a dominant fixture in California schools. Their presence has devastating and discriminatory impacts on tens of thousands of California students. Read More

A disturbing trend has emerged in California—police officers are stationed in schools and are replacing educators as disciplinarians for minor offenses and student behavior issues. Further, on-campus policing often results in over-criminalizing students—mostly low-income students of color—and pushes affected students out of the educational environment and into the school-to-prison pipeline. This i... Read More

Redistricting is the process of redrawing the district maps used by political jurisdictions to elect public officials. This process takes place every ten years following each decennial census and affects all government bodies that use district elections including the U.S. House of Representatives, state legislatures, county boards of supervisors, city councils, and school boards. This year, hundre... Read More