Publications

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

The detention of immigrants is inherently a violation of reproductive justice, as it denies people their bodily autonomy and human rights. Barriers to Reproductive Health While Detained seeks to promote awareness of these problems among the legal and medical providers working with detained people, and to provide ready access to some of the relevant legal standards. Read More

Today, Native American students throughout California continue to face disproportionately higher rates of exclusionary discipline, chronic absenteeism, and lower academic outcomes than their nonIndigenous peers. In Humboldt County, home to nearly twenty times more Indigenous students than the statewide average, these disparities are egregious. Read More

Together, we are achieving important victories against secret and dangerous surveillance. We are raising awareness of how surveillance technology like drones, stingrays, and facial recognition exacerbate discriminatory policing, suppress dissent, and facilitate harm to immigrants and people of color. We are building the political coalitions and power essential to win surveillance reform and durabl... Read More

Data about school counselors had been required previously, but this report provides the first state-level student-to-staff ratio comparison for these other school-based mental health personnel, along with school counselors. A key finding of the report is that schools are under-resourced and students are overcriminalized. Read More

Nosotros esperamos que este manual práctico sirva de herramienta para que los residentes de California hagan cambios en sus comunidades y para que se mantengan involucrados en los procesos que impactan su vida. Read More

A toolkit for communities seeking improved water, sanitation, and other municipal services Everyone needs basic municipal services, ranging from water to garbage and sewage removal. But these services are not equitably distributed. The purpose of this toolkit is to help residents advocate for the services they need and deserve. It explains a key process by which local governments make decision... Read More

A report by the ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the Pacific Institute, “A Survey of Efforts to Achieve Universal Access to Water and Sanitation in California,” details the lack of access to sanitation faced by many communities in California. In 2012, California became the first state in the country to enact legislation recognizing the human right to water. But low-income people who l... Read More