Research & Publications

This report shares firsthand accounts from patients who have been denied appropriate care at Catholic hospitals, from health care providers forbidden from providing critical care because of the Directives, and from physicians at secular hospitals who have treated very sick women after they were turned away from a Catholic facility.

This joint ACLU-Yale Law School report reveals that more than a quarter of a million people are on terrorist watchlists used by police in the United States, and those lists are full of mistakes.

After observing and investigating proceedings at 27 “summary courts” in South Carolina, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the ACLU, and the ACLU of South Carolina together produced Summary Injustice: A Look at Constitutional Deficiencies in South Carolina’s Summary Courts. These courts try and convict people accused of low-level offenses, routinely failing to adequately advise defendants that they have a constitutional right to a lawyer, whether they can afford to pay for one or not.

The report reveals other standard operating procedures that have no place in the American justice system. The police who arrest defendants act as their prosecutors, the judges aren’t required to have a law degree, and defense lawyers are a rarity. With no lawyers in the courtrooms, errors that result in increased punishments for the defendants go unnoticed. The report details the cases of several defendants and their sentences.

Municipal courts – which are one kind of summary court—are flourishing in South Carolina because they make money for their towns’ coffers by collecting fees and fines.

The court-watching for Summary Injustice was conducted between December 2014 and July 2015. The report is the first step in the ACLU and the National Criminal Defense Lawyers Association’s joint investigation of South Carolina’s summary courts. Together we are gathering data from magistrate and municipal courts in several counties across the state, and our next report will offer recommendations for reforms that will ensure South Carolinians’ access to their constitutional right to an attorney.

Over the past number of years, crowd-control weapons (CCWs) are increasingly being used in responding to popular protests. In a joint report “Lethal in Disguise: The Health Consequences of Crowd-Control Weapons,” The International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO) and Physicians for Human Rights have documented the health consequences of these weapons. The report aims to raise awareness about the misuse and abuse of CCWs, the detrimental health effects that these weapons can have, and the impact of their use on the meaningful enjoyment of freedom of assembly and expression. It also seeks to foster a global debate to develop international standards and guidelines on the use of CCWs with the ultimate goal of preventing injury, disability and death by providing information on these weapons and insisting on their safe use.

Fact Sheets Related to this Report:

• Water Cannons
• KIPs
• Chemical Irritants
• Acoustic Weapons
• Directed Energy Devices
• Disorientation Devices

En este informe se examinan flagrantes violaciones a las normas sobre atención médica establecidas por el propio Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas de los Estados Unidos (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés), que tuvieron un papel importante en ocho de las defunciones de personas que se encontraban bajo custodia, ocurridas desde 2010 hasta 2012. Un análisis efectuado por la Unión Americana de Libertades Civiles (ACLU, por sus siglas en inglés), Detention Watch Network (DWN por sus siglas en inglés), y el Centro Nacional de Justicia para Inmigrantes (NJIC, por sus siglas en inglés), acerca de las investigaciones hechas por el ICE sobre las muertes y los informes de inspección de los establecimientos revela que si bien los informes del propio ICE detectaron violaciones de sus normas médicas como factores contribuyentes a esas muertes, las inspecciones de los establecimientos de detención del ICE efectuadas antes y después de estas defunciones no reconocieron, y en ocasiones hasta desestimaron, las fallas fundamentales identificadas en las investigaciones sobre las muertes.