Everyone, regardless of their race, place, or income, deserves equal treatment under the law and rules that govern our country and our institutions. Yet this is far from the reality in Ohio, particularly for Black Ohioans.
Many of our nation’s institutions, public policies, and even its founding have protected a culture of systemic racism and perpetuated racial injustice, thereby holding back, harming, and killing Black people. Within our criminal justice and legal system, there is a history of systemic racism embedded into the institutions, and that was not done by accident. Today, many individuals who control these systems continue to uphold these racist and discriminatory structures.
Our criminal justice and legal systems have dangerous and deadly impacts on Black women and girls, especially Black trans women. Far too often, though, we fail to center the experiences of Black women and girls when calling for change in conversations around law enforcement violence, mass incarceration, and criminal justice.
Our new project, The Justice Agenda for Black Women and Girls, looks to play a role in closing that gap in criminal justice reform efforts. We will directly, and solely, focus on the experiences of Black women and girls interacting with the criminal justice and legal systems, as well as exploring the proactive policy solutions to directly address the barriers they face to fair, equal treatment under the law.
