NLG Statement in Support of #8toAbolition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: communications@nlg.org The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) supports the #8toAbolition campaign, which builds on decades of work by Black feminist abolitionists to demand an end to policing and prisons, and community investment that prioritizes the lives and safety of Black people. 8 to Abolition was created by BIPOC police and prison abolitionists as […]

National Lawyers Guild Supports NoNewJails NYC Campaign

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) is committed to building a world without incarceration. As prison abolitionists, we know that all jails and prisons are sites of violence that only serve to perpetuate white supremacy, social control and cycles of intergenerational trauma. In our ongoing work to dismantle those systems, we oppose any efforts that invest […]

[WEBINAR] Implementing Abolition: How to Create Just and Lasting Decarceration

Tuesday, April 9 – 5 PM (ET) / 2 PM (PT) UPDATE -4/11/19: Watch the recording of the full webinar! While prison populations have declined in recent years, they remain enormous, and immigration detention has ballooned. Also, in many areas where prison populations have decreased the most, racial disparities have worsened. Webinar faculty will talk […]

What American Drug Culture Reveals about Race in the US

We are publishing this piece as part of the NLG annual student Week Against Mass Incarceration. In 2019, we are highlighting the connections between the exponential increase of incarcerated people and the 40-year War on Drugs.  By Lisa Drapkin, NLG Director of Membership The cultural narrative around drug use in the US is constantly shifting, […]

DE-NJ NLG Prisoners’ Legal Advocacy Network (PLAN) Mounts Legal Responses to Widespread Reports of Prisoner Abuses in the Aftermath of the 2018 National Prison Strike

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 20, 2018 Contact: Paul Stanley Holdorf, Esq. Melinda R. Patterson, Esq. 908-591-1589 | plan@nlg.org From August 21, 2018 to September 9, 2018, prisoners across the country participated in a peaceful strike to protest steadily deteriorating conditions of confinement in United States prisons. These worsening conditions, such as major cutbacks to prisoner […]

WEBINAR: Bail Funds and Community-Based Strategies

REGISTER NOW! bit.ly/bailfundwebinar Bail and bond funds can be an important tool towards dismantling the prison industrial complex and ending mass incarceration. However, as many new funds emerge in response to the rampant policing of protests and uprisings, this is an important moment to share lessons learned on the ground. Lawyers and legal workers sometimes […]

Mass Incarceration in the Trump Era

By Pooja Gehi, NLG Executive Director In 2015, the National Lawyers Guild adopted a resolution calling for the dismantling and abolition of all prisons. As an organization, we recognized mass incarceration in all of its iterations—policing, violence, incarceration, forced labor, privatization and capitalism—as a crisis that we must resist in all of our work. Sharlyn Grace, then […]

NLG Stands with Prisoners in Struggle, Endorse IWOC National Prison Strike in September

Today, prisoners across Alabama have ended a 10-day strike that started May 1 (International Workers’ Day) to protest unpaid labor and horrendous conditions, already reporting retaliation by prison officials. On September 9, 2016, the National Lawyers Guild will join Support Prisoner Resistance, The Free Alabama Movement and The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) in a Call […]

NLG Adopts Resolution Supporting Prison Abolition

“Prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.” –Angela Y. Davis FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE NEW YORK—Following the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) Law for the People Convention in October, NLG membership adopted a resolution calling for the dismantling and abolition of all prisons and of all aspects of systems and institutions that support, condone, create, […]