The Southern Coalition for Social Justice believes no one is the sum of their worst mistakes. Since 2018, we’ve launched a wide-ranging initiative focused on helping individuals with criminal records navigate the re-entry process and ensure their records are expunged so they may economically and socially better their lives. People seeking SCSJ’s re-entry or criminal […]
Your First 48 Toolkit
Your First 48 Hours Toolkit is a Durham County resource guide for successful reentry after incarceration, connecting you to resources and service providers that help overcome the barriers to a successful reentry. Returning to your community with a criminal record can be a difficult task due to the collateral consequence of incarceration that limits access […]
Umar Muhammad Clean Slate Toolkit
The Umar Muhammad Clean Slate Toolkit is a free resource providing a step-by-step guide to remove eligible North Carolina charges from a person’s record. With a typical criminal record expungement costing between $1,500 and $2,000 in court costs and attorney’s fees, the toolkit is designed to help individuals navigate the process independently, making expunctions easier to […]
The Freedom to Vote
North Carolina is one of a handful of states that disenfranchise people living in our communities who are on felony probation and parole. Unfortunately, this policy, which dates back to the early 1900’s, disenfranchised nearly 70,000 North Carolinians in 2017. This number doesn’t even begin to count the number of people who never re-registered to […]
Open Data Policing Website Manual
USES OF OPEN DATA POLICING Locate an Officer’s Career Stop and Search History Stopped by the police? Use our “Find a Stop” feature to locate your traffic stop. Click on the associated Officer ID number to display the enforcement history of the officer who stopped you. Maryland data includes an officer’s stop, search, and contraband […]
Open Data Policing
Open Data Policing is a first-of-its-kind platform that aims to make real the recommendation of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing to make stop, search, and use-of-force “data…publicly available to ensure transparency.”
Clean Slate Project
One Mistake, Two Journeys
A Mother’s Fight for Justice
The Benefits of Ban the Box: A Case Study of Durham, NC
For many job applicants around the country, one question blocks them from gainful employment and economic opportunity. A single question, often posed as a checkbox on the front of most job applications, asks about an applicant’s criminal history. For many employers, it has become a way to weed out applicants before ever considering qualifications such as education […]
Excessive force by Durham PD
Stories of Racial Profiling in Durham
In 2013, following a series of citizen complaints, Durham Mayor Bill Bell asked the city’s Human Relations Commission to investigate allegations of discriminatory policing by the Durham Police Department. After seven months of hearings, the 14-member commission, persuaded by statistical evidence and testimony of those directly affected, issued a report confirming “the existence of racial […]