News & Commentary

We went into the 126th Legislature with a plan: to bring Maine's privacy laws up to speed with advancing technology. To that end, we proposed a 5-bill privacy package with bipartisan sponsorship. And while it was an uphill battle the whole way, we were successful in winning privacy protections and standing up for the 4th Amendment! 

Yesterday, we saw an unprecedented move towards criminal justice reform nationwide. In his address at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Bar Association, United States Attorney General Eric Holder called for “significant actions to recalibrate America's federal criminal justice system", asserting that mass incarceration “at the federal, state and local level is both ineffective and unsustainable.” The transcript of his speech can be found here. Some of the highlights include:

Recently, a school in Wood County, West Virginia agreed to abolish for two years its single-sex education practice in which boys and girls were segregated to separate classrooms. This was after legal action was levied by the ACLU on behalf of a Wood County family who believed the program was sexist. This recent occurrence brings an interesting and little discussed topic to light: single-sex education. If you are from the Northeast and not West Virginia, perhaps the phrase evokes scenes of prim girls in skirts learning needlepoint or dour faced Choate boys before the Rosemary Hall addition.

Today, a federal judge ruled that the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk practices are unconstitutional. The ACLU’s affiliate in New York has been on top of this issue for years, and the data they’ve compiled clearly shows that this is not just a minor problem. Innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 4 million times since 2002, and nearly nine out of 10 who were stopped-and-frisked were completely innocent.

The federal government classifies marijuana as a "Schedule 1" narcotic--high potential for abuse; no currently accepted medical use; and dangerous--and for decades the government has asserted that there is sound scientific basis for this classification. It is not true.  Medical research in countries that make it easier for such research to take place without fear of prosecution have shown that cannabis has enormous potential as a treatment for a wide range of debilitating conditions, including seizure disorders (families in this country are desperate for that research, but marijuana's legal status makes it nearly impossible).

In this week’s New Yorker, an article titled Taken focuses on civil asset forfeiture laws utilized by law enforcement. Under federal law and in 42 states, civil-forfeiture laws allow police agencies to confiscate cash or property that they have reason to believe was obtained through “illicit means.” In most circumstances this money is then funneled back into law enforcement or state budgets.  

Hello all! My name is Grainne Dunne and I have just begun my work at the ACLU of Maine as the new Justice Organizer. I am so excited to be part of the dynamic team here at the ACLU of Maine and cannot wait to get to work with my new colleagues on criminal justice reform in Maine.

At the ACLU, we find ourselves working on issues of racial profiling far too often. It permeates so many of the different areas that we work on. From immigration to school discipline to drug arrests to everyday encounters with the police, the sad fact is that racial profiling exists all across our society, including here in Maine.

Black people are twice as likely as white people to be arrested for marijuana possession in Maine, despite the fact that they use marijuana at the same rates, according to a startling new report from our national office.Alarmingly, in York County, blacks are five times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession – higher than the national average of just under four times.According to the report, there were 2,842 arrests for marijuana possession in Maine in 2010, accounting for 47.9% of all drug arrests. 75 of them, or 2.6 percent, were arrests of black people, even though black people made up only 1.2 percent of the population.The report estimates that Maine spends $8.8 million on marijuana possession enforcement annually - including police, judicial and legal services, and corrections expenditures. Nationally, states spent an estimated $3.61 billion enforcing marijuana possession in 2010 alone.This information comes as the Maine Legislature considers LD 1229, which would send the question of marijuana legalization directly to the voters. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Diane Russell, will be voted on by the full House and Senate soon and has our support.Eliminating penalties for low-level marijuana possession will prevent people from becoming enmeshed in the criminal justice system in the first instance. Moreover, legalization will eliminate the many collateral consequences that flow from marijuana arrests, thereby reducing the number of people entering or otherwise harmed by the criminal justice system.The time has come for Maine, and the nation, to realize that less punitive approaches to criminal justice not only make more fiscal sense but also better protect our communities. We look forward to working with the people of Maine for sensible reform.