As always, @boltsmag.org puts out a great guide to all the elections coming up. "We’ve identified more than 180 key elections that will be decided this fall—from mayors and governors to school boards and judges—and explain why they matter." boltsmag.org/whats-on-the...

A study tracking the effects of a California resentencing policy aimed at shrinking state prison populations found low recidivism rates among people who were older and had served lengthy sentences, reports CalMatters.

Love this from @boltsmag.org: Your Cheat Sheet to the 2025 General Elections boltsmag.org/2025-general...

Hawaii's supreme court rejects the argument that recording all interrogations is burdensome for police: “If children can record everyday events with ease, law enforcement cannot claim hardship to record perhaps its most consequential investigative act.”

NEW in Bolts: We guide you through more than 180 elections on the ballot in the fall of 2025, and why they matter.

NEW: November general elections are around the corner, so it’s time to launch my cheat sheet of what’s on the ballot this fall! I guide you thru the *185* elections I'm watching, & why: lawmakers, governors, judges, DAs, mayors, school boards, & dozens of ballot measures. Explore, share, save:

Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill has so far refused to systematically investigate more than a dozen cases in which witnesses and defendants allege bullying and intimidation by one detective and his partners.

"What we know from research is, if you don’t have compulsory voting, the people least likely to vote are poorer people, people from new migrant groups, and often the young," says an Australian scholar on what it means that Australia requires voting.

Activists and immigration attorneys warn that a Boston law enforcement program has created formal and informal channels for passing data to ICE. The city is applying to renew the federal grant that supports the program, adding to critics’ worries.

The Des Moines Register reports on ICE’s arrest of the school superintendent in Des Moines, Iowa.

Across the country, 31 states have requirements that police record interrogations, though many only require recordings in certain cases. Hawaii just became the ninth state to impose this requirement regardless of the crime someone is suspected of.

“You see local counties pushing back, because they’re hearing from their constituents, ‘Wait, what does this mean for our air quality? What does this mean for water demands? What does this mean for power?’”

Boston's Michelle Wu has attracted notice for standing up to Trump on ICE raids. But her stance is undermined by the city's fusion center, which civil liberties advocates have warned abt for yrs: "The whole purpose of it is federal & local law enforcement collaboration." boltsmag.org/boston-polic...

A report commissioned by prosecutors cites more than a dozen cases where witnesses or defendants allege that a Chicago detective, Brian Forberg, or his partners, bullied witnesses into falsely blaming them for murder. Read our new collaboration with @injusticewatch.org: boltsmag.org/chicago-cook...

Eileen O'Neill Burke made it harder for people to have their innocence claims investigated by the Cook County Conviction Integrity Unit — one of several ways her office is weakening review of wrongful convictions. Read the latest from us and @boltsmag.org:

Boston’s mayor said last month that the city would reapply for a $12 million federal grant that’s meant to fund emergency responses but will be routed through a controversial center that shares data between local police and the federal government.

A California bill would have expanded defense and post-conviction relief options for people who could prove that their arrest or conviction was a direct result of domestic violence. It failed this month.

Isolating people inside a small, closet-like cell for weeks, months, and even years on end remains common inside this country’s prisons and jails. Two people who've experienced it answer nine of your questions on what this does.

"'The prosecutor’s office is there to do justice,' Ronald Safer said. 'And, my goodness, if you have reason to believe that your office was used by rogue police officers to convict the innocent, why wouldn’t you investigate?'" #CIU boltsmag.org/chicago-cook...

Voters in Jackson County, Missouri, have recalled County Executive Frank White today. This vote to oust White follows the two recalls that were successful earlier this month in California and Ohio, all featured on our guide to September's elections:

Proponents of a proposal requiring ballot initiatives in Missouri to win majorities in every district say it would ensure referendums have “broad geographic support.” They’ve also said weaker support in rural areas should be enough to kill popular reforms.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is pursuing funding this year that would strengthen the capacity for sharing data between the city’s local police and federal law enforcement. Critics fear it may embolden ICE operations.

Clemency freed three abuse survivors in New Jersey; now advocates want to go further. “We really want to ensure lasting impact,” said the ACLU’s Rebecca Uwakwe. She is pushing for a bill that would give survivors a legal path to seek sentence reductions.

Advocates in California will continue to push for relief for people convicted of harming their abusers. “Survivors are resilient, and there’s so many left behind, and so many that this bill would have helped.”

NEW: Chicago has a so-called 'conviction integrity unit' that's meant to identify and free the innocent. Since the new prosecutor came into office, it's all gone south—cases are not being reviewed, and allegations of police coercion are left unaddressed: boltsmag.org/chicago-cook...

Some places in Colorado, including Denver, already print ballots in both Spanish and English for every election. But until the passage of SB 1, each city was left to decide whether to provide multilingual ballots—and many places chose not to do so.

A recent decision by Hawaii's Supreme Court to expand due process comes at a time when many progressive advocates are focusing on state constitutions and state courts, given the conservative hostility of federal courts to civil rights litigation.

NEW from Bolts and @injusticewatch.org: Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke’s Conviction Integrity Unit hasn’t exonerated anyone in her 10 months on the job. She's also done little to confront coercion allegations against a former Chicago police detective. boltsmag.org/chicago-cook...

Voters in Jackson County, Missouri will decide today whether or not to recall Frank White, the county's Democratic executive. Read more about the election in our guide, which we will update as results come in:

We have a newsletter full of political reporting you don't want to miss tomorrow— —about Hawaii and Arizona, Boston and Chicago, and more! If you want to be on top of local politics, & news about criminal justice & voting rights, sign up now! It's free & weekly: boltsmag.org/newsletter.

Christopher Blackwell experienced solitary confinement: “For me, the most impactful thing was to remain in close contact with loved ones, phone calls and letters,” he recalls. But “many people in solitary have no outside support to keep them grounded.”

In Virginia, people leaving prison automatically regained the right to vote under the previous governor. But Governor Youngkin ended that policy and now decides who gets to cast a ballot.

Mayor Eric Adams ended his reelection bid on Sunday. A few months ago, Bolts reported how Adams was regularly declaring a state of emergency in order to prevent a city ordinance banning the use of solitary confinement from being implemented.

“In this day and age where federal constitutional rights are being eviscerated or evaporated, it’s important that state supreme courts protect people’s rights,” says the legal director of the ACLU of Hawaii.

NEW: Mayor Wu has been one of the faces of pushback to Trump's ICE demands. But a police grant the city is re-applying for is sparking concerns about helping immigration enforcement: not just due to new strings DHS is imposing, but also due to how a fusion center called BRIC is already working.

NEW in Bolts: A grant that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu is pursuing would help fund a law enforcement center that’s drawn criticism over data-sharing with ICE. It would also come with new strings to spend money on border control.

As federal agents marched in Chicago this weekend, a top U.S. Border Patrol official told a WBEZ reporter that one of the factors in who agents are arresting is “the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look.”

A failed California reform would have helped domestic violence survivors erase previous convictions. “I can picture all the people it would help, all the people who aren’t going to be judged by the worst day of their life that took them to prison.”

Democrats in Maryland decided not to ban sheriffs from contracting with ICE, worried that the White House may retaliate. Jordy Diaz, who advocates for immigrants' rights in the state, says he's disappointed: "They really dropped the ball.”

For the third year, California killed a bill to help incarcerated domestic violence survivors. “There are a ton of states that are far more conservative than California that passed more extensive legislation through Republican run legislatures."

Incarcerated writer Christopher Blackwell says the damage of solitary confinement isn’t always clear at first. “It is something that just chips away at your core spirit, sometimes leaving a shell of a person when they are released from its grasp.”

“There’s a ton of states that are far more conservative than California that passed more extensive legislation through Republican run legislatures, so any claim that this is a progressive bill just doesn’t align with what other states are doing.”

A wave of states have passed legislation to abolish life without parole for people under 18. These reforms have granted thousands of people who are already incarcerated a chance to apply for release, typically only once they’ve spent decades in prison.

The Oklahoma senator who sponsored a new law to curtail citizen initiatives said he wants to “give more Oklahomans, not just the urban elites in Oklahoma City and Tulsa, a say in what questions qualify for the ballot.” Critics question his reasoning.

In a string of recent rulings, Hawaii Justice Todd Evins has rebuked the originalist approach preferred by the conservative U.S. Supreme Court. “A constitution adapts,” he writes in a new decision. “Due process is agile.”

Some state constitutions still contain explicit exceptions that allow forced labor for incarcerated people, a direct legacy of the 13th Amendment’s “exception clause.”

Evidence from the first round of voting suggests that this year’s general elections for Georgia’s utility commission are likely to fly under the radar. But climate advocates are hoping they can focus attention on them.

For much of this nation's history, health care for incarcerated people was provided directly by state prison or health authorities. But today, roughly two dozen states use for-profit health care contractors.

Due to a loophole in Georgia law, state officials have the power to nullify some elections that have already happened. Critics are slamming what they call a “dystopian” rule.