DetentionKills Transparency Initiative Collected Works 2022-24
Previewing a Forthcoming Edited Volume Compiling Our Work
Happy FOIA Friday to all who celebrate!
Today I wanted to share the early draft of what will become our first edited volume of resources and reflections on the transparency and accountability work we’ve engaged in around deaths in custody, government secrecy, and preventable harm in DHS custody.
The book will live online for now so that it can include appendices linking to all of the Freedom of Information Act Requests we’ve filed, alongside the records we’ve received and posted to DocumentCloud. It’ll also include a series of themed appendices containing (1) pleadings, briefs, and decisions from death-in-custody suits; (2) government and NGO reports regarding deaths in custody; (3) selected media coverage of the issues; and (4) rapid response resources for communities responding to an in-custody death.
I am inviting several of the families, organizers, and stakeholders our project has worked with over the years to contribute reflections on their experiences, so that it might benefits folks dealing with these traumatic emergencies for the first time.
Finally, I’m going to include some exclusive reporting and writing I’ve been doing over the past couple years about the systems and incentive structures that perpetuate death where the protection of life is purportedly paramount. I will describe my foolhardy 10-year plan to end ICE detention so that people might be inspired to dream big while also being informed by the obstacles that remain.
If you’re reading this post and would like to contribute to this effort, or believe there would be something important to include that I may have left out, please let me know.
For now, here’s a preview of the dispatches portion of the work, which is a collection of writings posted on this substack, edited, and put all in one place.
If you’d like to help support this effort, please consider becoming a subscriber, or if that’s not in your budget, sharing this site with others who might benefit from the work we do here.
Thank you as always.