The Rhode Island Center for Justice stands with Jose Batista, Executive Director of the Providence External Review Authority (PERA), established by the Providence City Council to function as a civilian police oversight board. On November 10th, Director Batista released two videos from an April 19, 2020 incident showing Sergeant Hanley handcuffing and being physically and…

On November 3rd, 2020, the Rhode Island District Court issued an administrative order changing the eviction protocol for tenants who file a CDC declaration for a moratorium of eviction. Are you at risk of eviction due to non-payment of rent? Have you applied to financial assistance programs for help paying your rent? In Rhode Island,…

Plaintiffs will appeal, saying the decision gives them a road map to the  First Circuit  PRESS RELEASE – OCTOBER 13, 2020 New York, NY — Judge William Smith of the U.S. District Court for  Rhode Island today issued his long-awaited decision in Cook v.  Raimondo. The case was filed in November 2018 by a group…

The Rhode Island Center for Justice supports the 2020 Justice Budget platform, which calls for equitable budgeting, fair taxes, and improved social safety nets in a balanced economy. We call on legislators and state leaders to pass the provisions in the Justice Budget and make Rhode Island a state of shared prosperity for all. Economic…

The Providence Journal recently published a salacious story of a tenant-landlord dispute, where the landlord of a luxury apartment was unable to remove a tenant when her lease expired. The piece depicted the tenant as a charlatan lawyer who decided to overstay her lease. However, this article does not reflect the reality of most tenant-landlord…

All National Grid residential customers are protected from utility shutoff due to the pandemic, but this protection will expire at the end of September unless you are enrolled in low-income discount rates. If you are enrolled in discount rates, you are protected from shutoff until April 2021. You may be newly eligible for this rate…

The information in this post is now partially out-of-date. Please see our updated blog post for more information. Está en riesgo de ser desalojado por falta de pagar la renta? Vea el Formulario de Notificación y Declaración de Moratoria de Desalojo y solicite ayuda para pagar la renta aquí. On September 5, 2020 the Centers…

Anuncio traducido abajo. English / Inglés The Latino Policy Institute, AMOR (Alliance to Mobilize Our Resistance), Fuerza Laboral, and the Economic Progress Institute have released resource guides in Spanish and English on rights of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic, including worker safety, sick leave, and unemployment. These documents, embedded below, include: https://tinyurl.com/BackToWorkRI-ENG: An English two-page…

At their July 13th meeting, the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission (PUC) voted to extend the state’s moratorium on utility shutoffs by National Grid through November 1st, 2020 for low-income utility customers and through September 30th, 2020 for all other residential utility customers. Citing a number of the arguments articulated in the Public Comment submitted…

Since the year 2000, nearly 5,000 identified Black men, women and children have been killed in fatal encounters with police across the United States.  A Washington Post investigation found that the FBI undercounts fatal police shootings by more than half because reporting by police departments is voluntary.  Until recently there was no comprehensive national database…