Commentary

Last week, the Supreme Court surprised many liberals when it overturned the conviction of a Black man on death row, Curtis Flowers, for racial bias in jury selection.

The criminal and juvenile legal systems are drivers of poverty. Presidential candidates should recognize that.

Marion Wilson’s was the 1,500th execution since 1976, the year Georgia resumed the death penalty after the Supreme Court’s decision in Gregg v. Georgia.

Corrupt cops, lazy lawyers, and cowardly politicians: Kevin Cooper’s case exemplifies three and a half decades of systemic failures

On June 1, BuzzFeed and Injustice Watch reported on the Plain View Project, a new database of racist, violent, and otherwise offensive public Facebook posts and comments by active and retired police officers. (We covered the Plain View Project, the online behavior it exposed, and the additional investigation by Injustice Watch / BuzzFeed in our […]

A nearly 30-year-old New York Times Magazine profile of the infamous prosecutor may reveal as much about Linda Fairstein as Ava DuVernay‘s acclaimed new Netflix series.

In January, when Phil Sims became the sheriff of Marshall County, Alabama, he found a cardboard box in a storage closet containing five government-issued smartphones, each with multiple holes drilled clear through them. His predecessor had destroyed them. The hard drives had been removed from his computers. Records were missing. The jail’s refrigerators and shelves […]

“I had stared at death before. I was way too familiar with the vagaries of murder.” So begins “Deadfall,” a novel written by celebrity prosecutor Linda Fairstein. She continues: “I had seen it flex its muscles on the cracked pavement of New York City sidewalks and behind grimy stairwells in housing projects. I knew that […]

CBS 2 Chicago relied on police voices and irrelevant data to question efforts to end cash bail.

When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was interviewed this week on a local news network, he was asked about Layleen Polanco, the 27-year-old transgender woman who was recently found dead in her cell at Rikers Island. The specific cause of her death is not known, but why was she held for two months […]

In 2015, the Chicago City Council passed a reparations ordinance. That ordinance, the first of its kind in the country, was the city’s official acknowledgment that Jon Burge, a Chicago police commander, and detectives under his command, “systematically engaged in acts of torture, physical abuse and coercion of African American men and women at Area […]

Four women leave water and food in a place where desperately hungry and thirsty people are likely to find them. The hope is to save lives. Others come along and, sneering, pour out the water. One, laughing, calls it “trash.” Another kicks the jugs, violently. A video capturing these acts on several occasions between 2010 and […]

The popularity of Axon’s tech soared after the police killing of Michael Brown in 2014, but it may be doing more harm than good in protecting people from excessive force.

Last week, in a 4-3 vote on the 2019-20 budget, the City Council in Durham, North Carolina, voted against funding 18 new police officers. It voted instead to raise the wage for part-time city workers to just over $15 an hour. With that, the city joined jurisdictions around the country that are critically evaluating requests for increased […]

Prosecutors are supremely powerful and have played an outsize role in mass incarceration. What can be done?

The sensationalist coverage of a handful of fights highlights local media’s misplaced priorities.

The content of New York’s Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act represents a new kind of lawmaking—a process that originates with the people who have the most at stake and is shepherded by a diverse coalition.

On Saturday, Injustice Watch and BuzzFeed News published an investigation into racist and violent social media posts by current and retired police officers. The article by Emily Hoerner and Rick Tulsky came out of a collaboration with the Plain View Project, which examined the Facebook accounts of police officers from eight departments across the county. The Plain View Project looked […]

Chicago hands out millions in settlements and legal fees for police misconduct. Its newly inaugurated mayor should take a dollar from the department’s budget for every dollar the city spends settling with its victims.

A former Baltimore officer says the Hopkins plan should be viewed skeptically because campus police have a history of deadly force and its officials come from troubled Baltimore Police units.

Instead of building ‘humane jails’ to replace Rikers Island, let’s push the NYPD to cut down on arrests.

Low-income women are fueling bail industry profits—and getting harmed in the process.

A former Baltimore Police officer says it’s time for the department to stop wasteful, harmful marijuana arrests, especially after Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby’s announcement that her office would not prosecute cases of possession.

Alex Berenson says he’s concerned there’s not enough research into cannabis risks, but his misleading arguments set scientists back.

Trump didn’t start it, but we can end it.

Our staff picks 12 stories worth reading (or rereading) before the new year.

Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins’s promise to decline to prosecute several offenses is a rejection of the punitive tradition of prosecutors and perhaps signals a new kind of reform that spurns criminal justice as a solution to public health problems.

The rocky implementation of New York’s Raise the Age law shows that young people in detention need love, not force.

Established to track anyone convicted of a gun-related offense, the registry has proved to be both racist and ineffective in reducing gun violence.