In one Pennsylvania county, more than three times as many people on the registry were charged in 2016 with failing to follow registry requirements than were charged with a new sexual offense
A podcast from The Appeal, featuring Josie Duffy Rice and Clint Smith III.
A community group met with the Bastrop County sheriff in an effort to build trust between the sheriff’s office and the immigrant community. Then, the sheriff ran a sting that led to more than one dozen arrestees being handed over to ICE.
Prosecutors on the “J20” case faced grave allegations of misconduct after withholding exculpatory evidence contained in videos from defense attorneys. But this is far from the first time that this office has found itself in hot water.
Catina Curley suffered physical abuse at the hands of her husband for more than a decade. When she turned a revolver on him, she was charged with murder and sentenced to life. Now, thanks to a court ruling, she has a chance at freedom.
Groups like the Loop and DanceSafe test drugs like Ecstasy and warn users of high dosages and adulterants, but federal legislation from the early 2000s has live music promoters wary of their brand of harm reduction.
Introducing a new podcast from The Appeal, featuring Josie Duffy Rice and Clint Smith III.
York County resident Aaron Hinds overdosed on heroin with a friend. The friend died, and Hinds now faces a ‘drug delivery resulting in death’ charge and a 40-year prison sentence.
A onetime gang liaison for the Baltimore Police Department writes that its database is racist and error-ridden.
In jurisdictions across the country, people incarcerated before they’ve ever been convicted of a crime are charged a daily fee just for sitting in jail—and several courts have ruled that the practice is legal.
Legislation passed in Massachusetts and pending in California would set a minimum age for children to enter the juvenile justice system.
In Georgia, a man stole a can of beer worth $2 from a corner store. The court ordered him to wear an ankle monitor for a year. The company administering it, Sentinel Offender Services, charged him so much money that he eventually owed more than $1,000. Trying to keep up with his payments, he sold plasma, but he fell behind and the judge jailed him for non-payment.
With William C. Anderson, journalist and co-author of As Black As Resistance.
In overdose-wracked Franklin County, Pennsylvania, a small-time dealer is denied bail, while the number of drug induced homicide cases has skyrocketed.
Most evenings, Aguirre Dick rides his bike about three miles from the streets of Waikiki in Honolulu to the slopes of a volcano, where he sleeps. If he doesn’t make that trek, he could be arrested. A 2014 law made it illegal to sit or lie down on the public sidewalks in Waikiki. As a result of this law, those without homes, like Aguirre, live in constant fear of being pushed into the criminal justice system simply because they are too poor to own or rent lodging. Liz Barney / The Guardian
A former Baltimore Police officer says that a plan to flood the streets with local and federal law enforcement is likely to yield more of the same ineffective ‘broken windows’-style arrests.
A Pennsylvania hate crime statute is being used by law enforcement to punish angry arrestees.
New York’s Democratic governor has granted only a trickle of commutations, fewer than many of his Democratic and Republican predecessors.
The solution to problems like unsolved homicides, especially in communities of color, cannot be reinvestment in institutions that wage violence against them.
As voters begin to realize that prosecutors in the world’s most incarcerated nation may not be the best people to run the government, the era of the prosecutor politician could be on its way out.
With journalists Raven Rakia and Ashoka Jegroo.
Kim Kardashian’s successful campaign to free a 63-year-old grandmother serving a life sentence in a drug case is a reminder that we need to go big on clemency. A 52-year-old grandfather named Euka Wadlington, also doing life in a drug case, would be a great place to start.
Years after two landmark Supreme Court rulings, prosecutors in Louisiana are still overwhelmingly seeking life sentences for children.
The judge who sentenced Brock Turner brought much-needed compassion to the bench, says public defender Sajid Khan.
Walliris Velez thought the worst was behind her after she was slashed in a subway car, but then came an arrest and an attempted murder charge by the Bronx DA.
Across the state, most incumbents successfully fended off progressive challengers during the June 5 primary.
With Josie Duffy Rice, senior staff reporter at The Appeal.
On Wednesday, May 16, 16-year-old Rosalyn “Bird” Holmes was able to walk out of prison and hug her mother. Though the teenager has yet to be indicted, let alone convicted, of any crime, she nonetheless spent the past 40 days in the Tennessee State Penitentiary, an adult women’s prison in Henning, Tennessee. Had it not […]
Todd Entrekin, the sheriff of the small Alabama county of Etowah, recently found himself in the national spotlight when an Alabama newspaper discovered that over the course of three years he pocketed at least $750,000budgeted for feeding the people detained in his county jail. While the inmates in his jail ate meat from a package labeled “not fit for human […]
A widely shared, recent piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer tells the story of a woman’s grief six months after her husband was murdered. Gerry Grandzol was shot at close range by two young Black men while he was unpacking groceries from his SUV with his two young daughters. The family, which is white, lived in a typically […]
What I am about to tell you is deeply problematic. And it makes sense that of all states, it’s happening in Louisiana — which, with its sky-high incarceration rate, is the “world’s prison capital.” According to local reports, a staggering “one in 86 adult Louisianians is doing time, nearly double the national average. Among black men from New Orleans, […]
Law enforcement’s power to seize property suspected of being used in criminal activity regardless of whether the owner has been convicted of a crime has generated mounting public scrutiny of the practice, known as civil asset forfeiture. Both Nebraska and New Mexico have abolished civil asset forfeiture in recent years, and the Department of Justice under the […]
State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit, which is comprised of Hillsborough County, surprised many last year when he narrowly defeated incumbent State Attorney Mark Ober, who had been the chief elected prosecutor in Florida’s fourth largest county for 16 years. A former federal prosecutor, Warren ran as a supporter of criminal justice reform, vowing to lock […]
It has been over a week since California law enforcement announced what many have waited to hear for more than 40 years — that they identified and captured the man they believe to be the Golden State Killer, thought to be responsible for at least 12 murders and nearly 50 rapes between northern and southern California from […]
When Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark announced last September that gun possession and assault charges would be dropped against teenager Pedro Hernandez, who had spent 12 months on Rikers Island, she pledged her office would investigate what went wrong, and that the investigation would “go wherever the evidence leads.” A lot had gone wrong in the case […]
Los Angeles Police Department analysts are each tasked with maintaining “a minimum” of a dozen ongoing surveillance targets for future targeting, using Palantir software and an updated “probable offender” formula, according to October 2017 documents, obtained through a public records request lawsuit by the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and given exclusively to The Appeal. These […]
It was late afternoon on Dec. 26, 2016 — the day after Christmas, a day when most stores are busy processing the returns for unwanted gifts — when Curtis Lawson entered a Walmart in Knoxville, Tennessee. He had a receipt for $39.57 in purchases made earlier that month. He needed cash. He walked through the store, picking up the […]
These days, former Sheriff Jim Pendergraph calls himself an “Old School Conservative,” but not so long ago he identified as a Democrat. This is back in early 2006, when Pendergraph was like most sheriffs — an enormously powerful guy who managed to get around unnoticed. He was 35 years into his law enforcement career and 12 years […]
In 2010 Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and presidency. Barack Obama was just heading into his second year in office. Social media was basically brand new. Adele had just won the Grammy for Best New Artist the year before. And millions of people in the United States had a naive hopefulness about the future of […]
When Kevin Daigle was set to be tried in late April on first-degree murder charges for allegedly killing a Louisiana state trooper in August 2015, he faced the steepest of odds: Prosecutors in the case decided to seek the death penalty, and juries are prone to deliver death verdicts when the life of a law enforcement officer is taken. But […]