While Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey faces scrutiny over policing and racial equity issues, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter has helped his city achieve progressive milestones, say lawmakers and advocates.
The state representative will almost certainly be the city’s first Black mayor, and his victory follows a year of nationwide social upheaval over police and racial justice issues.
Despite a 2019 California law mandating the release of certain records related to police misconduct, law enforcement agencies in the state are still fighting records requests.
Incumbent Bill Peduto’s policing record is under scrutiny after protests last summer. He is facing what may be his most competitive race yet.
Cities across the country must rethink the role of law enforcement, as police continue to brutalize and kill Black men and women during traffic stops, advocates say.
Prosecutors across the country have begun declining low-level cases in an effort to reduce racial inequity and to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mayor Randall Woodfin is increasing police funding and ignoring calls for non-law enforcement public safety alternatives.
A new diversion program will allow people charged with driving with a suspended license or without insurance to avoid jail time and fees.
Nezhad, a community organizer, is seeking to unseat incumbent Jacob Frey on a platform of transforming public safety without police, providing housing for all, and addressing poverty through direct economic support.
Community members and advocates question why Mayor Jim Kenney and the City Council continue to fund the police department at record levels, despite the department’s low murder solve rate.
In Granite City, Illinois, landlords have been penalized for refusing to evict tenants who have criminal records or are simply living with someone who does.
Law enforcement agencies are creating online content, often at the expense of people they have arrested.
The DA’s office has been home to bribery, corruption, and more since it was formed 170 years ago. What could a progressive prosecutor do to change that?
The ballot initiative, supported by police, corporations, and even big grocery chains, would use more taxpayer money to incarcerate people, rather than invest in other social services.
A review of five years of cases that arose from traffic stops in the south-central region of the state shows that police used underhand tactics to justify holding and searching drivers illegally.
A June report from the county’s independent judicial arm urges local government to reallocate law enforcement resources to social services.
As U.S. attorney in Seattle, Durkan prosecuted a severely mentally ill man in a terrorism case using an informant convicted of child sex abuse—and claimed to have reformed the same Seattle Police Department that has tear-gassed peaceful protesters for weeks.
Qualified immunity is just one obstacle of many that incarcerated people face when seeking to hold correctional officers accountable for misconduct.
This year’s presidential contest will be the first since a federal judge lifted a decades-old consent decree barring the Republican National Committee from engaging in “ballot security,” or voter intimidation at the polls.
The city’s clearance rate for murder, whose victims are disproportionately Black, has hovered around 40 percent for the last several years.
The Department of Justice is leaving researchers, policymakers, and advocates in the dark about deaths in police custody, prisons, and jails.
Two people, arrested and detained in Cincinnati after protesting the police killing of George Floyd, recall being held at the jail, outside, for hours.
The cuts will defund a controversial gang policing unit and end the city’s policing partnership with TriMet, the regional transit agency.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has asked for the budget increase amid ongoing local and national reports of police violence against protesters.
Canyon Boykin was charged with manslaughter for shooting and killing Ricky Ball during a traffic stop in 2015.
More training, more equipment, and more officers will not stop police from killing Black people.
Josie Duffy Rice and her co-host, Derecka Purnell, talk to Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of the Advancement Project, about the school to prison pipeline.
Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. As the country braces itself for the “all but certain” global pandemic of the coronavirus, some people are stocking up on food and surgical masks, many are […]
“A public health approach neither accepts harm as a given nor accepts punishment as prevention.”
Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Every American law student gets to know, and usually comes to dislike, a person called “the reasonable person.” The reasonable person is everywhere: negligence cases in torts […]
Two recent investigations look at how, in the name of fighting crime, police departments engage in dangerous, often fatal, vehicle pursuits
On the eve of the state’s marijuana legalization law going into effect, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois announced that he would issue 11,017 pardons to people with low-level marijuana convictions.
Spotlights like this one provide original commentary and analysis on pressing criminal justice issues of the day. You can read them each day in our newsletter, The Daily Appeal. Last month, longtime public defender Chesa Boudin was elected San Francisco’s next district attorney. His victory was not merely an upset over an interim incumbent with establishment […]
Investing billions of government dollars into programs that embed police in Black communities will not reduce police violence, nor repair years of injustice.
Research shows access to a trauma center is critical after a shooting. But as gun deaths are rising in Philly, one trauma center has closed. Experts say a rise in homicides may prompt more policing.
Recent violent arrests in the city subways should make New Yorkers question the push by Governor Andrew Cuomo and the MTA to hire 500 new transit police.
At least three women made police reports about Girls Do Porn in 2015, but recruiters continued to exploit women until the FBI stepped in last month.
With Appeal contributors Julia Rock and Harry August
Last week, the City Council reinstated a “no camping” ordinance meant to discourage people experiencing homelessness from sleeping on sidewalks and outside a shelter. Advocates say the city is criminalizing poverty.
The officers who killed Joshua Pawlik in 2018 are asking a state judge to block a federally appointed monitor’s decision that they violated policies on use of force.