As criminal justice reformers take steps to defund police departments and limit qualified immunity, it’s important to consider the role of universal and special duties in policing.
Geriatic prison with the most deaths in Texas has a years-long history of neglect, Kentucky corrections officials won’t say how many people they’ve tested for COVID-19, and an outbreak at a remote Oregon prison grows from 20 to 120 cases in less than a week, all as Gov. Kate Brown has refused calls to decarcerate the state’s prison system.
The COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide protests over police brutality are strengthening the case against mass incarceration, advocates argue.
Critics say California’s release plan is an inadequate response to the COVID-19 outbreak in the state’s prison system, 42 percent of Louisiana prisoners tested for COVID-19 are positive, and conditions at Texas and Indiana prisons get the attention of lawmakers.
A new report finds that too many kids, particularly Black youth, continue to be held in dangerous juvenile detention facilities; California prison officials refused offers of free testing before and during San Quentin outbreak; and Gov. Gavin Newsom announces plans to release 8,000 incarcerated people.
In a moment of crisis, the state Senate and House are slated to be in recess until January.
A new multimedia campaign seeks to amplify voices of people incarcerated in Maryland’s Prince George’s County Jail, a GEO Group stockholder sues the for-profit prison company over its ’woefully ineffective’ COVID-19 response, and widespread testing is turning up thousands of new infections.
Pressure mounts on California’s governor to release people from prison; people with months, even days, left on their sentence are dying in Texas prisons; and a new report finds higher rates of COVID-19 in prison than in the U.S. population.
Legal experts say the IRS is illegally denying CARES Act payments to incarcerated people.
Florida media outlets had to sue to obtain information on COVID prison deaths; after preventable outbreaks, California replaces its prison medical director; and the Texas prison where Andrea Circle Bear died grapples with a new outbreak.
Social Workers address crises regularly and without an armed police officer standing in front of us. Often, the presence of an armed officer escalates a crisis that could have been better handled by mental health professionals alone.
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.
In late April, officer Toni McBride shot Daniel Hernandez to death after a suicide call. His attorney and grieving family say videos posted on social media of McBride gleefully firing high-powered weapons show that she’s a trigger-happy officer.
In the 1990s, Davis was a policing superstar, hailed as the best crime solver the Crescent City had ever seen. But a dispute over a paid detail at a festival turned into a major federal case against her, brought by a prosecutor involved whose conduct in other cases was called ‘grotesque.’
A representative board is needed to check the power of the NYPD and appropriately discipline officers for misconduct, they argue.
Workers report facing a difficult choice between earning a living and feeling safe and healthy at their job.
In our Explainer series, Justice Collaborative lawyers, journalists, and other legal experts help unpack some of the most complicated issues in the criminal justice system. We break down the problems behind the headlines—like bail, civil asset forfeiture, or the Brady doctrine—so that everyone can understand them. Wherever possible, we try to utilize the stories of […]
The city’s clearance rate for murder, whose victims are disproportionately Black, has hovered around 40 percent for the last several years.
Law enforcement super PACs are spending big money on district attorney races and local elections from California to New York—and respected Democratic consulting firms are helping them.
Safe and healthy communities start with less police and more investment in community services that work.
The Department of Justice is leaving researchers, policymakers, and advocates in the dark about deaths in police custody, prisons, and jails.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has hampered the process of installing a police oversight council, activists say, despite making it a major part of her public safety platform during her mayoral run.
For decades, the Court has been carving out generous exceptions and crafting new rules that limit the Miranda warning’s real-world impact.
Two people, arrested and detained in Cincinnati after protesting the police killing of George Floyd, recall being held at the jail, outside, for hours.
Protesters and activists have categorically changed the national conversation about public safety. Now they have to figure out how to change public policy.
The ruling thwarts the administration’s attempt to deport nearly 700,000 immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.
In October 2018, Marshall Miles died at the Sacramento County jail after struggling with deputies. His lawyers say a deposition scheduled for next month will force the sheriff to answer for the in-custody death.
The cuts will defund a controversial gang policing unit and end the city’s policing partnership with TriMet, the regional transit agency.
A lawyer with the state attorney general’s office omitted key evidence in a meeting with the family of Ricky Ball, who Canyon Boykin shot and killed in 2015.
Yes, we must radically transform policing in America. But we cannot stop there. We must transform the pervasive systems of economic and carceral injustice that are choking our common life.
The city wants to give the force an additional $24 million. But the department is still failing to solve crimes, and officers have shot 212 people between 2011 and 2018, killing about half.
After families of people killed by police asked the organization to investigate racist American policing, 54 African nations called for a debate on the treatment of Black Americans. The debate will happen today.
District Attorney Rachael Rollins sought to block the disclosure of records that could show Boston police used Snapchat to target people who are Black or Latinx.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis are both provoked by natural phenomena, the dangers they present are just as political as the crisis of police violence.
Memos obtained by The Appeal and anecdotes from public defenders reveal how, for a week during protests over police brutality, the NYPD stalled cases by directing officers not to testify in court.
Sterling Higgins called 911 in March 2019 seeking help during a mental health crisis. Police took him to Obion County Jail, where he died after officers pinned him to a floor.
Essential workers say curfews put them at risk of police violence, even though they were exempt.
Videos contradict officers’ claims that they didn’t ‘kettle’ protesters.
The New Jersey department received slavish media praise after it was disbanded and reoriented toward community policing. But behind the reformist mask was an embrace of surveillance and broken windows policing.
Breonna Taylor was killed nearly three months ago during a no-knock raid. All 26 members of the Metro Council have signed on as co-sponsors to “Breonna’s Law,” which would ban them.