“A public health approach neither accepts harm as a given nor accepts punishment as prevention.”

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister’s stings, conducted under the guise of targeting human trafficking, netted the largest number of arrests there since 2008. Sex workers say the operations put them at risk.

A wave of sensationalist press is not just coming from New York City, but also from county sheriff and city police departments frustrated by bail reform that they claim is ‘too broad.’

Activists hope Chesa Boudin will press charges, and push for systemic changes to address the criminalization of mental illness.

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

There’s a cynical local-to-national news pipeline designed to mock the powerless under the guise of “odd” news stories.

Moms 4 Housing made a home for their families in a vacant house in Oakland. Yesterday, police in tanks and riot gear evicted them.

Charges in each of four arrests of a city man were subsequently dropped. Now he has become one of a long line of New York City residents who have filed wrongful arrest lawsuits against the city.

The move is made possible by a Texas law that legalized the production of hemp last year.

The department is targeting communities of color and violating local and federal law by using broad ‘association’ criteria to list people in a gang database, a Rhode Island community organization claims.

Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez of Texas told The Appeal about her vision for a complete overhaul of her state’s legal system.

Logbooks were seized as part of an inquiry into misconduct allegations against high-ranking officers in the division that investigates sex crimes.

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.

According to a complaint, police in Oak Lawn, a suburb of Chicago, subjected Tylus Allen Jr. to invasive searches, all of which turned up nothing.

Misconduct complaints against officers in the NYPD’s 34th Precinct have risen for three years straight. In 2018, 15 officers had complaints against them substantiated, the most of any precinct in New York City.

Since 2010, no Vallejo officer has been disciplined for using deadly force, despite multiple shootings of unarmed people—including a man holding a can of beer. And active police union leaders have been involved in the shooting investigations.

Social media posts, tattoos, or the unvetted word of an officer can lead to inclusion on the list, which is overwhelmingly composed of people of color.

A City Council Committee considers a bill on NYPD surveillance today.

Criminalizing those who sell drugs by enacting more punitive laws may lead to more dangerous drug use and will disproportionately affect communities of color, a new report suggests.

District Attorney Rachael Rollins ran as a reformer who would work to increase transparency, but her office and the police department have been fighting the order.

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 […]

Tribal jurisdiction over intimate partner and sexual violence was created in the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act and advocates argue it is necessary for accountability and safety.

Investing billions of government dollars into programs that embed police in Black communities will not reduce police violence, nor repair years of injustice.

A Philadelphia police union’s recent attack on Players Coalition co-founder Malcolm Jenkins matches rhetorical tactics that officers’ groups are using in the face of outspoken support for criminal justice reforms.

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. In 1997, four Navy sailors in Norfolk, Virginia were arrested for the rape and murder of a young woman. The men were trained to endure stressful situations, […]

Advocates say the removals are more evidence of a troubling and unregulated law enforcement tool, overseen by the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

During the tenure of Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal, deputies assaulted and harassed men inside the parish jail. Several deputies were convicted in federal court, and now cases brought by the office are under renewed scrutiny.

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. New Yorkers were supposed to be finished with all of this. Done with 12 years of Michael Bloomberg, a technocratic, out-of-touch billionaire mayor who oversaw the highly […]

The billionaire and former New York City mayor defended the NYPD’s surveillance of Muslim Americans and mandatory minimum prison sentences for gun possession, among other policies.

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. Rodney Reed was scheduled to be executed tomorrow. He won’t be, at least not tomorrow. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 1998 for the rape […]

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. In a video posted on Twitter on Friday, a small woman with a pushcart full of churros is surrounded by four NYPD officers inside the Broadway Junction […]

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.

A close examination of a poll backed by a business group reveals loaded questions, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and the shortchanging of very real privacy concerns.

If passed, Question 2 would also allow the board to force police commissioners to provide more insight into disciplinary decisions.

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.

The mayors of New York, Chicago, and San Francisco wrap themselves in the language of progressivism, but when it comes to the criminal legal system they’re Trumpian.

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.

A lawsuit in Los Angeles and a motion in Orange County highlight battles to get key information.

Criminal case files from Oakland’s seminal Riders scandal were among documents shredded by the Alameda County Superior Court in 2015.