sign up here to receive periodic e-mails and news alerts from The Crime Report.
The Crime Report talks funding, inertia and over-incarceration with the man who heads Vera Institute of Justice’s NOLA office.
It’s rare for an entire city to get a do-over, but after Hurricane Katrina roared through New Orleans and the levees gave way, the Crescent City became ground zero for policy makers and visionaries wanting to transform the city’s agencies and social structures.
Are “prostitution free zones” and other new law enforcement tactics for snaring sex workers unconstitutional?
In late June I witnessed something unusual in New York City’s Midtown Community Court: a trial on a prostitution charge. Hundreds of people are arrested for a prostitution-related offense in Manhattan each year, but only a fraction challenge the arrest at trial.
While the Justice Department waits to impose new correction standards on sexual violence, a new national survey shows that rape in prison is a growing problem.
The numbers are in: Since 2007, the number of reported prison rapes has increased by 4,000. Female offenders are twice as likely to be sexually victimized as males and two-thirds of male inmates have been victimized by female staff, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey released today. Although some believe the figures underestimate the problem, the report is widely believed to be the most accurate survey of prison sexual violence to date.
The nation’s banks lost $46 million last year in holdups. What are they doing wrong?
At a time when bank surveillance cameras produce portrait-quality images and tellers can attach GPS tracking devices to stolen money, you might think robbing a bank offers slim hope of success.
Think again. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) tallied almost 6,000 bank heists around the U.S. last year—more than 16 a day―with robbers making off with a total of $46 million. Worse still, only about half the perpetrators have been caught, and about $8 million was recovered. In just over half of the cases, robbers wrote a threatening note demanding money but didn’t display a weapon.
The city’s declining jail population is also getting older.
More than half of New York City inmates have a high concentration of mental illness, Dora B. Schriro, Commissioner of
New York City’s Department of Correction, said Thursday.
Mass incarceration policies have taken a heavy toll on American families, neighborhoods and society. In an essay for The Crime Report, in advance of publication of a major American Academy of Arts and Sciences project, Prof. Glenn Loury of Brown University, calls for a profound change.
Over the past four decades, the United States has, by any measure, become a vastly more punitive society. This expansion, and transformation, of U.S. penal institutions—which has taken place at every level of government, and in all regions of the country―is without historical precedent or international parallel.
The following is the true life story of Manos, a young inmate,who wrote this as he leaves the juvenile justice system and enters the adult system. The letter was originally published by The Beat Within, a juvenile justice system writing workshop, which has generously allowed The Crime Report to share.
Hey Beat, What’s cracking? Today I’m going to talk and write about my long life story from beginning to end. It all started off when I was born in O’Connor Hospital in San Jose. I was born on September 23, 1992. I can’t really remember a lot of my memories from when I was a little kid, but I’ll tell you the ones I do remember.
Accountability and civilian oversight have transformed Los Angeles’ police culture. But the job isn’t complete yet.
The good news in L.A. these days is that the epic struggle to reform the Los Angeles Police Department, which caused some of the deadliest American riots of the 20th Century, and so fiercely dominated and divided the city, is finally nearing its end.
Location-based social networks using geotagging technology are a cool way of letting friends and family keep track of you—and as a law enforcement tool, they can protect public safety. But when we share, do we really know who’s watching?
In the world of social networking, Carri Bugbee is hardly a novice. The Portland, Oregon social media marketing strategist has 7,164 followers on Twitter, 1,197 Facebook friends and more than 500 connections on LinkedIn. But when she got involved with geotagging through a location-based network, she received an uncomfortable wake-up call.
In America’s border ‘war zone,’ a U.S. Border Patrol agent is assaulted every eight hours
Border Patrol Agent Jose Morales has patrolled the same stretch of no-man’s-land in his unmarked SUV between Tijuana, Mexico and San Ysidro, Calif., hundreds of times. But the world seemed to stop around 9 a.m. one morning last month when a dispatcher broke through the radio chatter with a solemn announcement, “Border Patrol Agent Robert Rosas, you will never be forgotten.”
