The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/)
The proposal by Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Rand Paul would authorize total spending of $10 million a year for states that replace cash bail with a system that considers community risk, not a defendant’s ability to pay. New Jersey has already moved forward with a system that some call a model for the nation.
“Weak patenting standards and ineffectual policing” have helped turn the pharmaceutical industry into a key driver of the opioid epidemic, according to a study published in the Harvard Law & Policy Review.
The American Bar Association says the the proposed legislation “offends deeply rooted principles of federalism where public safety is traditionally the concern of state and local government.”
The president’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and discussing Trump’s authority to grant pardons to aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe.
Judge Sam Benningfield in rural White County, Tenn., has offered the 30-days-off deal for two months. Sixty men and women have signed up. The ACLU says the idea is unconstitutional.
The city once labeled “Paradise Lost” as drug-driven murder spiked to 300 a year in the 1980s had just 26 homicides in the first six months this year. Police and community leaders cite several reasons, including a citizenry fed-up with gun violence that has grown more willing to engage with law enforcers.
The live TV coverage of the former football star’s Nevada parole hearing was “astonishing,” says criminologist James Alan Fox. What if the media gave that much time and attention to important criminal justice stories, like the broken parole system?
Hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions touted the demise of two “dark net” drugs sites, AlphaBay and Hansa, dealers began migrating to another, DreamMarket. The scenario highlights the whack-a-mole challenges of policing drugs sold online.
A contentious bill that is racing through the legislative process would dismiss the country’s current Supreme Court judges and let President Andrzej Duda appoint new ones. There were mass protests against the proposal in Warsaw and other cities, and the European Union has voiced stern opposition.
Edward Flynn, the city’s longtime chief, has hired legal counsel after what he viewed as a threat to his job security in a dispute over the city’s police pursuit policy.
The state supreme court said sex offenders convicted before a 2012 law was enacted cannot be compelled to adhere to registration protocols required under the law.
Two city council members have questioned whether the gunfire-locating technology is effective in reducing crime. The Texas city has been testing the technology in two neighborhoods for the past year.
U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison says 475 vulnerable inmates at the state’s Pack Unit prison should be able to live in units cooled to no more than 88 degrees. Critic says “human beings have been baked inside Texas prisons.”
State legislator David Richardson visits prisons and finds inmates routinely without basic necessities. One warden was embarrassed about the shortages.
U. Renee Hall, a deputy chief in Detroit, will replace David Brown. She will need to address a murder rate that has risen over the past two years from a historically low level in 2014, and a department still bruised from last July’s sniper attack which left five officers dead. Last year, 336 officers left the department amid a crisis over pensions.