The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/author/jackatme/)
Health experts and technology regulators told a Senate Commerce Committee meeting this week that strengthening federal protections for data privacy could increase the effectiveness of contact tracing and help the U.S. deal with the coronavirus.
In what is already one of the most litigious election years in U.S. history, federal lawsuits alleging violations of voters’ civil rights in the wake of election contests between February and August have soared by 82 percent over the same period in 2016, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The death penalty’s disproportionate use against Black Americans reflects the legacy of lynchings and other brutal punishments used by law enforcement and the justice system as tools to control people of color, argues the Death Penalty Information Center in a new report.
Should President Donald Trump be able to fill Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat this fall, the court’s new alignment could determine that future pro-gun cases clear the hurdle that has prevented other petitions from receiving a ruling.
The algorithm—typically called a “risk assessment,” though city officials prefer “release assessment”—is set to return to use this month in New York City criminal courts after a six-month hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic.
A “snapshot” of the state prison population as of last summer found significant disproportional impact on people of color who were confined to solitary.
Despite a rollback of some of its provisions, New York State’s landmark reform of the money bail system has gone a long way towards ending the “criminalization” of poverty, a panel of justice researchers and activists said Wednesday.
Official misconduct contributed to the false criminal convictions of more than 50 percent of innocent people who were later exonerated, according to a report from the National Registry of Exonerations.
The state where one of the most egregious recent examples of police use-of-force occurred—the shooting of Jacob Blake—is ahead of other jurisdictions in policing reforms. But critics say Wisconsin still has far to go.
Body-worn cameras “do not seem to affect officers’ or citizens’ behaviors in the ways initially hoped for by police leaders and citizens,” says George Mason University Criminologist Cynthia Lum.