The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/author/jackatme/page/2/)
The National Registry of Exonerations says that, collectively, innocent people exonerated last year spent 1,908 years incarcerated, an average of 13.3 years lost per person. Official misconduct was blamed for most of the cases.
The Justice Department has contacted Republican North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr, who dumped up to $1.72 million in stocks before the market plunged, for further information. Other lawmakers who traded ahead of the market turmoil caused by the COVID-19 panic based on confidential briefings they received could face similar inquiries, according to media reports.
Despite prisoner releases, the vast majority of America’s 2.3 million inmates live in ‘epidemiological tinderboxes,” warns Jody Lewen of the Prison University Project in a letter calling on authorities to take additional safety measures. Jails are a crucial hot zone, adds the Pew Public Safety Performance Project in a report showing that jail populations have remained unchanged despite decreases in admissions–largely because lengths of stay have increased.
The growing virus toll raises questions about how laws should be enforced and about how departments will hold up as the virus spreads among those whose work puts them at increased risk.
How are criminal justice agencies adapting to the coronavirus pandemic? Aubrey Fox, head of New York’s Criminal Justice Agency, and Greg Berman, former head of the Center for Court Innovation, recently discussed the challenge in an email conversation. They invited The Crime Report to post their discussion.
As some counties and states decide to shut down gun stores, gun rights advocates and industry lobby groups see it not only as a Second Amendment issue but as a threat to public safety. “People want to exercise their God-given right to bear arms and protect their families,” said one.
Civil rights advocates have achieved significant success in curtailing racial profiling in traffic stops, and in practices that single out ‘Arabic-looking’ individuals as terror suspects. But a third type of profiling that targets people of color for being in places where they don’t ‘belong’ is the next challenge for law enforcement authorities, says a Pittsburgh law professor.
The tool was launched by the National Police Foundation, in collaboration with the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS (NAPSG) Foundation and Esri. The “situational awareness tool” has logged 682 exposures to the virus among 28,065 officers in the departments responding as of Tuesday.
In the latest skirmish of the war between a large section of the U.S. legal community and Attorney General William Barr, some of the country’s top jurists charge the AG’s expansive views of presidential powers, combined with his interventions in support of President Trump’s allies, are helping to nurture an “imperial” presidency.
A new analysis by the the Prison Policy Institute of U.S. prison and jail populations demonstrates what it calls the “enormous churn” of people in and out of custody.