The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/focus/)
This section features the best criminal justice reporting around the nation, produced by our media partners and collaborators, and journalists who have participated in the Criminal Justice Reporting Fellowship programs sponsored by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, TCR’s parent organization. For a more comprehensive list of Fellows’ work, please check out the “programs” section—and monitor this site for information on upcoming programs and how to apply!
Before leaving office, former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law a sweeping act restructuring court fines and fees across the state. But critics, including the legislator who sponsored the bill, say it still falls short of lawmakers’ intentions to create a fairer system.
The bail bond industry is under attack from all sides of the political spectrum. A lawsuit filed in St. Louis by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation says the industry violates constitutional protections.
A six-month investigation of South Carolina officer-involved shootings over the past decade by The Greenville News revealed shortcomings in the use of police bodycams and failures to report incidents to the state office responsible for investigating them. The victims were disproportionately African Americans, the paper said.
Youth advocates and government officials say implementation of the first phase of the state’s Raise the Age Law has resulted in significant declines in young people shuttled into the adult system.
The state has issued 41 firearms restraining orders since its “red flag” law went into effect Jan. 1. Can policymakers elsewhere learn from Illinois’ experience?
In some Wisconsin counties, inmates pay an average of $390 a month in pay-to-stay fees. Advocates say such fees can criminalize poverty, according to an investigation by Wisconsin Watch.
Advocates, joined by a state lawmaker, are fighting an uphill struggle to end the practice of suspending driver’s licenses for nonpayment of fines, in the face of resistance from courts who depend on the money to fund their operations.
The number of 16-year-olds arrested in New York for nonviolent or violent felonies dropped 25 percent in the first six months of 2019, according to data obtained by The Chronicle of Social Change. Some sources credit “changes in police response and youth behavior”; others point to last year’s overhaul of the state’s juvenile justice system.
The 2016 Supreme Court decision to make its previous ban on mandatory life terms for juveniles retroactive has been applied inconsistently across the U.S. One Pennsylvania county is expected to complete all of its cases this summer; but in Michigan, some 200 inmates are still waiting to go before a judge, according to a Detroit Free Press investigation.
For justice-involved members of the Chippewa nation in northern Minnesota, the judicial system has failed to tackle the “historical traumas” that have mired them in substance abuse and other ills. But tribal and state authorities are collaborating on a plan to apply traditional tribal notions of restorative justice to their needs.