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!
Jail authorities in one western Pennsylvania county saw a 54 percent increase in the number of females, many of them single mothers, compared to 3.5 percent for men. It’s part of a national trend that some ascribe to the opioid crisis and others to the inequities created by money bail.
Eyewitness videos of shootings have helped bring accountability to law enforcement. But they can also traumatize African Americans who see themselves and those they love in these fatal encounters.
Under Pennsylvania law, as in other states, children can be charged as adults, and placed in adult facilities, for certain felonies; but the federal government mandates they be held ‘out of sight and sound” from adults. That often adds an extra burden to local authorities, even as it does little to rehabilitate the young person, according to advocates.
Nearly 200 people on Pennsylvania’s sex offender registry were convicted as adults for offenses committed as juveniles, some for offenses committed when they were as young as five years old. Should there be a statute of limitations for such crimes?
Jail authorities in Iowa’s rural Wayne County have earned nearly $1 million by housing inmates from nearby counties. That’s helped fund some long-needed improvements in health care for inmates.
On any given day, dozens of children ages 14-17 are housed in adult jails in counties across Pennsylvania while facing charges in adult court, thanks to a tough-on-crime law passed in 1995.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has been in office less than a month, but some of his appointments suggest a surprising willingness to consider major changes in the state’s justice system.
Butler County, Pa., jail authorities have set aside special cells, some of them padded, for inmates whose behavior renders them unfit for the general population. But they concede this doesn’t address the real needs of individuals who find scant help in the outside world.
Virginia legislators may soon end a policy of suspending driver’s licenses for non-payment of fines that critics say amounts to a penalty for being poor. Low-income motorists who need their cars to get to work—and to earn the money to pay their traffic debts— can face jail if they’re caught driving illegally.
Former prison nurse Jose Vallejo is one of several corrections employees who have come forward with unsettling claims that Arizona inmates’ lives were put at risk when the state contracted with a private company for correctional health care services.