The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/policy-politics/)
As national attention focuses on prosecutors’ role in the justice system, and as more reform DAs win office, they could benefit from up-to-date research to help them make decisions, especially on many lower-level criminal cases that don’t necessarily warrant a prison term, a Washington DC panel was told Thursday.
Sally Yates, President Obama’s Deputy Attorney General, hopes the “bizarre” White House meeting between the rapper and the president will persuade Trump to embark on a “wholesale rethinking of the prison experience.”
Victims’ rights, gun violence and—no surprise— marijuana legalization are among the criminal justice issues appearing on state ballots in next month’s midterm elections. Here’s why you should pay attention to the outcomes.
Women in Arizona’s state prison complex at Perryville claim that chronic shortages of toilet paper force them to use wash rags instead. Authorities deny the allegations, but a state representative blames cost-cutting and a correctional culture that is largely “designed for men.”
In a meeting with the president that was supposed to focus on criminal justice, rapper Kanye West launched into a defense of Larry Hoover, the leader of Chicago’s Gangster Disciples who is serving six life sentences for running a drug empire.
Brett Kavanaugh began his Supreme Court tenure by announcing the hiring of four female law clerks. But that doesn’t address the elitism which undermines how we pick the people who staff the nation’s highest court. TCR columnist James Doyle offers a different solution.
Florida proposition on next month’s ballot would create 1.3 million new voters. Republicans have been backing prison reform, but some fear that this measure could benefit Democrats.
Rahm Emanuel said stop-and-frisk strategies recommended by Trump were “failed policies.” In a speech to police chiefs, Trump also slammed critics of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh who he said perpetrated a “hoax” about his background.
Speaking at a convention of police chiefs in Orlando, Christopher Wray cited the opiate crisis, mass violence, terrorism and cyber threats as law enforcement priorities. And the leader of an agency that has faced oppressive attacks from Donald Trump pointedly said that law enforcers must “tune out the noise” emanating from critics.
Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and President Trump, engaged in an ongoing political drama, will travel together on Monday to a convention of police chiefs in Orlando, although it’s not clear that the trip will include their much-discussed sit-down.