The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/policy-politics/)
Law enforcement efforts to avert the kind of violence seen in Charlottesville last year and Portland, Or., this year would be boosted by anti-street gang strategies, say two researchers.
A new report by the American Bar Association’s Senior Lawyers Division makes nine recommendations and suggests 45 “action items” that it says can advance public health efforts to confront the opioid epidemic. One recommendation calls for promoting policies and laws that support families and caregivers struggling with opioid and substance misuse disorders.
Vox news reporter German Lopez reports there were plenty of reasons for the low turnout from white nationalists at Sunday’s Unite the Right rally, including alt.right organizers’ fear of retribution. He quotes neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin as warning prospective participants: “Getting doxed as a neo-Nazi street fighter will ruin your life, forever.”
The pronouncements that leading politicians make about crime can have a lasting impact on the crime fears of young adults, according to a study in the British Journal of Criminology.
Ex-Superintendent Garry McCarthy is running for mayor against Rahm Emanuel, who fired him in 2015. McCarthy says Emanuel has “created a political environment that is emboldening criminals while hamstringing the police.” Emanuel replied that McCarthy was whistling a different tune five years ago.
A dozen states now have laws allowing seizure of guns from someone who is deemed dangerous, often because of mental health concerns or threats of violence. Gov. Greg Abbott spoke favorably of the idea after a school shooting near Houston. Gun enthusiasts were not happy. Abbott has changed his mind.
The Justice Department had announced a new direction for the justice reinvestment program that encourages states to cut prison populations. The proposal has been withdrawn after advocates of reinvestment sought support from key members of Congress.
Evidence indicating that individuals imprisoned for sexually violent offenses have a low likelihood of recidivating was never made public, according to two California scholars─perhaps because it called into question the constitutional legitimacy of state laws making sex offenders subject to indefinite civil commitment long after they served their sentences.
The number of people housed in private prisons increased five times faster than the total prison population between 2000 and 2016, and detainees in private immigration facilities increased by 442 percent in same period, says the Sentencing Project, predicting that as overall prison populations decline, corrections companies will “seek profit in other areas of criminal justice services and immigration detention.”
All were on probation or parole for felony convictions, which in North Carolina and many other states disqualifies a person from voting. Civil rights leaders protested because nine of the defendants were black. The prosecutor says, “If we have clear cases, we’re going to prosecute.”