The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/policy-politics/)
The Texas GOP seems hellbent on passing a controversial law that would prompt gender-policing in bathrooms. Many of that state’s top cops, including Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo, tried in vain to talk them out of it.
The attorney general says coveted federal grants will be withheld from cities unless they give federal immigration authorities access to jails and provide advance notice when someone in the country illegally is about to be released. Among the grants at stake: a popular program that provides police money to buy bulletproof vests and body cameras.
President Trump and his team continue to poke needles at the former Alabama senator, who at times during the presidential campaign was the rare politician of national standing willing to stand beside Trump. That history has not saved him from the petulant president’s ire.
Prosecutors can play the critical role in reforming the justice system—if they’re willing to go beyond their traditional roles as tough law enforcers. In a TCR Special Report, two former prosecutors explain in separate commentaries how that can happen.
The president’s lawyers are exploring ways to limit or undercut special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation and discussing Trump’s authority to grant pardons to aides, family members and even himself in connection with the probe.
Edward Flynn, the city’s longtime chief, has hired legal counsel after what he viewed as a threat to his job security in a dispute over the city’s police pursuit policy.
Over 4.7 million Americans are under “community corrections” supervision today—more than twice the number of individuals behind bars. Rethinking that 19th-century approach is crucial if we want to end mass incarceration, say the authors of a Harvard Kennedy School paper released today.
Two briefing papers by the Vera Institute of Justice contend that criminal justice policy “is too often swayed by political rhetoric and unfounded assumptions.” According to Vera, assertions that “violent crime increases in a few cities equal a sweeping national problem” are not based on facts.
While members of Congress spar over how much of the big health care law they can kill, on a much smaller scale, the U.S. Justice Department has its own case of a federally funded effort that won’t go away, at least so far this year, no matter how hard lawmakers try.
David Muhlhausen, an adjunct at George Mason University and an advocate of empirical research on justice issues, has testified before Congress on policing and prisoner reentry issues. He succeeds Nancy Rodriguez to head the National Institute of Justice, the DOJ’s research arm.