The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/tcr-special-report/)
Stories by The Crime Report staff and nationwide network of contributors.
Brian Melendez was one of thousands of Native children swept into a state-run foster care system riddled with abuse and neglect. He beat the odds by becoming a probation officer and then a counselor on a Nevada reservation, where he helps young people deal with the trauma suffered at the hands of a deeply flawed justice system for Native Americans.
Reducing violence in America’s at-risk communities requires more than aggressive policing. Speakers at a John Jay conference last month described the growing successes around the country of multi-pronged, evidence-based efforts involving community outreach, peer support and civilian professionals.
Police ‘hot spot’ strategies usually focus on isolating the relatively small number of individuals responsible for violence in a neighborhood. But experts at a John Jay conference on violence prevention said the focus should also identify victims who can evolve into offenders themselves.
Minorities have so far had little success in breaking into the legal pot industry. But two African-American entrepreneurs in New York hope to change that.
The House committee overseeing the Justice Department budget advanced a proposal that would defund Project Safe Neighborhoods, a program dating from 2002 that the Trump Justice Department revitalized. The program still may be saved by the Senate.
The grants to the Urban Institute and the Vera Institute of Justice are aimed at transforming prison environments and “the culture of incarceration” in selected state facilities.
Advocates tell a National Academies of Sciences committee how the number of youth arrests in the U.S. could be lowered further and help maintain the decline in juvenile crime.
The winners of the first annual “Youth Voices Contest,” sponsored by Strategies for Youth, offer poignant—and hopeful—takes on the often-charged relationship between young people and police.
The president’s hardline stance on the Affordable Care Act threatens to reduce access to the medical and mental health care needed by older individuals after they leave prison. That would undercut the promise of the recently signed First Step Act.
The two young Pennsylvania prosecutors who won a conviction of comedian Bill Cosby on sexual assault charges sit down with TCR to reprise the case, and draw lessons about future prosecutions of sex crimes.