The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/tcr-special-report/)
Stories by The Crime Report staff and nationwide network of contributors.
Sexual abuse or harassment by police is slowly beginning to receive attention from training academies and state legislatures. But in many agencies, the issue is often swept under the rug, a TCR investigation shows.
Speaking at the Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, Jim McGreevey, who now chairs the New Jersey Reentry Corporation, argued that most community supervision programs lack the resources to offer the practical skills needed to help individuals navigate the complex transition from prison to civil society once they have completed their sentence.
Jeremiah Bourgeois was convicted of murder at age 14, with every expectation he would spend the remainder of his life in prison. A collection of his writings for The Crime Report, published by Amazon this month, tells an extraordinary story of how one man found a path back to redemption—and freedom— after spending 27 years inside America’s carceral state.
Victims of revenge porn have few rights, even under laws that treat the public, nonconsensual distribution of intimate images as a crime against privacy or public decency—and they are hobbled by laws that protect websites from liability. Some jurisdictions are turning to restorative justice as a solution.
America’s probation and parole systems were originally conceived as a channel for providing “rehabilitation and mercy.” For our special report, TCR surveyed some of the states where innovative strategies might offer a path to recovering those goals.
The feds are considering a shift in federal oversight of foreign gun sales from the State Department to the Department of Commerce. Critics charge the regulatory change, expected later this year, will put more U.S. firearms into the hands of overseas gangs and terrorists.
Speakers at a Florida conference predicted Amendment 4, passed last year to restore voting rights to convicted felons, will kickstart sentencing and prison reforms badly needed by the state. But a legal tussle over who is entitled to register is casting a shadow.
Fictional detectives like Peter Falk’s Columbo can solve mysteries on a hunch. Real-life investigators who do the same are often responsible for wrongful arrests that undermine the legitimacy of the justice system–and let the real wrongdoers escape, according to criminologists.
A criminologist’s count found that the number of planned shooting attacks that have been stopped in the U.S. since 2000 far exceed the 92 “completed” ones.
A new draft study says the federal-Pew Charitable Trusts justice reinvestment program hasn’t done much to reduce prison populations. Its former head told a criminology meeting this month it was a case of “reform meeting reality.”