The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/tcr-special-report/)
Stories by The Crime Report staff and nationwide network of contributors.
Arrests of juveniles have plummeted, but reformers are pivoting to the plight of young people placed on probation by juvenile courts, where they are more likely to be trapped in a cycle that makes it virtually impossible to escape further involvement in the justice system.
In death penalty cases, the media usually focuses on the victim’s family and the condemned prisoner’s crime. Yet the pain of the families of those put to death is also real, and long-lasting, as journalist Jodie Sinclair discovered when she interviewed relatives of two men executed in Texas.
Some 45 states have the authority to revoke police officers’ licenses, but a growing number have recently begun to toughen police decertification laws, which would establish a procedure to more effectively prevent police officers found guilty of misconduct from being hired by other law enforcement agencies —with varying degrees of success.
Courts have received little federal aid amidst the COVID-19 recession and national shutdown. Judiciary leaders are hoping Congress will fix that in the latest crisis aid package now being negotiated.
In the 1960s, NYPD detective Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino in a 1973 film, risked his life to expose police corruption and misconduct. Modern-day Serpicos are still largely unprotected, exacerbating the “culture of silence” in American policing, policing experts and former cops tell The Crime Report.
Behind the outrage on the streets of America’s cities this week, there were genuine efforts to find common ground between police and demonstrators. It was not always comfortable, but it was real, a TCR reporter who joined thousands of marchers in New York City discovered one evening this week.
In the last three months, the coronavirus pandemic has heightened concerns about one of the country’s most notorious penal complexes. Through their lawyer, inmates told The Crime Report that even though the city has freed hundreds of inmates and adopted health measures, the New York City jail is still dangerously cramped and unsanitary.
Nearly 300 migrants in the sprawling network of federal detention facilities have so far tested positive for COVID-19. But detainees and advocates say the crowded conditions and already inadequate medical care will lead to an “exponential” growth in coronavirus cases.
As schoolwork shifts online and more kids stay home during the coronavirus pandemic, the risk of abuse has grown. But it’s also harder to track.
Prison riots in Italy and France. Spreading infections and shortages of masks and protective equipment in the United Kingdom, Spain and elsewhere. TCR looks at COVID-19’s impact on European corrections, offering a foretaste of what could be in store for American facilities.