The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/viewpoints/)
Like negotiations with an enemy in war, negotiations in a criminal case seek to avoid unpredictable outcomes. The plea bargaining system too often fails that test, writes the chief policy adviser for the Council on Criminal Justice.
Although everyone grasps in a general way that “stuff happens” in the U.S. criminal justice system, what most Americans don’t see is that once things do go wrong there is an elaborate architecture in place to guarantee that things will stay wrong.
Physical and mental abuse should not be part of a prison sentence, even for prisoners whose crimes are heinous, writes an attorney and advocate for prison reform.
Law enforcement needs careful guidelines to ensure the sophisticated counterterrorism surveillance tools developed in the aftermath of the New York attacks are not abused in daily police work. The UK might offer one model.
Ordinary Americans are virtually absent from roles of power and influence in all of our justice systems. That’s too often overlooked in reform conversations, says TCR’s legal affairs columnist.
Focusing scarce public safety resources on arresting and incarcerating low-level offenders won’t deter violent crime or make our neighborhoods safer, argue two R Street researchers.
A lawsuit filed this month by Spencer Elden, whose naked photo as an infant was on the cover of Nirvana’s chart-topping “Nevermind,” claims he was the victim of sexual exploitation. Is the Coppertone baby next?
The U.S. and its allies spent over $10 billion to modernize the Afghan police service. Why has there been so little to show for those efforts?
At least 50 homicides in the U.S. and Canada over the past several years have been attributed to “incels,” adherents of a murderous subculture that targets women. The latest incident left six people dead in the UK last week, including the shooter, and raises questions about whether believers should be classified as terrorists, writes a former UK detective superintendent.
The debate over decarceration has been upended by distracting calls for prison abolition, writes a justice reform advocate. He argues that reformers should instead examine what led Europe down a different path and determine how best to develop a system more closely resembling the ones found on the continent.