Killings of unarmed black people by police have worsened historically troubled police-community relations. Until recently, little research existed that might help, but this has begun to change.
Philip Atiba Goff explains how social psychology can change American policing.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
After Ferguson, investigations revealed that the entire criminal justice system in St. Louis County – not just the police department – levied massive amounts of fines and fees on its poorest citizens in order to fund itself. It was a wake-up call, but one organization was already there working on these very issues.
Thomas Harvey is the co-founder and executive director of Arch City Defenders.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
The presidential pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio was a message to Donald Trump's supporters: if you defy a federal court order, I've got your back. David explains how the notorious Maricopa County, Ariz., sheriff was convicted of contempt of court, and why his pardon sets a dangerous precedent.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on Sept. 5, 2017. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorites. This episode originally aired June 20, 2017.
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Being a federal judge is a lawyer’s dream job – lifetime tenure, sophisticated cases, and a good salary, too. So why did Kevin Sharp, a well-respected federal trial judge, give all this up just six years in?
Mandatory minimums are a problem for a lot of people on both sides of American courts, especially in the age of Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on Sept. 5, 2017. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorites. This episode originally aired May 2, 2017.
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The Stingray is a new technology that allows police to gather all the cell phone signals in a whole area at any time – without a warrant or any accountability. And if you ask for information about it: permission denied.
Adam Bates studies the secret use of Stingray devices at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on Sept. 5, 2017. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite past episodes. This episode originally appeared Jan. 31, 2017.
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The largest provider of services to the mentally ill in America is not a health care provider – it is the criminal justice system. And on any given day, Chicago's Cook County Jail is actually the largest mental health institution in the entire country.
Sheriff Tom Dart runs the facility, and he's radically changed how the system in Chicago treats the mentally ill.
Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on Sept. 5, 2017. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite past episodes. This episode originally appeared Oct. 4, 2016.
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Our vast criminal justice system forces us to think about big issues like fairness and safety. But what can we learn from a deep examination of a single case, in which we dive as far down as we can and learn every detail? We ask these questions of Serial host and co-producer Sarah Koenig, who regularly reports and produces stories for This American Life.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
There's been a vocal response to President Trump's remarks before an audience of police officers last week, when he seemed to encourage rough handling of suspects. The president's defenders say it was a joke, but many law enforcement professionals aren't laughing.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on September 5th, 2017. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite past episodes. This episode originally appeared Sept. 12, 2016.
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The prosecutor sits in a powerful position in the American criminal justice system, deciding who to charge and with what, and wielding significant discretion.
Some prosecutors use this power to focus narrowly on crime, but San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon uses his office to attempt to better the system, increase public safety, and make his city a stronger community.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Details are still sparse in the fatal shooting of 40-year-old Justine Damond, an Australian national, by Minneapolis police on July 15. But what we do know points to a serious problem with the relationship between police and the people who rely on them for protection and safety.
The federal government doesn't record anything when police shoot civilians, and there's no national database to tell us how big or complex the problem is.
One newspaper journalist says he learned a lot requesting documents from more than 400 jurisdictions in his home state alone. In six years and more than 800 shootings, not one resulted in criminal charges.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Ohio prosecutors have declined to seek a third trial against a white University of Cincinnati police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man during a 2015 traffic stop.
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Some of the biggest banks and financial institutions had a big part in the 2008 crash. Millions lost homes, jobs and savings – yet no one at the top went to jail. Our guest, Pulitzer Prize-winner Jesse Eisinger of ProPublica, says it’s because federal prosecutors have joined the "chickenshit club."
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
The latest bombshell development in the Trump-Russia affair -- news of Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer he hoped would provide him with incriminating information on Hillary Clinton -- has prompted some pretty intense rhetoric. Intimations of "treason," for instance. But does the concept apply here? We examine the legal definition of treason in the context of Trump and Russia.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
We hear it all the time: law enforcement needs to change for the 21st century. But what does "21st century policing" actually mean?
Ronald Davis helped write the blueprint. He’ll tell us where policing is now, and where it needs to go.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
In the last 25 years, DNA has become a tool of unparalleled power, solving the coldest cases and overturning guilty verdicts based on faulty forensics, false confessions, and bad eyewitness identification. But what if it's not infallible, or even as good as it could be?
Cybergenetics founder Mark Perlin argues a new process for analyzing DNA using computers means we have to re-think our system for DNA analysis.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
The Minnesota police officer who killed Philando Castile has been acquitted, despite video evidence of the shooting seen by the jury. How did this happen?
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Police leadership must create a strong relationship between officers in the department and the communities they serve, but in the past, the same department may have participated in or enforced racial discrimination.
That history can prevent healing and can make police reform a nonstarter.
Chief Louis Dekmar of LaGrange, Georgia, says it was important for his department to acknowledge and apologize for the 1940 lynching of Austin Callaway, an incident that happened decades before he was born.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
The rape trial of Bill Cosby has ended in a mistrial. What happens next?
Being a federal judge is a lawyer’s dream job – lifetime tenure, sophisticated cases, and a good salary, too. So why did Kevin Sharp, a well-respected federal trial judge, give all this up just six years in?
Mandatory minimums are a problem for a lot of people on both sides of American courts, especially in the age of Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Three words you may have been hearing a lot lately: "obstruction of justice." What's the legal definition of obstruction? How is it prosecuted? And could a charge like that ever apply to President Donald Trump? David has answers.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Automatic license plate readers – those cameras on police cars and light poles that capture plate numbers – have been in widespread use since the 1990s. But some argue regulations for how and how long police can use and store that information hasn’t kept up with the technology.
Nathan Freed Wessler says automatic plate readers are great for spotting stolen cars or wanted drivers, but they’re also watching the rest of us.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
The Supreme Court will hear Carpenter vs. United States, a case with major implications for police use of location data from cellular networks. David reviews what's at stake.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of federal efforts to fix forensic science in April, but not because the problems were solved. Why stop these efforts now, just as better scientific standards were emerging? And what will it mean for wrongful convictions?
John Hollway, associate dean and executive director of the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, explains.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.
Criminal justice reform – it’s always been a liberal issue. But in the last few years, reform efforts have started to emerge on the right, too. It’s one of the few issues seeing bipartisan agreement in our polarized country.
Arthur Rizer, justice policy director and senior fellow at the R Street Institute, makes the conservative case for reform.
Find more at criminalinjusticepodcast.com.