Info

Criminal (In)justice

Problems with police, prosecutors and courts have people asking: is our criminal justice system broken? University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris interviews the people who know the system best, and hears their best ideas for fixing it. Criminal (In)justice is an independent production created in partnership with 90.5 WESA, Pittsburgh's NPR News Station.
RSS Feed
Criminal (In)justice
2020
June
May
April
March
February
January


2019
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March


All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: 2018
Sep 28, 2018

Kelly from St Paul asks: if you dump toxic materials into a lake, knowing it will cause deaths, can you be charged with murder?

Sep 26, 2018

Recommended reading: Brentin Mock's piece in CityLab on Rahm Emanuel and missed opportunities for police reform in Chicago.

Sep 24, 2018

As we record this, the question hanging over Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court is whether, and how, Senate Judiciary Committee will treat the accusations of criminal sexual assault made against Judge Kavanaugh by Professor Christine Blasy Ford. Whatever happens, the most important thing is to have a full, complete, and independent investigation of the charges before any hearing or vote.

Sep 22, 2018

It was pretty bad when Chicago judge Jessica Arong O'Brien was found guilty on federal charges of mortgage fraud. It was worse when she refused to give up her seat on the Cook County bench for more than six months after the conviction, continuing to draw a paycheck even after losing her law license. 

Sep 18, 2018

Female police officers bring a unique, positive skill set to
the job. They communicate better, and have a special talent
for de-escalation. In an era when we want less force and
more de-escalation, should the future of policing be female?

Guest Dr. Cara Rabe-Hemp is professor in the Department of
Criminal Studies at Illinois State University. She the author
of Thriving in an All-Boys Club: Female Police and their
Fight for Equality (2018).

Sep 16, 2018

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has put cities on notice: don’t try to establish facilities where addicts can inject intravenous drugs safely. What is Rosenstein's justification for this policy? And does the evidence bear it out?

Sep 13, 2018

David discusses three recent criminal justice stories on WESA's The Confluence.

Sep 10, 2018

Trial is underway for the Chicago police officer who shot and killed Laquan McDonald in 2014. The killing and ensuing coverup effectively ended the careers of several high-level city officials including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has announced he won't seek re-election. 

Sep 4, 2018

When juveniles face criminal charges, most end up on probation. This should put their young lives on track. But too often, it’s just another set of rules, and kids fall into deeper trouble. Can we transform probation for juveniles, so more kids don’t become adult offenders? Guest Stephen Bishop runs the effort to transform juvenile probation in the U.S., for the Annie E Casey Foundation. Bishop discusses how to make probation both more rare, and more successful.

Aug 30, 2018

Technically, slavery is illegal in the United States. But there's a big loophole in the 13th amendment: it's perfectly okay to compel someone's labor against their will, for little or no pay, as long as they've been convicted of a crime. Now, inmates across the country are on strike, demanding an end to what they call "modern-day slavery." The history of prison labor in America shows that's not much of an exaggeration.

Aug 28, 2018

Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on September 4, 2018. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite past episodes. This episode originally appeared June 26, 2018. 

 

=================

Every four years, the whole sports-loving planet is watching soccer’s World Cup. Soccer is the world’s most popular sport – so how did its governing body, FIFA, become the focus of the most massive corruption scandal in sports history? And why was that scandal broken by U.S. law enforcement?

Our guest is Ken Bensinger, veteran journalist, who helped break the story with his investigative reporting; his new book is Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World’s Biggest Sports Scandal (Simon & Schuster, 2018).


Read more at http://criminalinjustice.libsyn.com/size/25/?search=bensinger#vhe0biW51Aa4zaX0.99

Aug 21, 2018

Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on September 4, 2018. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite past episodes. This episode originally appeared February 20, 2018. 

 

=================

In the U.S., judges set bail – an amount of money defendants must deposit with the court -- to make sure people appear in court. Defendants must pay the bail amount to get released to wait for trial. Those with enough money to get out before trial, but those without cash stay in jail – regardless of the risk they pose. Could a data-based system do a better job of assessing these risks, and keep the poor out of jail before trial?

Matt Alsdorf is founder and president of Pretrial Advisors, and former Vice President for Criminal Justice at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Matt headed up the foundation’s effort to apply a data-based solution to the problem of pretrial incarceration – the Public Safety Assessment tool.

Aug 19, 2018

A new report from the Pennsylvania attorney general details how the Catholic church systematically covered up decades of sexual abuse by priests. In almost all of the cases, the abuse happened so long ago that the statute of limitations prevents prosecution of the abusers and their enablers. Or does it?

Aug 14, 2018

Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on September 4, 2018. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite past episodes. This episode originally appeared January 9, 2018. 

 

=================

In the criminal justice system, things can go terribly wrong: convictions of the innocent, or killings of unarmed suspects.  We use the courts and investigations try to see who’s to blame.  But we do little to learn ways to stop it from happening again.  Using procedures from the worlds of medicine and aviation as a guide, attorney James Doyle has become the leading advocate for using Sentinel event analysis as way to understand and fix systemic problems in criminal justice.

Aug 7, 2018

Criminal Injustice returns with a new season on September 4, 2018. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite past episodes. This episode originally appeared February 6, 2018. 

=================

Private prisons hold over 100,000 people in the U.S. Some say they provide needed flexibility as corrections populations change and budgets shrink. But what really happens when punishment is about profit? 

Lauren-Brooke Eisen is Senior Counsel at the Brennan Center’s Justice Program and author of Inside Private Prisons: An American Dilemma in the Age of Mass Incarceration.

Aug 5, 2018

John from Dayton calls in with another question: how does the discovery process work in civil law, and how does it apply in criminal cases?

Jul 31, 2018

The killing of Antwon Rose, an unarmed African American teenager shot by police in East Pittsburgh, PA, is a recent and tragic example of what can go wrong when local law enforcement agencies are too small. 

Jul 28, 2018

David joins the panel on WESA's The Confluence July 20 to discuss SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh's judicial record on criminal justice, individual rights, and civil liberties.

Jul 24, 2018

Prisons in the U.S. frequently use long-term solitary confinement, even though the evidence makes clear that solitary has devastating effects on prisoners’ mental and physical health.  Some authorities call long-term solitary nothing short of torture.  So what can we make of our prisons using solitary for people with significant disabilities?  If solitary devastates so-called normal prisoners, what does it do to those with severe physical or cognitive impairments? 

Jamelia Morgan is an attorney with the Abolitionist Law Center.

Jul 19, 2018

How might we expect Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to rule on criminal justice issues? His record on criminal cases is sparse, but there are some telling details...

Jul 14, 2018

An update on Kentucky lawyer Eric Conn, who pled guilty to one of the biggest cons in the history of Social Security only to flee the country. 

Jul 10, 2018

In the US, we incarcerate our fellow citizens at the highest rate in the world. And once they are in prison, we give the incarcerated not another thought. But one program works to help improve our imprisoned population, by teaching them college courses inside – along with college students, from the outside. It’s called the Inside Out Prison Exchange Program – and it’s grown from a single program at a Philadelphia sponsored at Temple University, to a force in 130 prisons around the world involving 130 universities and colleges.

Jul 4, 2018

At the close of a momentous U.S. Supreme Court term, producer Josh Raulerson joins David to review the most important decisions on criminal justice cases.

Jul 1, 2018

With the news of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's retirement, we review some of the important decisions in which he played a key role, and consider how his departure may affect the Court's approach to criminal justice cases.

Jun 29, 2018

In what's turned out to be a week of bombshell Supreme Court news, a lesser-noticed (but still notable) ruling in Carpenter v U.S.: a 5-4 majority concurs that police need a warrant to track someone's location using data from cellular towers. 

« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 Next »