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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.
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Now displaying: Page 8
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. 

 

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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. 

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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. 

Jun 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).

Jun 21, 2018

The Trump administration has claimed its policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S. border is required under existing laws. That's true -- if you choose to carry out blanket criminal prosecution of all illegal border crossings, including those made by legitimate asylum-seekers. Why has every previous administration opted to enforce the law through civil proceedings only? And what does today's executive order actually do?

Jun 15, 2018

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared war on legal marijuana in January. How's that working out?

Jun 12, 2018

We often hear that police work requires split-second responses to keep officers and the public safe. But this might be less true than we think. Can we build a better cop, by training them to slow things down? Emily Owens and her colleagues have produced new research that shows that, with a simple and inexpensive intervention, police officers get better outcomes with less use of force.

Jun 8, 2018

Technological change is disrupting seemingly every field. How will it impact criminal justice systems around the world in the future? 

Jun 5, 2018

Why would a defense attorney decide not to put up a defense at all? Dave answers a question from Liddy in Long Island.

Jun 3, 2018

Police need a warrant to search your home and surrounding property... but not your vehicle. What if your vehicle is parked on your property? A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling settles the matter.

May 31, 2018

A disability lawyer in Texas demonstrates why, when you're in a hole, it's best to stop digging.

May 29, 2018

The word “torture” conjures images of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, or waterboarding at CIA black sites. But in the 70s and 80s, torture went on in parts of the Chicago Police Department for years. We’ll learn what happened, and we’ll talk about the consequences for civilians and the justice system.

Steve Mills is a veteran journalist and Deputy Editor of ProPublica Illinois

May 27, 2018

A recent conversation on 90.5 WESA's The Confluence about cash-strapped municipalities consolidating their law enforcement agencies.

May 24, 2018

Donald Trump demands an internal investigation into whether the FBI planted an informant in his presidential campaign. That duty that falls to the Inspector General of the Justice Department. What does this lesser-known office actually do?

May 22, 2018

John from Dayton is a government teacher whose students have questions about the impeachment process. We break it down in another "Ask Dave" bonus episode.

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