The U.S. is the land of due process and constitutional rights. So how do police get the right to seize the property of citizens without criminal convictions, often without even criminal charges? The answer is civil asset forfeiture: an old tool designed to take away the ill-gotten gains of big-time criminals, but it’s morphed into a way for police departments to seize money and property from regular people and keep it to fund their own operations.
Read MoreIn our state legal systems, elected county prosecutors decide who gets tried and on what charges. With this great power, are there any limits? With controversy surrounding the investigation of police misconduct in so many cities, should local prosecutors be the ones deciding whether to charge police officers?
Read MoreTo get released before trial, most American courts require defendants to post bail money. For people too poor to raise even the lowest amounts, this means staying in jail while waiting for trial to begin. Regardless of guilt, those with means can walk free to prepare from afar. Staying in jail awaiting trial damages both lives and legal cases: people in custody lose jobs, housing, and property, and statistics show that they end up with longer sentences if they’re found guilty. And all of this costs taxpayers billions. But there's a better way.
Read MorePimps and sex traffickers have long been part of the dark side of the economy, but they now use the internet for their ugly business. And some of this involves trafficking underage girls for sex. Our guest has pioneered an approach to meeting this challenge with a distinctively 21st-century solution: using algorithmic analysis on big data to identify and catch sex traffickers who operate online.
Read MoreThe tattered system for supplying criminal defense services to the poor is a shambles. More than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that persons charged with crimes must be provided with a defense lawyer if they are too poor to afford one, that promise has been broken. In countless places around the U.S., governments simply do not provide the resources for poor people charged with crimes to have a real defense. The result: defense lawyers with impossible caseloads struggling to meet the constitutional minimum standards for defense. It’s a national scandal, and yet year after year, state and local governments do too little – or nothing – to fix it.
Read MoreIn the second part of our look at what things might look at after the War on Drugs, we turn to Portugal. This country, a member of the European Union, decriminalized the possession of all drugs in amounts sufficient for personal use. You read that right: Portugal decriminalized all drugs – heroin, cocaine, you name it – and turned completely toward a public health outlook, and away from a law enforcement model.
Read MoreMore than four decades after President Richard Nixon first declared the War on Drugs, the U.S. is at a crossroads. We can’t arrest and jail our way out of the problem, and a small but growing number of jurisdictions are decriminalizing cannabis. So what is the next step?
Read MoreWith every shooting incident, study, and official statement, one demand always appears: better training for police. It’s easy to say and a no brainer to support, but what does that actually mean?
Read MoreBig Data has come to policing. Departments nationwide with lots of data and robust analysis capability say they can predict where crime may occur, and maybe even who will be involved as perpetrator or victim. Does this help police fight crime? And if it does, what are the downsides for citizens and civil liberties?
Read MoreWalt Pavlo had a good job, a family, a nice home. He never planned on going to prison. Now that he's out, he has a new job: counseling others who are about to enter the system.
Read MoreIn each of 93 federal districts in America, the United States Attorney is the chief federal prosecutor and law enforcement officer. The U.S. Attorney has immense responsibilities and great power, deciding what cases to pursue, who to charge, and what priorities to set. At least as important, the U.S. Attorney decides who not to charge and when to drop cases for lack of evidence. The job isn’t just to get convictions; it’s to do justice.
David Hickton is the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Read MoreWith hundreds of exonerations of the wrongfully convicted, it’s easy to think that the law and lawyers making use of DNA have made all the difference. But investigative journalists have made huge contributions: exposing shoddy forensics, showing the public how eyewitness testimony goes wrong and how false confessions get made, and confronting police wrongdoing and lack of accountability. Without the untiring efforts of reporters, much of the injustice in the criminal system would stay hidden.
Read MoreWith the public discussion of police misconduct and lack of trust at a fever pitch, the loudest voices often dominate. We need the insight of a person with the experience of a police officer, with deep knowledge of the law and social science, and with the oral and verbal skills of a great public communicator. Enter this week's guest.
Read MoreThe federal judge sits astride the American justice system; few positions accord a person such responsibility, power and respect. But if it's really a plum gig, what would make a federal judge walk away? How does a judge cope with an unjust system?
Robert Cindrich is a former U.S. District Court judge and former United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. He is now of counsel to the law firm of Schnader Harrison Segal and Lewis.
Read MoreFor decades, police in the U.S. have used force under the Supreme Court's rule that they can do as much as appears "reasonably necessary" to accomplish their lawful goals. But after almost two years of national attention on police shootings of blacks, a major police professional organization has proposed -- for the first time -- that police use force less often and with more restraint than is legally required. Is this a turning point?
Chuck Wexler is Executive Director of the Washington D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum.
Read MoreThe U.S. is number one in the world when it comes to incarcerating its own citizens. With one in three black men in the U.S. likely to go to prison during his lifetime, the system begs for reform, burdens taxpayers, and weakens our country and particularly our communities of color. After decades of resistance, the system may see changes and shrinking prison populations, because of bipartisan support for improvement.
Marc Mauer is Executive Director of the Washington D.C.-based Sentencing Project.
Read MoreWhen someone dies or has his or her constitutional rights violated in an encounter with the police, officers can be sued. But why are these suits so tough to win even in the worst cases of misconduct? And what does the multiple millions of dollars in damages every year say about the state of police abuse in the U.S.?
David Rudovsky is a national leader in civil rights and civil liberties litigation. He is a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a founding partner at Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing and Feinberg.
Read MoreWhen there’s a bad shooting by police, local prosecutors seldom take action. The feds can step in, but they rarely do. Why? And even when they do, why do they lose these cases so often?
Mark Kappelhoff is clinical professor of law at the University of Minnesota, and served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice.
Read MoreFor too long, the police "warrior" culture has relied on the use of force as its ultimate tool. But one high-ranking veteran officer and his colleagues have re-imagined police work: they give everyone unconditional respect. And it works.
Capt. Chip Huth of the Kansas City (MO) Police Dept. is co-author of Unleashing the Power of Unconditional Respect: Transforming Law Enforcement and Police Training.
Read MoreRacial bias in the criminal justice system isn't just about old-school bigotry. The real problem is unconscious bias in the minds of most of us, including law enforcement. How does this affect officers' life-and-death decision making?
Melba Pearson is the Assistant District Attorney for Miami-Dade, Fla., and President of the National Black Prosecutors Association.
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