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.
Read MoreAs the Criminal Injustice team takes a break for the holidays, we take a moment to look back at some of our favorite episodes of the year and preview what's coming up in Season 3.
New episodes return in January, but keep checking in over the next few weeks as we repost some of the best episodes of 2016.
Read MoreThe NAACP used the legal system to overcome separate but equal, desegregate schools and public facilities, and bring some measure of equal justice to African Americans living under Jim Crow laws in the U.S. What role does this legendary organization have now in the era of Black Lives Matter, and how would Thurgood Marshall interpret it all?
Read MoreMore than ten years ago, states began passing Stand Your Ground Laws: the laws said people defending themselves could use force, even deadly force, in any public place where they had a right to be. Proponents said we’d be safer from crime and especially violence and murder.
Read MoreCan President Donald Trump order local law enforcement to practice stop-and-frisk policing?
Read MoreDo the legal rules for using deadly force, set by the Supreme Court in the 1980s, still make sense? Do they protect the officer and the public, or is it time to change how police make the decision to take a life?
Read MoreWhat will the U.S. Department of Justice look like under President Trump? And how will its role in overseeing local law enforcement change? We unpack a few of the possible scenarios.
Read MoreWhen a sexual assault occurs, police encourage the victim to complete a “rape kit” – a standardized procedure to collect evidence needed to find and prosecute the assailant. But instead of rapid usage of this evidence, tens of thousands of the completed kits still sit in police warehouses – untested and waiting.
Read MoreAnalysis of recent SCOTUS cases that grapple with the role of race in criminal justice.
Read MoreWhen police officers get in trouble, we think their law enforcement careers end. But some resign before they’re canned and move on to serve – creating new and bigger problems – in other police departments. Is this legal? What about background checks? Does anyone track this?
Read MoreThe International Association of Chiefs of Police recently issued an apology for "historical injustices" against people of color by law enforcement officers. How significant is this statement, and how likely is it to influence police-community relations?
Read MorePolice departments in the U.S. are under scrutiny like never before. Calls for change are the only constant. So how does a police chief lead a department in this climate? And what’s most important as we look forward, two years after Ferguson?
Read MoreWhat would innovation in probation look like? For years, it’s meant reporting to your agent, obeying conditions set by the court, drug testing – and eventually, you screw up and go back to jail. The only constants were huge caseloads and high failure rates.
Wayne McKenzie, General Counsel to the New York City Department of Probation, says change is here in the form of Neighborhood Opportunity Networks and their growing cohort of city partnerships.
New thinking, borrowed from progressive policing and social justice programs, has made probation a genuine launching pad for a second chance and public safety.
Read MoreDNA exonerations have proven that some people confess to serious crimes they didn’t commit, even without physical abuse or mental illness. Why would anyone do this? Do police cause this, intentionally or not, because of the questioning techniques they use? And what can we do to make sure this doesn’t occur?
Read MoreWe can't know definitively whether Donald Trump's taped remarks about groping women refer to events that actually took place as described. But if they did... did the GOP presidential nominee commit sexual assault? The answer, under New York law, is unequivocally 'yes.'
[Note: this episode quotes directly from the Trump tape, and therefore includes language that may not be suitable for children]
Read MoreSince the mid 1980s, mandatory minimum drug sentences have served as the driving force behind the explosion in the federal prison population, and also the vast racial disproportionality in that population.
Read MoreThe fallout from recent police shootings has some questioning the value of body cameras as a check on improper use of force. But the technology can only be as good as the policy governing its use.
Read MoreThe Serial podcast, and its host Sarah Koenig, pulled off two amazing feats. Serial broke podcasting open: it was the first podcast to see 5 million downloads and now has well over 80 million. But it also pointed the lens of a full, in-depth journalistic examination on just one murder case.
Read MoreThere was a lot of talk about New York's controversial stop-and-frisk policy in Monday's presidential debate -- much of it incorrect. Donald Trump was called out for spreading misinformation, but he wasn't the only one who got something wrong.
Read MorePolice departments in the U.S. are under scrutiny like never before. Calls for change are the only constant. So how does a police chief lead a department in this climate? And what’s most important as we look forward, two years after Ferguson?
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