The Reckoning Over Young Prisoners Serving Life Without Parole
The U.S. Supreme Court has spent a decade limiting the harshest sentence given to juvenile offenders. But state supreme courts are still grappling with how those rulings should play out.
The Presence of Justice
Beyond the age of mass incarceration
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This project is supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge.
Designing the Opposite of Rikers
A new report lays out design guidelines for community-based “justice hubs”—jails that create positive effects inside and outside their walls.
A Major Victory for the Right to Record Police
Federal appeals courts covering half of U.S. states have now ruled that Americans have a First Amendment right to videotape encounters with law enforcement.
How Prisoners' Family Members Can Assist Overworked Public Defenders
Through a suburban Philadelphia program, they learn how to help their relatives' criminal defense—and do some of the nitty-gritty work lawyers would typically handle.
Criminal-Justice Reform Survives Its First Stress Test
Why didn’t the fall of former Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams on fraud and corruption charges doom his reform-minded agenda?
A Mental-Health Crisis in Alabama’s Prisons
In a 302-page opinion this week, a federal judge in Montgomery condemned the dire conditions faced by prisoners with mental illnesses.
How Black Girls Aren’t Presumed to Be Innocent
A new study finds that adults view them as less child-like and less in need of protection than their white peers.
Do Right-to-Carry Gun Laws Make States Safer?
In a new paper, researchers dispute a popular argument for arming everyday citizens. “There is not even the slightest hint in the data that [these] laws reduce violent crime,” they write.
The Supreme Court Tinkers at the Edges of the Machinery of Death
Opponents of the practice won a series of notable cases at the U.S. Supreme Court this term, even as total victory in their war against the death penalty moved further out of reach.
Do African Americans Have a Right to Bear Arms?
And if so, why won’t the justice system or the NRA stand up for it?