More than 7,000 federal prisoners saw their sentences reduced by the 2018 First Step Act. But hundreds of those people face deportation. Some call First Step an example of inflated hopes and modest reality. While it decreases prison overcrowding and improves prison conditions, it does…
Lisa Marie Montgomery is 52 and mentally ill, living on a cocktail of psychotropic drugs that only occasionally help her recognize the reality of her federal prison cell. She is also the only woman — the first in nearly 70 years — to face an…
As COVID-19 cases rose, fell and now rise again across the country, prisons and youth detention facilities have consistently continued to see high numbers of infection and yes, death, leading some to call it the new death penalty. According to the ACLU’s Death by Incarceration…
Smartphone users may not know it, but their mobile devices could allow police and other government agents to track their whereabouts even if they’ve done nothing wrong. If you have a phone that uses Google apps — an estimated 97% of all smart phones in…
Sales of “ghost guns,” do-it-yourself kits that offer almost everything needed to build a gun, have been steadily rising for several years, but have reached new highs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Numerous websites selling the so-called “80 percent” guns are apologizing for delays in filling…
Contrary to the belief among certain conspiracy theorists that President Donald Trump is battling a massive ring of child sex traffickers, the administration is prosecuting significantly fewer child sex traffickers than the previous administration. After climbing steadily under President Barack Obama, the number of federal…
A nonprofit organization founded to end excessive use of force by police is calling on the public to demand that all language in police union contracts related to discipline be removed. It is also calling for more community oversight of police discipline. One of Campaign…
COVID-19 infection and mortality rates in prisons are much higher than in the general population, according to a national study, as crowded environments act like a petri dish for exponential growth of the coronavirus. “Because prisons have more people incarcerated than they were designed to…
Martial Law, until recent years, was a concept for military intervention most Americans only thought of in relation to war – World War II, when it was declared in Hawaii after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. In these politically divisive times, however, the term…
Russians have targeted not only U.S. elections, but also American courts, according to national security experts, who say the justice system is being manipulated and exploited as part of a larger effort to diminish faith and trust in the U.S. government. Court officials across the…