12-year sentence for having a phone in jail is ‘failure,’ Mississippi justice says
The Mississippi Supreme Court's confirmation of a 12-year prison sentence for an African American man who carried his mobile phone into a county jail cell is being slammed as a brutal example of racial injustice.
Watch 5:30
Mississippi inmate deaths expose a corrections system in crisis
In a single week, five people incarcerated in Mississippi jails have died at the hands of other inmates. The deaths have highlighted a system in dire condition, suffering from staffing problems and deteriorating facilities. Jerry Mitchell, founder of the Mississippi…
Watch 6:38
For-profit prisons reap business benefit from Trump’s immigration stance
A new investigation reveals the rapid growth of for-profit prisons being used to house immigrants. While the phenomenon has generated tremendous revenue for the industry, it has also resulted in hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and mistreatment in those…
Justice Dept. plans crackdown on violent crime in 7 cities
The Justice Department will intensify federal law enforcement resources in the seven cities — Detroit, Albuquerque, Baltimore, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis and Milwaukee — which have violent crime rates high above the national average.
Nearly a year ago, President Trump signed a bipartisan federal criminal justice reform bill that reduced mandatory sentences. Many states followed suit -- but not Maryland. In collaboration with the University of Maryland’s Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, John Yang…
The exoneration of Ricky Kidd, a wrongly convicted man in Missouri who spent more than two decades in prison, highlights major problems with U.S. criminal justice. As covered in our Broken Justice podcast, Kidd was freed largely due to pro…
Genetic genealogy, the technique millions of people are using to learn about their family history, has now become a potent tool with which law enforcement can solve crimes. But the method has major privacy implications that are prompting some critics…
In 2019, American law enforcement agencies have identified over 70 suspects using a new technique called genetic genealogy, which California detectives leveraged in 2018 to identify the Golden State Killer. In the first of a two-part series, William Brangham shares…
A new podcast from the NewsHour examines the public defender system in the United States — and the enormous gaps and problems that undermine its effectiveness. Amna Nawaz and producer Frank Carlson reported from Missouri for this five-part series, and…
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