You probably already know the jaw-dropping stats about American prisons: that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. That we’re home to 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners. That more than one in every 10 American men has a felony conviction. That more than 60 percent […]
By Matthew Johnson, multimedia manager, Urban Institute In the dark of night, on the west side of Chicago, a group of young men jumped onto a moving Union Pacific cargo train, pried a door open, and attempted to steal what was inside. But this was not their night. They were detected, police rushed to the […]
By Christopher Moraff, reporting fellow at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Next City During his speech this month at the annual gathering of the NAACP in Philadelphia, President Barack Obama exposed one of the fundamental challenges to reforming our broken criminal justice system when he observed that justice is “not only the absence of […]