Weeks of nationwide and global demonstrations after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have had their effect, according to a new AP-NORC poll. The vast majority of Americans now see the need for criminal justice reform. And, a large majority (69%) now says that the system needs either a complete overhaul or major changes.
Major poll says 94% of Americans want criminal justice reform
States consider the problem of implicit race bias in jury selection
For a jury to be of "your peers," shouldn't it more or less reflect the ethic makeup of the community you live in?
Do bail risk assessment tools reduce unnecessary pretrial holds?
Many people agree that our criminal justice system relies too much on pretrial detention -- keeping people in jail because they are assigned bail they can't afford. Ideally, we could tell who is a flight risk and who is a danger to the community in some logical way and release those who are not.
What could prevent racist bail-risk-assessment outcomes?
When someone is charged with a crime, bail is determined in part based on a risk assessment. The court decides whether the defendant, if allowed to go free, will fail to appear for trial or will commit another crime.
Study of 100 mln traffic stops finds pervasive racial disparities
"Driving while black" isn't a real crime, but it might as well be. African-Americans and people of color persistently report being stopped, searched, cited and even arrested for traffic offenses in situations where white people probably wouldn't be. Yet people of color don't break the law at a higher rate than whites. If anything, a recent study found, whites are more likely to do so.
Is it time to end the war on marijuana?
Marijuana arrests make up over half of all drug arrests in the U.S., and approximately 88 percent of marijuana arrests are for possession. Enforcing our state and federal marijuana laws costs the U.S. about $3.6 billion every year, yet doing so has had virtually no measurable impact on the availability of marijuana. It also ensnares hundreds of thousands of people in the criminal justice system.
US Supreme Court to consider racial bias in jury selection
When prosecutors and defense attorneys choose jurors from a pool, they are allowed to reject some jurors, either for good cause or in what is called a "preemptory challenge." Jurors can be removed for cause, for example, when they are unqualified to serve, have a conflict of interest, or admit that they cannot put aside their biases. Each side gets a limited number of preemptory challenges that can be used to strike jurors without a specific cause.
Iowa Supreme Court to decide legality of pretextual traffic stops
When an African-American woman from Waterloo named Scottize Brown was pulled over in 2015, it had little to do with her behavior. The officer who pulled her over had run the license plate on the vehicle she was driving and learned that the owner had alleged gang affiliations.
Are the Des Moines police engaging in racial profiling?
The dashcam video of a Des Moines police stop involving two African-American men, Montray Little and Jared Clinton, has been viewed over 9 million times.
