Crime and Criminal Justice

As of May 7, 2013, 603 Guantanamo prisoners have been released or transferred abroad. Of those 603 we have identified 53 who are either confirmed to be or suspected of engaging in militant activities against either the U.S. or non-U.S. targets. We have placed them in the following categories:

Category 1: GTMO detainees confirmed to be engaging in militant activities against U.S. targets.

TOTAL: 17, 2.8%

Category 2: GTMO detainees suspected of engaging in militant activities against U.S. targets

Robert Wright weighs in on whether the horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School will spur a gun control policy change. Kayla Pope and Hank Greely, who we recorded after an October New America event, discuss the developing field of using brain science in the courtroom. Elizabeth Weingarten hosts.

A series of recent articles from the St. Louis Dispatch has been documenting a disturbing trend in Missouri: the return of the debtors’ prison. Debtors’ prisons are technically illegal in all states, and largely regarded as a relic of the past. Still, Missouri and other states are increasingly jailing people for failure to pay private debts by relying on a technicality that permits incarceration when the debtor misses a court date. The Dispatch’s most recent installment focuses on the role of payday lenders in enforcing debts through the courts, resulting in additional fees and deep humiliation for customers who end up spending time behind bars. Payday lenders, however, are not alone in enforcing such serious penalties for an inability to repay a debt; moreover, this trend can be understood as but one facet of the larger criminalization of poverty.

Since September 11, 2001, more than 300 U.S. residents have been prosecuted for crimes related to homegrown terrorism. About half were targeted by law enforcement using infiltration techniques – confidential informants, undercover operations, or, in some cases, both.[i]

Ever wondered how FBI agents catch globe-trotting serial killers? Or how journalists report stories about imprisoned international criminals? Here’s your chance to find out: You're invited to jump — risk free — into the world of transnational crime-fighting.
 

This piece was co-authored with Clarissa Ramon, Outreach and Government Affairs Associate at Public Knowledge.

Sitting before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 9, 2004, Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was taking his time getting to the question that everyone in attendance was waiting for him to answer. "And finally" he said, "there is the matter of whether or not what is happening in Darfur is genocide."

A decade ago this August, veteran New York City cop Joseph Gray went to a Brooklyn strip club, drank himself silly, and then got into his burgundy van and accidentally smashed into and killed three people, including a pregnant 24-year-old woman and her 4-year-old son, Andy. Twelve hours later, the undelivered child had died, too. Gray pleaded with the judge for leniency, but in her words, barreling down the street drunk, in a thousand-pound van, was like "waving a loaded gun around a crowded room." Gray was given the maximum of five to 15 years for second-degree manslaughter.