By William J. Ford
Criminal justice advocates welcomed a Senate bill that would sharply reduce the number of crimes for which a juvenile could be charged as an adult.
Senate Bill 422 by Sen. William C. Smith Jr. (D-Montgomery) would raise the age at which a juvenile would be tried as an adult from 14 in the current law, to 16. It would also eliminate a number of crimes for which 16-year-olds are currently made eligible to be charge as adults.
By Capital News Service
On an afternoon in mid-January, a Montgomery County police drone tracked a shoplifting suspect as he made his way from a Wheaton CVS to the entrance of a nearby Metro station, where a patrol unit intercepted and arrested him.
Police flight records show that the drone, piloted by officers at a command center in Rockville, then returned to its station on a nearby rooftop to await the next 911 call.
The drone is one of four operated by the Montgomery County Department of Police. The year-old drone response program is the first of its kind in Maryland, with drones stationed in Gaithersburg, Silver Spring and Wheaton. The drones have responded to nearly 2,000 calls since the program’s launch, often reaching the scene before police officers get there.
By Nick Evans
Former Columbus, Ohio police officer Adam Coy shot and killed Andre Hill shortly before Christmas in 2020. Last November Coy was found guilty of murder, felonious assault and two counts of dereliction of duty. As it is in many police involved shootings, body camera footage was crucial evidence establishing the how the incident unfolded.
By Amanda Hernandez
Rampant sexual abuse by guards at women’s prisons in California. An inmate suicide that went unnoticed for 18 hours in Washington state. Multiple jail breaks in Pennsylvania.
Prisons and jails across the United States are overcrowded and understaffed, jeopardizing the safety of incarcerated people, correctional officers and surrounding communities. As state legislatures convene in the coming weeks, many lawmakers are focusing on a key criminal justice issue for prisons and jails: more oversight.
By Janine Jackson
Janine Jackson interviewed the Sentencing Project’s Richard Mendel about coverage of youth crime for the December 20, 2024, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Janine Jackson: Some listeners may know the Sentencing Project for their work calling out racial disparities in sentencing associated with crack versus powder cocaine, and mandatory minimums. A recent project involves looking into another factor shaping public understanding and public policy around criminal justice—the news media. In this case, the focus is young people.
By Christine Sexton
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The Death Penalty Information Center, a group that says it has no position on the death penalty but is critical of how it carried out, reported that 26 people were sentenced to death in the United States in 2024.
Ten states sentenced people to death this year but just four — Alabama, California, Florida, and Texas — accounted for the majority. Florida led with seven death sentences, followed by six in Texas, four in Alabama, and three in California.
About one-third of the 26 new death sentences were imposed without a unanimous recommendation from a jury, including six in Florida and three in Alabama.
By Skylar Laird
COLUMBIA — The state’s prison system does not have to allow interviews with inmates, a federal appeals court decided, echoing a decision from a lower court.
Three federal judges dismissed a lawsuit by the state’s American Civil Liberties Union, upholding a Department of Corrections policy prohibiting in-person and phone interviews with inmates.
By Drew Costley
A federal judge in Baton Rouge heard arguments from news organizations and the state of Louisiana on Wednesday (Dec. 11) on whether a new state law, creating a 25-foot buffer zone around police officers, illegally infringes on First Amendment rights.
The measure, Act 259, which passed the Louisiana State Legislature in the spring and was signed into law by Gov. Jeff Landry in May, makes it a criminal offense to knowingly or intentionally come within 25 feet of a working police officer after being ordered or asked to step back.
The Louisiana Public Service Commission on Wednesday (Nov. 20) reviewed the rates that prisons and jails charge inmates to make phone calls, following a directive from the Federal Communications Commission earlier this year mandating lower fees than are currently charged at Louisiana state prisons and most jails.
At the meeting, held in Baton Rouge, commissioners heard testimony from both prison and jail telecommunications companies and advocates pushing for free calls.
By Jackie Llanos
The unanimous decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reverses a federal trial judge’s ruling blocking the law because its definition of the word “riot” was too vague. Now, the Eleventh Circuit is sending the dispute between several civil rights organizations and Gov. Ron DeSantis back to the lower court.
Although temporary, the reversal of U.S. District Judge Mark Walker’s preliminary injunction means that DeSantis is likely to prevail against the legal challenge to (HB 1), officially labeled the “Combatting Violence, Disorder, and Looting, and Law Enforcement Protection Act,” but better known as the “Anti-Riot Act.”
“The plaintiffs’ fear of guilt by association under the statute is also unfounded,” wrote Judge Jill Pryor in the 17-page opinion. She was appointed to the 11th Circuit by former President Barack Obama. “If a protestor lacks the ‘intent to assist others in violent and disorderly conduct,’ the spontaneous violence of unrelated individuals is not enough to trigger liability under the statute.”
She added: “The statute does not broadly prohibit constitutionally protected speech. Nor does it reach the plaintiffs’ hypothetical photographing or videotaping of police officers at a violent protest, so long as the photography or videography is not intended to assist others in carrying out violence.”
Much of the appellate court’s opinion hinges on the Florida Supreme Court’s interpretation of the law. In June, the Florida court ruled that the law didn’t apply to peaceful protesters who happened to be with a crowd that turned violent. Both DeSantis and the ACLU of Florida celebrated the state Supreme Court’s opinion at the time, with the civil rights organization calling it a “monumental victory for protesters.”
Daniel Tilley, the ACLU of Florida’s legal director, also celebrated Monday’s ruling, writing in a statement that HB 1 threatened Black Floridians who have been criminalized and targeted for exercising their rights.
“Today’s decision reaffirms important legal protections that will benefit anyone who wants to take a public stand to demand racial justice, as well as all Floridians who want to peacefully demonstrate for what they believe in without fear of reprisal,” Tilley wrote.
Walker will have to reevaluate the law in accordance with the appellate ruling.
Pryor thanked the Florida justices for their input in the ruling.
The Florida Legislature passed the law the spring after protests broke out throughout the state and nation against police brutality after George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis Police Department officers.
After the law’s passage, groups such as Dream Defenders, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP, Black Collective Inc., Chainless Change Inc., and Black Lives Matter Alliance Broward filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The groups claimed the law chilled First Amendment rights.
This story has been updated to include comment from the ACLU of Florida sent to Florida Phoenix after publication.
This article originally appeared in the Florida Phoenix October 7th, 2024
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By Amanda Hernandez
Violent crime and property crime in the United States dropped in 2023, continuing a downward trend following higher rates of crime during the pandemic, according to the FBI’s latest national crime report.
Murders and intentional manslaughter, known as non-negligent manslaughter, fell by 11.6% from 2022. Property crime dropped by 2.4%.
Overall, FBI data shows that violent crime fell by 3%.
Violent crime has become a major issue in the 2024 presidential race, with former President Donald Trump claiming that crime has been “through the roof” under the Biden administration.
On the campaign trail, Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has cited findings from a different source — the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey — to argue that crime is out of control.
While the FBI’s data reflects only crimes reported to the police, the victimization survey is based on interviews conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and includes both reported and unreported crimes. Interviewees are asked whether they reported the crime to the police. But the survey does not include murder data and only tracks crimes against individuals aged 12 and older.
The victimization survey, released in mid-September, shows that the violent crime victimization rate rose from 16.4 per 1,000 people in 2020 to 22.5 per 1,000 in 2023. The report also notes that the 2023 rate is statistically similar to the rate in 2019, when Trump was in office.
Many crime data experts consider both sources trustworthy. But the agencies track different trends, measure crimes differently and collect data over varying time frames. Unlike the victimization survey, the FBI’s data is largely based on calls for service or police reports. Still, most crimes go unreported, which means the FBI’s data is neither entirely accurate nor complete.
The victimization surveys released throughout the peak years of the pandemic were particularly difficult to conduct, which is a key reason why, according to some experts, the FBI and the survey may show different trends.
As a result, these differences, which are often unknown or misunderstood, make it easier for anyone — including politicians — to manipulate findings to support their agendas.
Political candidates at the national, state and local levels on both sides of the aisle have used crime statistics in their campaigns this year, with some taking credit for promising trends and others using different numbers to flog their opponents. But it’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions about crime trends or attribute them to specific policies.
“There’s never any single reason why crime trends move one way or another,” said Ames Grawert, a crime data expert and senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice’s justice program. The Brennan Center is a left-leaning law and policy group.
“When an answer is presented that maybe makes intuitive sense or a certain political persuasion, it’s all too natural to jump to that answer. The problem is that that is just not how crime works,” Grawert told Stateline.
At an August rally in Philadelphia, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said: “Violent crime was up under Donald Trump. That’s not even counting the crimes he committed.”
During Trump’s first three years in office, the violent crime rate per 100,000 people actually decreased each year, according to the FBI, from 376.5 in 2017, to 370.8 in 2018, to 364.4 in 2019.
It wasn’t until 2020 that the rate surged to 386.3, the highest under Trump, which is when the country experienced the largest one-year increase in murders.
We live in a world of sound bites, and people aren't taking the time to digest information and fact check. The onus is on the voter.
– Alex Piquero, criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics
Walz’s comments overlook the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social upheaval following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. And despite the increase that year, the violent crime rate in Trump’s final year remained slightly lower than in the last year of President Barack Obama’s administration. In 2016, the rate was 386.8 per 100,000 people.
Following the release of the FBI’s annual crime report last month, U.S. Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican running for attorney general in North Carolina, shared and later deleted a retweet on X that falsely claimed the FBI’s data showed zero homicides in Los Angeles and New Orleans last year. In fact, FBI data showed that the Los Angeles Police Department reported 325 homicides, while New Orleans police reported 198 in 2023.
Crime has emerged as a top issue on voters’ minds.
A Gallup poll conducted in March found that nearly 80% of Americans worry about crime and violence “a great deal” or “a fair amount,” ranking it above concerns such as the economy and illegal immigration. In another Gallup poll conducted late last year, 63% of respondents described crime in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2000.
Crime data usually lags by at least a year, depending on the agency or organization gathering and analyzing the statistics. But the lack of accurate, real-time crime data from official sources, such as federal or state agencies, may leave some voters vulnerable to political manipulation, according to some crime and voter behavior experts.
There are at least three trackers collecting and analyzing national and local crime data that aim to close the gap in real-time reporting. Developed by the Council on Criminal Justice, data consulting firm AH Datalytics and NORC at the University of Chicago, these trackers all show a similar trend of declining crime rates.
“We live in a world of sound bites, and people aren’t taking the time to digest information and fact check,” Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, said in an interview with Stateline. “The onus is on the voter.”
In 2020, when shutdowns in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic kept people at home, homicides surged by nearly 30% — the largest single-year increase since the FBI began tracking crime.
In 2022, violent crime had fallen back to near pre-pandemic levels, and the FBI data showed a continued decline last year. The rate of violent crime dropped from about 377 incidents per 100,000 people in 2022, to around 364 per 100,000 in 2023, slightly below the 2019 rate.
The largest cities, those with populations of at least 1 million, saw the biggest drop in violent crime — nearly 7% — while cities with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 saw a slight 0.3% increase.
Rape incidents decreased by more than 9% and aggravated assault by nearly 3%. Burglary and larceny-theft decreased by 8% and 4%, respectively.
Motor vehicle theft, however, rose by 12% in 2023 compared with 2022, the highest rate of car theft since 2007, with 319 thefts per 100,000 people.
Although national data suggests an overall major decrease in crime across the country, some crime-data experts caution that that isn’t necessarily the case in individual cities and neighborhoods.
“It can be sort of simplistic to look at national trends. You have to allow the space for nuance and context about what’s happening at the local level too,” said Grawert, of the Brennan Center.
Some crime experts and politicians have criticized the FBI’s latest report, pointing out that not all law enforcement agencies have submitted their crime statistics.
The FBI is transitioning participating agencies to a new reporting system called the National Incident-Based Reporting System or NIBRS. The FBI mandated that the transition, which began in the late 1980s, be completed by 2021. This requirement resulted in a significant drop in agency participation for that year’s report because some law enforcement agencies couldn’t meet the deadline.
In 2022, the FBI relaxed the requirement, allowing agencies to use both the new and older reporting systems. Since the 2021 mandate, more law enforcement agencies have transitioned to the new reporting system.
Reporting crime data to the FBI is voluntary, and some departments may submit only a few months’ worth of data.
Although the FBI’s latest report covers 94% of the U.S. population, only 73% of all law enforcement agencies participated, using either reporting system, according to Stateline’s analysis of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program participation data. This means that 5,926 agencies, or 27%, did not report any data to the FBI.
The majority of the missing agencies are likely smaller rural departments that don’t participate due to limited resources and staff, according to some crime data experts.
But participation in the FBI’s crime reporting program has steadily increased over time, particularly after the drop in 2021. Many of the law enforcement agencies in the country’s largest cities submitted data for 2023, and every city agency serving a population of 1 million or more provided a full year of data, according to the FBI’s report.
This article originally appeared in Stateline October 7th, 2024
By Rudi Keller
Just a few hours after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal, Missouri officials executed Marcellus Williams Tuesday at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre.
Williams, who was backed in his appeals for clemency by St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, left only a single sentence — “All praise to Allah in every situation” — in his last statement, KMOV TV reported.
By Sklar Laird
The Wednesday order came as part of a new lawsuit about a state secrecy law
COLUMBIA — A federal judge said Wednesday she will not halt the state’s first execution in 13 years over attorneys’ request for more information on the lethal drugs.
Attorneys for Freddie Owens, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection Friday, asked for a delay in his execution after filing a federal lawsuit in Columbia last week arguing condemned inmates need more information about the state’s supply of pentobarbital.
By Mina Corpuz
Willie Jerome Manning, sentenced to death for the murder of two Mississippi State University students 30 years ago, “has had his days in court” and now an execution date can be set, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled Monday.
“Petitioner has had more than a full measure of justice,” Chief Justice Michael Randolph wrote in the majority opinion joined by justices James Maxwell II, Dawn Beam, David Ishee and Kenneth Griffis.
By Sameea Kamal
Ronald Latney used to believe his vote didn’t matter. But after returning to jail this year, he realized the difference it can make — especially locally.
“I try to tell everybody … like, man, we need to vote, because our lives depend on this,” he said, mentioning district attorney races and bail policies. “That’s very impactful on me and what I’m going through now.”
COLUMBIA — The state Supreme Court will not halt the state’s first execution in 13 years over an inmate’s claims of new evidence and legal errors, the court said in a Thursday order.
Freddie Owens, who changed his legal name to Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, is scheduled to die Sept. 20 by lethal injection. Unless his attorneys file another motion to halt his execution that convinces the high court, the only way to prevent his execution would be for the governor to grant him clemency.
Gov. Henry McMaster has declined to say whether he will give Owens clemency, saying he will announce his decision minutes before Owens is scheduled to die. Civil rights groups are circulating a petition asking McMaster to give Owens a lighter sentence.
By Stanley Dunlap
Georgia’s state prisons and Fulton County’s jail took center stage Friday before legislative committees tasked with making recommendations on how to deal with troubles arising from overcrowded and outdated detention facilities.
The Georgia Senate’s Department of Corrections Facilities Study Committee held its first hearing this month when it heard from the state’s top agency officials about the challenges of running a large prison system where severe understaffing, deteriorating buildings, smuggling of contraband have led to more violence among inmates, correctional officers and other prison staff.
State corrections officials told lawmakers at the Friday hearing the agency needs to upgrade aging prisons with more one-bed cells to resolve a typical underlying cause of violent attacks between inmates.
They also discussed the need to eliminate a complex system of drones that deliver cell phones and other illegal contraband to inmates and stop the spread of violent street gangs across the state that have a presence in Georgia prisons.
By Susan Tebben
“Student disconnection” spurred on by mental health factors, disproportionate discipline and a lack of in-school supports plays its part in driving Ohio’s absenteeism rate, according to a new report from an Ohio think tank.
That absenteeism, and the contributing factors of it, can create “an entry point in the school-to-prison pipeline,” according to Policy Matters Ohio, who released a new study on the issue this month.
By J. Holly McCall and Sam Stockard
The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation into private prison company CoreCivic and Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, which it manages, over alleged civil rights violations.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke announced the move Tuesday morning, citing a record of assaults, murders and understaffing at the facility since it opened in 2016.
“People are incarcerated at Trousdale Turner as punishment for their crimes, but in our legal system, punishment does not and cannot include violence and sexual abuse,” said Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
By William J. Ford
Lawmaker says issue could be topic when Maryland General Assembly convenes in January
The ACLU’s Jay Stanley acknowledges that he’s paid “to think about the ways this could go wrong” – but he said he’s thought of 10 issues that communities should be concerned about before they let their local police use drones to respond to calls.
Drone supporters said that they understand the concerns, but that police use of drones can help departments stretch their resources and improve their response times, while installing safeguards to protect peoples’ privacy rights.
