Category: Criminal Justice Reform

We understand that 2016 was a horrific year for police fatalities—139, of which 64 were shot and killed in the line of duty.
 
Police across the country feel besieged, some to the point that they elected to “stand down”…

Newly-elected Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg was elected as a “reformer” with plans to clean up the local criminal justice system. Some of her stated goals are lofty indeed:
 

Concentrate on the prosecution of violent offenders while diverting…

Criminal sentencing is a flawed process. The question is what to do about it. This is a difficult question, especially when there is no consensus across the nation’s sentencing landscape, either at the federal or state level, about the real…

Police are trained to “shoot to stop.” This means rapid fire “center mass” into the chest of someone who may be posing a threat to the officer or someone else. The police fire multiple times until the perceived threat has…

Crime reached unprecedented levels in the 1980s and early 1990s before it began a precipitous decline beginning in 1995. Experts from every field in the nation’s criminal justice system have offered reasons or speculation about what caused the decline.  The…