Older, sick prisoners cost far more to incarcerate. Since they pose little or no risk to public safety, states should ease the path to medical parole.
A Los Angeles fourth-grader brought a stolen 0.40-caliber Glock 22 to his elementary school this week, reflecting a larger problem. As of April 15, there were 903 weapons incidents across L.A. schools.
California has long relied on its prison population to battle wildfires. But a steady decline in the state’s incarcerated population and a $45 billion budget shortfall has left the state with gaps when it comes to wildfire response.
The state’s Clean Slate Act, approved in 2022, established an automatic record-sealing process for some lower-level crimes to better allow people access to housing, jobs or other opportunities. It will go into effect this summer.
A 53-page report details the bureaucratic dysfunction that allowed the Ohio county to pay for a jail management system it never used due to a signing bonus fixation, lack of planning and poor management.
A 6-year plunge in federal funding that aids victims of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse is causing alarm among state and local organizations that rely on those dollars to provide services.
The state has a surplus of 15,000 prison beds. Consolidating and deactivating prisons could free up billions of dollars for safety net programs, education, housing and workforce development.
The guidance that allows states to provide health-care coverage to incarcerated people at least a month prior to their release has gained bipartisan interest. As of last month, federal officials had approved applications from four states.
The Panoche Water District allegedly stole 130,000 acre feet of water and redistributed it to farmland across Fresno and Merced counties. Now the feds want retribution but not everyone in the region agrees.
A new bill would require Colorado law enforcement agencies to publish policy on the controversial "prone restraint", a technique that many critics link to the deaths of those restrained facedown.
The bill is part of a package to punish juvenile offenders more harshly. One senator warns the measure will bring “massive repercussions” and raises complicated legal questions.
Earlier this month, Mayor Cherelle Parker announced her administration’s plan to end the Kensington neighborhood’s open-air drug markets by arresting people for low-level offenses that the city hadn’t targeted in years.
California officials say that the state’s 31 prisons are necessary to accommodate the fluctuating inmate population. Analysts say the cash-strapped state could save money by closing five more.
Veterans were once half as likely as the general population to land in prison. Now, they're twice as likely. State and local officials are trying to prevent this from happening.
Jails across the state have seen their first reduction in deaths in seven years. But investigations of the 63 deaths revealed supervision failures in more than a third of them.
As concerns rise about crime and safety, Democratic leaders have been shifting to the right when it comes to criminal justice policies. Last month, 11 percent of Californians identified crime and drugs as the top issue.
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