Tag: criminal justice
How Prosecutors Might Charge Trump for January 6th
Last week, former President Trump received a “target letter” from Jack Smith, a special counsel for the Justice Department, indicating that Trump will likely be criminally charged in connection with at least some aspects of his role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election. On Thursday, the Times reported that the letter mentioned three criminal statutes: conspiracy to defraud the government, obstruction of an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. The last of these is a Reconstruction-era
What the Labels of Mental Illness Obscure
Let me explain something about me: When I was 12, I started having panic attacks, brought on by fears that I couldn’t shake, even though I knew they were irrational. I was terrified, for example, that I’d become depressed—but I’d never been depressed before, and didn’t feel depressed. My junior high school devoted a series of assemblies to warning us budding teenagers that we were entering the most dangerous years of our lives, now ripe targets for cutting, suicide,
1990s Policing: Overrated or Underrated?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
On Tuesday, Joe Biden declared that, “when it comes to public safety in this nation, the answer is not defund the police. It’s fund the police.” He was speaking in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. “I know we expect
A New Explanation for the COVID Crime Wave
This article is a collaboration between The Atlantic and ProPublica.
On Dec. 31, 2020, a 40-year-old man named Leon Casiquito walked into Kelly Liquors on Route 66 in Albuquerque and tried to shoplift a bottle of tequila. When one of the owners, Danny Choi, tried to stop him, Casiquito flashed a small pocketknife. Choi told police he knocked the bottle out of Casiquito’s hand with a stick and Casiquito left the store.
Choi locked the door, but Casiquito
Do Voters See a Difference Between Crime and Homelessness?
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Monday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
How do you perceive crime in your neighborhood? How about homelessness? Disorder? What’s your relationship to these things? How much do you think about them? How, if at all, do they affect where you live
Is This the Worst Place to Be Poor and Charged with a Federal Crime?
In early August, a forty-one-year-old man whom I’ll call Albert—he asked me not to use his real name—was released from a medium-security prison in South Carolina. Albert grew up in Statesboro, in the southeastern corner of Georgia. His mother struggled with a drug addiction, and he didn’t have a good relationship with his father; his grandmother raised him. He made it to the tenth grade before dropping out of school. Eventually, he became a small-time drug dealer. In 2009, when