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U.S. Mass Shootings On Rise No Matter How You Define Them | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/07/06/what-you-need-to-know-about-the-rise-in-u-s-mass-shootings
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The Gun Violence Archive, an independent research group, uses a broad definition of a mass shooting: an incident in which four or more people are killed or injured, not including the shooter. It includes shootings linked to gang activity, street fights or domestic violence.

The group counted 2,403 mass shootings from 2017 to 2021, with 2,495 dead and 10,225 injured. The group’s data reveals a steep rise in recent years: 692 mass shootings in 2021, up 66% from 2019’s total of 417.

The group tallied 318 mass shootings as of 3 p.m. on July 5. That puts 2022 on track to finish as one of the deadliest years since the group began monitoring these crimes in 2014.

Like The Violence Project, Everytown for Gun Safety defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people are killed with a firearm, excluding the perpetrator. Everytown counts incidents that “occur in both public and private spaces, have any number of shooters, and result from a myriad of motives, such as group violence, domestic violence, or terrorist violence.” By the group’s count, there have been 110 incidents in the last five years, compared to 96 from 2012 through 2016.

The Black Mortality Gap, and a Century-Old Document | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/08/30/the-black-mortality-gap-and-a-century-old-document
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he overall mortality disparity has existed for centuries. Racism drives some of the key social determinants of health, like lower levels of income and generational wealth; less access to healthy food, water and public spaces; environmental damage; overpolicing and disproportionate incarceration; and the stresses of prolonged discrimination.lack Americans already had an inferior experience with the health system. Black patients received segregated care; Black medical students were excluded from training programs; Black physicians lacked resources for their practices. The report recommended that Black doctors see only Black patients, and that they should focus on areas like hygiene, calling it “dangerous” for them to specialize in other parts of the profession. Flexner said the White medical field should offer Black patients care as a moral imperative, but also because it was necessary to prevent them from transmitting diseases to White people. Integration, seen as medically dangerous, was out of the question.This disparity appears to have real-world effects on patients. A study showed Black infant mortality reduced by half when a Black doctor provided treatment.

As Coronavirus Surges, Crime Declines in Some Cities | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/03/27/as-coronavirus-surges-crime-declines-in-some-cities
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Street cops and police union officials have been predicting a crime wave as cities across the country reduce low-level arrests and release inmates from jails to slow the spread of COVID-19.

But at least in some big cities, that’s not happening. In fact, in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco, recent data show big drops in crime reports, week over week. The declines are even more significant when we compare this year with the same time periods in the three previous years.

The decreases suggest that trying to contain COVID-19 is not a public safety threat in some big cities—at least for now.

More than 55,000 people a year believe their gender and gender identity made them hate crime victims. So why did police departments nationwide only report 215 such bias incidents last year?

Why Police Struggle to Report One of The Fastest-Growing Hate Crimes | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/11/26/why-police-struggle-to-report-one-of-the-fastest-growing-hate-cr
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If you ask people across the country whether they have been a victim of a bias crime because of their gender or gender identity, tens of thousands have stories to tell.

An analysis from the Justice Department estimates that between 2013 and 2017 more than 55,000 hate crimes targeting victims’ gender took place on average each year. That’s almost 30 percent of all hate crimes reported by victims.

But you wouldn’t know that from the most recent hate crime statistics released earlier this month by the FBI. The new data show that last year police departments around the country reported 215 gender-related hate crimes targeting men, women, transgender and nonbinary people. They represented 3 percent of the total incidents in the FBI’s numbers.

Police reports and the victims surveys capture different aspects of the criminal justice system. The survey asks American households each year about their experience with crime, whereas the FBI collects numbers from local police departments that voluntarily participate in its Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Last year, more than 16,000 law enforcement agencies provided hate crime figures to the FBI, and more than 80 percent of them—including every agency in the state of Alabama—reported that no hate crimes occurred in their jurisdictions at all.

Is There a Connection Between Undocumented Immigrants and Crime? | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/05/13/is-there-a-connection-between-undocumented-immigrants-and-crime

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A lot of research has shown that there’s no causal connection between immigration and crime in the United States. But after one such study was reported on jointly by The Marshall Project and The Upshot last year, readers had one major complaint: Many argued it was unauthorized immigrants who increase crime, not immigrants over all.

An analysis derived from new data is now able to help address this question, suggesting that growth in illegal immigration does not lead to higher local #crime rates.

In part because it’s hard to collect data on them, undocumented immigrants have been the subjects of few studies, including those related to crime. But Pew Research Center recently released estimates of undocumented populations sorted by metro area, which The Marshall Project has compared with local crime rates published by the FBI. For the first time, there is an opportunity for a broader analysis of how unauthorized immigration might have affected crime rates since 2007.

#migrants

Framed for Murder By His Own DNA
We leave traces of our genetic material everywhere, even on things we’ve never touched. That got Lukis Anderson charged with a brutal crime he didn’t commit.
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/04/19/framed-for-murder-by-his-own-dna

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Back in the 1980s, when DNA forensic analysis was still in its infancy, crime labs needed a speck of bodily fluid—usually blood, semen, or spit—to generate a genetic profile.That changed in 1997, when Australian forensic scientist Roland van Oorschot stunned the criminal justice world with a nine-paragraph paper titled “DNA Fingerprints from Fingerprints.” It revealed that DNA could be detected not just from bodily fluids but from traces left by a touch. Investigators across the globe began scouring crime scenes for anything—a doorknob, a countertop, a knife handle—that a perpetrator may have tainted with incriminating “touch” DNA.But van Oorschot’s paper also contained a vital observation: Some people’s DNA appeared on things that they had never touched.In the years since, van Oorschot’s lab has been one of the few to investigate this phenomenon, dubbed “secondary transfer.” What they have learned is that, once it’s out in the world, DNA doesn’t always stay put.
Objects bearing DNA of a participant who never touched them
Objects bearing foreign DNA that didn’t match any participants

Guantánamo, Forever.
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/02/28/guantanamo-forever
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After nearly a decade in detention, Haroon Gul believed he had a chance at freedom. Then came President Trump.

Trump Justice, Year One: The Demolition Derby.
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/01/17/trump-justice-year-one-the-demolition-derby
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On criminal justice, Donald J. Trump’s predecessor was a late-blooming activist. By the end of President Barack Obama’s second term, his administration had exhorted prosecutors to stop measuring success by the number of defendants sent away for the maximum, taken a hands-off approach to states legalizing marijuana and urged local courts not to punish the poor with confiscatory fines and fees. His Justice Department intervened in cities where communities had lost trust in their police. After a few years when he had earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief,” Obama pivoted to refocus immigration authorities — in effect, a parallel criminal justice system — on migrants considered dangerous, and created safeguards for those brought here as children. He visited a prison, endorsed congressional reform of mandatory minimum sentences and spoke empathetically of the Black Lives Matter movement. He nominated judges regarded as progressives.In less than a year, President Trump demolished Obama’s legacy.

‘Black Identity Extremists’ and the Dark Side of the FBI | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/10/17/black-identity-extremists-and-the-dark-side-of-the-fbi
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Recent political developments have helped put the FBI in a favorable light. The agency and its leadership have been praised for its performance throughout the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Former director James Comey affirmed the agency’s fundamental goodness in a letter to his colleagues after he was relieved of his post President Trump.

“I have said to you before that, in times of turbulence, the American people should see the FBI as a rock of competence, honesty, and independence,” wrote Comey. “It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing.”

While Comey might only have good things to say about the FBI, newly leaked documents suggest he shouldn’t. Despite the agency’s new, upstanding image, it might be back to its Hoover-era dirty tricks—if it ever really departed from them.

Foreign Policy reported recently on the existence of a document that circulated within the FBI’s counterterrorism division. Just nine days before the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, it named a major threat to public safety: not organized white nationalists, but “black identity extremists.”

Project Life Inside
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/tag/life-inside

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First-person essays from those who work or live in the criminal justice system. Please send pitches for Life Inside to ehager@themarshallproject.org. We’re looking for 1,000 to 1,400-word nonfiction stories about a vivid, surprising, personal experience you had with the system — whether you’re a lawyer, prisoner, judge, victim, police officer, or otherwise work or live inside the system. Poetry, fiction, essays about experiences that are not directly related to criminal justice, and op-eds will not be accepted. Our honor roll recognizing Kickstarter donors who generously supported

“Prison is a Real-Life Example of the World White Supremacists Want”
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/24/prison-is-a-real-life-example-of-the-world-white-supremacists-wa

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The Marshall Project invited some of its incarcerated contributors to reflect on the fallout from the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. These essays were gathered and edited by Eli Hager for this special edition of Life Inside.

In prison, I’m surrounded by racists all day long, and I don’t wish to see that kind of thing happening out in the world I long to return to. Everything in here is about race — and I mean everything. Whites have their side of the chow hall, blacks have their side of the chow hall. Whites use the white barber, blacks use the black barber. It’s the 1950s in here — I mean, we share drinking fountains, but not much else. In other words, prison is a real-life example of the world that white supremacists want to return to. The only difference between prison in 2017 and a segregated 1950s is the fact that whites are often the minorities behind bars.

Guess Who’s Tracking Your Prescription Drugs? | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/08/02/guess-whos-tracking-your-prescription-drugs
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As drug overdose deaths continue their record climb, Missouri last month became the 50th state to launch a prescription drug monitoring program, or PDMP. These state-run databases, which track prescriptions of certain potentially addictive or dangerous medications, are widely regarded as an essential tool to stem the opioid epidemic. Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens last month announced he was creating one in what had been the lone holdout state; legislative efforts to establish a program there had repeatedly failed because of lawmakers’ concerns about privacy.

Their concerns were not unfounded.

Federal courts in Utah and Oregon recently ruled that the Drug Enforcement Administration, in its effort to investigate suspected drug abusers or pill mills, can access information in those states’ PDMPs without a warrant, even over the states’ objections. And last month in California, the state supreme court ruled that the state medical board could view hundreds of patients’ prescription drug records in the course of its investigation of a physician accused of misconduct. “Physicians and patients have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the highly regulated prescription drug industry,” District Judge David Nuffer wrote in the Utah case.

Imagine living in a cell that’s smaller than a parking space — with a homicidal roommate ▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/03/24/the-deadly-consequences-of-solitary-with-a-cellmate

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How the Heroin Epidemic Differs in Communities of Color | Chasing Heroin | FRONTLINE | PBS
▻http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-heroin-epidemic-differs-in-communities-of-color

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ost of the media attention in the current nationwide heroin epidemic has focused on the uptick in overdose deaths among suburban, white, middle-class users — many of whom turned to the drug after experimenting with prescription painkillers.

And it’s among whites where the most dramatic effect has been seen — a rise of more than 260 percent in the last five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control."

But the epidemic has also been seeping into communities of color, where heroin overdose death rates have more than doubled among African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans, but gone largely overlooked by the media.

People develop addictions for a variety of reasons, which makes it difficult to gather concrete data on what’s happening in each community, said Dr. Wilson Compton, deputy director at the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse. “To a certain extent, these are hidden behaviors, and we only notice people at the end of their lives sometimes,” he said. “So we don’t always know all of the pathways that lead to this.”

Are State-Sanctioned Heroin Shooting Galleries a Good Idea?
▻http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/03/11/are-state-sanctioned-heroin-shooting-galleries-a-good-idea

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Studies of safe injection sites, largely in Canada and Australia, have found that they help reduce overdoses and don’t increase drug use or trafficking in the communities where they’re located.

Sites in the United States could violate the federal Controlled Substances Act, which prohibits possession of drugs such as heroin or cocaine or operating a place where people use them. But Congress could change the law or the U.S. Justice Department could make exceptions for the sites, said Leo Beletsky, a law and health sciences professor at Northeastern University.

Most state laws mirror the federal act and would also need to be amended to allow injection sites to operate legally, he said. Though if states begin legalizing them, the federal government could choose not to prosecute people who run and use them — just as the Justice Department has decided not to enforce federal laws for possessing, processing or selling marijuana in states that have legalized it.

Policing the Future | The Marshall Project
▻https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/03/policing-the-future?ref=hp-3-112
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"Still, the county police enjoy a better local reputation than the munis. Over the last five years, Jennings precinct commander Jeff Fuesting has tried to improve relations between officers — nearly all white — and residents — nearly all black — by going door to door for “Walk and Talks.” Fuesting had expressed interest in predictive policing years before, so when the department heads brought in HunchLab, they asked his precinct to roll it out first. They believed that data could help their officers police better and more objectively. By identifying and aggressively patrolling “hot spots,” as determined by the software, the police wanted to deter crime before it ever happened.

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What Is Predictive Policing?❞
▻https://vimeo.com/153983104