Criminal Justice

September 8, 2014 - Angela A. Allen-Bell, a professor at Southern University Law Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has a new article out that turns the tables on anti-Black Panther Party rhetoric by asking if the treatment the group has suffered at the hands of government officials constitutes a form of domestic terrorism.

August 25, 2014 - Following the $16 billion Justice Department settlement with North Carolina-based Bank of America for financial crimes, Dirt Diggers Digest looks at prosecution of corporate crime of another sort -- and finds less-than-vigorous prosecution for environmental offense.

May 19, 2014 - Legislation to open the state to oil and gas drilling would impose prison time for unauthorized individuals to disclose chemicals in fracking fluids that the industry wants kept secret. At the same time, it fails to address some of fracking's most serious environmental and public health risks.

April 28, 2014 - Prisoners' advocates call the reforms a step forward, but they don't address discrimination in presidential pardons or apply to everyone serving harsh sentences from outdated guidelines.

April 4, 2014 - The ruling means that the woman whose drug use had her facing a possible life term can at most be charged with manslaughter in the death of her stillborn daughter.

March 28, 2014 - This week Amnesty International released its annual report on the death penalty worldwide, finding that the United States executes more people than just four other countries -- China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It also shows that when it comes to state-sanctioned killing, the U.S. South is an outlier among outliers.

December 5, 2013 - Controversy continues over an Election Day police operation in the small North Carolina town of Mount Gilead that disproportionately affected black residents. Such operations appear to violate policing best practices, but law enforcement officers involved defend their actions.