Eye-witness testimonies are an essential component of many trials. They are a fundamental piece of evidence that in many cases are often necessary for the police to secure a conviction, and some cases cannot proceed without them. The reliability of eye-witness testimonies is always a concern. There have been cases when eye-witness testimonies have been[…]
Woking Convict Invalid Prison: a woman prisoner in solitary confinement / Wellcome Collection, Creative Commons Prison officers tried to regulate women’s minds and bodies, and maintain a new disciplinary routine in the second half of the 1800s. Many female inmates resisted. By (left-to-right) Dr. Rachel Bennett, Dr. Catherine Cox, and Dr. Hilary Marland /[…]
Gloucestershire Constabulary at Northleach 1850s Pictures of Victorian policemen contain varied, conflicting and interacting strands of meaning. By Jane M. Card / 08.27.2018 Historian Introduction Images from the past are never to be taken at face value since, made according to contemporary visual conventions and artistic tastes, they reflect not objective reality but contemporary opinions[…]
Edited by Matthew A. McIntosh / 03.15.2018 Historian Brewminate Editor-in-Chief 1 – Deviance 1.1 – Introduction Merton’s Social Strain Theory: This diagram depicts Robert K. Merton’s Social Strain Theory. Deviance, in a sociological context, describes actions or behaviors that violate informal social norms or formally-enacted rules. Among those who study social norms and their relation[…]
Frederick Harran is the public safety director of the Bensalem Township Police Department in Pennsylvania, which has used the DNA program to solve burglaries. “This has probably been the greatest innovation in local law enforcement since the bulletproof vest,” he said. / Greg Kahn, special to ProPublica Police in Florida and other states are building[…]
The LaSalle Detention Center in Jena, Louisiana, a for-profit prison operated by the GEO Group. | Immigration Detention Justice Center By C.J. Atkins / 08.18.2016 Private, for-profit prison companies are having a rough time on Wall Street today after a new memo from Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates was released that instructs federal officials not[…]
Tens of thousands of people every year are sent to jail based on the results of a $2 roadside drug test. Widespread evidence shows that these tests routinely produce false positives. Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them? Graphics by Fathom | Photography by Todd Heisler, The New York Times Story Co-Published with the[…]
Leaked document shows the FBI does not have to jump through a lot of hoops to get access to journalists’ call data. (Photo: Roger H. Goun/flickr/cc) The other major question here is: why are these rules secret in the first place?’ By Deirdre Fulton / 07.01.2016 Newly leaked documents published by The Intercept expose just[…]
“Free speech rules don’t apply to Silicon Valley,” observes a civil liberties advocacy group. (Photo: Ian Higgins/flickr/cc) Technology could allow police and government forces to stop citizens from recording abuses of force By Nika Knight / 06.30.2016 Owning an iPhone could someday mean being blocked from recording anything that someone in power doesn’t want you[…]
The Supreme Court ruled 5-3 that evidence collected during an illegal stop can be used in court if the search was conducted after the discovery of an arrest warrant. (Photo: Mark Fischer/flickr/cc) “This case tells everyone…that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in[…]
CONVICTED RAPIST BROCK ALLEN TURNER Brock Allen Turner, who withdrew from the university, was arrested after students saw him lying on top of an unconscious woman outside a frat party From Sam Levin at The Guardian / 06.02.2016: A former Stanford University athlete convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months[…]
By Jessica Mason / 04.30.2016 Efforts to gut the federal False Claims Act backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce got a hearing on Capitol Hill Thursday. The federal push builds on previous back-door Chamber efforts through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to discourage states from pursuing fraud claims. The False Claims Act (FCA)[…]
By Joe Clark / 04.04.2016 Ten NYPD officers sat down on camera with NBC New York to discuss racism and the illegal quota based system they say their department still uses to judge a cop’s performance. In 2010, the State of New York banned law enforcement agencies from using quota based job performance evaluations. NYPD[…]
Photo Scott Hirko/Getty Images, Mosaic David Sleight/ProPublica By Joaquin Sapien (ProPublica) / 03.29.2016: The Innocence Project released a report Tuesday alleging that prosecutors across the country are almost never punished when they withhold evidence or commit other forms of misconduct that land innocent people in prison. The Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal group that[…]