Criminal (In)justice

The criminal legal system has left us with too little justice, and too much mass incarceration, racial disparities, and lifelong burdens on those it touches. But few groups suffer as much under the system’s burdens as young black people. 

How America criminalizes black youth – we discuss it with Professor Kristin Henning, author of “The Rage of Innocence: How American Criminalizes Black Youth.”

The news is out: 2020 saw a 30% rise in murders, nationwide. 2021 isn’t looking good, either. Some want us to turn back to the aggressive policing of the past. But is there a better way to stem the tide of gun violence? What actually works? 

We look at the evidence and get real information on what to do, right now, to stem the violence, with Ciera Bates—Chamberlain, Executive Director of Live Free Chicago – Live Free Illinois, and T...

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona was larger than life – America’s Toughest Sheriff. But when he became an anti-immigration profiler of Latinos, they organized and resisted – and that changed everything. We talk to veteran journalist Jude Joffe-Block, co-author of “Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe versus the Latino Resistance,” published in 2021 by the University of California Press.

We know that every part of the criminal justice system needs transformational change. We’ve heard this about police, prosecution, the courts, and prisons. But what about public defense systems? 

We talk to Jonathan Rapping, founder and president of Gideon’s Promise, a national organization supporting public defenders, and the author of “Gideon’s Promise: A Public Defender Movement to Transform Criminal Justice,” (Beacon Press, 2020)...

When something goes catastrophically wrong with a police action, we ask whose fault it was.  Who made the mistake? Focusing on who’s to blame is a key question for justice.  But what if we want to prevent similar errors going forward?  How do we fix the system that allowed the mistake to happen? 

We look at root cause analysis in the Criminal justice system with three people who were part of a Sentinel Event Revi...

As the country looks for better alternatives to police for people in crisis, Eugene, Oregon’s CAHOOTS is the model. So what happens when a much bigger city tries this approach?

In this episode, we talk to Colorado Public Radio journalist David Sachs, who has been reporting on the STAR program, in Denver – an attempt to do for his city what CAHOOTS did for much smaller Eugene. His work on STAR has been heard on NPR, and has been publ...

When people experience a mental health crisis or homelessness, the best person to help may not be a uniformed and armed police officer.  So, who ya gonna call? We talk to journalist Rowan Moore Gerety, who has investigated the CAHOOTS program, in Eugene, Oregon.  His story, “An Alternative to Police That Police Can Get Behind,” was published in The Atlantic.

Criminal Injustice returns with new episodes in September 2021. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite interviews. This episode originally appeared September 17, 2019.

Urban violence kills thousands of Americans every year. It accounts for almost three quarters of the murders in the U.S., and it traps a huge number of people in poverty, blight, trauma and despair. What if there was a way cut murderous urban violence – ...

Criminal Injustice returns with new episodes in September 2021. Until then, we're reposting some of our favorite interviews. This episode originally appeared April 27, 2021.

When someone goes to prison, it can destroy the family left behind – and even more so when no one really knows what happened. But then, what does the family do years later, when that family member returns?

Our guest, filmmaker Shirley Vernae Williams, tells u...