THE CATALOG

After six years and 150+ interviews, Criminal Injustice is wrapping up. Dave and producer Josh Raulerson look back on what the show has accomplished and what it's meant to them.

On Criminal Injustice, we’ve examined a host of changes and reforms that have altered the criminal justice landscape. But nothing – nothing – can match the change brought to every aspect of the system by the use of DNA to uncover wrongful convictions.

In Episode 55, we brought you a conversation with Kevin Sharp: a former federal judge who gave it up because he had to sentence young men like Chris Young to cruel and unjust mandatory sentences. Several years later, we have an update: we talk with Kevin Sharp, and this time with Chris Young too.

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.

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?

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 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?

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?

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?

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?

In the world of police reform, accountability for misconduct depends on transparency – and that kind of transparency exists in very few places. So when a state finally does open its files on police discipline, what do we learn?

Since the murder of George Floyd, cities and towns everywhere have proposed reforms that they hope can transform their police departments. Proposals range from more body cameras to eliminating police departments entirely. But what really works? Which of these will improve public safety, for everyone?

Every day in American courtrooms, forensic science offers evidence to judges and juries: fingerprints, ballistics, shoe prints, even bite marks. It’s supposed to provide scientific proof of guilt. But what if it’s a lot less reliable than we think?

Since George Floyd’s death, countless advocates, government officials, task forces and commissions have made demands and proposals for police reform. But one reform advocate took a novel approach: she went inside the police organization, and joined up.

Since the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May of 2020, many governments, commissions, and organizations have come out with plans to change police departments. What does this look like when the leaders of a reform effort are African American, from law enforcement, and female?

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?

In the US, the local prosecutor – usu the district attorney has a huge influence on the criminal system. The DA influences who gets prosecuted, for what, how long they serve if convicted – even who gets the death penalty. So what happens when the usual tough on crime DA gets replaced – by someone determined to bring transformational change to prosecution?

For years, advocates for better policing have pushed various reforms: consent decrees, civilian oversight, body cameras. But after George Floyd’s death and 2020, is reform still a viable alternative? Or is it defund or bust?

We’ve spoken here about exoneration of the wrongfully convicted – how difficult and how important it is. But what happens to the exoneree – to that person – after release? How does that person build a life after years in prison, for something he or she did not do?

Returning to life outside of prison: It’s called re-entry. Getting people ready to go home just makes sense if you want them to succeed, and over 95 percent of all imprisoned people are eventually released. But we didn’t always do much to assure reentry success, and in many places and many ways, we still don’t. What does the evidence show about what works?

Leaving incarceration, and returning to life outside of prison. It’s a difficult process, and many end up back behind bars. What does it take to make it work? What more can be done to support those coming home? We hear it directly from two men who have done it. Mr. F. and Mr. R. (identities withheld) describe their steps into the free world after each served decades in prison.

More US jurisdictions are questioning the use of money bail systems for pretrial release from jail. But many in law enforcement and the bail bond industry say this will damage public safety. Is that true? What really happens when you trash cash bail?

President Richard Nixon declared illegal drugs to be public enemy number one in 1971. Almost 50 years later, fifty years of failure, waste, and criminal justice mistakes in the name of the war on drugs, is the end of this disaster finally in sight?

We hear it everywhere: trust in police has eroded, reaching historic low point. Yet we know that if police want to make communities safe and livable, nothing is more important than trust. How can police build trust with the public, especially in a time when race and police conduct is at the forefront?

Mandatory minimum sentences helped fill prisons in the U.S., and they played a substantial role in the mass incarceration we see now. What were these sentences supposed to do, and where did they go wrong? Most importantly, how do we get rid of them?

Since the murder of George Floyd, hundreds of protests against police misconduct have occurred across the country. People are demanding real change, right now. But let’s step back, and take the long view: has American policing improved? Even if the answer is yes, what more must police do to give all Americans the policing they deserve, equally, fairly, and free or racial bias?

We’ve all heard about the cases of wrongfully convicted people going to prison for the crimes others committed. In some cases, DNA exonerates them and finds the person who really did it. But what about people wrongfully convicted – of crimes that never happened at all?

More than two million Americans are incarcerated in prisons and jails. These are often violent, difficult, and unhealthy places. But if prison is dangerous, how much more so – is Death Row? And how does a person live, knowing the only way out is death by execution?

With the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, the search for ways to tame police misconduct has become more intense than ever. Can requiring officers to have private insurance play a role?

In the storm of protests after the murder of George Floyd, many say that having more African American and Latino officers will reduce police violence and force used against people of color. Will it?

Pittsburgh has been named America’s most livable city many times over by magazines and ratings guides. And it is pretty great. At least, for people like me. What is it like for African American residents? And why are their experiences with our police so different than mine?

Our guest is the Reverend Dr. John Welch, former Vice President and Dean of the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. He tells us what it’s like to be in a thriving American city, as a black man, especially with regard to policing.

With incidents of serious injuries and deaths at the hands of police, cities face the costs of settlements and jury verdicts. Some of these cases mean millions of dollars paid. How do cities pay for this? What does it mean to city budgets? And how is it that someone is making money off of this?

The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off outrage, weeks of demonstrations across the country and around the world, and has started discussion and legislative action at every level of government. On this episode, we’ll ask an African American law enforcement leader what policing has been like – and where it goes now.

Can you believe it? Our first episode was published on this date in 2016! 117 interviews and countless bonus episodes later, producer Josh Raulerson joins Dave to mark the occasion with a look back at four years of Criminal Injustice.

Every year, more than 600,000 Americans leave our jails and prisons. Many are on parole. Others people are put on probation instead of going to prison. The job of supervising all of them falls to parole and probation officers.

San Quentin Prison in California has always had a reputation as one of the toughest, most violent prisons anywhere. But twelve years ago, the prison’s in-house newspaper, produced by inmates, began to change things. What can journalism do for incarcerated people, and for the prisons in which they serve their sentences? And what about the impact on people outside of prison?

Every year, courts hand out sentences of life without the possibility of parole to people convicted of serious crimes.  Our guest today was one of those people, and he’ll tell us what that was like – and, with his sentence commuted, what his life is like on the outside, after 43 years. 

When HIV appeared in the U.S., it was a death sentence and a source of real fear. Now, with treatment, people living with the virus can live long and full lives. So why do laws still criminalize some actions of people living with HIV?

Police suicides are on the rise. Just how bad is the problem? Why is it happening, and what can be done to stop it?

The National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice began just a year after Ferguson. The Initiative aimed to improve criminal justice outcomes and police-community relations in six cities. Now the results are in. Did it work? And what can we learn as we look for ways to improve our whole system?

In the U.S., our prisons are full of people raised in the poorest neighborhoods, who only had access to the worst schools. So what happens when they can enter a first-class college program – inside prison?

The U.S. uses solitary confinement like no other country in the world, and nowhere more than the Supermax prison in Colorado. Solitary damages prisoners' minds, and the U.N. has called it torture. What happens when prisoners leave Supermax? 

Keegan Hamilton is a senior reporter at Vice News.

The law makes heroin, cocaine, and meth illegal according to their defined chemical structures. But what about drugs made from synthetic compounds, which can be changed with a tiny tweak in a clandestine lab? Can the law just say "close enough?"

Koch Industries and Charles and David Koch – names that are synonymous with right-wing political causes and deregulation of industry. So why is Koch joining with the left to give former inmates second chances?

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 – by half?

Many people make their social media posts public.  Everyone can see them, like a signed billboard visible anywhere in the world. So, what should we think when we learn that *some* police officers, in some departments, have been posting racist messages or memes endorsing violence, visible to anyone on the Internet? 

In the last five years, we’ve seen case after case of police killing unarmed civilians – even people running away. Usually, officers do not face charges; when they do, juries often acquit them. Does the law governing police use of
force favor police?

Mass incarceration remains the hallmark of the US justice system, as it has been for decades. In the last ten years, in some states, we see less jail in low-level cases and more electronic monitoring. But does this just trade one form of custody for another?

The American criminal justice system is all about finding the bad guys, convicting them, and penalizing them -- often by sending them to prison. But what does that do to help victims restore themselves? Can we imagine a system not of criminal justice, but restorative justice?

American prosecutors have always been powerful figures in our justice system: they decide the charges, and offer the plea bargains. But our guest says they have become far too powerful – resulting in mass incarceration and the wrecking of human lives over trivial offenses.

Jury service is THE way that members of the public participate in the criminal justice system. But who gets to serve? Are certain racial or ethnic groups excluded, and what’s the effect of these exclusions in the courtroom?

When policing has a major crisis – the 1980s crime wave, or the killings of unarmed black men by police in 2014 and 2015 – we often grab for a high-tech fix. But technology seldom becomes the silver bullet we hope for. Our guest has put this trend under the microscope. We talk with veteran investigative journalist Matt Stroud about his new book, Thin Blue Lie: The Failure of High-Tech Policing, published in April of 2019.

Americans know that if they want a better criminal justice system, prosecutors must drive change. We’ve seen the result in election of more progressive prosecutors across the country. But what should this new wave of prosecutors do? What policies should shape their priorities?

We try to solve the problem of mass incarceration by eliminating mandatory sentences, or by getting rid of cash bail. But what about a better method of providing criminal defense services? Could this cut prison and jail populations, AND secure public safety? There’s a way to do this: use a holistic model for criminal defense services.

Chicago has seen police scandals for decades -- from torturing suspects into confessions to the Laquan McDonald murder and coverup. 

James Kalven has combined journalism and human rights work to spur police reform. Has it worked? And what lies ahead for a city awash in homicides and distrust of police?

Black Americans say they often experience difficulty with police that whites don't experience: extra scrutiny, harassment, profiling, even violence. Police say they have a difficult job that others just don't understand. What's it like to be both black and a police officer?

Since the creation of the first SWAT teams in the 1960s, militarized police units have multiplied. SWAT teams can rescue hostages or handle emergencies – but are they used that way? Do they increase public safety? And what’s the impact on the public, and on officers?

When the police kill an unarmed black man, we know the family and community suffer. But what about other people – particularly Black Americans beyond those closest to the victim – what’s the impact on them?

We often hear about new methods police try to achieve better results against crime. But do the police have any reason to believe that their new approaches will work? Are their new initiatives based on hope, or on actual evidence that they will really help?

With every police shooting of an unarmed civilian, we hear calls for civilian oversight of police. But just creating an oversight agency is no magic bullet. What does a civilian review board need to succeed? What’s the evidence on the success of civilian oversight?

The Supreme Court banned racial discrimination in jury selection decades ago. But some prosecutors refused to abide by the rules. They developed work arounds, including sorting jurors by their reactions to the OJ Simpson verdict. Now the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) argues that using the OJ verdict as racial discrimination tool violates the Constitution.

Surveillance cameras are everywhere in American cities and
towns. They’re touted as crime fighting tools, but do they
really work? Are they worth the cost – in money, and in
privacy? Dr. Nancy LaVigne, vice president for justice
policy, of the non-partisan Urban Institute is the lead author
of the largest study of the effectiveness of surveillance
cameras.

Female police officers bring a unique, positive skill set to
the job. They communicate better, and have a special talent
for de-escalation. In an era when we want less force and
more de-escalation, should the future of policing be female?

When juveniles face criminal charges, most end up on probation. This should put their young lives on track. But too often, it’s just another set of rules, and kids fall into deeper trouble. Can we transform probation for juveniles, so more kids don’t become adult offenders?

Prisons in the U.S. frequently use long-term solitary confinement, even though the evidence makes clear that solitary has devastating effects on prisoners’ mental and physical health.  Some authorities call long-term solitary nothing short of torture.  So what can we make of our prisons using solitary for people with significant disabilities?  If solitary devastates so-called normal prisoners, what does it do to those with severe physical or cognitive impairments? 

In the US, we incarcerate our fellow citizens at the highest rate in the world. And once they are in prison, we give the incarcerated not another thought. But one program works to help improve our imprisoned population, by teaching them college courses inside – along with college students, from the outside.

Every four years, the whole sports-loving planet is watching soccer’s World Cup. Soccer is the world’s most popular sport – so how did its governing body, FIFA, become the focus of the most massive corruption scandal in sports history? And why was that scandal broken by U.S. law enforcement?

We often hear that police work requires split-second responses to keep officers and the public safe. But this might be less true than we think. Can we build a better cop, by training them to slow things down?

The word “torture” conjures images of Abu Ghraib in Iraq, or waterboarding at CIA black sites. But in the 70s and 80s, torture went on in parts of the Chicago Police Department for years. We’ll learn what happened, and we’ll talk about the consequences for civilians and the justice system.

We know there are real criminals out there, people who need to go to prison. But what happens when a criminal admits his crimes, but goes to prison for something he swears he did not do -- a notorious double homicide? This is the story of drug dealer Calvin Buari, presented by journalist Steve Fishman in the new podcast Empire on Blood.

The U.S. Department of Justice enforces the federal Constitution and statutes, and has the lead role in upholding the rule of law. But in the last year and a half, DOJ has received withering criticism and outright denunciation from the president. What’s the impact on the Department, and the rule of law? 

In the US, there have been almost two thousand wrongful convictions Yet in so many cases, prosecutors, police, judges and even defense attorneys simply refuse to acknowledge these catastrophic mistakes. Our guest – a former prosecutor – explains why we blind ourselves to these injustices.

Prosecutors must disclose any evidence that goes against guilt or lessens punishment. The Constitution says so. But some state laws allow them to withhold the evidence until just before trial, so defendant have to make plea decisions without it. This skews the whole system, and is long overdue for change.

For people attempting to re-enter society from jail, a job is key to staying straight. And a driver’s license is a must for lots of jobs. So why does the law in so many states suspend drivers licenses for crimes having nothing to do with driving?

In U.S. courts using bail for pretrial release, those with enough money to get out before trial, but those without cash stay in. But support for reform has been building, and New Jersey did away with cash bail almost entirely in 2017. What happens instead of bail, and how is it working so far? 

In the U.S., judges set bail – an amount of money defendants must deposit with the court -- to make sure people appear in court. Defendants must pay the bail amount to get released to wait for trial. Those with enough money to get out before trial, but those without cash stay in jail – regardless of the risk they pose. Could a data-based system do a better job of assessing these risks, and keep the poor out of jail before trial?

Private prisons hold over 100,000 people in the U.S. Some say they provide needed flexibility as corrections populations change and budgets shrink. But what really happens when punishment is about profit? 

Why has the US prison population grown for decades, surpassing two million? We’ve put more people in jail, but new research shows it’s not just how many people go to prison. What counts, for prison growth, is how long they stay.

The criminal justice system is designed to enforce accountability when bad things happen. But when it comes to preventing them from happening in the first place, courts and law enforcement agencies could learn a thing or two from the aviation and healthcare industries.

An important rule of legal ethics is the obligation to keep client information confidential. Lawyers say that rule is fundamental to the attorney-client relationship, so clients can speak freely. But what happens when following that rule keep someone else – an innocent person – in prison? That’s what happened to Alton Logan, who sat in prison in Illinois for 26 years, even though two lawyers who represented the real killer knew the truth all along.

When bad behavior by a police officer makes news, police often say that it’s just about one bad officer. But police departments seldom make the character of each officer the biggest factor in who they hire.

Three years after Ferguson, criminal justice reform has spurred discussion about police, courts and incarceration. PAC leader Whitney Tymas sees prosecutors as the key to fundamental change. She explains how her organization tackles local elections and what they’re trying to accomplish.

Since they began in the early 20th century, juvenile courts always treated kids differently – as people who were young enough to change. This began to change in the 1980s and 1990s when crime really spiked and we began putting some kids in adult courts and prisons – even giving life without parole and death penalties.Marsha Levick, deputy director and chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, explains what changed.

Police have endured harsh public scrutiny over use of force cases, but prosecutors have also taken heat for choosing not to pursue cases when civilians are shot by police.

Older, traditional prosecutorial professional organizations, such as the National District Attorneys Association, have fought against any changes. But one group, the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, has taken a more open approach, arguing for the importance of prosecutorial independence and transparency.

David LaBahn is the CEO and president for the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

Gun violence kills thousands of Americans every year. It carries massive consequences in lives lost, injuries and medical treatment, but what about the economic cost – in jobs, businesses and community development? How can we measure the economic opportunity costs of gun violence?

The death penalty – once a constant in U.S. criminal justice – has actually declined for more than a decade. In the last few years, it’s fallen dramatically, with death sentences handed down and executions way off. Why? And what does it mean for the rest of the criminal justice system?

The Chicago Police Department has a big problem with misconduct against civilians – both now and in the past. How much does this cost the city financially? What do the patterns of misconduct tell us? And why has the city done almost nothing to address those patterns?

Police killings of unarmed black men, stop-and-frisk policies and racially disproportionate prison populations have all been called symptoms of a broken criminal justice system.

Georgetown law professor and author Paul Butler says no – this is exactly the way the system was designed to work.

Mass incarceration in the U.S. created crisis conditions in prisons everywhere, and modern prison systems now have to address much more than just locking inmates up. 

Killings of unarmed black people by police have worsened historically troubled police-community relations. Until recently, little research existed that might help explain this or improve the situation. Social psychologists have created work that helps us understand why things go wrong in policing, what role race plays, and how we can do better.

After riots erupted Ferguson in 2014, investigations revealed that the entire criminal justice system in St. Louis County – not just the police department – levied massive amounts of fines and fees on its poorest citizens in order to fund itself.  It was a wake-up call, but one organization had been in place working on these issues for five years.

The federal government doesn't record anything when police shoot civilians, and there's no official national database to tell us how big or complex the problem is.

One newspaper journalist says he learned a lot requesting documents from more than 400 jurisdictions in his home state alone. In six years and more than 800 shootings, not one incident resulted in criminal charges.

James Comey wasn’t the nation’s embattled former FBI Director in 2002; he was the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan. It was around then that he gave a speech to a group of fellow attorneys -- men and women with impeccable courtroom records. He had a few... harsh words.

We hear it all the time: law enforcement needs to change for the 21st century. But what does "21st century policing" actually mean, and how would that police department be different than what we have now?

In the last 25 years, DNA has become a tool of unparalleled power, solving the coldest cases and overturning guilty verdicts based on faulty forensics, false confessions, and bad eyewitness identification. But a new process for analyzing DNA using computers means that now, DNA can be even more powerful, faster and more accurate.

A chief of police has to lead officers toward a strong relationship with the communities they serve, but in the past, the same department may have participated in or enforced racial discrimination and injustice.

Being a federal judge is a lawyer’s dream job – lifetime tenure, sophisticated cases and a good salary, too. So why did a well-respected federal trial judge in Tennessee give it all up just six years in?

Automatic license plate readers – those cameras on police cars and light poles that capture plate numbers – have been in widespread use since the 1990s. But some argue regulations for how and how long police can use and store that information hasn’t kept up with the technology.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the end of federal efforts to fix forensic science in April, but not because the problems were solved. Why shut down the National Commission on Forensic Science now, just as better scientific standards were emerging? And what will it mean for wrongful convictions?

The Trump administration has promised a return to "tough on crime" criminal justice policies, including a recent memo that instructs federal prosecutors to reverse Obama era reforms meant to curb mandatory minimum sentences.

Drone aircraft were developed as weapons of war, but now they have begun to find their way into domestic police work as well. Drones can help officers trace suspects or missing persons and could assess threats like toxic spills. But they pose a threat to privacy and criminal justice standards, too.

The exposure of wrongful convictions began in 1989, and it upended the idea that guilty verdicts were always trustworthy. When there’s a wrongful conviction, what has to happen to get a court to exonerate someone?

Marissa Boyers Bluestine is the Litigation Director for the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, and she tells us what it’s really like, on the ground, working to establish innocence – after a guilty verdict.

The last few years have exposed problems in policing: use of force, high-tech surveillance, and a lack of transparency. Our guest argues that the fault for this lies not just with the police, or the courts – it’s on us.

Americans who live in high-crime neighborhoods often get portrayed as anti-police, but an Urban Institute study released in February shows something different: strong respect for the law and a willingness to help with public safety.

American juries are composed of 12 ordinary citizens tasked with bringing justice to the downtrodden and common sense to the law – no easy job. But who actually gets to serve? Research out of North Carolina shows some people get removed from jury pools much more often than others.

Racial reconciliation – an attempt to speak plainly about racial strife between police and citizens of color – is a necessary step toward comprehensive police reform. It’s important, and no doubt difficult – but what does it actually look and feel like on the ground?

Aseante Hylick builds these conversations across the U.S.

Efforts to oversee police several decades ago resulted in hundreds of complaint review boards that investigate individual complaints. But a new type of oversight is gaining traction – one in which appointed civilians look at whole departments and how they do their jobs.

When a group of people is given great power to watch over the rest of us, how do we make sure they use that power correctly?

Pittsburgh’s Citizen Police Review Board was created in 1997 to do just that. Its investigators weigh in on individual complaints and issue findings independent of city leadership and department administrators.

President Donald Trump has called for a return to “law and order” policing and shown support for stop and frisk and heavy use of force. Many modern police leaders aren’t buying in.

American cities all have crime and violence in some neighborhoods. People in these communities, and the police who work there, all want less crime and greater safety. So why do police and communities find themselves mistrusting each and unable to work together? How can we break out of this cycle?

We hear a lot about crime trends, almost always involving homicides or felonies. But the vast majority of criminal offenses are misdemeanors. These convictions can have a major impact on employment, education, you name it - yet they are hardly studied at all.

From Obama-era task forces to widespread protests, the idea of community policing has become part of our national conversation. But even if you wanted to make a difference, where would you start?

We know that the current system for police interrogation, the Reid Technique, can lead to false confessions. It’s been taught to hundreds of thousands of police officers for decades. But now there’s another way to question suspects: the PEACE method. Developed in the United Kingdom in response to terrible false confession cases there, it’s revolutionizing police questioning across the world. Will it work in the U.S. too?

Facial recognition technology is being used by police all over the U.S. using images of millions of innocent Americans. It’s a lot less accurate than what we see on TV, and it may be pointing police at a disproportionate number of minority citizens.

The largest provider of services to the mentally ill in America is not a health care provider – it is the criminal justice system. And on any given day, Chicago's Cook County Jail is actually the largest mental health institution in the entire country.

The NAACP used the legal system to overcome separate but equal, desegregate schools and public facilities, and bring some measure of equal justice to African Americans living under Jim Crow laws in the U.S. What role does this legendary organization have now in the era of Black Lives Matter, and how would Thurgood Marshall interpret it all?

More than ten years ago, states began passing Stand Your Ground Laws: the laws said people defending themselves could use force, even deadly force, in any public place where they had a right to be.  Proponents said we’d be safer from crime and especially violence and murder.

Do the legal rules for using deadly force, set by the Supreme Court in the 1980s, still make sense? Do they protect the officer and the public, or is it time to change how police make the decision to take a life?

When a sexual assault occurs, police encourage the victim to complete a “rape kit” – a standardized procedure to collect evidence needed to find and prosecute the assailant.  But instead of rapid usage of this evidence, tens of thousands of the completed kits still sit in police warehouses – untested and waiting.

When police officers get in trouble, we think their law enforcement careers end. But some resign before they’re canned and move on to serve – creating new and bigger problems – in other police departments. Is this legal? What about background checks? Does anyone track this?

Police departments in the U.S. are under scrutiny like never before. Calls for change are the only constant.  So how does a police chief lead a department in this climate?  And what’s most important as we look forward, two years after Ferguson?

What would innovation in probation look like? For years, it’s meant reporting to your agent, obeying conditions set by the court, drug testing – and eventually, you screw up and go back to jail. The only constants were huge caseloads and high failure rates.

Wayne McKenzie, General Counsel to the New York City Department of Probation, says change is here in the form of Neighborhood Opportunity Networks and their growing cohort of city partnerships. 

New thinking, borrowed from progressive policing and social justice programs, has made probation a genuine launching pad for a second chance and public safety.

DNA exonerations have proven that some people confess to serious crimes they didn’t commit, even without physical abuse or mental illness. Why would anyone do this? Do police cause this, intentionally or not, because of the questioning techniques they use? And what can we do to make sure this doesn’t occur? 

Since the mid 1980s, mandatory minimum drug sentences have served as the driving force behind the explosion in the federal prison population, and also the vast racial disproportionality in that population. 

The Serial podcast, and its host Sarah Koenig, pulled off two amazing feats. Serial broke podcasting open: it was the first podcast to see 5 million downloads and now has well over 80 million. But it also pointed the lens of a full, in-depth journalistic examination on just one murder case. 

Police departments in the U.S. are under scrutiny like never before. Calls for change are the only constant.  So how does a police chief lead a department in this climate?  And what’s most important as we look forward, two years after Ferguson?

We see it over and over: police officers confront a person in the throes of mental illness. Some of these people may be dangerous; most are not violent, but they are confused, disturbed, and not acting rationally. Police officers are trained for a different job: detecting and preventing crime and disorder, and too often, things go terribly wrong, resulting in violence and even the death of a person with a mental illness.

The prosecutor sits in a powerful position in the American criminal justice system, deciding who to charge and with what, and wielding significant discretion.  Some prosecutors use this power to focus narrowly on crime but George Gascon, District Attorney in San Francisco, CA, uses his office to attempt to better the system, to increase public safety, and to make his city a stronger community.

The U.S. is the land of due process and constitutional rights. So how do police get the right to seize the property of citizens without criminal convictions, often without even criminal charges? The answer is civil asset forfeiture: an old tool designed to take away the ill-gotten gains of big-time criminals, but it’s morphed into a way for police departments to seize money and property from regular people and keep it to fund their own operations.

In our state legal systems, elected county prosecutors decide who gets tried and on what charges.  With this great power, are there any limits? With controversy surrounding the investigation of police misconduct in so many cities, should local prosecutors be the ones deciding whether to charge police officers?

To get released before trial, most American courts require defendants to post bail money. For people too poor to raise even the lowest amounts, this means staying in jail while waiting for trial to begin. Regardless of guilt, those with means can walk free to prepare from afar. Staying in jail awaiting trial damages both lives and legal cases: people in custody lose jobs, housing, and property, and statistics show that they end up with longer sentences if they’re found guilty. And all of this costs taxpayers billions. But there's a better way.

Pimps and sex traffickers have long been part of the dark side of the economy, but they now use the internet for their ugly business.  And some of this involves trafficking underage girls for sex.  Our guest has pioneered an approach to meeting this challenge with a distinctively 21st-century solution: using algorithmic analysis on big data to identify and catch sex traffickers who operate online. 

The tattered system for supplying criminal defense services to the poor is a shambles. More than 50 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that persons charged with crimes must be provided with a defense lawyer if they are too poor to afford one, that promise has been broken. In countless places around the U.S., governments simply do not provide the resources for poor people charged with crimes to have a real defense. The result: defense lawyers with impossible caseloads struggling to meet the constitutional minimum standards for defense. It’s a national scandal, and yet year after year, state and local governments do too little – or nothing – to fix it.

In the second part of our look at what things might look at after the War on Drugs, we turn to Portugal. This country, a member of the European Union, decriminalized the possession of all drugs in amounts sufficient for personal use. You read that right: Portugal decriminalized all drugs – heroin, cocaine, you name it – and turned completely toward a public health outlook, and away from a law enforcement model.

More than four decades after President Richard Nixon first declared the War on Drugs, the U.S. is at a crossroads. We can’t arrest and jail our way out of the problem, and a small but growing number of jurisdictions are decriminalizing cannabis. So what is the next step?

With every shooting incident, study, and official statement, one demand always appears: better training for police.  It’s easy to say and a no brainer to support, but what does that actually mean? 

Big Data has come to policing. Departments nationwide with lots of data and robust analysis capability say they can predict where crime may occur, and maybe even who will be involved as perpetrator or victim. Does this help police fight crime? And if it does, what are the downsides for citizens and civil liberties?

Walt Pavlo had a good job, a family, a nice home. He never planned on going to prison. Now that he's out, he has a new job: counseling others who are about to enter the system.

In each of 93 federal districts in America, the United States Attorney is the chief federal prosecutor and law enforcement officer. The U.S. Attorney has immense responsibilities and great power, deciding what cases to pursue, who to charge, and what priorities to set. At least as important, the U.S. Attorney decides who not to charge and when to drop cases for lack of evidence. The job isn’t just to get convictions; it’s to do justice.

David Hickton is the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

With hundreds of exonerations of the wrongfully convicted, it’s easy to think that the law and lawyers making use of DNA have made all the difference. But investigative journalists have made huge contributions: exposing shoddy forensics, showing the public how eyewitness testimony goes wrong and how false confessions get made, and confronting police wrongdoing and lack of accountability. Without the untiring efforts of reporters, much of the injustice in the criminal system would stay hidden.

With the public discussion of police misconduct and lack of trust at a fever pitch, the loudest voices often dominate. We need the insight of a person with the experience of a police officer, with deep knowledge of the law and social science, and with the oral and verbal skills of a great public communicator. Enter this week's guest.

The federal judge sits astride the American justice system; few positions accord a person such responsibility, power and respect. But if it's really a plum gig, what would make a federal judge walk away? How does a judge cope with an unjust system?

Robert Cindrich is a former U.S. District Court judge and former United States Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. He is now of counsel to the law firm of Schnader Harrison Segal and Lewis.

For decades, police in the U.S. have used force under the Supreme Court's rule that they can do as much as appears "reasonably necessary" to accomplish their lawful goals. But after almost two years of national attention on police shootings of blacks, a major police professional organization has proposed -- for the first time -- that police use force less often and with more restraint than is legally required. Is this a turning point?

Chuck Wexler is Executive Director of the Washington D.C.-based Police Executive Research Forum.

The U.S. is number one in the world when it comes to incarcerating its own citizens.  With one in three black men in the U.S. likely to go to prison during his lifetime, the system begs for reform, burdens taxpayers, and weakens our country and particularly our communities of color.  After decades of resistance, the system may see changes and shrinking prison populations, because of bipartisan support for improvement.

Marc Mauer is Executive Director of the Washington D.C.-based Sentencing Project.

When someone dies or has his or her constitutional rights violated in an encounter with the police, officers can be sued. But why are these suits so tough to win even in the worst cases of misconduct? And what does the multiple millions of dollars in damages every year say about the state of police abuse in the U.S.?

David Rudovsky is a national leader in civil rights and civil liberties litigation. He is a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a founding partner at Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing and Feinberg.

When there’s a bad shooting by police, local prosecutors seldom take action. The feds can step in, but they rarely do. Why? And even when they do, why do they lose these cases so often?

Mark Kappelhoff is clinical professor of law at the University of Minnesota, and served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General with the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

For too long, the police "warrior" culture has relied on the use of force as its ultimate tool. But one high-ranking veteran officer and his colleagues have re-imagined police work: they give everyone unconditional respect. And it works.

Capt. Chip Huth of the Kansas City (MO) Police Dept. is co-author of Unleashing the Power of Unconditional Respect: Transforming Law Enforcement and Police Training.

Racial bias in the criminal justice system isn't just about old-school bigotry. The real problem is unconscious bias in the minds of most of us, including law enforcement. How does this affect officers' life-and-death decision making?

Melba Pearson is the Assistant District Attorney for Miami-Dade, Fla., and President of the National Black Prosecutors Association.

Take the Harvard Implicit Association Test.

Sometimes a local law enforcement agency is so dysfunctional that the federal government has to get involved. What does a top-to-bottom overhaul of an entire police department look like?

Sam Walker is Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska, and a leading expert on police accountability.

Surveillance technology and civil liberties don't often go together. But when it comes to preventing and punishing police misconduct, many civil libertarians think equipping officers with body-worn cameras could make a difference.

We look at the promise and perils of police body cameras in conversation with Vic Walczak, Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.