According to Haley Walker’s article, School-to-Prison Pipeline, juvenile offenders are “ten times more likely” than the rest of the children in America to have mental health conditions. Many different reasons explain this disproportionate rate, including the removal of these juveniles from their social support systems. Kathryn Monahan wrote in The Effects of Visitation on Incarcerated Juvenile Offenders: How Contact with the Outside Impacts Adjustment on the Inside that when

Sports gambling is a market that has not always been legal, but that has not stopped sports bettors from placing bets on sporting events and winning or losing their money accordingly. In May 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court found the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (“PASPA”) unconstitutional. PASPA, which federally banned states from creating and regulating their own sports gambling markets, was deemed a violation of the commandeering clause of the U.S. Co

Crime is often a local issue, one handled by the community in which it occurs. Laws are mostly enforced by local or state police, and most defendants are prosecuted in local courts. Yet, 54% of Americans believe that national crime is “extremely or very serious,” compared with only 14% who believe the same about the area where they live. However, comparatively few crimes are prosecuted at the federal level, and the Constitution assigns responsibility for criminal prosecutions

Maryland has been making changes to its juvenile legislation, and the state most recently passed the Juvenile Restoration Act (JRA), which took effect in Oct. 2021. The JRA outlaws sentencing to life without the possibility of parole children who have been tried as adults. Further, it allows many individuals to submit a motion to the court for a sentence modification. The JRA is providing an avenue to rectify harsh sentences previously given to juveniles through these resente

On Feb. 3, 2022, the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia filed Blades v. Garland in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). The class action lawsuit alleges that the BOP uses an algorithm to calculate security designations for people charged in Washington, D.C., but that this algorithm is discriminatory and leads to people from Washington being treated unfairly. The plaintiffs call for a stop of the BO

On Oct. 28, 2021 after being injected with the first of a series of lethal injection drugs, John Marion Grant began to violently convulse, shake and projectile vomit for several minutes. Oklahoma executioners injected Grant with the controversial drug midazolam despite concerns about its tendency to subject individuals to unnecessary and excruciating pain. Grant’s case is but one example of the multitude of botched executions which have occurred in states across the country i