Malicious prosecution is a major problem in the United States. The Washington Post found government misconduct in some manner caused over half of all wrongful criminal convictions. However, following a 6-3 ruling handed down by the Supreme Court on April 4, 2022, the wide privileges generally granted to the government have been substantially stripped back, providing victims of malicious prosecution an avenue to sue police departments and prosecution offices that engage in the

Fingerprint analysis was first proposed for criminal identification in the 19th century and has since become an evidentiary staple of forensic science for law enforcement agencies both on and off the screen. Despite its establishment in the criminal legal system and in television, the science behind latent fingerprint identification, or rather the lack thereof, needs to be addressed. To understand the basis of the critiques against latent fingerprint identification, one must

There are over 200,000 women currently incarcerated in the United States. Thousands of these women are pregnant. Many persons become incarcerated while pregnant, although they may not find out until they have been imprisoned for weeks. Some persons can become pregnant after they are incarcerated as well. The National Commission on Correctional Healthcare recommends that women be tested for pregnancy upon arrival to jail or prison, but this recommendation is not followed by al

The First Step Act, implemented on Dec. 21, 2018, required the Department of Justice (DOJ) to “develop a risk needs assessment system to be used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to assess the recidivism risk and criminogenic needs of all federal prisoners and to place prisoners in recidivism reducing programs and productive activities to address their needs and reduce the risk.” Critics instantly predicted this plan would create issues of racial and gender bias. In July

Though traditional notions of public safety have long regarded law enforcement as the only effective means of keeping communities safe, the current state of policing—marked by abuses of discretion, civil rights violations and increasing rates of brutality—casts doubt on whether police departments can or should be responsible for overseeing public safety measures in their current capacity, if at all. In response to such doubt, there are growing calls to defund the police —the