Criminal (In)justice

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**Criminal (In)justice**

Sometimes challenging, often disturbing, occasionally absurd, always timely: Criminal Injustice explores the most complex and urgent issues facing the U.S. criminal justice system in conversation with the field's most knowledgeable experts. Professor David Harris and guests take on everything from racial bias to use of force… from surveillance technology to mass incarceration… and from police abuse and misconduct to the astonishing, frequently hilarious misdeeds of "Lawyers Behaving Badly." It's not a lecture hall, and you don't need a law degree to keep up. But you'll walk away from each episode with a deeper, richer understanding of what's wrong with the criminal justice system – and how to fix it.

Latest Episodes:

Bonus: Why Trump's Lawsuits Didn't Fly Dec 23, 2020

Show notes

Why did the Trump legal team fail to overturn the election in court? It's not complicated.

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#130 Does Eliminating Cash Bail Harm Public Safety? Dec 15, 2020

Show notes

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? Dr. Don Stemen of Loyola University in Chicago is co-author of a new research paper about what really happened when Cook County, Illinois, moved away from cash bail.

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Bonus: WWJD? Dec 08, 2020

Show notes

As president, Joe Biden can fight for the criminal justice reforms the electorate is demanding... or he can double down on his decades-long advocacy for tougher policing, harsher sentencing, and stricter drug laws. With Inauguration Day on the horizon, we ask: what will Joe do?

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#129 The Beginning of the End of the War on Drugs? Dec 01, 2020

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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?

Our guest is Matt Sutton, Director of Media Relations, at the Drug Policy Alliance.

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Bonus: Tarrick McGuire, from Selma to Montgomery Nov 27, 2020

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An outtake from our recent interview with Tarrick McGuire in which the Arlington, TX police chief recalls visiting the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.

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Bonus: Criminal Justice on the 2020 Ballot Nov 24, 2020

Show notes

Police accountability, cash bail, drug decriminalization and legalization, and strong reform candidates were all on the ballot this November. Dave reviews the results.

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#128 How Can Police Build Trust? Nov 17, 2020

Show notes

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?

Tarrick McGuire is the Chief of the Arlington Texas Police Department, and one of the most dynamic and creative leaders in policing today. He’ll discuss with us how policing must go forward in the time after the death of George Floyd. He’s the subject of an interview in the current issue in Translational Criminology.

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Bonus: Literally the One Thing We All Agree On Nov 10, 2020

Show notes

Judging from the unexpectedly close presidential election result, the U.S. electorate is as polarized as ever -- at least in terms of partisan alignment. But there's one issue on which the 2020 vote reveals widespread and growing agreement among Americans from across all demographics and in almost every part of the country: the decriminalization and full legalization of marijuana and, increasingly, other drugs.

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#127 Getting Rid of Mandatory Minimums Nov 03, 2020

Show notes

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?

Our guest is Kevin Ring, the President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a Washington D.C. advocacy group that has fought mandatory minimum sentences for years.

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Lawyers Behaving Badly: Saying the Quiet Part Really, Really Loud Oct 27, 2020

Show notes

"Systemic racism" refers to systems that produce racially disparate outcomes regardless of the individual motivations, values, or personal qualities of the people working within them. The criminal justice system doesn't require individual police officers, lawyers or judges to hold racist views in order to structurally uphold white supremacy. But -- as the case of suspended Pennsylvania judge Mark Tranquilli vividly illustrates -- plenty of them do anyway.

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