criminal-justice-issues
Shapiro files criminal charges against Energy Transfer in construction of Mariner East 2 pipeline
The charges accuse the Texas-based pipeline company of using unauthorized chemicals in their drilling fluid, releasing it into state water, and not reporting the spills.
Perry Co.’s DA could put a homeless man in jail over a Mountain Dew. Is that justice? | Opinion
Prosecutors have broad discretion on whether to pursue cases. Is politics driving this one?
In a city torn by violence, Black Philadelphians are buying guns to respond to crime, racism
“Why would you want the racists to be the only ones with knowledge of firearms?” Philadelphia gun advocate and founder of Black Guns Matter, Maj Toure, recently asked a reporter.
My son is incarcerated. Prison gerrymandering silences his voice. It’s time to end it | Opinion
You may not be in the same situation that our family is in, but I would bet you can understand the hurt I feel when I can’t get my child — my family, my world — the help he needs.
‘This can’t be normal, this can’t be accepted’: Philly gun violence leaves families in pain, fear
A 'perfect storm' of deadly factors has helped revive an old nickname for Philadelphia popularized by its detractors — “Killadelphia.”
Life without parole has turned Pa.’s prisons into hospices for the hopeless | Opinion
People are aging and dying in prison, withering away to nothing with no chance of ever returning to the free world
Why the murder rate is rising — and what we can do about it | John A. Tures
Protecting police officers and people from guns will do better to lower the murder rate, just as the assault weapons ban did in the 1990s and early 2000s.
AlleCo DA Zappala rescinds policy halting plea deals to Black lawyer who called his office racist
Between 2016 and 2017, Zappala’s office charged Black teens as adults 20 times as often as it charged white teens as adults in Allegheny County.
McClinton calls for safeguards against prison gerrymandering in Pa. legislative maps
(*This story was updated at 9:10 p.m. on Wednesday 5/26/21 to include comment from House Republicans, and to reflect that G. Reynolds Clark no longer works at the University of Pittsburgh and that Robert Byer did not donate to President Donald Trump.) Potentially upsetting decades of precedent that has aided rural, white Pennsylvanians at the […]