Lars Trautman is the National Director for Right On Crime. He brings a decade of experience as a prosecutor, Capitol Hill staffer, and public policy expert to his work shaping and advancing smart criminal justice policies and practices. He has particular expertise relating to prosecution, diversion and crisis response strategies, and pretrial justice.
Inflation, rising interest rates, and bank failures are enough to make business leaders wake up in a cold sweat. Adding to the parade of horribles: crime. This month, Whole Foods executives abruptly closed their flagship store in San Francisco due to safety concerns. Before that it was Walgreens shuttering five stores in the Bay Area...
Any doubts around President Joe Biden’s running for reelection were dispelled by his reversal on D.C.’s new crime bill, a political punch that blindsided Washington D.C. and House Democrats. In an attempt to stem anger at this betrayal, Biden described his decision in policy terms—he simply couldn’t stand by and let D.C. enact lower penalties...
After two years of observing the actions of the Biden administration with a growing sense of helplessness and outrage, House Republicans are finally in a position to effectually respond. Having assumed control of the House of Representatives, their investigations now leverage substantial resources and are backed by subpoena power. Fittingly, one of their first undertakings...
Amidst all the other things parents have to worry about, they’ve been bombarded with a message on fentanyl that’s only half-right: it’s dangerous (yes!) and the main threat has become multicolored (not quite). Easily identified by its bright, colorful pills, rainbow fentanyl is a marketing gimmick with dangerous consequences. But at least, it is a...
There’s a fine line separating prosecution and persecution, yet it’s one that holds the very legitimacy of the justice system within its bounds. When it blurs, the law changes from a tool of public safety into a means of depriving the public of its safety. Unfortunately, a new poll suggests that a majority of American...
Never underestimate the ability of the government to muck something up. That’s the subtext of a recent report from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) detailing its failures to comply with the Death in Custody Reporting Act (DCRA). For those unwilling to sift through the laundry list of excuses, the short summary is that the DOJ doesn’t know how...
Do you support law enforcement, or police reform? How about both? A recent piece of legislation by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Law Enforcement De-Escalation Training Act of 2022, would authorize $70 million in funding to support law enforcement crisis response. In particular, it would make it easier for law enforcement officers to receive...
Zero. That’s how many people were convicted by a federal jury in Rhode Island last year. The state’s federal judges handed out dozens of prison sentences, amounting to hundreds of years, yet not a single year of prison resulted from a jury verdict. So much for the vaunted Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial....
The idea of being alone evokes a special kind of dread for many people. Reams have been written on how to avoid this fate, and those who can’t tend to earn our sympathy. Unless, that is, they’re cut off from meaningful human contact because they’re one of the thousands of federal inmates held in solitary...
Conservative criminal justice reformers have faced occasional skepticism over our tried-and-true criminal justice solutions, but never something quite so outlandish as a recent suggestion, by an avowed conservative, no less, that conservative reformers somehow bear blame for rising violent crime in liberal bastions such as New York City and Portland. Sean Kennedy, in his recent Washington Examiner article ,...
“Elderly inmate sent home during COVID is back in prison after going to computer class.” That’s probably not the kind of headline that liberals expected to see after heralding President Joe Biden’s win last November as a victory for justice and decency. Yet, it stands to be just the first of many similar sad stories of criminal...