The verdicts in the trial of Derek Chauvin are satisfying as the evidence of guilt was overwhelming. However, the nation will face many similar tragedies unless we use the lessons learned to pass criminal justice reform legislation to address the underlying bias in the current system. Former President Obama made that point yesterday in response to the verdict. CNN: "While today's verdict may have been a necessary step on the road to progress, it was far from a sufficient one.

For decades most criminal justice experts and district attorneys accepted the theory that vigorously prosecuting defendants for minor first time offenses would reduce the risk that they would engage in future criminal activity. Recently, more progressive prosecutors have questioned the theory and some have stopped prosecuting certain nonviolent low-level offenses like prostitution, disorderly conduct, trespassing, and drug possession, arguing that it caused "significant harm

Police officials and researchers have known for some time that many individuals in the Hispanic community are reluctant to contact police about crimes they have witnessed or suffered if the city has a policy of cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE]. That's why many city officials have elected to become "sanctuary cities" which don't automatically detain undocumented individuals so they can be turned over to ICE. They believe that a "sanctuary" policy incr

Virginia is poised to be the 23rd state to ban capital punishment, but the first in the South. It's quite a change of heart for the state that holds the national record for most executions - 1,389. The death penalty used to be quite popular in Virginia, but, public opinion has been slowly changing on the issue. The use of DNA evidence to review convictions demonstrated that prosecutors and juries are way more fallible than we imagined, and decades of research showed that capi

Criminal justice experts have been debating the value of prison rehabilitation programs for decades. The debate centers on whether job training programs and education initiatives reduce recidivism rates and are worth the public expense. America largely abandoned rehabilitation in the 1980s because of the costs, but as a result we have one of the highest recidivism rates in he world. New research conducted by Santiago Tobon in Columbia and published this week in MIT's Review o

Massachusetts has seen some early success with an innovative incarceration system meant to reduce recidivism. It's called "People Achieving Change Together" [PACT] and it's based on a model developed in Germany. From NPR, CRISTINA QUINN: "Inmates in the P.A.C.T. unit load up on grown-up responsibilities and obligations, including mandatory anger management meetings, sessions with therapists and reporting to work or class every day. They also get more phone privileges and are