Safer Supervision, Summer Homicide Rates & More

"Today, it's kind of pointless. It's been four years, no infractions, I run a company, my wife and I also have a real estate business, five kids."

Daniel Brown has been a model citizen since his early release from federal prison. Still, he faces another six years of stringent supervised release that hinders his personal and professional life despite four years of perfect compliance. He's just one of more than 124,000 people under monitor by an overburdened federal system that costs taxpayers $500 million annually. With 82% of federal offenders sentenced to supervision and two-thirds of revocations stemming from minor violations, the Safer Supervision Act could bring relief to people who have turned their life around and result in significant savings for taxpayers. 

“It’s too early to say with much confidence what the change in murder will be in 2024 for any given city…but a sample of this size is fairly good at predicting the direction and scope of a crime change nationally even at this point of the year.”

In a significant turnaround, preliminary data shows that U.S. murder rates have plunged by approximately 18.5% so far in 2024, with cities like Boston, Fort Worth, and Seattle seeing drops of over 40%. The data highlights a promising trend toward reduced crime rates just as cities prepare for rising temperatures, offering hope for a safer summer across the country.

“As a mother, I am crushed, but I am disappointed too. I feel that there is no urgency in catching the murderers of these three young ladies.”

Three young black women, Dominique Lewis, Reeba Moore, and Chanice White were killed in a targeted shooting in December 2017. The incident remains unsolved, despite pleas from the victims' families for updates and justice. It's just one of 1,000 homicide cases that remain unsolved over the past decade in St. Louis. Despite recent improvements in the city's homicide clearance rate, crimes against black victims continue to be less likely to be solved, with less than half of their cases resolved, compared to nearly two-thirds for white victims.

“If cooking someone to death does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment, then nothing does.”

Southern prison cells routinely reach lethal temperatures exceeding 120 degrees, leading desperate incarcerated people to drink toilet water to cool off and contributing to at least 14 deaths annually in Texas alone. Despite the glaring need for air conditioning as we enter yet another summer season, political resistance has stalled funding, leaving three-quarters of Florida prisons and over two-thirds of Texas prison beds sweltering. The extreme heat endangers both incarcerated individuals and guards, exacerbates violence, and leads to high turnover rates among correctional officers. 

“If judges were following the letter of the law of the case In Re Humphrey, we would expect to see more people released pretrial, we would expect to see lower cash bail amounts, and we’re really not seeing any of that.”

Despite a California Supreme Court ruling mandating affordable bail, a new UCLA report finds that Los Angeles County judges routinely set unaffordable bail, with a median amount of $100,000. That amount is double the state average, and the report further found that judges routinely failed to consider a defendant's ability to pay, including in over half of the cases reviewed that involved non-violent offenses.