In The News: Department of Criminal Justice

Las Vegas Review Journal

UNLV senior Jamie McInelly confidently tells a jury of students that she’s seeking a charge of attempted murder.

Al Jazeera America

Investigators in Las Vegas are still investigating what they consider to be an active crime scene.

Las Vegas Sun

It’s 1:54 a.m. on July 30, 2006. The call to Metro Police dispatch is from the east valley, about a house party loud enough to rattle a neighbor’s windows. “I don’t know what they’re doing, but it’s trouble waiting to happen out here. The dogs are going crazy,” the caller says, guessing there could be 100 kids at the party. “Nobody in this house is sleeping, or on this block.”

Los Angeles Times

It appeared to have all the ingredients for protests, hashtags and calls for justice on 24-hour cable news channels.

WJBC

In a ranking of the best states to be in law enforcement, Illinois is near the top.

Monday is national Peace Officers Memorial Day. In honor of the occasion, financial site WalletHub has a ranking for the best states to wear the badge. Illinois ranked fourth overall, getting high marks for for how many officers are on the job and the nation’s highest average pay.

Las Vegas Sun

A giant step backward. A declaration of war. The worst legislation for women’s health in a generation.

These were among reactions to the May 4 passage of the American Health Care Act through the U.S. House of Representatives, from the American Civil Liberties Union, advocacy group UltraViolet and health care provider Planned Parenthood, which will lose all federal grants and reimbursements for a year if the bill were to clear the Senate.

WalletHub

Law enforcement is one of the least glamorous jobs, made even less so in recent years by high-profile scandals of police brutality, especially toward unarmed minorities. But to serve and protect remains a necessary, and often thankless, public service. It’s a calling that more than 900,000 Americans have answered, knowing full well the hazards associated with their occupation. In the past 10 years, for instance, more than 1,500 police officers, including 143 in 2016 alone, died in the line of duty. Tens of thousands more were assaulted and injured.

Wisonville Spokesman

The women's prison population has tripled in the past two decades because of sentencing reforms and a criminal justice system that is biased against women, according to a criminal justice reform researcher.

Independent Voter Network

Over the course of 25 years, women’s incarceration has increased drastically, and has reached a point where females are jailed at a rate of nearly 150 percent when compared to men. According to the ACLU, there are now more than 200,000 women behind bars and more than one million women on probation and parole–many of which have been caught up by the “war on drugs,” with heavy sentences for non-violent offenses.

Bloomberg

On Aug. 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Mo., a white police officer shot and killed an unarmed black teenager named Michael Brown. Several witnesses described the shooting—which wasn’t captured on video—as unprovoked.

KSNV-TV: News 3

Community leaders and police officers joined together in Las Vegas to promote a message of peace just hours after an ambush-style sniper attack left 5 Dallas officers dead Thursday night.

KLAS-TV: 8 News Now

The recent violence between the black community and police officers has raised questions about how often these kinds of incidents happen.