Far more immigration cases are being prosecuted criminally under Trump administration
The first full fiscal year of the Trump administration saw large increases in the number of people arrested and criminally prosecuted for immigration offenses.
Only 2% of federal criminal defendants go to trial, and most who do are found guilty
Trials are rare in the federal criminal justice system: Just 2% of criminal defendants went to trial in 2018. Acquittals are even rarer.
From police to parole, black and white Americans differ widely in their views of criminal justice system
Attitudes vary considerably by race on issues including crime, policing, the death penalty, parole decisions and voting rights.
The gap between the number of blacks and whites in prison is shrinking
Blacks have long outnumbered whites in U.S. prisons. But a significant decline in the number of black prisoners has narrowed the gap.
California is one of 11 states that have the death penalty but haven’t used it in more than a decade
More than a third of the states that allow executions haven’t carried one out in at least 10 years or, in some cases, much longer.
Despite recent violence, Chicago is far from the U.S. ‘murder capital’
St. Louis led the nation with 66.1 murders per 100,000 people in 2017. It was followed by Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
5 facts about the death penalty
Pope Francis has changed the Catholic Church’s teaching to fully oppose the death penalty. Read key facts about the death penalty in the U.S. and abroad.
Activism in the Social Media Age
As the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag turns 5 years old, a look at its evolution on Twitter and how Americans view social media's impact on political and civic engagement
Public support for the death penalty ticks up
Public support for the death penalty, which reached a four-decade low in 2016, has increased somewhat since then. Since 2016, opinions among Republicans and Democrats have changed little, but the share of independents favoring the death penalty has increased 8 percentage points.
America’s incarceration rate is at a two-decade low
At the end of 2016, there were about 2.2 million people behind bars in the U.S., amounting to an incarceration rate of 860 inmates for every 100,000 adults.
