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ATennessee father and businessman was shot and killed in Chattanooga last week by a man with a lengthy rap sheet, according to police. Local businessman Christopher Wright, 38, was downtown in the city on Thursday to attend his 20-year high school reunion, according to The Chattanoogan. It reported Friday that he graduated from the city's private Baylor School in 2003 and went on to graduate from Yale University.

Attorney General Merrick Garland rebuffed suggestions that his Department of Justice has a "double standard" when it assesses how to treat persons suspected of wrongdoing. "We weigh each and every situation to determine how to proceed," he maintained. "Sometimes circumstances call for aggressive prosecution. Sometimes a more lenient approach is warranted." "Take the recent decision to go easy on Hunter Biden," Garland suggested. "Here we had an individual with no previous criminal record--a first time offender, so to speak. It was our determination that no useful public purpose would be served by putting this individual behind bars. Additionally, it would...

Seven children who were rescued from their abusive mother have detailed the years of torture she inflicted on them - including forcing them to drink bleach and pouring it over their genitals. The alarm was raised on Tuesday, when two of the children - 16-year-old twins, a boy and a girl - managed to escape from the family home in Houston, Texas and convince a neighbor to help. The mother, Zaikiya Duncan, 40, and her boyfriend Jova Terrell, 27, left the house on learning the twins had escaped and were arrested later that day in Baton Rouge - a four...

As a former federal prosecutor, I am clear-eyed about crime. Unlike some reformers, I don’t think our justice system is fundamentally broken, unjust, or corrupt. I have nothing but respect for law-enforcement officials, who put themselves in danger every single day in order to protect the public. I know from experience that dangerous criminals exist — individuals who are incapable of or uninterested in rehabilitation and change. We should throw the book at those people. But my time as a prosecutor also tells me that not every criminal is dangerous or incapable of living a productive life. My faith as...

On September 4, 2001, Robert Mueller took over the FBI. At his confirmation hearings, fraud had overshadowed discussions of terrorism. And as FBI Director, Mueller quickly diverged from the common understanding that the attacks that killed 3,000 people had been an act of war rather than a crime. In 2008, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, who had been unleashed from Guantanamo Bay, carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq. Al-Ajmi had been represented by Thomas Wilner who was being paid by the Kuwaiti government. Wilner was a pal of Robert Mueller. And when the families were having dinner together, Mueller got up...

Two student survivors of last month’s deadly shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school are urging President Donald Trump to break his ties with the National Rifle Association and live up to his pledge to push for stricter U.S. gun laws.

A man with a long criminal history that includes a conviction for armed robbery has been charged with first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a Chicago police commander. Department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Shomari Legghette, 44, was also charged with being a felon possession of a firearm and possession of narcotics. Legghette has been arrested repeatedly and, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections, he has several felony convictions dating back to the 1990s that have landed him in prison. Most of them are drug-related, but his record also includes crimes that show a willingness to use a gun....

State Department: ‘Very Few’ Freed Gitmo Detainees Return to Terrorism David Rutz BY: August 16, 2016 5:02 pm State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday that “very few” released Guantanamo Bay detainees return to terrorism while addressing the transfer of 15 Gitmo prisoners by the Obama administration. President Obama, who has sought to close Gitmo since he took office, sent 15 detainees to the United Arab Emirates this week, the largest single transfer of prisoners from the detention facility of his presidency. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) said the 12 Yemenis and three Afghans in the transfer are “among the...

Radical left-wingers want to free half the nation’s prisoners—including many violent offenders—a move that would cause an upsurge in crime rates for decades to come. To many of today’s leftists criminality itself is an illegitimate concept. The mindless chanting of the slogan “no one is illegal” at open-borders rallies is part of the same school of thought. Spearheaded by the American Civil Liberties Union and bankrolled by radical speculator George Soros, the “end mass incarceration” movement wants to reduce the U.S. prison population by 50 percent within the next 10 to 15 years. This specific push is called the “Cut50”...

What could go wrong? Barack Obama released a nuclear terrorist back to Afghanistan this month. Mohammad Zahir was in possession of uranium for use in making an atomic bomb when he was captured. Daniel Greenfield at Frontpage Magazine reported: If Obama has a red line when it comes to releasing terrorists, we haven’t seen it yet. There appears to be no threat that a terrorist can pose and no crime he has committed too severe to prevent him from getting a plane trip out of Gitmo at taxpayer expense. The last releases saw terrorists rated as high risk freed by...

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Hisham Y. Altalib visited the White House. According to visitor logs, Altalib was received by Joshua DuBois, the director of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Four days later, White House officials welcomed a foreign delegation of the radical Sharia-enforcing Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. The White House meeting with overseas Muslim Brotherhood leaders was reported in April by a few mainstream journalists and questioned loudly by conservative media. But the White House confab in March with U.S.-based Altalib -- which appears to be a prep session with the global Muslim Brotherhood's American...

The Center for American Progress has attempted to tackle a growing bipartisan issue: over-criminalization and over-incarceration. A recent panel discussion at CAP featured University of Texas sociology professor Becky Pettit who argued that “incarceration is deeply concentrated among men, those who are young, and those of color.” She noted out of the 2.2 million inmates in the prison system, “approximately half of them are black.” She claimed that, “Among young black men who drop out of high school, over a third are incarcerated on any given day.” She did not mention that their victims outside the gates are also likely...

WASHINGTON — Prisoners should be provided free education in order to reduce crime and recidivism, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich declared at a gathering of conservative advocates of prison reform. Right on Crime, a Texas-based coalition of conservative public figures and elected officials, had a two day Leadership Summit at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center Tuesday and Wednesday. Newt Gingrich gave remarks at the Wednesday morning session, describing some of the needs he believed had to be met for meaningful prison reform. While still supportive of the early 1990's "war on crime" measures championed by...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) - Plans to close Guantanamo are not sitting well with the Sept. 11 victims' relatives who sat stunned while two alleged terrorists declared they were proud of their role in the plot.

Maybe this explains why the push to close Guantanamo Bay has slowed to a mere memory. The Obama administration waited until the last minute to publish a report from the Director of National Intelligence on recidivism among Gitmo alumni, and one can see why they wanted to keep it confidential as long as possible. While Barack Obama played Let’s Make a Deal with Europe to get the terrorists behind Door Number Three, more and more of those released previously have returned to terrorism — with dozens no longer able to be located: A de-classified summary of a report about detainees...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Petraeus Discusses Future of Afghan Detainees By U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Maria Yager American Forces Press Service PARWAN PROVINCE, Afghanistan, Sept. 28, 2010 – The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan toured the U.S. Detention Facility here yesterday, and discussed his vision for detention operations in Afghanistan. “When I took command of Multinational Force-Iraq in February 2007, we still had Camp Bucca with 17,000 detainees at that time and it grew larger,” said Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander, International Security Assistance Force and commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan. ”We still had all of...

Recidivism rate worse than statistics indicate, Memphis-area study finds 20 years of research discovers 81 percent of former inmates end up back behind bars By Michael Lollar March 7, 2010 Jeff Smith had been free of drugs for four years. Two of those years were during a stay at the Shelby County Correction Center and two were while working at the Salvation Army after his release from jail. It was at the Salvation Army that Smith, 54, says he felt “a sense of purpose for the first time in years.” He was doing what he says he loves best —...

Kansas will consider abolishing the death penalty next year as death sentences are declining across the United States. Fewer people were sentenced to death this year than any other year since 1976, according to a report released Friday by the Death Penalty Information Center...Sen. Tim Owens, R-Overland Park, has scheduled four days of hearings beginning Jan. 19 on a new bill that would eliminate the death penalty in Kansas... But Kansas' top prosecutor said this week he wants to see the death penalty continue. "I think it's a just punishment for what those folks did," Attorney General Steve Six told...

The average length of stay until expected release of parole violators that are recommitted with a new felony conviction is 36.71 months.[1]Ohio. Based upon this figure, the cost to incarcerate is $94,834 per recidivist in this demographic. The total incarceration cost alone for these recidivists is between $35.8 and $58.7 billion. Can prisoner recidivism realistically be reduced to a figure below ten percent? It can’t happen overnight, but yes, it can. With state and federal budgets for departments of rehabilitation & corrections reaching incendiary levels, the need to implement new and innovative programs has become profound.

Gov. Bill Ritter's plan to cut the state budget through inmate releases could reduce Colorado's prison population by 1,000 in a year and immediately save $19 million. It will also almost certainly accelerate the commission of new crimes, and could force layoffs from a privately run prison. Ritter's plan calls for trimming parole supervision for some inmates already out of prison, and releasing some non-sex-offender inmates early and placing them on parole. A total of 5,700 inmates or parolees could see their status change as a result of Ritter's cut. A Metropolitan State College of Denver professor says it's unavoidable...