Where does this strange empire start or stop?

The “true-crime boom” of the mid- to late 2010s is a strange pop-culture phenomenon, given that it is not so much a new type of programming as an acknowledgement of a centuries-long obsession: People love true stories about murder and other brands of brutality and grift, and they have gorged on them particularly since the beginning of modern journalism.

Krasner’s mass incarceration memo outlining criminal justice reforms is a dream come true.

Spoiler: It’s wage theft.

Since 1980, more than 260,000 black men have been killed in America. Mitch Landrieu, the mayor of New Orleans, is on a crusade to stop the killing.

Bike thievery is essentially a risk-free crime.

An intelligent, self-interested observer of this case, who happens to live in Florida, would not be wrong to do as George Zimmerman did—buy a gun, master the finer points of Florida self-defense law, and then wait.

On the eve of his first inauguration, President Lincoln snuck into Washington in the middle of the night, evading the would-be assassins who waited for him in Baltimore.

The prison-industrial complex is huge and filled with criminal injustice. It is a blight on America and needs to be destroyed. Abolishing prisons and releasing all the prisoners would amount to a deregulation of criminal punishment. It would mean letting the private sector determine how best to prevent ourselves from getting robbed. In high finance, the laissez-faire approach has proved to be a disaster; for petty crime, it would be a boon.

‘We should not underestimate, however, the difficulty of prosecuting high-ranking officials in large corporations. This case may be an exception, but senior corporate officers rarely have sufficient personal involvement to be charged with crimes. To reach the boardroom, where policies are formed that can lead to tragedy, we must be willing to hold corporations criminally responsible.’

Dozens of violent, fearful, hateful incidents from just the last three years, leading up to the recent shooting of Representative Giffords. “On June 26, 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court embraced the National Rifle Association’s contention that the Second Amendment provides individuals with the right to take violent action against our government should it become ‘tyrannical.’ The following timeline catalogues incidents of insurrectionist violence (or the promotion of such violence) that have occurred since that decision was issued.”

"I’m extremely, extremely disappointed by Naomi Wolf’s dismissive piece about Interpol’s arrest of Julian Assange for alleged sexual offenses." A thorough dismissal of Assange fanboys dismissing his rape charges.

Basically, psychological criminal profiling is a crock of shit.

This piece is incredibly sad. But it is hopeful also. The expansion of pet-based forensic science teams, the increasing intersection of psychological examinations of pet abuse and how it relates to bad home situations, and the use of animals for therapeutic practice are three wonderful things. A must-read.

Joshua Davis reports via hour-long communications with the jailed orchestrator of a multi-million diamond heist in Antwerp. Very exciting.

A man with personal experience in the criminal justice system explains why trying to eradicate violence with violence is foolish, destructive, and a fundamentally broken idea.

What to do if you're robbed.

"Off the top of my head, I'd say you're looking at a Boesky, a Jim Brown, a Miss Daisy, two Jethros and a Leon Spinks, not to mention the biggest Ella Fitzgerald ever!"

The Yakuza, Russian Mafia, Italian Mafia, Mexican Drug Cartels, and the fading Italian-American Mafia.