Crime and Criminal Justice

Sitting before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 9, 2004, Secretary of State, Colin Powell, was taking his time getting to the question that everyone in attendance was waiting for him to answer. "And finally" he said, "there is the matter of whether or not what is happening in Darfur is genocide."

A decade ago this August, veteran New York City cop Joseph Gray went to a Brooklyn strip club, drank himself silly, and then got into his burgundy van and accidentally smashed into and killed three people, including a pregnant 24-year-old woman and her 4-year-old son, Andy. Twelve hours later, the undelivered child had died, too. Gray pleaded with the judge for leniency, but in her words, barreling down the street drunk, in a thousand-pound van, was like "waving a loaded gun around a crowded room." Gray was given the maximum of five to 15 years for second-degree manslaughter.

As Rep. Peter King, R-NY, begins a series of House Homeland Security Committee hearings to investigate what he terms the radicalization of Muslim-American communities, the New America Foundation and Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Policy examined the 175 cases of Americans and U.S. residents convicted of or charged with some form of jihadist terrorist activity.

On January 11, 2011, the New America Foundation hosted a retrospective discussion on the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Journalist Andy Worthington, Colonel Morris Davis, Thomas Wilner, and Benjamin Wittes all participated. Patrick Doherty, senior advisor to New America’s Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative and Director of the organization’s Smart Strategy Initiative, moderated the event.

Austin, TX — Forty-eight hours after reports hit the wire of a shooting on the University of Texas at Austin campus, the scurried and anxious rhythm of that day has slowed back down to a steady pulse. Just as quickly as the news swept through Austin and the nation, the news cycle snapped back to its regularly scheduled programming. Yet, despite returning to campus and feeling more informed about what had happened, many questions remain.

The recent spike in violent political rhetoric coupled with last week's arrest of two men who threatened the lives of two Democratic House members has a lot of commentators worried about a surge in domestic political terrorism.

Those fears are misplaced. Not because there won't be violence, but because politically inspired violence won't necessarily be aimed at politicians.

Hours before dawn on one of the last days of October 2009, the deadliest month for American troops in Afghanistan since 2001, Eric Holder, attorney general of the United States, strode out of a C-17 cargo plane parked at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. President Barack Obama, having reversed the ban on media coverage of the arrival of war dead at Dover, trailed just behind. During the official military ceremony, the two friends stood in dark suits, silently saluting 18 servicemen, including three Drug Enforcement Agency officials claimed by the Afghan War days prior.

Obama administration officials, apparently bowing to political pressure, said over the weekend they are considering moving the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused operational commander of the 9/11 attacks, out of New York City.

The objections to holding it in New York seem reasonable: The financial cost to the city and the fear that the trial might inspire a lone bomber or even an organized al Qaeda attack.

Three years ago this month, Mexican President Felipe Calderón donned military fatigues and declared a full-scale war on drugs, ordering the army into Mexico's streets, highways and villages.

Back then, Calderón received broad support, both domestically and from abroad, for what was viewed as a brave, overdue and necessary decision. Tangible results were predicted to come soon.

Moreover, George W.