Crime

With the popularity of the CSI television shows it might seem like every police department and prosecutor’s office across the country employs high-tech science to solve even the most basic of crimes. But, according to legal expert David Harris, with the exception of DNA work, law enforcement has not embraced science and often resists it, many times at the expense of the accused.

It was hailed as a perfect, judicial compromise -- wider use of life sentences without parole for murderers and rapists as a replacement for capital punishment, regarded by death penalty opponents as cruel and unusual. But how is life-without-parole working out in the American criminal justice system? Charles Ogletree, professor of law at Harvard, and Austin Sarat, professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College, are co-editors of "Life Without Parole: America's New Death Penalty."

Baltimore native Michael Austin spent nearly 27 years in prison for an armed robbery and murder he did not commit. While in Maryland's old House of Correction, Austin turned to music as a way of coping with life in "The Cut" while he sought legal help from outside. He wrote songs and refined his singing voice. Austin, pardoned in 2001, talks about the redeeming value of music, and we'll hear songs from his new CD, "I Just Want To Love You."

According to a new Abell Foundation report, encouraging Baltimore police officers to live in the city could help reduce crime. Yet the report found that nearly 72 percent of employees of the Baltimore Police Department live outside of the city. Our guest: the report’s author, Matt Van Itallie, on why so many officers chose to live in the suburbs and how providing housing incentives could help lower the crime rate.

Could marijuana be the nation's new cash crop? Doug Fine, an investigative journalist and NPR contributor, gives the economic argument for legalization in "Too High To Fail: Cannabis and The New Green Revolution."
Original airdate: 8/22/12

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake introduces her pick for Baltimore's next Police Chief, Anthony Batts. We get to know Batts, and hear from Rawlings-Blake on why she chose him to lead the department following the departure of Frederick Bealefeld.

This segment originally aired on August 10, 2009

If this were the 1960s, I might have been smoking a cigarette while doing this broadcast.  But it’s not the 60s, the risks of smoking are known, taxes are much higher … and the number of cigarettes being smuggled into Maryland to evade those taxes is higher as well.  According to Maryland's comptroller, Peter Franchot, the number of contraband cigarettes seized during the past fiscal year is much higher than i

In the wake of the Aurora movie theater massacre, a look at gun culture and violence in the U.S. Many assert that the media (movies, tv, and video games in particular) contribute to our culture of violence. Or is it our historic celebration of guns and power, in the name of liberty, that leads to these mass murders? And why is it young, white males who perpetrate the majority of mass killings? Midday culture commentator Sheri Parks helps to answer these difficult and polarizing questions.

Want to carry a gun in Maryland? A recent order from U.S. District Court Judge Benson E.