February 9, 2012, 12:05 AM
County governments have invested nearly a half-billion dollars over the past 15 years to modernize juvenile lockups and now have the capacity to absorb offenders currently housed in the state’s youth prisons, if those facilities are closed, a new study contends. The report [PDF] by...
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January 20, 2012, 12:05 AM
When it’s 17-year-old Eric Gant’s turn to testify today at an Oakland legislative hearing on the health and welfare of California’s minority men and boys, he will ask for a safe way to get to school. “Students deserve a safe path to school, like an adult wants a safe...
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January 13, 2012, 8:36 AM
The fatal police shooting earlier this month of a Texas middle school student clutching a BB gun – the latest in a series of incidents involving imitation firearms – spotlights how localities and states have struggled to identify and control both look-alike toys and guns that fire...
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January 12, 2012, 12:05 AM
Monterey County had the highest youth homicide rate in California in 2010, followed by Alameda County, according to an analysis conducted by the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit group focused on curbing firearms violence. The homicide rate for 10- to 24-year-olds in Monterey County,...
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August 4, 2011, 12:05 AM
Chris Rodriguez was taking a piano lesson around 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 10, 2008, at a North Oakland music school. Across the street, an inebriated man robbed a gas station, firing three shots at an attendant. None of the bullets hit their intended target. Instead, one cut through the school...
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July 18, 2011, 12:05 AM
California has too many inmates, the U.S. Supreme Court and nearly everyone else agrees. Orange-jumpsuited felons pack cell blocks, and row after row of bunk beds claim countless square feet in gymnasiums and other correctional buildings in the state’s 33 prisons. The burden of...
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December 15, 2010, 12:05 AM
Crime in the city of East Palo Alto is a shadow of its former self. But even the shadow is menacing. In a new report [PDF] released today, the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice examined the state of public safety in a community once maligned as a murder capital. East Palo Alto, situated...
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November 30, 2010, 12:05 AM
I inherited the Zodiac beat from Paul Avery, the crime reporter who broke many stories about San Francisco’s most enduring murder mystery. That’s how I wound up getting a thank you note from the man who emerged, posthumously, as Hollywood’s prime Zodiac suspect. Zodiac,...
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November 17, 2010, 12:06 AM
When the California State Auditor scrutinized Ohlone Community College’s crime statistics a year ago, it found the school was simultaneously underreporting some violent offenses while inflating its count of others. Within the college’s public safety records, auditors discovered two...
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October 13, 2010, 12:05 AM
During precisely the period that California experienced the biggest immigrant population increase in its history, the state also experienced a precipitous drop in crime rates, according to a report by Barry Krisberg, a renowned criminologist at UC Berkeley's School of Law. ...
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February 4, 2010, 12:06 AM
Digging into data on incarceration and crime rates, Ron Unz, publisher of the American Conservative magazine, finds little hard evidence to support the notion that Hispanics are more violent than other segments of the population. In a report released this week, Unz walks readers step-by-...
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