In this issue, and in part two that will follow, we ask a few questions that we think should guide our thinking about the future of our justice system. We highlight the current state of the issues that will most impact its future and what investments we need to make now to ensure that the next 250 years are not a return to regressive, failed tactics of the past.

Our country is at a crossroads, and we have the power to decide whether we will lean into or move away from mass incarceration. Those outcomes will be shaped by the choices we make today about safety, justice, and who gets to exercise power in our communities.

CORCA allows DHS to circumvent constitutional safeguards by deputizing retailers like Home Depot to do the data collection for them.

At a moment when politicians across the spectrum claim to care about affordability, cash bail remains one of the clearest examples of how poverty itself is punished in America.

While it may look like a commonsense crime bill on the surface, the Combating Organized Crime Act would establish a central intelligence hub for retail theft within the Department of Homeland Security, expanding the agency’s access to protected data from corporations and their influence on local police.

Those closest to a community’s needs and risks are best positioned to shape its justice policies.

The evidence on bail reform contradicts Trump’s rationale for his executive orders.

A man sentenced to life in prison for sexually abusing two middle-school-aged children could end up benefiting from President Donald Trump’s massive slush fund. Andrew Paul Johnson was sentenced earlier this year, just months after being pardoned by Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Under Trump’s $1.8 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” beneficiaries could include Jan. 6 rioters. Johnson allegedly told the kids he abused that he would share millions of dollars in restitution money that he expected from the Trump administration for his Jan. 6 case.

The Gulfstream IV jet was operated by Journey Aviation, a Miami-based charter company that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has previously used to carry out its third-country “deportations” to African countries, but it is owned by Michael Dezer and his family via a shell company. The wealthy often lease their private jets to charter companies part-time to qualify for a huge tax break that Trump signed into law in his first term.

A $608 million federal reimbursement that Florida’s been counting on to pay for the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” lockup won’t cover construction costs — if the money comes through at all, Justice Department lawyers have declared.

President Donald Trump's border czar Tom Homan accepted a $50,000 bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent last year in a since-closed U.S. Justice Department bribery investigation, two sources familiar with the matter said on Sunday.

Nearly half of the FBI agents working in the US’s major field offices have been reassigned to aid immigration enforcement, according to newly released data, a stunning shift in law enforcement priorities that has raised public safety concerns.

Homeland security agents investigating sexual crimes against children, for instance, have been redeployed to the immigrant crackdown for weeks at a time, hampering their pursuit of child predators. A national security probe into the black market for Iranian oil sold to finance terrorism has been slowed down for months because of the shift to immigration work, allowing tanker ships and money to disappear. And federal efforts to combat human smuggling and sex trafficking have languished with investigators reassigned to help staff deportation efforts.

The Department of Homeland Security has kept at least one beneficiary of the nine-figure ad deal a secret, records and interviews show: a Republican consulting firm with long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. The company running the Mount Rushmore shoot, called the Strategy Group, does not appear on public documents about the contract. The main recipient listed on the contracts is a mysterious Delaware company, which was created days before the deal was finalized.

The so-called One Big Beautiful Act allocates more than $170 billion over four years for border and interior enforcement, with a stated goal of deporting 1 million immigrants each year. That is more than the yearly budget for all local and state law enforcement agencies combined across the entire United States.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal law enforcement agency primarily tasked with carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, now has a larger budget than most of the world’s militaries.

On a winter night last year, shortly after Donald Trump was sworn into office, senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security assembled discreetly at a private home in Washington, D.C., to discuss what they saw as a gathering crisis inside the agency: the relationship between their new boss, Kristi Noem, and Corey Lewandowski, her adviser, enforcer, and rumored boyfriend.

The jets, which a department official said were needed for safety, are the latest expenditures on behalf of Ms. Noem to draw scrutiny from Democrats and other critics who have noted her lavish spending on living and other expenses during her time in public life.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is diverting criminal law enforcement agents away from their investigations and enforcement responsibilities to conduct civil immigration enforcement operations on a massive scale. New data highlight how widespread this misuse of government personnel and resources is. Congress should prevent this diversion of appropriated funds in the next government spending bill.

US immigration officers made false and misleading statements in their reports about several Los Angeles protesters they arrested during the massive demonstrations that rocked the city in June, according to federal law enforcement files obtained by the Guardian.

Everyday people have in recent weeks fanned out across the city to document protests and film tense interactions with federal immigration officers. They have also borne witness to tragedy. The fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti were captured on shaky video by bystanders clutching smartphones in the bitter cold and standing within shouting distance of the victims.