Criminal Justice

Native Americans demand accountability for a federal policy that aimed to erase Indigenous culture.

The U.S. government ordered 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most American citizens, imprisoned during World War II. An admission of wrongdoing and reparations payments came decades later, but a Supreme Court ruling had lasting impact.

According to experts who monitor the radical right, the white supremacist ideology that police say drove the Buffalo gunman has begun moving from the extremes into the mainstream. This is the fifth episode of a five-part series produced in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate.

Violent attacks involving extremist ideology, like the Buffalo rampage, began to rise in the last decade, but officials were slow to recognize homegrown threats. This is the fourth episode of a five-part series produced in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate.

In the years before Barack Obama was elected, many groups on the extreme right kept a relatively low profile. With the election of a Black president, that changed. This is the third episode of a five-part series produced in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate.

Anti-government propaganda, military deployment and the F.B.I. raid in Waco, Texas, radicalized Timothy McVeigh and led to the Oklahoma City attack. This is the second episode of a five-part series produced in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate.

The killing of radio host Alan Berg exposed a new kind of right-wing extremism. This is the first episode of a five-part series released in collaboration with The WNET Group’s reporting initiative Exploring Hate. This series was recognized with a 2022 Online Journalism Award for Best Digital Storytelling.

Driven by fears of the rise of communism, the United States adopted a policy of containment, intervening in the politics of countries across the globe. In Latin America, the consequences of those efforts are still unfolding.

An untold story of the civil rights movement. American Reckoning is produced in collaboration with PBS Frontline.

An untold story of the civil rights movement.

After civil rights leader George Metcalfe was severely injured in a car bombing, the Black community in Natchez, Miss., organized their response.

In the face of threats from the Ku Klux Klan, a group known as the Deacons for Defense helped to protect the Black community.

The N.A.A.C.P. of Natchez, Miss., issued 12 demands for racial justice and organized a boycott of area businesses.

In 1967, N.A.A.C.P. official Wharlest Jackson was killed in a car bombing. Nearly 60 years later, his family is still looking for answers.

Nelson Rauda, an independent journalist, told us that El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, is putting the squeeze on press freedom.

“Massacre in El Salvador,” a collaboration with Frontline and ProPublica, tells the story of the worst massacre in recent Latin American history, and why a final reckoning is at risk.

The ‘Burning Bed’ killing put domestic violence in the headlines.

In the 1990s, a handful of researchers inspired panic with a dire but flawed prediction: the imminent arrival of a new breed of “superpredators.”

Why don’t people intervene when they encounter violence streaming live online?

DNA information that is available on genealogy websites is doing more than satisfying curiosity – it’s solving crimes.

Twenty years after Columbine, we examine the impact the attack has had on today’s youths – and how the media has more recently shifted its coverage of school shootings.

Víctor Jara was a legendary Chilean folk singer and political activist, whose brutal killing during a military coup in 1973 went unsolved for decades. Now, his family may finally get justice.

An inmate population surge in the 1980s led to the growth of for-profit prisons. Today, despite their mixed record, private prison companies are overseeing the vast majority of undocumented migrants.

This is the story of cops, African-American pastors, gang members, and academics coming together to create positive change for Boston, while upending notions of traditional policing in a way that is especially pertinent today.

A century ago, a culture rid itself of the problem of mass murder. How did that happen and what can the modern-day world learn from it?

Can the lessons we learned from extremist cults decades ago be used to fight ISIS recruitment today?

With the Trump administration’s move to end a commission investigating flaws in forensic science, Retro Report looks at the history of one now-challenged method: hair analysis.

More than 50 years after Kitty Genovese’s murder became a symbol of urban apathy, her partner, Mary Ann Zielonko remembers Kitty’s life and impact.

Flavia Battistiol has turned to social media in hopes of being reunited with the sibling who disappeared in 1977, when the military junta ruled Argentina.

The story of one man’s search for his identity after his parents disappeared during Argentina’s military dictatorship.

The Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of women dedicated to finding babies who were taken by Argentina’s military regime in the 1970s and 1980s, have reunited their 130th family.

The killing of twelve students and a teacher at Columbine High School in 1999 continues to shape how we view and understand school shootings today.

A mini-doc about the anatomy of a shaken baby case from the perspective of defense attorney Adele Bernhard.

In 1982, an Australian mother was convicted of murdering her baby daughter. She was later exonerated, but soon fell victim to a joke that distracted the world from the real story.

The murder of four American churchwomen focused attention on the United States’ involvement in El Salvador. Decades later, the case continues to take surprising turns.

When armed suspects stand off against the law today, one event continues to cast a shadow on both sides of the police line: the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge.

Before DNA testing, prosecutors relied on less sophisticated forensic techniques, including microscopic hair analysis, to put criminals behind bars. But how reliable was hair analysis?

Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been making headlines for years. Some priests have been punished, but what about the bishops who shielded them?

The nightmare began in 1983 when a 39-year-old mother called the police department in Manhattan Beach, California and accused a teacher at the McMartin Preschool, Raymond Buckey, of molesting her two and a half-year old son.

Long before Edward Snowden leaked highly classified government secrets, there was the greatest heist you’ve never heard of. On March 8, 1971, a group of eight Vietnam War protesters broke into an F.B.I. field office in Media, Pa., and stole hundreds of government documents containing information that shocked the nation.

After the 1993 murder of a California child, many states passed laws to lock up repeat offenders for life, but today those laws are raising new questions about how crime is handled in America.

Six days after 9/11, the FBI’s raid on a sleeper cell signaled America’s resolve to fight terrorism. But, despite a celebrated conviction, there was one problem–they were wrong.

For teachers: This video is part of a collection of resources including four short films, each accompanied by a lesson plan and student activity.

In 1988, the nation learned the truth about the alleged crimes against Tawana Brawley, but the shocking story was far from over.

In the 1980s, images of tiny, jittery “crack babies” caused social outcry – crack-addicted pregnant mothers were prosecuted and the media warned that a generation of “crack babies” would plague our country. Turns out… they were wrong.