Carrie Johnson

The bipartisan effort to overhaul the criminal justice system for drug offenders has hit a speed bump.

Some members of Congress are trying to tie those lighter punishments for drug defendants to a new bill that the Justice Department says would make it harder to prosecute a range of crimes ...

Obama administration officials are warning that a recent plan adopted by the House Judiciary Committee threatens to make the justice system worse not better.

Jonathan Pollard has been released from a federal prison on Friday after serving nearly 30 years on charges he spied for Israel. To some he's a patriotic hero to others he remains a traitor.

The new leader of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office gives his first interview to NPR about security posture in the U.S. capital in the face of threats by the Islamic State.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch says the U.S. government is working "around the clock to uncover and disrupt plots" aimed at Americans.

France's president said the attacks in Paris were planned in Syria, organized in Belgium and carried out in France. Authorities are carrying out a wide-reaching investigation to figur...

NPR discusses the FBI response to the attacks in Paris. Lynch said in her statement that the U.S. "stands in solidarity with France."

The mayor of Gary, Ind., acknowledged Thursday that police in some cities may be stepping back because of a rise in public scrutiny of their actions, a controversial phenomenon known as the Ferguson effect.

"We don't see it in our city but I know it is happening in some communities," ...

Shared Hope International, which tracks how many states have passed laws against trafficking, finds many states are doing better at stopping the practice than when the first report was issued in 2011.

The chief of the Justice Department's civil rights division says "too many barriers still exist in courts across America" when it comes to providing lawyers to poor criminal defendants.

In a speech to the first-ever National Consortium on the Right to Counsel, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta said, ...

This story was updated at 2:15 p.m. ET Thursday

The acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration said the police may be "reluctant to engage" for fear "rightly, or wrongly, that you become the next viral video," adding a new voice to the debate over public scrutiny of law enforcement.

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U.S. Courts has hired new officers to deal with the release of drug offenders. Some "are not going to succeed. ... It's our job to minimize the harm they are going to create," chief of probation said.

Dana Bowerman is one of about 6,100 prisoners just released as part of a change in the way the U.S. punishes people convicted of federal drug crimes. "It still feels weird, different," she told NPR.

Several thousand federal inmates are being released early as a result of changes to U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines on drug crimes.

Thousands of federal inmates are being released because of a change in the way the U.S. government sentences drug criminals, but few are going straight from prison to freedom.

The FBI Agents Association honored fallen colleagues and the former head of U.S. Special Operations in a star-studded charity gala in Washington on Wednesday.

The second-annual awards dinner generated money to help provide scholarships for children of FBI workers and funds that offer "special assistance" to agents and their families.

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Hillary Clinton testifies before the House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks on Thursday, in a session expected to last most of the day.

"Our experience has been ... that you really can reduce crime and incarceration at the same time," says Ronal Serpas of the new group, Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration.

Momentum for sentencing reform grows as leaders of the House Judiciary Committee introduce a bipartisan bill. But rising violence in some big cities could complicate the legislative forecast.