Victims' Commissioner Claire Waxman expressed her delight at the government's decision, stating that the change is long overdue and acknowledges the years of campaigning led by bereaved families like Tracey Hanson, who sought justice following the tragic death of her son Josh.
Pat Salmon, who was sentenced for the repeated sexual assault of a five-year-old girl, died in the Mater Hospital after serving only four months of his three-year sentence.
Jason Thompson, a guard at HMP Isis, was suspended as the Metropolitan Police investigated his involvement in smuggling drugs and contraband into the prison. He was sentenced to four years and six months for conspiracy and misconduct.
A detective garda who brutally assaulted his wife in front of their young children walked free from court without a custodial sentence, raising serious concerns about justice.
Proposition 36, a state ballot measure, enacted harsher penalties for minor theft and drug offenses, with proponents pledging the crackdown would lead to mass treatment to keep people alive, out of jail, and off our streets. Case records, however, suggest the state is largely failing to meet the central goal of getting people help and instead conducting mass arrests and incarcerating more people with addiction.
Wenzlau will need to give his probation officer with any passwords for electronic devices when they check to ensure he doesn't contact minors. The plea bargain also requires Wenzlau's probation officer to approve anytime Wenzlau wants to use the internet, according to court records. Wenzlau also has to keep his browsing history for at least 4 weeks.
The high-ranking role comes with a $180,000 to $230,000 salary, the listing states, and "will serve as a trusted advisor to the mayor, first deputy mayor, and the administration's senior leadership on all matters related to the closing of Rikers."
Weak legal regulation of paramedics is being blamed for a "horrifying" situation where criminals, including at least eight known convicted sex offenders, are free to work as paramedics. A confidential report seen by the Irish Independent confirms the Health Minister was informed of the issue in September 2025, but did not respond until a second "urgent" letter was delivered on December 10, 2025.
RDAP is a voluntary program that lasts between nine and 12 months (ordinarily, it requires roughly 38 weeks to complete in five-day workweeks, three-hour-a-day segments). The 500-hour program strives to educate inmates on the dangers of addiction. Most importantly, relapse prevention is stressed with the goal of helping inmates during post-release stay clean and sober to avoid reoffending. Congress appropriates more than $100 million annually for RDAP.
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.
For decades, addiction treatment in the United States has relied on a familiar explanation when people relapse: recovery is hard, addiction is chronic and setbacks are part of the process. That narrative is often delivered with compassion, but it can obscure a more troubling reality. Many treatment failures are not personal shortcomings. They are predictable outcomes of how recovery is currently designed.
The Alaska Department of Corrections does not provide comprehensive access to this life saving medication. "I'm gonna give you a little pinch," Spencer said, sliding the needle into a fold of skin on the patient's belly for the subcutaneous injection. Alaska's not an outlier. Despite the fact that those recently released from incarceration are some of the most vulnerable to dying from drug overdose, addiction experts say that many jails and prisons around the country don't provide medication treatment.
Metropolitan Police A convicted sex offender who was accidentally released from prison has pleaded guilty to burglary and carrying a knife. Brahim Kaddour-Cherif, 24, became the centre of a manhunt in November after he was mistakenly set free from HMP Wandsworth while on remand awaiting trial for the offences. On Tuesday, Kaddour-Cherif appeared at Snaresbrook Crown Court and admitted breaking into a garage in Walthamstow, east London and stealing bikes in January 2024.
Donald Marler, 31, was transferred to North Kern State Prison on Jan. 7, two months after pleading no contest to voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of 38-year-old Nicholas Lord. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors threw out a murder charge, court records show. At Marler's preliminary hearing last April, a woman who was one of Lord's roommates testified that the two men started arguing about a stolen car inside their shared residence on June 7, 2022.
The charges against Zato stem from an incident in which she plowed into 27-year-old James Roda of Oakland with her 1984 Mercedes-Benz while he was in the middle of 14th Street between Madison and Oak streets shortly before 1 a.m. on Oct. 5, 2013. Zato's lawyer, Megan Burns, said in her closing argument in November that Zato struck Roda under duress because she faced an imminent threat from a group of men who had beaten her and robbed her of her cellphone in front of the Oakland Public Library.
A state office created in 2024 to scrutinize local investigations into jail deaths has yet to complete a single review of the more than 150 people who have died in custody in California's county jails over the past year-and-a-half. That's because it hasn't received the records needed to fully analyze the deaths, according to the Board of State and Community Corrections, a regulatory body appointed by the governor to oversee the state's jails and juvenile halls.
Baby Victoria's body was found in a shopping bag in Brighton in 2023, after her parents concealed her birth and went on the run in an attempt to avoid contact with social services. Marten and Gordon, a convicted rapist, were both sentenced to 14 years for gross negligence manslaughter last year. The review, chaired by Sir David Holmes, sought to identify missed safeguarding opportunities, and to learn lessons from what the review called the "extreme case" of baby Victoria's death.
He describes turning to steroids after several spine injuries in the line of duty, the nightmares that haunt him from the day a tried to save a 2-year-old girl who drowned in a backyard pool, and the fateful morning where FBI armored cars drove onto his lawn and burst into his home with flashbang grenades while he poured milk into his kids' cereal bowls.