Is hiring more black officers the key to reducing police violence?

  High-profile cases of officer brutality against black citizens in recent years have caused Americans to question the racial makeup of their police departments.

  Many advocates believe that diversifying these forces will help reduce police violence against people of color.

Poverty expert explains how we make it a crime to be poor

  Officially, the United States ended debtors’ prisons in 1833. Unofficially, as we saw in the Justice Department’s report on racially biased policing in Ferguson, there is a system of fines and fees for minor crimes that often result in jail time for the poor, mostly black citizens who cannot afford to pay them.

  To provide more context on the issue, I talked with Peter Edelman, Georgetown University law professor and former staffer for Robert F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, about his new book Not a Crime to be Poor: The Criminalization of Poverty in America.