Carrie Johnson

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.

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee are preparing to introduce a bill Thursday they're billing as "companion" legislation to the major Senate sentencing overhaul unveiled last week.

Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., issued a rare joint statement saying their ...

It's wonder enough in sharply-divided Washington that nine Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate came together this week to do anything, let alone touch the once politically charged arena of crime and punishment.

But groups as different as the ACLU and Koch Industries had joined this year in a ...

FBI Director James Comey said he is closely monitoring the investigation into the possible compromise of security information on Hillary Clinton's email server, but he declined to offer details about the politically sensitive matter.

In a regular pen-and-pad briefing with reporters in Washington, Comey said he had recently informed lawmakers ...

The Taliban overran the Afghan city of Kunduz earlier this week. This comes just a few months after a new leader took over the Taliban and a year after President Ashraf Ghani took power of the Afghan government.

NPR has learned a bipartisan group of senators on the Judiciary Committee is preparing to unveil a criminal justice overhaul proposal on Thursday.

The State Department is preparing to release another batch of Hillary Clinton's email messages Wednesday. It's the latest in what Clinton herself called a process of "drip drip drip" that will extend into early next year.

The email controversy has been causing the presidential hopeful a lot of political problems. ...

Hillary Clinton is still facing questions about her private email server. Her carefully worded responses are in part designed to provide legal cover.

A bipartisan group of senators on the Judiciary Committee is preparing to unveil a criminal justice overhaul proposal as early as Thursday, two sources familiar with the deal told NPR.

The plan follows months of behind-the-scenes work by the staffs of Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who is chairman ...

A federal judge has thrown out four bribery charges against Sen. Robert Menendez and his longtime friend and donor, leaving intact the bulk of the corruption case against them.

Prosecutors indicted Menendez and Salomon Melgen, an eye doctor, in April, after accusing the men of engaging in a quid pro ...