Suit Alleges ‘Scheme’ in Criminal Costs Borne by New Orleans’s Poor

A lawsuit filed against New Orleans criminal district court alleges that it runs a “scheme” in which the poor are jailed if they fall behind paying fines. “The extent to which every actor in the local New Orleans legal system depends on this money for their own survival is shocking,” said Alec Karakatsanis, a founder of Equal Justice Under Law, a civil rights group, and one of the lawyers who filed the suit….

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10 Years After Katrina

Ten years later, it is not exactly right to say that New Orleans is back. The city did not return, not as it was. The city that exists now, a decade later, is a work in progress, an improvisation that is establishing a new normal.

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Can We Trust Each Other?

A Pew Research survey recently found that fewer than one-third of Americans trusted others in everyday interactions. What does this mean?

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