What Are Three Teenagers Supposed to Do When the FBI Raids Their House?

The Wild Story of My Dad’s Mysterious Scraps of Paper, the Agents Who Wanted Them, and Our Race to Find Them First

A Rangers hockey game was on TV as I folded the warm pile of laundry splayed out on the couch. It was a brisk, fall Saturday afternoon in the suburban part of Schenectady, upstate New York’s Electric City. I was 12 years old and into hockey back then before the sport became the joke: I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out.

My mother was in the kitchen doing what she characteristically does on a Saturday, making spaghetti sauce, meatballs, sausage, and braciole for the week. The comforting …

By Kathleen Garrett | February 16, 2016

How to Drink Like a Gangster

Four Cocktails to Die for, Courtesy of America’s Underworld

By Scott M. Deitche | January 8, 2016

For his brief reign atop the Gambino crime family, in the late 1980s, John Gotti, the “Teflon Don,” was the heir apparent to Al Capone as America’s top mob …

Last Year There Were 800 Fewer Homicides in L.A. Than in 1992

The Recent Crime Surge Doesn’t Compare to the Tsunami of Violence 20 Years Ago

By Miles Corwin | December 2, 2015

The recent surge in the violent crime rate in Los Angeles after more than a decade of decline, the hostility in inner cities against law enforcement, the high-profile incidents of …

When a Felony Is No Longer a Felony

How Redefining Nonviolent Crimes Is Changing California’s Justice System

by Sarah Rothbard | February 19, 2015

After decades of building prisons and increasing the number of people behind bars, the pendulum of California’s criminal justice system has swung away from incarceration. Among the policies and laws …

How to Make Every Offender an Ex-Offender

Keeping Parolees Out of Prison Takes Jobs, Housing, and Cold, Hard Cash

February 14, 2015

Immediately after Californians voted in favor of Proposition 47—which redefined nonviolent felonies—last November, lawyers’ phones started ringing. The goal of this legislation—called the “The Safe Neighborhood and Schools Act” by …

The Murder That Made Us Celebrity-Obsessed

In 1922, the Mysterious Death of Director William Desmond Taylor Sparked America's Hunger for Scandal

by William J. Mann | January 13, 2015

I was 9 years old when I first learned about the murder of 1920s movie director William Desmond Taylor. Taylor’s killing was one of several scandals—others included the “Fatty” Arbuckle …

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