San Benito County Crime & Justice Articles

California cities are struggling to hire police in a tight labor market after the COVID pandemic. Some are raising by double digits and offering eye-catching bonuses.

Psychedelics are having a moment. A nationwide push to bring magic mushrooms and other psychedelics into the mainstream is gaining traction, and some Californians want in.

The Hollister City Council voted Aug. 21 to partner with Flock Safety to provide gunshot detection and license plate reading cameras for a roughly one square mile area of Hollister. The council gave Mayor Mia Casey the green light to …

More California police departments are deploying body cameras. A new court ruling restricts how prosecutors can use footage of witness accounts at trial.

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen announced Aug. 3 that he is sponsoring an “unprecedented” statewide ballot initiative that seeks to “transcend the bitter politics of gun control and save the lives of crime victims, the suicidal and children.” …

Almost half of the jobs for doctors and psychiatrists in California prisons are unfilled. Now, their union says it’s ready to strike over pay even as the state faces a steep budget deficit.

A yearlong investigation shows that a $100 million-a-year rehabilitation program for former California prisoners grew with little oversight from the state corrections agency. It's unclear how many parolees wind up back in prison.

A Bay Area woman sued her husband's employer after she became infected with COVID-19. The California Supreme Court found that giving her workers' comp could set a precedent that would imperil the system.

The first-in-the-nation state-appointed task force report contains hundreds of recommendations for reparation, including a proposal that the state apologize and make financial amends for slavery and decades of racist policies.

In a landmark case, California's Supreme Court will decide if cities must switch their at-large elections to a voting-by-district system after hearing oral arguments the Pico Neighborhood Association v. Santa Monica voting rights case June 27.

The population of transgender inmates in California prisoners surged by 234 percent in the years since the state adopted a first-in-the-nation policy allowing gender-affirming health care.

Learn about the charismatic leaders who founded Daughters of Bilitis, Mattachine Society, ONE Inc. and other “homophile movement” groups in the Golden State.

You have to be 18 to get divorced in California, but there’s no minimum age to get married. Child marriage survivors protested at the state Capitol, but the Legislature likely won’t act until next year.

A technological upgrade coming soon to the Gilroy Police Department will give officers the latest equipment and also allow the public to submit digital evidence to help solve crimes. The Gilroy City Council unanimously approved a 10-year contract with Axon …

Gov. Gavin Newsom took to his Twitter account to propose an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would regulate gun sales and use nationwide, in a way that courts cannot change.

‘You small, pathetic man,’ Gavin Newsom wrote in a Twitter post suggesting he’d pursue criminal charges against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over recent migrant flights to Sacramento.

California is unwinding the prison-building boom of the 1980s and 1990s. The cuts are falling on small towns that banked on government jobs to anchor their communities.

More than 4 percent of death penalty convicts have been wrongfully convicted, data shows. But courts including the U.S. Supreme Court have failed to provide protections for the innocent facing death at the hands of the state.

The death penalty remains legal in California, but Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered a moratorium on executions in 2019. Will capital punishment end in the state? Here’s what’s happening.

The California Supreme Court has kept the state at the forefront of legal issues surrounding abortion, the death penalty and same-sex marriage, starting in its earliest days in the Gold Rush era.