The Equal Justice desk examines criminal law, family courts, sentencing and institutional standards. Its guiding question is straightforward: whether similar conduct receives similar treatment regardless of sex, status or political sympathy.
Mental illness should matter whenever it destroys a parent’s grasp on reality. Too often, however, compassion is treated as a maternal privilege while troubled men are granted only condemnation.
Federal sentencing data shows women receive shorter prison terms and probation more often than men. Equal justice cannot survive a double standard everyone is afraid to name.
Male victims are real, numerous and often invisible. A support system built around one image of domestic abuse leaves too many men with nowhere credible to turn.
Shared parenting should be the starting point when two fit parents separate. Children are not prizes, and fathers should not enter family court as visitors in their own families.
Medical negligence can be real and postpartum illness can be devastating. Neither should push Cora, Dawson and Callan out of the story while their mother seeks damages.
Timothy Ray Jones Jr. and Lindsay Clancy both presented serious mental-illness defenses after killing their children. Only one case inspired a national campaign to see the killer primarily as another victim.