Articles by Steven Gilchrist

An October 2018 audit conducted by officials in Missouri indicated that the whereabouts of 1,259 registered sex offenders was unknown. At the time of the audit, Missouri had approximately 16,000 convicted sex offenders listed on record. In addition to the audit results from Missouri officials, the Associated Press identified other states with similar challenges pertaining to sex offender registries. The state of Wisconsin had 2,735 missing registered sex offenders. A 2017 audit in Massachusetts indicated that nearly 1,800 registered sex offenders were missing from registry records. According to a New York Times article from October 2, 2018: "Federal law requires states to register sex offenders and to notify the public when a convicted sex offender moves into a community. But despite the law's good intentions, it has been criticized for invading the privacy of those who have already been punished, then continuing to punish them. Those who remain on the sex offender registry of...

On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Title VIII of the Act is also referred to as the Fair Housing Act. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination by direct providers of housing regarding the financing, rental, and sale of housing based on disability, family status, gender, race or color, religion, and national origin. Direct providers of housing include: banks, homeowners insurance companies, landlords, local governments, and real estate companies.  The Fair Housing Act of 1968 was an additional legislative act that followed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Fair Housing Act was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate shortly after the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Marting Luther King, Jr. In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act which enhanced the Fair Housing Act to include prohibiting discrimination in housing based on disability or family status.  The Fair Housing Act...

In October 2020, researchers from the City University of New York's Hunter College and Harvard Medical School analyzed information gathered by the federal government regarding health insurance coverage in the United States. The researchers discovered that the number of Americans with health insurance decreased by approximately 2.3 million between 2016 - 2019. The decrease in the number of uninsured Americans led to as many as 25,180 deaths. Researchers estimate that if more Americans cannot gain access to health insurance, then the number of deaths caused by lack of health insurance coverage could triple in the United States. "Gutting the Affordable Care Act would throw another 19.9 million Americans off of insurance, and cause up to 68,345 extra deaths each year. We need to expand insurance, not shrink it. With 30 million uninsured today, we could save thousands of lives by achieving universal coverage," says Dr. Adam Gaffney a Harvard Medical School physician and lead a...

According to Mapping Police Violence.org 1,134 civilians were killed by on duty police officers in the United States in 2021.  The Washington Post  also has a database of fatal police shootings of civilians. Fatal Force, The  Washington Post database, was established by the newspaper on January 1, 2015. This database has kept track of all of the people shot and killed by law enforcement officers in the United States since 2015. Since The Post started the Fatal Force database more than 5,000 people have been shot and killed in the United States by police. Over 95% of the individuals shot and killed by police during this time frame have been male. Approximately 1/2 of the people shot and killed by police have been between the ages of 20 - 40. The states with the highest rates of fatal shootings by law enforcement are New Mexico, Alaska, and Oklahoma. The FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention both keep track of the number of fatal shootings by police; h...

In October 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. According to the United States Department of Justice this legislative act offers funding and technical assistance to local, state, and tribal jurisdictions for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes.  Matthew Wayne  Shepard (December 1, 1976 - October 12, 1998) was a University of Wyoming student who was pistol-whipped, tortured, and left to die after being tied to a barbed-wire fence in Laramie, Wisconsin on October 6, 1998. In May 1995, Matthew Shepard graduated from the American School in Switzerland (TASIS). While at the American School he participated in theater classes and took German and Italian classes as well. James Byrd, Jr. (May 2, 1949 - June 7, 1998) was murdered on June 7, 1998 in Jasper, Texas after being dragged behind a pickup truck along an asphalt road. James Byrd graduated from Jasper Rowe High School in 1967 and later became a vacuum s...