another search, another death...and no effect on supply or demand

Radley Balko the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces, tells yet another story like many others he has told. He quotes from a news story about the killing of Derek Cuice:

A deputy shot and killed an unarmed man while attempting to serve a narcotics search warrant in Deltona, according to the Volusia County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators said deputies were entering the home on Maybrook Drive when Derek Cruice, 26, allegedly advanced on a member of the SWAT team around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday. 

“Volusia County Sheriff’s Office narcotics investigators and the Street Crimes Unit were attempting to serve a search warrant at a residence. They were met with resistance and a shooting occurred,” Volusia County Sheriff Ben Johnson said. 

 Balko writes:

It seems likely that Cruice was dealing pot. The police say they found a ledger book, a scale, about a half-pound of marijuana and some cash. It also seems likely that if the police had simply knocked on the door and waited, or apprehended Cruice as he was coming or going, Cruice would be still be alive. This insistence on serving drug warrants by barreling into homes creates needless violence, confusion and confrontation. They’re designed to do this. I doubt that Cruice knowingly decided to take on a raiding police team armed only with his basketball shorts. It seems far more likely that he thought they were criminal intruders and was either trying to confront them, or was trying to escape. But there is no room for errors in judgment for the people on the receiving end of these raids — even though sowing confusion and disorientation are the stated aim. But it is only the suspects, the targets of the raids, who are expected to do everything right. When the police screw up and kill someone, they’re generally forgiven, owing again to the volatility of the situation.

Those who have been through a home invasion by the cops will recognize the truth in this. When law enforcement shows up wearing Kevlar and with weapons drawn, they are not protecting anyone but themselves. The chaos, no matter how unnecessary, is intentional.

So judging from the many, many prior incidents similar to this one, it’s probably safe to say that this officer will be cleared of any wrongdoing. It’s also probably safe to say that any investigation will determine that there’s nothing wrong with the police department’s warrant service policies. At least that’s how these investigations usually go. And if it is determined that the cops in these cases are following policy, and that there’s nothing wrong with the policies themselves, then the only conclusion we can draw is that the police agencies believe unarmed men getting shot in the face is an acceptable consequence of the effort to stop people from getting high on marijuana. [My emphasis.]

Balko sounds frustrated, angry. But after hearing so many stories like this, who isn't? 

Of course, even that is an illusion. If there’s one thing we can say with near-absolute certainty, it’s that it is no more difficult to buy pot in Volusia County, Fla., today than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down in his own home. And so we add another body to the pile.

It is no more difficult to buy pot...than it was before Derek Cruice was gunned down... 

Violent, chaotic searches, arrests and convictions, long prison sentences. None of those have slowed down the supply or demand for recreational drugs.

The story is the same with child pornography. As I said here, discussing an interview of a man who had a collection of a million child porn images:

It is important to know that putting people in prison for possessing, receiving, or distributing illegal images does nothing to reduce the availability of child porn. 

Those million images? Still freely available on the Internet.

"$60 meth bust led to shooting of officer"

This is what happens when law enforcement uses unnecessary force: Police making a meth bust shot an undercover cop. The injured cop was shot several times and is still in critical care.

Meth is a dangerous drug, I hear, but I would hazard a guess that no one needs to be shot several times because of $60 worth of meth.

“We’re getting some push back because (the investigation) was for $60 of meth,” said Albuquerque police officer Tanner Tixier, a spokesman. “But that’s how these investigations work. You start with $20, $40, $60 buys. You can’t just go out and buy five pounds of meth.”

Sure, I suppose that could make sense if you ignore the fact that making those $20, $40, $60 buys--and the buys for tens of thousands of dollars--hasn't stopped the availability of meth.

If a large bust manages to slow down the meth trade in a city, the price for meth rises, making it more profitable to produce.

Is that the goal?

People get hurt and killed in the midst of chaos. When it isn't cops shooting cops, it is cops shooting innocent people, cops shooting dogs or cops burning toddlers.

Is that the goal?

if porn is addictive, do we ban it?

At The Public Discourse, Morgan Bennett writes,

Internet pornography is a “monstrous injustice,” and the time for its abolition has come.

She makes some excellent points in a pair of articles though I disagree with her conclusion.

In The New Narcotic, she talks about the addictive effects of repeated viewing of pornography. Viewing pornography can be more addictive than hard drugs like cocaine or heroin. Because pornographic images, once seen, stay in memory and can be recalled consciously or unconsciously, porn addictions can have a more lasting effect than using drugs that do not remain forever in the user's system.

...internet pornography does more than just spike the level of dopamine in the brain for a pleasure sensation. It literally changes the physical matter within the brain so that new neurological pathways require pornographic material in order to trigger the desired reward sensation. ...

Pornography, by both arousing (the “high” effect via dopamine) and causing an orgasm (the “release” effect via opiates), is a type of polydrug that triggers both types of addictive brain chemicals in one punch, enhancing its addictive propensity as well as its power to instigate a pattern of increasing tolerance. Tolerance in pornography’s case requires not necessarily greater quantities of pornography but more novel pornographic content like more taboo sexual acts, child pornography, or sadomasochistic pornography.  [My emphasis.]

Powerful stuff. The idea that this is all freely available--and can be used in privacy and anonymity--is worrisome. Kids who happen onto, or search out, porn have no idea what they may have started. For that matter, neither do adults. An addiction to legal pornography can lead a regular viewer to more novel content, images of more taboo sexual acts. The easy availability of porn on the internet inevitably leads to more people looking at illegal images.

Just as not everyone who has a beer ends up an addict, not every porn consumer will end up addicted to child porn. Some will and the numbers will increase over time.

In Internet Pornography & the First Amendment, she makes a persuasive argument that internet pornography damages both society and personal relationships. The pervasiveness of pornography, freely available and available at all times, is bound to have an effect on society.

If I could, with a stroke of luck or genius or my pen, make all pornography vanish, I would do it. Alas, I cannot. And neither can legislators.

First, local, state, and federal governments should enforce the current obscenity-related laws already on the books. Nearly every state has anti-obscenity laws. The enforcement of those laws would send a message that the production and distribution of obscene material is unacceptable in a civilized society. Second, local and national groups should run billboard, TV, and internet advertising campaigns to expose the harms of internet pornography to the public. 

Looking beyond those “first steps,” I would argue for the eventual enactment of new laws that would censor obscene internet pornography.

Pornography is too easily created, too easily distributed, and too appealing to the curious for it ever to be successfully abolished. Did the prohibition of alcohol stop people from drinking booze? Has the prohibition on marijuana made pot unavailable? Has the ban on child pornography stopped production or downloading?

Have we truly learned nothing from those efforts?

What the ban on pot and other drugs has done is put millions of people in prison and vacuumed over $1 trillion out of taxpayer pockets...all without reducing drug use. Putting thousands and thousands of people in prison for possessing illegal pornography has done nothing to reduce the amount of child porn available.

Another effect of prohibiting child pornography has been to make it impossible for child porn addicts to ask for help to stop. Morgan Bennett, in The New Narcotic, nicely outlines how addictive pornography can be and in Internet Pornography & the First Amendment she wants to penalize those with that addiction. Compassionate, she's not.

Imagine those efforts applied to currently-legal porn as well. How many more would we incarcerate? How many more families would be torn apart by the justice system? How many breadwinners would spend years in prison when therapy or 12-step groups would have served them better?

Her suggestion that we educate the public on the dangers of porn is sensible. Something related has been suggested before.

Censorship or abolition of any kind of pornography is, quite simply, impossible. To attempt to do that will destroy more families than the porn itself does.

good cops wouldn't?

Commenter Our Family is His makes an astonishing assumption, so astonishing that I wondered if I misread her attempt at humor.

Thankfully good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing, so while you were emotionally hurt so much that day and your husband decided to rip your family apart, you were safe that day.

Good cops would have investigated to see if any of us have a history of violence. 
Good cops would have questioned the need to come into my home with their weapons drawn.
Good cops would have waited until the children were out of the house.

Good cops wouldn't shoot an innocent person doing nothing? 

Sometimes the resulting damage, injuries, and deaths have less to do with whether the cops are good or bad than to do with the dangers inherent in drawing weapons in a chaotic situation. Too much chance for unexpected movements or sounds, too much chance for misunderstandings, too much chance for adrenalin to lead to mistakes.

Good cops understand that and avoid creating that chaos.

rand paul wants to give judges a way to ignore mandatory minimum sentences

Exciting to see Rand Paul doing something to lessen the impact of mandatory minimum sentences. Heck, it's exciting to see someone in the Senate acknowledging that there is a problem.

Judges will tell you that current federal sentencing laws — known as mandatory minimums — don’t actually do anything to keep us safer. In fact, judges will tell you that mandatory minimums do much harm to taxpayers and to individuals, who may have their lives ruined for a simple mistake or minor lapse of judgment. 

Mandatory minimums reflect two of the biggest problems in Washington: The first problem is the idea that there should be a Washington-knows-best, one-size-fits-all approach to all problems, be they social, educational or criminal. This approach leads to our second problem: Washington’s habit of undermining the system our Founding Fathers created. Their system left as much power as possible in the hands of local and state officials, and sought to treat people as individuals, not as groups or classes of people.

He focuses on how mandatory minimums affect drug offenses because so many people in prison are there on for that reason.

Our Founding Fathers went to great lengths to prevent the executive and prosecutors from obtaining too much power. The Fourth Amendment was written to stop overzealous searches, and the Fifth and Sixth Amendments were written to establish full due process as an inalienable right. 

Ignoring these rights comes with several tangible costs. In the last 30 years, the number of federal inmates has increased from 25,000 to nearly 219,000. That is nearly a 10-fold increase in federal prisoners, each of whom cost the taxpayers $29,027 a year to incarcerate. The federal prison budget has doubled in 10 years to more than $6 billion. 

Half of the people sentenced to federal prison are drug offenders. Some are simply drug addicts, who would be better served in a treatment facility. Most are nonviolent and should be punished in ways that do not require spending decades in a federal prison, with meals and health care provided by the taxpayers.

For these reasons and others, last week I joined my colleague Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in introducing a bill that would authorize judges to disregard federal mandatory-minimum sentencing on a case-by-case basis.

Prosecutors use mandatory minimums to force a defendant to accept a plea agreement. The plea agreement means the case avoids trial and the prosecutor avoids having to prove the case in court.

It would be best to abolish mandatory minimum sentences and this bill wouldn't do that, though it is an encouraging start.

judicial whining and finger-pointing

What's a judge to do?

 My passion for justice was hard-wired into my DNA. Never could I have imagined that by the end of my 50s, after nineteen years as one of 678 federal district court judges in the nation, I would have sent 1,092 of my fellow citizens to federal prison for mandatory minimum sentences ranging from sixty months to life without the possibility of release.

Judge Mark W. Bennett writes in The Nation about his part in sending Iowans to prison--for years and decades--for their non-violent crimes.

Several years ago, I started visiting inmates I had sentenced in prison. It is deeply inspiring to see the positive changes most have made. Some definitely needed the wake-up call of a prison cell, but very few need more than two or three years behind bars. These men and women need intensive drug treatment, and most of the inmates I visit are working hard to turn their lives around. They are shocked—and glad—to see me, and it’s important to them that people outside prison care about their progress. For far too many, I am their only visitor.

Good on you, Judge, for visiting prisoners and convincing yourself that since the sentence you handed down worked out well for some, perhaps you're not the bad guy you feared.

If lengthy mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug addicts actually worked, one might be able to rationalize them. But there is no evidence that they do. I have seen how they leave hundreds of thousands of young children parentless and thousands of aging, infirm and dying parents childless. They destroy families and mightily fuel the cycle of poverty and addiction. In fact, I have been at this so long, I am now sentencing the grown children of people I long ago sent to prison.

Judge Bennett shows real compassion for the children and families severely affected by the mandatory minimum sentences but did he stop signing search warrants that would send armed men into the homes of those families when the children were home? 

I wonder at what point in those nineteen years the good Judge came to the realization that mandatory minimum sentencing is wrong. Did he know right away that it was wrong? Did he continue sentencing defendants to the mandatory minimum for nineteen years or only a dozen or so? Or did his realization come immediately before writing the opinion piece? 

What could he have done? Judge Bennett provides his own answer in the comments after his article:

I understand why some of you are labeling me a coward. But there is a lapse of "critical thinking" here. I took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States when I was sworn in. Federal judges cannot substitute their personal opinions and refuse to apply valid laws passed by Congress. If we did our legal system would be replaced by anarchy. Our Nation operates under the rule of law. Higher courts have upheld the constitutionally of mandatory minimum sentencing and no defendant before me has ever raise a legal challenge to them. They are not illegal but IMHO unwise. Only Congress can change them..that's not a copout it's the law !!!!! So for Pope Pisius [another commenter] to accuse me of fake heroism and fake concern is unfair. And yes, RoundAbout federal judges have to apply valid laws passed by Congress. We can't willy nilly enforce only laws we personally agree with. 

So he was just doing his job...to prevent anarchy. The defendants walked willingly onto the trains. Here's an idea, Judge Bennett: You could have instructed jurors on their duty to decide if the law was properly applied in the case before them. Imagine if you had begun doing that nineteen years ago! How many of those 1,092 defendants would have benefited? And if you didn't want to do that yourself, you could have allowed defense attorneys to do it.

Many people across the political spectrum have spoken out against the insanity of mandatory minimums. These include our past three presidents, as well as Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist, whom nobody could dismiss as “soft on crime,” and Anthony Kennedy, who told the American Bar Association in 2003, “I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences.” In 2005, four former attorneys general, a former FBI director and dozens of former federal prosecutors, judges and Justice Department officials filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court opposing the use of mandatory minimums in a case involving a marijuana defendant facing a fifty-five-year sentence. In 2008, The Christian Science Monitor reported that 60 percent of Americans opposed mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenders. And in a 2010 survey of federal district court judges, 62 percent said mandatory minimums were too harsh.

Three presidents, four former attorneys general, a former FBI director, dozens of former prosecutors, judges...blah, blah, blah. Did any one of them do anything more than talk about how awful the mandatory minimum sentences are? 

Did any of the three presidents put forth bills to abolish the MMs? Did the FBI director put out the word to stop executing search warrants SWAT-style or home invasion-style? Did the prosecutors stop using the MMs to pin defendants between a rock and a hard place? 

I would guess that, just like Judge Bennett, they did not.

what happens when police are militarized?

In Maryland, this:

Terry Allen Porter’s home was raided using all the power of the state security apparatus not because he was terrorist, a bank robber, serial killer, or a relative of the Kennedy clan, but because of an anonymous tip that he was an avid outdoorsman...

An anonymous tip. Hmm. 

Terry Allen Porter required the attention of Maryland State Police, Washington County Sheriff’s Office deputies, a helicopter, K-9 units, a heavily armed FBI SWAT team, and two armored vehicles because he had guns and a twenty-year-old conviction for dealing cocaine that landing him in jail for six months in 1992. 

Three different law enforcement agencies to raid someone with a single non-violent crime in his history. Hmm.

How his home came to be raided should be of great concern to every American. All media accounts suggest that he was informed on by a fellow citizen who apparently had few facts correct (no “machine gun-style firearms,” handguns, or large caches of ammunition were recovered) and a police officer who felt not liking how the election turned out, having security cameras, and being a “prepper” constituted a threat that needed to be responded to with a combined-arms raid of infantry, armor, and air power.

Imagine your neighborhood during a raid such as this. When law enforcement comes in with multiple agencies, with officers armed to the teeth, with helicopter overhead, accidents are just waiting to happen. 

As an American, I am appalled that an informant (who rather frankly appears to have been a liar) and scant evidence brought forth by an undercover cop who saw no actual criminal activity were enough to launch a massive paramilitary raid against a citizen without a history of violence.

And, incidentally, a citizen who wasn't home at the time. Yes. All the combined investigative powers of the Maryland state police, the county sheriff and the FBI led up to a raid when the suspect wasn't even home. Lucky for him.

vote the cowards out of office

I wasn't able to post this earlier today but it is still important: Vote.

Remember the millions of felons who are not able to vote out the elected officials who:

• created the mandatory minimum sentencing that gives prosecutors too much power, 
• who make sure juries do not know their duty to decide if the law is applied correctly, 
• who pass laws that make it nearly impossible to lead a normal life after serving prison time.

Vote out the cowards who are too afraid to do the right thing because they will be seen as easy on crime.

power of the prosecutor...not kosher

Watch Unjustified: The Unchecked Power of America's Justice System for an interesting story about the excessive power of the federal prosecutor. If you think that abuse of power probably affects only the druggies and the perverts, think again.

Radley Balko writes about a Montana SWAT team who threw a flash grenade through a window, into the bedroom of a 12-year-old girl, leaving her badly burned.

Sorry, but when you’re blindly shoving a flash grenade attached to a boomstick through a window, and you clearly have no idea who or what is in that room where you’re detonating, the possibility that an innocence person might get burned is not “totally unforeseen.” It’s only unforeseen when you’re so caught up in your drug war that you can’t be bothered to take the time to consider the possible collateral damage your actions may cause.

The cops were executing a search warrant because they suspected a meth lab at the home. Yes, they used a flash grenade in a suspected meth lab. Not too bright, really. Oh, and there was no meth lab at the home, after all. The list of what the cops did right is very, very short.

This is what happens when law enforcement embraces military tactics and leaves "protect and serve" behind.

how can felons change laws when they can't vote?

Who benefits from drug laws that incarcerate an obscene number of American citizens? The top five interests identified in this article include police unions, private prison corporations, and prison guard unions. Not surprisingly, these same interests benefit by incarcerating sex offenders.

1.) Police Unions: Police departments across the country have become dependent on federal drug war grants to finance their budget. In March, wepublished a story revealing that a police union lobbyist in California coordinated the effort to defeat Prop 19, a ballot measure in 2010 to legalize marijuana, while helping his police department clients collect tens of millions in federal marijuana-eradication grants. And it’s not just in California. Federal lobbying disclosures show that other police union lobbyists have pushed for stiffer penalties for marijuana-related crimes nationwide. 

2.) Private Prisons Corporations: Private prison corporations make millions by incarcerating people who have been imprisoned for drug crimes, including marijuana. As Republic Report’s Matt Stoller noted last year, Corrections Corporation of America, one of the largest for-profit prison companies, revealed in a regulatory filing that continuing the drug war is part in parcel to their business strategy. Prison companies have spent millions bankrolling pro-drug war politicians and have used secretive front groups, like the American Legislative Exchange Council, to pass harsh sentencing requirements for drug crimes. 

3.) Alcohol and Beer Companies: Fearing competition for the dollars Americans spend on leisure, alcohol and tobacco interests have lobbied to keep marijuana out of reach. For instance, the California Beer & Beverage Distributors contributed campaign contributions to a committee set up to prevent marijuana from being legalized and taxed. 

4.) Pharmaceutical Corporations: Like the sin industries listed above, pharmaceutical interests would like to keep marijuana illegal so American don’t have the option of cheap medical alternatives to their products. Howard Wooldridge, a retired police officer who now lobbies the government to relax marijuana prohibition laws, told Republic Report that next to police unions, the “second biggest opponent on Capitol Hill is big PhRMA” because marijuana can replace “everything from Advil to Vicodin and other expensive pills.” 

5.) Prison Guard Unions: Prison guard unions have a vested interest in keeping people behind bars just like for-profit prison companies. In 2008, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association spent a whopping $1 millionto defeat a measure that would have “reduced sentences and parole times for nonviolent drug offenders while emphasizing drug treatment over prison.”

Millions of Americans are disenfranchised when they are convicted of felonies but police, prison guards, and prison corporations continue to gain power. Those who have a direct interest in changing the laws--the felons--are cut out of the political process.

More than 5.85 million adults who've been convicted of a felony aren't welcome at polling places, according to data through 2010 compiled by The Sentencing Project. That's 600,000 more than in 2004, the last time the nonprofit group crunched the numbers. 

The vast majority of these disenfranchised adults have been released from prison. Sentencing Project researchers found more than 4 million Americans who cannot cast a ballot because they're on probation or parole, or live in a state that withholds the right to vote from all ex-felons.

A felony on one's record makes it difficult to find a job, to find a home, to buy a home, to make oneself a productive citizen again. Those circumstances would fire up anyone to change the laws that made such hell of their lives but--luckily for law enforcement and the prison industry--this group has no vote.

how do I feel about the victims of child porn?

I promised I would respond to Liza's comments on how I feel about the victims of child pornography. She said:

I think you are very lucky that you or your kids have never been sexually abused. You have no idea the effect it has on a person. They carry the shame and horror until they die. Every relationship they have is affected. What happens to the family of the perpetrator is not the victim's concern. It's horrible for the family but the victim is what matters. Even if the victim is only in pictures. I assure you that the child in the pictures is the victim in child porn - not the person that looks at it. 

I've read every word you have written. There seems to be no concern for the victims but only for your family. I think if you thought about sexual abused victims, you'd have a easier time with what has happened to your family. You'd understand why all hell as broke loose in your family.

There must be blogs out there that discuss the viewpoint you accuse me of ignoring; this is not one of them. I started this blog to talk about my experience as the wife of a man under investigation for possession of child pornography.

Sexual abuse of a child is wrong, no matter how the child deals with it as a child or as an adult. If a victim grows up to be a lovely, well-adjusted person with no lingering effects of the abuse, the abuse was and is wrong.

I have said before that I cannot imagine what it is like to be a victim of sexual abuse and to find that there are photos of that abuse available on the Internet. While victims can share some responses to their abuse, surely they cannot all react the same way. Every victim has his or her own feelings about the abuse and makes his or her own decisions about how to deal with those feelings. To say they all "carry the shame and horror until they die" is a gross generalization and discounts the individual perspectives of each person involved.

I cannot do anything about how victims deal with the after effects of abuse when I do not know the victim. As much as I would like to wave my magic wand and make things better for all child sexual abuse victims, I am tragically unable to do that. We all are. Putting sex offenders on a registry is not the magic wand, either. Identifying all the sex offenders in the neighborhood does nothing to protect children from the first-time offender.

You say "What happens to the family of the perpetrator is not the victim's concern." If you don't care personally about what happens to the families of sex offenders, that is your choice but when your government is responsible for the bad treatment of sex offenders and their families, it is your concern.

You say, "I assure you that the child in the pictures is the victim in child porn - not the person that looks at it." The child in the pictures is a victim of the person who sexually abuses him or her and of the person who photographs the abuse and distributes it. The person who looks at child porn is victimized by a court system and a society that treats him as if he has committed the abuse in the photos even when he did not.

It is frequently said that the child in the photos is victimized again every time someone looks at the image. If that is true, why are you not angry with the investigators, the prosecutors, the attorneys, the juries and all the other people who look at those images? If simple looking victimizes the child all over again, those people are also victimizers, are they not? Perhaps you mean that any pervert who looks at the images and masturbates while looking...those are the ones victimizing the child again? Here's a surprise: the law does not care if the viewer is masturbating or knitting socks while looking. Masturbation is not the crime. The crime is more specific: Clicking a link to download the image is the crime; possessing the image is the crime. The law does not even care if you look at the images in your possession.

My concern is not only for my family. They are, of course, my first priority (isn't that true for you, as well?) but our concerns should reach far beyond our families.

My concern is for the victims of the war on drugs unemployed because their status as a felon makes them ineligible for hire. My concern is for the sex offenders harrassed, hurt, and killed because they are on the sex offender registry. My concern is for the government budgets straining under the rising cost of incarceration. My concern is for the families who are victimized by law enforcement using SWAT tactics or home invasion tactics to execute search warrants. My concern is for the children who watch cops shoot the family dog during those searches. My concern is for the millions of American citizens who are not allowed to vote. My concern is for the defendants--innocent, even--who are forced to accept a plea agreement because the mandatory minimum sentence waits for them if they don't take the plea.

You said a mouthful when you said I should be glad that my family has not been subject to child sexual abuse. I am glad. My heart goes out to anyone who has to deal with that particular horror. However, child sexual abuse is not the only horror in the world...nor is it even the worst horror.

I will not apologize for focusing on the injustice my family faces.

Chris Christie sounds good...but how is he on crime?

I caught the last half of Chris Christie speaking at the GOP National Convention last night. I am impressed with his willingness to be tough on government spending and to make real efforts to cut spending in New Jersey. 

He used to be a federal prosecutor; how does that affect him and his ideas about crime? Some call him smart on crime.

This legislation gives victims access to more information from prosecutors, assists victims of violent crime with medical expenses out of funds paid by offenders, and entitles victims to appear in court for all proceedings. Perhaps most importantly, the new law requires a judge to consider a victim’s statement before accepting a plea bargain. Moreover, the law gives victims a tool to enforce these protections, as it gives them legal standing to file motions to ensure that their interests are recognized.

I don't know enough about the New Jersey law here to have a solid opinion on this but I would rather see reforms that make plea agreements much less common and trials more common. Yes, I imagine a world where the defendant can exercise his Constitutional right to a trial, a world where the prosecution actually has to prove their case. Instead, these reforms sound like another heavy hammer for the prosecution.

Christie also is pushing the use of drug courts to keep drug law offenders out of prison. That sounds compassionate but there are plenty of questions about the effectiveness and fairness of those drug courts.

We must make our voices heard. The current focus on the need to cut government spending is a great opportunity to suggest reform of the current justice system. A reduction in the number of prisons and prisoners would save taxpayer money and it would keep productive members of society in society where they can remain productive. Fewer broken families, too. Fewer people labeled for life as felons or sex offenders...or both. Fewer asset forfeiture cases...the list goes on and on.

just say No!

This man made one simple mistake: He let the cops search him and his vehicle. He thought he had nothing to worry about because he had nothing to hide.


I have begun telling my kids how to respond if they are ever stopped by police. I tell them to say, "I do not consent to any searches." I tell them that even if the cops are polite and friendly they should still refuse consent to a search, even when they are sure they have nothing to hide. I think of this as preparation for the day when they will be driving with their friends in the car. When friends are in the car, they could spill pot, drop pills, leave something behind that law enforcement could find suspicious.


The justice system is controlled by bureaucrats, people who follow the rules and don't know how or when to discriminate among details.

All of this was supposed to be temporary. James hoped that after 12 months, his record would be wiped, and he could find his way back into the finance industry.   

He was wrong. While his probation officer told James that he could break curfew if he was working late (and only then), she didn't tell him that he needed permission from the judge do so. This led to him being charged with violating his probation, and the extension of his punishment until March 2008. And those two years were more than enough time for every third-party private background-check company in the state to register him as having pled no contest to a possession charge.

Just as with this man, even when the situation is generally understood to be unjust, the justice system has no way to stop, think, and reconsider. No way to back out of the course it is set upon.


It is best to Just say No.

you know those awesome drug dogs?

Nevada's drug dogs are trained to respond to the officers, not to the drugs. Does this surprise you? Maybe what should surprise you instead is that we ever fell for the idea that a reaction from a dog is considered a cause for reasonable suspicion.


I admire the dogs used to find bodies in the wreckage after earthquakes or tornadoes or floods, so it isn't that I think dogs are not smart enough to detect drugs. However, there is a huge difference between saving a life based on a dog's senses, and wrecking a life because a dog reacted a certain way. Kind of like polygraphs: Sure, they might be right sometimes or even many times, but the fact that they can be wrong is reason they cannot be used as evidence in court.


When dogs are used to detect drugs--high schools routinely let drug dogs find the lockers that contain drugs, for example--we are accepting the reaction of an animal as legal justification for infringing on someone's right to be free from search or seizure . The animal cannot explain its reaction, it cannot be questioned. If a cop searched a car (or a locker) with only the justification that he "had a sense" that the car/locker contained drugs, we would laugh. Why do we roll over for dogs? 

policing for profit

Civil forfeiture threatens the property rights of all Americans.  These laws allow the police to seize your home, car, cash or other property upon the mere suspicion that it has been used or involved in criminal activity.

Do you think someone is exaggerating? Think again.

Law enforcement can confiscate your property and/or money...and keep it. You don't have to be proven guilty; you don't even have to be charged with a crime for them to be able to keep it. Law enforcement can simply say that it looks as if the property or cash was used criminally or as if it was gotten illegally. They don't have to prove it; they need only suspect it.

From a 2008 NPR article:

As a tactic in the war on drugs, law enforcement pursues that drug money and is then allowed to keep a portion as an incentive to fight crime.

As a result, the amount of drug dollars flowing into local police budgets is staggering. Justice Department figures show that in the past four years alone, the amount of assets seized by local law enforcement agencies across the nation enrolled in the federal program—the vast majority of it cash—has tripled, from $567 million to $1.6 billion. And that doesn't include tens of millions more the agencies got from state asset forfeiture programs.

Property forfeiture is a very profitable business for law enforcement agencies so they have every reason to continue the practice.

In the 22 years from 1989 to 2010, an estimated $12.6 billion in assets were seized by U.S. Attorneys in asset forfeiture cases. The growth rate during that time frame averaged an annual +19.4%. For just 2010 alone, the value of assets seized grew by +52.8% over 2009 and equaled 6 times greater than that for 1989.

It is past time to pull law enforcement back under control.

what to do with the children?

Nebraska is trying to restructure their system for handling foster children. They tried privatization but that didn't work. So, they look for solutions...they look everywhere except right under their noses.


Instead of working so hard to handle the over abundance of foster children, they could cut the numbers by...ready?...taking fewer parents away from the families. When parents go to prison, the kids are left behind and often end up in foster care. Huge numbers of drug convictions lead directly to an overload of the foster care system. 


Many children are in awful situations and foster care can be an improvement for them but when the system is overloaded, these kids suffer from the resulting neglect.

send this book to your legislators!

Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow is an important book; more people should read it. At first, I was a bit put off by her assertion that mass incarceration is a method of keeping black people under control (as the Jim Crow laws were used) but there is much more to the book than that.

The facts are indisputable: the War on Drugs has affected black men disproportionately. While drug use is fairly evenly distributed across races, black men have borne the bigger burden of searches, prosecution and imprisonment. The War on Drugs has been a pointless exercise. Has it diminished the number of illegal drug users? Nope. Has it stopped drug-related crime? Nope. Prohibition has taught us nothing, evidently.

Her remedies include decriminalizing drugs and making drug treatment programs more easily available. I agree. She is eager to lay part of that on the government--the government should provide drug treatment programs--but I would rather leave that to the private sector. Putting the government in charge of these programs is a sure path to corruption. Not exactly the best environment for addicts who are hoping to live a better life.

Without the huge number of drug convictions populating our prisons, what will happen to the huge number of people who depend on prisons for their livelihood? Prison guards and administrators, investors in private prisons, law enforcement agencies (among others) will fight to keep their position, arguing against decriminalization. It is likely that another source of criminals will be found to keep these people employed and to keep the federal money flowing to law enforcement agencies.

Any idea which criminals are an easy pick and likely to fill the breach?

who benefits from increase in incarcerations?

Politicians and prison guard unions go together like chicken and noodles. The unions like politicians who like to demonstrate that they are tough on crime. The politicians like the unions because they donate buckets of money to ensure legislators who are tough on crime.


Job security for prison guards is found in higher incarceration levels. 

Although California’s prison building boom began before the prison guards’ arrival as a political force, the union has been both a supporter and a beneficiary of that expansion. Of the state’s 33 prisons, 23 have been built since 1984.  

Twenty-three prisons built in California since 1984! Imagine how many new guards were hired in that time; imagine the increase in the amount of money in the union coffers, the amount of money the union could spend on political races.


An increase in successful prosecutions is necessary for the survival of prison guard unions. 

pressure to plea bargain

Michelle Alexander puts forth an interesting idea: Instead of taking the plea bargain offered, go to court. Prosecutors like to pile on the charges so that the accused is looking at a horrific prison sentence, and then offer a plea bargain. Instead of risking the horrific sentence, the accused takes the "bargain," which might be an easier sentence but still means he is pleading guilty to a felony. Once a felon, always a felon. I heard someone else describe it as a life sentence,no matter how soon you get out of prison. When you are a felon, people don't want to hire you, they don't want to rent to you. You can't vote, serve on a jury, or own a gun.

Alexander says the majority of the accused take the plea bargain to avoid the risk they see in going to court. However, if enough said "no thanks" to the plea bargain, the court system would be overwhelmed by the number of trials. It is an interesting way to apply pressure in the effort to make changes in the system.

Alexander talks about drug cases because the majority of the growth in prison population is from drug convictions but all of this is true about child pornography convictions, as well. On top of the humiliation of leaving prison with that lifetime felony "sentence," those convicted of possession of child porn are given the additional lifetime sentence of the sex offender registry.

If you plead guilty to drug possession, you have a much better shot at hanging on to your friends and family while you are in prison than if you plead guilty to receiving child porn. People understand substance abuse but addiction to child porn--or even a passing interest--is something else entirely. Only a crazy person would confess to understanding how someone could develop an interest in child porn...because no one wants to be smeared with the taint of something so beyond the pale.