when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

A sixteen-year-old boy shot by a police sniper, for what?

According to his parents, Andrew Messina had a bad day at school and the pressure was so overwhelming, he grabbed a gun and threatened to kill himself. 

Lisa Messina called the cops in desperation, hoping an officer would come talk to him. But what arrived was an army of deputies, an armored tank and a sniper.

This is the natural outcome of a militarized police force that puts its own safety above that of the citizens they have sworn to protect and serve. When police have armored tanks and snipers to use, the tanks and snipers will be used. 

Hat tip to Radley Balko at The Agitator.

supply and demand...or something entirely different?

The usual "proof" that those convicted of child porn possession should be punished as severely as those who produce the porn is that those who look at the images only encourage someone else to create more images and to abuse more children. Demand drives the market, they say. Here are a couple of comments from the spate of comments left on my blog:

Downloading and posessing child porn is illegal because it continues to victimize the children it exploited. It's illegal because it creates and fuels a demand for more images which lead to more children being hurt and abused.

...and...

Child porn exists because there is a market for it. The consumers of child porn and the demand for it make it possible for it to continue to exists. 

..and...

If sick slime balls like your husband weren't creating a market for child porn, then it wouldn't be readily available. 

If that argument is solid, then it could make good sense to put as many people like my husband in prison as possible. Jacob Sullum, in the July 2011 Reason, points out that incarceration rates of those charged with possession, receipt or distribution of child pornography have increased dramatically in recent years. He says the sentences for those crimes have increased in severity as well.

Between 1997 and 2007, the number of people sent to federal prison for possessing, receiving, or distributing (but not producing) child pornography quintupled, from 238 to 1,170, while the average sentence more than quadrupled, from 21 to 91 months.

So let me think about this. After incarcerating increasingly large numbers of people for child porn offenses, the demand must have decreased quite a bit. On the other hand, child porn must still be available or we wouldn't have such a steady supply of child porn defendants and convicts. The only thing that seems clear is that reducing the number of people looking at child porn does not decrease the supply of the images.

Could it be that the motivation of those who post child pornography to the Internet has nothing to do with supply and demand? Could it be that the motivation of those who abuse children and post images to the Internet has nothing to do with whether there is an audience for those images?

It is easy to think that profit is a motive for posting more and more varied images to child porn sites that sell the images. When money is involved, we think profit is the motive but maybe not. Maybe the people running the for-pay sites have other reasons to charge for the images. Perhaps they think charging for the images narrows the audience, eliminating the merely curious who could be more likely to report the egregious images. I don't know. I don't know anyone who runs a website that charges for the images so I don't know what the motivation is. Imagining the motive is not the same as knowing the motive.

Many more sites are available that offer the images for no charge at all. Freely available. What is the motivation for the people who post images to these sites? There is no profit motive here. Could it be that there are many possible motives for sharing the illegal images? 

The common belief that demand drives the child porn industry must be questioned. Criminal sentences based on that belief must be challenged.

internet anonymity = virtual courage

Not too long ago, my blog was hit with a bunch of comments from people eager to tell me how wrong I am to stand by my husband. A couple of examples:

If you are truly concerned about how your children will fare, I might suggest you take this time to choose their welfare over their father's and leave him, change your name, and remove them from the aegis of shame that his actions might cause them. 

...and... 

Shame on you. You should have removed yourself and your children away from that monster the SECOND you found out about this. You disgust me!

These are people who do not know me or my husband; they do not know the images found on his computer. They know the barest bones of our story, that my husband is charged with possession of child pornography. Internet anonymity provides the same kind of courage that liquor does, so the commenters let loose.


When I tell people who know me about the charges against my husband, they have--without fail--been supportive of our family.

To those of you reading this who are in a situation similar to mine, do not use the opinions of vitriolic strangers as a guide to making decisions about how to handle your life. You may make a decision different from mine but make the decision based on the facts, not on anonymous hysterics.

who are sex offenders?

Children. Children are sex offenders. This young man will pay for the rest of his life for something he did when he was thirteen.

Only 10 percent of young offenders will re-offend, according to the Center for Sex Offender Management. Yet young offenders who commit crimes against even younger peers are stuck in the most serious category.

The sex offender registry is touted as a way to keep children safe, but does it?

Those opposed to lifetime juvenile registration suggest that it does not prevent future offenses, since sexual abuse is most often committed not by strangers but by someone in, or close to, the family. “Registration gives people a false sense of security, a false sense of hope,” says Randy Smith, who reviewed adult and juvenile sex offenders for courts in Chicago and Ohio. 

But despite the efforts of advocates, the futures of young offenders like Anthony are in the hands of elected officials unlikely to oppose a law that claims to protect children from sexual abuse. Smith says, “A lot of sex offender laws come from the six o’clock news, from the random person who buries the kids in the woods.”

Legislators like to look tough on crime, even when they admit the laws are wrong.

Iowa State Senator Jerry Behn, who authored the state’s original residency restriction in 2002, admits the law overreached when it applied to all sex offenders, rather than only dangerous pedophiles. But, Behn says, “anyone who votes to fix this now is going to be viewed as light on sexual predators.”

Behn is despicable. To know the laws are wrong and to refuse to change them is wrong. This man has no place in public office.

halloween, a time for scaring people

Halloween lovers like a good scare and what could be scarier than sex offenders? Law enforcement across the country enjoy the chance to pull out all the stops to protect the children.

How effective is all the extra work of going to the home of each sex offender to make sure each one is behaving? As effective as not doing it at all. Does it accomplish anything?

Lisa Sample, Ph.D., a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, says these stunts do have one effect: They increase fear in the public.

Nebraskans Unafraid sent a letter to news media, asking them not to fall for the elaborate trick law enforcement perpetrates each year:

“This study found no significant increase in risk for non-familial child sexual abuse on or around Halloween.” ...  The study spanned nine years of data, 1997-2005. The researchers said that “Halloween” policies (such as the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office sex-offender publicity stunt) have no impact on crime. Quoting the researchers: 

“The most common types of crime from among the incidents reported on Halloween and adjacent days were theft (32%), destruction or vandalism of property (21%), assault (19%) and burglary (9%).  Vandalism and property destruction accounted for a greater proportion of crime around Halloween compared to other days of the year (21% vs. 14% of all reports).  Sex crimes of all types accounted for slightly over 1% of all Halloween crime. Non-familial sex crimes against children age 12 and under accounted for less than two-tenths of 1 percent of all Halloween crime incidents.” 

When you see law enforcement stop at the home of the neighborhood sex offender simply to harrass him and to use him as a means to frighten parents and to burnish the image of cops as protectors, don't fall for it.

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.