Deterrence: The View From District 12

Social control takes many forms.

In the U.S., mass incarceration plays that role for many segments of the population - particularly African-Americans.

Most of that incarceration, however, takes place off-screen. Many of us don't even think about the fact that our country has over 2 million people locked up in jail or prison. We just let the correctional officers and other criminal justice professionals serve as our proxies.

The nightmarish world depicted in "The Hunger Games" provides a thought-provoking contrast to our indifference. In Suzanne Collins's dystopia, a lethal form of incarceration plays out 24 / 7 on out-size video screens.

The ritual is almost like a return to the era of the public execution in its over-the-top striving for a deterrent effect. No use resisting The System when the power to compel such extreme behavior is on in-your-face display.

The prisoners are children who committed no crime, yet are put under intense pressure to be their own executioners.

Beltless at the Dakota County Courthouse

“Trust, but verify,” Ronald Reagan supposedly told Mikhail Gorbachev upon signing a missile treaty in the waning days of the Cold War.

It’s a curious phrase. The more a party feels it necessary to verify, the more it would seem to undermine trust. After all, if there really is trust, there is no need to verify.

That’s why people in close-knit communities leave their doors open and their cars unlocked. They don’t feel compelled to review surveillance tape upon returning home to verify that their trust was well founded.

What happens, however, when the size of a community grows sufficiently large that the instinctive trust of a smaller community is no longer present?

Well, then you would have — to take one example — the Dakota County courthouse in Hastings. As the Star Tribune reported last December, the country board insists that attorneys remove their belts and go throw security every time they visit the courthouse.

Members of the bar pressed the board for an exemption from the belts-off rule late last year. In other metro counties, they pointed out, attorneys are regularly allowed to bypass airport-type security procedures.

In addition, as attorney Paul Rogosheske contended, attorneys are already screened for character and moral fitness by the bar admission process.

The Dakota County Board was completely unmoved by these arguments. Instead, the board reaffirmed its support for continuing to require attorneys to go through the same security screening as everyone else.

During the board hearing, a commander from the sheriff’s office, John Grant, displayed a shiv (a piece of sharpened plastic). “This will kill you, just like anything else,” he said ominously.

Similarly, one of the county commissioners, Liz Workman, flatly told the lawyers that the courthouse was like the airport. So they should get used to removing their belts and going through the whole-nine-yards security procedure.

There is an obvious problem, however, with the airport analogy. Airlines offer expedited check-in programs for their frequent flyers. It’s a pity that Dakota County can’t do the same for its frequent courthouse-flyers, namely attorneys.

It’s a pity not because it’s such an inconvenience to remove your belt. It’s a pity because using more verification than is really needed tends to undercut trust.

Pistol Packing in L' Etoile du Nord

Headline writing is a peculiar craft that will outlive newspapers. To capture a would-be reader's interest, in a few short words, is an important skill. Especially in an age of information overload.

Sometimes, however, the headline writers get a little too cute. Even worse, sometimes they obscure the facts.

For example, yesterday's Star Tribune featured a long front-page article on legalized gun carrying in Minnesota. Presumably trying to riff on the state's "Land of 10,000 Lakes" slogan, the article multiplied the state's number of lakes by ten to get the number of permit holders.

The result was a headline that read Land of 100,000 Gun Toters.

Ah, but reality is not always so nicely symmetrical. It is Wisconsin, our neighbor to the east, that has about 100,000 gun permit holders. Here in Minnesota, with more restrictive gun permit requirements than Wisconsin, the number is more like 51,000. (The Strib said it was 50,777 as of 2007, which is now five years ago.)

A pity, to have such a fine article undermined by a factually inaccurate title. Unless the Strib was trying to imply that the trend line is heading toward 100,000 gun carriers in Minnesota?

Sandusky's Mens Rea

With certain conduct, the same action may be criminal or not, depending on the intent of the person who performed it. This is basic criminal law, and in the first year of law school, students historically have learned a Latin term for criminal intent: mens rea.

The Jerry Sandusky juvenile sex abuse case is a recent reminder of this basic principle. Some of the charges were for clearly prohibited acts, such as oral or anal sex with a minor. Other charges, however, were for conduct involving overt but somewhat ambiguous acts, such as touching in the shower.

Before the jury began its deliberations, the judge gave clear instructions about what constituted a criminal mental state.

“It is not necessarily a crime for a man to take a shower with a boy, wash a boy’s hair, lather his shoulders, or engage in back rubbing or back cracking,” the judge said. “What makes this kind of ambiguous contact a crime is the intent with which it is done. You must determine it is an act of lust.”

And that, indeed, is what the jury found. On virtually all of the charges involving “ambiguous conduct,” the jury found Sandusky guilty of actions motivated by lust.

Amazed by the Numbers

Round numbers are supposed to be easier to get your mind around. But it’s hard to do that, when the round number is one American in every 100 behind bars.

The American prison system currently holds about 1.6 million people. Jails confine another 735,000 more, according to latest data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

The jail figure is down slightly in the last few years. But when the number of prison inmates is added in, the total number of people confined in correctional facilities approaches 2.4 million.

It’s not so much a system as a set of systems, consisting of 50 states, the District of Columbia, the feds, and various local governments — particularly jails at the county level.

With so many decision makers, it’s hardly a vast conspiracy. The cumulative effect, however, is Leviathan-like in size. Scholars now call it mass incarceration.

This Leviathan is a labyrinth for many who are inside it. With prison terms so long and rehabilitation resources so scarce, it must seem like being stuck in a maze, trying to get out.

Indeed, mass incarceration has also become a labyrinth in policy terms. But no Theseus is in sight, to slay, or at least tame, the beast our society has created out of fear and malign neglect.

The closest we’ve come is Sen. Jim Webb, whose sensible proposal in 2009 for a national commission to review sentencing policy and practice went nowhere fast.

Instead of a single national hero, how about a host of heroes at the state and local level? In the dark maze, they could be a thousand points of light.

Prison or Probation? Wastewater Dumping Case Poses Familiar Question

What should the sentence be, when someone is convicted of illegally dumping mass quantities of wastewater on public and private property?

By mass quantities, I mean millions of gallons. The dumping was done by a 50-year-old Pennsylvania man, Robert Allan Shipman. He was the former owner of a business that disposed of products that included sewage sludge and restaurant grease, as well as wastewater containing byproducts from natural gas drilling.

Sadly, Shipman took the seemingly easy way out. He told his drivers to dump the water into steams and abandoned mines, and on various business properties in several western Pennsylvania counties.

Eventually, the harebrained scheme was discovered, Earlier this year, Shipman pleaded guilty to numerous criminal counts. Among them were theft, tampering with public records, and conspiracy.

Understandably, prosecutors sought a prison sentence. They argued that incarceration was needed to send a message that would deter other would-be polluters from harming the environment on such a disturbing scale.

Instead, the judge imposed a sentence of seven years of probation and 1,750 hours of community service. Shipman was also fined $100,000 and ordered to pay $257,000 in restitution.

Prosecutors are appealing the sentence, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Trespass at the Open

The seemingly ageless Bob Costas was conducting an interview near the 18th green of the Olympic Club in San Francisco with U.S. Open winner Webb Simpson.

Suddenly an oddly dressed interloper inserted himself into the picture. Within seconds, the camera cut away — but not before the interruption broke the flow of the interview.

Simpson dealt with the distraction by acknowledging it. “Enjoy your jail cell, buddy,” he said, glancing off camera. His tone seemed to express genuine concern, not derision.

Costas reflected back Simpson’s statement, as good interviewers often do. The “gendarme” was now in charge of the situation, Costas observed.

This was a somewhat odd word choice, it seems to me. After all, “police officer" would have been much more straightforward. But it did give Costas a chance to show off his vocabulary.

In any case, I record the exchange because of how it reflects the reliance our society continues to have on incarceration, even for nonviolent offenses. Locking someone in a cell is America’s default position when dealing with deviant conduct that has been defined as criminal.

We are arguably not as open a society as we like to think ourselves to be. A more open society would probably not be so quick to bundle its enemies off to jail.