Christopher Nolan's Kangaroo Court

The latest Batman movie carries the burden of being the occasion for the murderous assault in Aurora, Colorado, in July. A deranged graduate student named James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 59 in a shooting spree in a suburban theater during an opening-weekend screening of the film.

As the legal process for Holmes takes its course, the film itself is winding down its theatrical run. With video and other distribution channels in the pipeline, films don’t stay very long in theaters these days. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the theater in Burnsville, Minnesota, where I saw The Dark Knight Rises was one of the smallest I’d ever been in.

It was so small that the disparity between the large screen and the tiny room was quite incongruous.

Rather incongruous, too, is director Christopher Nolan’s plotting of the film. Strangely enough, in a movie featuring such over-the-top violence, Nolan at times seems on the verge of raising the question of whether violence is ever justified — even when responding to violence.

Unfortunately, that theme never really crystallizes. But the film contains some memorable individual scenes. Naturally, for purposes of this blog, I was struck by the sessions of the kangaroo court that is capable of issuing only death sentences.

Ostensibly, prisoners are given a choice: exile or death. Exile, however, turns out to be over the not-quite-frozen river, and therefore a de facto death sentence.

What was the context, I wonder, in which the term “kangaroo court” was coined? It dates, according to Webster’s, to 1853.

The larger question, however, is whether the entire film is a type of kangaroo court. One definition of such a court, after all, is of "a judgment or punishment given outside of legal procedure." In effect, the entire film comprises that kind of court.

10,000 Lakes, 10,000 Rounds of Ammunition

Fatal shootings in or near workplaces by disaffected former employees seem to have become part of the accepted backdrop of American life.

Only a month ago, in New York City, a disturbed former clothing designer lay in wait outside the Empire State Building for the co-worker whom he blamed for the loss of his job. The 58-year-old former employee shot and killed his intended victim — then was killed by police himself after taking out his gun again when they confronted him.

Nine bystanders were injured, presumably by the barrage of bullets (16 rounds) fired by police. This all went down immediately outside of one of America’s signature tourist attractions.

Two days ago, another horrific workplace shooting unfolded in a different American city. This time the scene was a sign manufacturing business in Minneapolis. A 36-year-old engraver who was being let go fatally shot five people and injured three others. He then descended to the building’s basement and killed himself.

Today’s account in the Star Tribune contained numerous storylines that could be explored in greater depth.

One is the ubiquity of guns in the U.S. today. The Minneapolis gunman used a 9 mm Gluck revolver. Police also found a second gun in his house, as well as packaging for 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

Another theme in these shootings is the pressure our hard-driving work culture exerts on all concerned. When the drive for success is so palpable in the workplace, it stands to reason that the chances of someone snapping increase.

Most people don’t snap. But why is it that some do? In some cases, mental illness is surely a precipitating factor.

The parents of the shooter in the Minneapolis case had apparently tried to get their son into counseling. He had resisted their efforts, however, and distanced himself from them.

In their statement to the media, the parents noted that their son’s battle with mental illness was “not an excuse for his actions, but sadly, may be a partial explanation.”

Indeed it may.

Certainty vs. Severity

American legislatures have constantly added to sentence lengths for a host of crimes in the last 25 years. In many states, this has been combined with a decrease in the power of the parole board due to determinate sentencing. The resulting increase in length of stay has been a key driver of the prison population boom.

In theoretical terms, the excessive focus on the severity of punishment has led farther and farther away from the realization that the Enlightenment thinker Cesare Beccaria reached way back in 1764. Namely, that if the goal is deterring crime, the certainty of punishment is far more important than the severity.

A particular case in point is drunk driving laws. Numerous states have adopted felony sentences for three or more convictions for drunken driving. In terms of actually preventing drunk driving, however, it would probably be more effective to put more cops on the road on a regular basis.

Why would this help? As things stand now, most offenders drive drunk multiple times before they are finally pulled over and charged. But if there were a significantly higher chance of being caught, potential drunk driving offenders would be more inclined to avoid committing the offense altogether.

This, at least, is what Beccaria’s certainty principle would suggest. To be sure, it would cost considerable sums of money to put more DWI checkpoints in place and engage in other crime prevention efforts. But considering how expensive it is to incarcerate someone, Beccaria’s insight could reallocate resources toward a more efficient overall strategy for dealing with drunk driving.

It would also be more just. With more consistent enforcement of the law, arrests would seem more consistent, and therefore more fair.

Brubaker and Tough Love

Robert Redford's portrayal of a crusading prison warden in the 1980 film “Brubaker” is far from his best known role. That is scarcely surprising. Even with a bona fide box office star on board, an often gritty (if increasingly melodramatic) prison movie is a tough sell to the public.

Still, the film remains noteworthy. It was based on the experiences of a real warden, Tom Murton, in the Arkansas prison system in the late 1960’s. Murton’s efforts led to federal litigation that helped validate the constitutional rights of inmates concerning the conditions of incarceration.

As depicted in the film those conditions were horrific, with beatings and bribery only the tip of the festering iceberg.

Is it possible that love could melt that iceberg and offer a new paradigm for criminal justice? Two authors from the American friends' community, Laura Magnani and Harmon L. Wray, explore that question in their 2006 book “Beyond Prisons.”

It's a book worth reading, even for those more comfortable with the word "tough" than the word "love."



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Status Offenses

In the age of Facebook, the word “status” has had a remarkable new lease on life. Two millennia removed from its Latin roots, the word pours forth over the Internet, a vessel into which millions pour their expressions of self.

There are, however, other specific uses for the word. In criminal justice vocabulary, “status offense” is a term of art for conduct that, though not criminal, carries consequences because the offender is a juvenile.

Examples of status offenses include:

• Underage drinking

• Skipping school (truancy),

• Running away from home

• Curfew violations

Behaviors such as these can bring juveniles under the supervision of the courts. If the problem is persistent enough, a judge may find that the juvenile is delinquent. This, in turn, can trigger placement in a custodial setting that has most, if not all, of the elements of incarceration.

A glance at the entry for “status crime” in the Fifth Edition of Black’s Law Dictionary (1979) points to a time when open-ended offenses were used against adults as well. A “status crime,” according to this edition of Black’s, is “[a] class of crime which consists not in proscribed action or inaction, but in the accused’s having a certain personal condition or being a person of a specified character.”

The example given in Black’s is vagrancy. I’m reminded also, though, of Otis the Drunk in reruns of the “Andy Griffith Show” that I saw in my youth.

Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barnie Fife did not have a systemic procedure in place for testing Otis’s blood-alcohol level. But that did not stop them from using their discretion to put him behind bars when they deemed it appropriate.

The Bitter Irony of Mass Incarceration

"A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."

Winston Churchill coined this  phrase in 1939 to describe Russia. It became widely known during the Cold War.

Could it be applied to America's prison boom?  For there is a mysterious element to how the U.S., in only one generation, become an international outlier on incarceration rates.

To be sure, there are many reasons for the unprecedented increase in inmates.Two years ago, a special issue of Daedalus on mass incarceration probed them in considerable depth.

The irrationality of America's entire epic jailing exercise, however, cannot be denied. To paraphrase Churchill, American mass incarceration is a riddle wrapped in a bitter irony. The nation that says it loves liberty so much takes so much of it away from its own citizens.

Length of Stay: No, Not in a Hospital

The sheer size of America's incarcerated population isn't due only to sending more people to jail or prison. It is also due to keeping them there longer.

To be sure, there have been plenty of people sent. In the last twenty years, the number has shot past 2 million. It currently still stands at 2.3 - despite intense financial pressure on state budgets to reduce the bloated corrections tab.

The size of the prison population would come down significantly, though, if offenders did not stay so long. Length of stay is an important driver of the overall incarceration increase. Yet as legislators have continued to lengthen sentences and tack on enhancements, the cumulative effect has been inescapable.

As a result, length of stay is a well-established term in criminal justice discourse.

To search engines, however, the term still seems to connote length of stay in hospitals, not prisons. A simple Google  search tonight for "length of stay" yielded a search results page consisting entirely of medical sources, such as this one from the Centers for Disease Control.