Why was criminal justice not an issue in the presidential debates? After all, there are over two million people in jail or prison in America. Add in probation and parole, and the total number under some form of correctional supervision is, in round numbers, a whopping seven million.
And in a John Donne, no-man-an-island sense, it doesn’t stop there. The families of inmates and probationers are also greatly affected by sentencing and corrections policy.
Indeed, so are we all, because we, as a society, set the sentences. Correctional officers and other justice system professionals are merely our proxies on the front lines.
Yet, as a recent column in the Huffington Post put it, on the issue of mass incarceration, there were two empty chairs at the presidential debates.
There are also empty chairs around many family tables because so many people are in prison.
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Sex Offender Restrictions on Halloween
Restrictions on what registered sex offenders whose crimes were against children can or must do on Halloween are common in a number of states. The constitutionality of such restrictions has been intensely litigated and is far from a settled question.
On October 29, a federal judge in California ruled on the issue. The holding was that sex offenders are not required to post signs outside their houses that say “no candy.” But the judge ruled that a local ordinance with several similar restrictions could be upheld.
The other restrictions prohibit outdoor lighting or decorating of a sex offender’s house on Halloween, as well as answering the door to give out candy to trick-or-treaters.
CNN’s online account elicited numerous comments. The question of protecting children versus unfairly branding sex offenders living in the community prompts strong feelings on all sides
On October 29, a federal judge in California ruled on the issue. The holding was that sex offenders are not required to post signs outside their houses that say “no candy.” But the judge ruled that a local ordinance with several similar restrictions could be upheld.
The other restrictions prohibit outdoor lighting or decorating of a sex offender’s house on Halloween, as well as answering the door to give out candy to trick-or-treaters.
CNN’s online account elicited numerous comments. The question of protecting children versus unfairly branding sex offenders living in the community prompts strong feelings on all sides
Monday, October 29, 2012
Living in Truth, on and off the Field
Thomas Mann, Vaclav Havel and other artists have agonized over the connection between art and life. Havel, the Czech dissident-turned-president, argued for the goal of living in truth.
To live in truth, one’s inner and outer worlds must be integrated. When that happens, Havel suggested, a life could become a work of art.
How, if at all, does this reasoning apply to athletes? For big-time athletes, like high-profiles, are often in the public eye, moving in worlds that can seem so different from ordinary reality.
In Moneyball, the versatile journalist Michael Lewis tells the story of Billy Beane, a peculiar case study of bringing art and life together in the sports word. Annointed by baseball scouts as a future superstar while still a teenager, Beane never fulfilled that promise on the field.
As a general manager, however, Billy Beane has been instrumental in reinventing the tradition-bound game of baseball. As Lewis shows in Moneyball, Beane has led the Oakland A’s to surprising success by his willingness to use statistical analysis to guide player acquisitions.
Lewis recounts how, in the early 1980s, Beane was overshadowed in the New York Mets minor league system by two other players, Darryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra. Strawberry and Beane were drafted the same year, both in the first round, and billed as future superstars. Dykstra and Beane were roommates and friends.
Dykstra, in particular, was a challenge for Beane, for Dykstra seemed to have a head for the game that maximized his minimal talent. For Beane, it was the opposite, as he continued to get minimal results from what seemed to be maximum talent.
Off the field, however, in the game of life, the tables have turned. Strawberry and Dykstra have each done prison time. Strawberry’s issue was drugs. Dykstra’s issues were many, including drugs, sex offenses, and financial crimes.
Earlier this year, when Dykstra was sentencing to three years in prison for grand theft auto, the Village Voice said it was the culmination of what was essentially a 20-year crime spree.
Meanwhile, Beane played played by Brad Pitt in a movie version of Moneyball and got his A's back in the playoffs again, despite the usual financial challenges.
To live in truth, one’s inner and outer worlds must be integrated. When that happens, Havel suggested, a life could become a work of art.
How, if at all, does this reasoning apply to athletes? For big-time athletes, like high-profiles, are often in the public eye, moving in worlds that can seem so different from ordinary reality.
In Moneyball, the versatile journalist Michael Lewis tells the story of Billy Beane, a peculiar case study of bringing art and life together in the sports word. Annointed by baseball scouts as a future superstar while still a teenager, Beane never fulfilled that promise on the field.
As a general manager, however, Billy Beane has been instrumental in reinventing the tradition-bound game of baseball. As Lewis shows in Moneyball, Beane has led the Oakland A’s to surprising success by his willingness to use statistical analysis to guide player acquisitions.
Lewis recounts how, in the early 1980s, Beane was overshadowed in the New York Mets minor league system by two other players, Darryl Strawberry and Lenny Dykstra. Strawberry and Beane were drafted the same year, both in the first round, and billed as future superstars. Dykstra and Beane were roommates and friends.
Dykstra, in particular, was a challenge for Beane, for Dykstra seemed to have a head for the game that maximized his minimal talent. For Beane, it was the opposite, as he continued to get minimal results from what seemed to be maximum talent.
Off the field, however, in the game of life, the tables have turned. Strawberry and Dykstra have each done prison time. Strawberry’s issue was drugs. Dykstra’s issues were many, including drugs, sex offenses, and financial crimes.
Earlier this year, when Dykstra was sentencing to three years in prison for grand theft auto, the Village Voice said it was the culmination of what was essentially a 20-year crime spree.
Meanwhile, Beane played played by Brad Pitt in a movie version of Moneyball and got his A's back in the playoffs again, despite the usual financial challenges.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Chris Brown's Sentence: Wake Up Call Needed?
Community service has become an accepted part of alternative sentencing. It’s often part of a probationary sentence that keeps someone out of prison.
When one stops to think about this, however, it’s deeply odd. Serving the community by speaking to school groups or picking up trash on public land should be considered a privilege, not a burden. Indeed, it’s a privilege millions of people embrace voluntarily, usually through the nonprofit group of their choice.
Those people are rarely written about in the media. But the media — particularly the entertainment media — makes sure we know about wayward celebrities like Chris Brown.
Brown is the young singer who physically assaulted his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. After pleading guilty to a felony assault charge, he began serving a 5-year probationary sentence. The sentence included a court-ordered requirement to perform at least 1,440 hours of community service.
For the past three years, he has been doing several different jobs in the Richmond, Virginia, area. These include cleanup work in police stations and janitorial duty at a daycare.
But the judge in Los Angeles County who is responsible for signing off on Brown’s sentence completion is not so sure his records are accurate. The number of hours Brown has racked up in the last seven months is supposedly 701, according to the Richmond Police. Yet as media reports pointed out, it previously took him 28 months to reach that number.
Plus, during the seven months when Brown has purportedly been putting in all that time picking up trash, he’s also been taking ample time to sing before large audiences and (the tablids speculate) maybe even start romancing Rihanna again.
There seems to be something wrong with this picture. The judge in Los Angeles has therefore ordered a further review of Brown’s records to determine whether he has violated his probation.
Chris Brown’s most well-known song is perhaps Don’t Wake Me Up. It is quite possible, based on the record review, that someone — probably his attorney — will need to wake him from the delusion that his sentence for beating up Rihanna is over so soon.
When one stops to think about this, however, it’s deeply odd. Serving the community by speaking to school groups or picking up trash on public land should be considered a privilege, not a burden. Indeed, it’s a privilege millions of people embrace voluntarily, usually through the nonprofit group of their choice.
Those people are rarely written about in the media. But the media — particularly the entertainment media — makes sure we know about wayward celebrities like Chris Brown.
Brown is the young singer who physically assaulted his then-girlfriend Rihanna in 2009. After pleading guilty to a felony assault charge, he began serving a 5-year probationary sentence. The sentence included a court-ordered requirement to perform at least 1,440 hours of community service.
For the past three years, he has been doing several different jobs in the Richmond, Virginia, area. These include cleanup work in police stations and janitorial duty at a daycare.
But the judge in Los Angeles County who is responsible for signing off on Brown’s sentence completion is not so sure his records are accurate. The number of hours Brown has racked up in the last seven months is supposedly 701, according to the Richmond Police. Yet as media reports pointed out, it previously took him 28 months to reach that number.
Plus, during the seven months when Brown has purportedly been putting in all that time picking up trash, he’s also been taking ample time to sing before large audiences and (the tablids speculate) maybe even start romancing Rihanna again.
There seems to be something wrong with this picture. The judge in Los Angeles has therefore ordered a further review of Brown’s records to determine whether he has violated his probation.
Chris Brown’s most well-known song is perhaps Don’t Wake Me Up. It is quite possible, based on the record review, that someone — probably his attorney — will need to wake him from the delusion that his sentence for beating up Rihanna is over so soon.
Friday, October 19, 2012
Meeting Maximum Bob (a bit belatedly)
Elmore Leonard is widely acknowledged as a master of crime fiction. Indeed, he’s a versatile writer who’s also accomplished in other genres, including Westerns.
I’ve enjoyed his work both on the page and in film adaptations. Over twenty years ago, I was tremendously impressed by the smooth writing and daring plot twists in the 3-novel collection Gold Coast.
On film, Get Shorty, with John Travolta and Danny DeVito, was a hoot. Out of Sight, with an emerging-from-ER George Clooney and a young Jennifer Lopez, was splendidly executed as well.
There is also a film version of Leonard’s 52 Pickup, which I haven’t seen. All year, however, I’ve been intending to pick up the book. It seemed fitting to do so, because that’s my age.
So today, I tried two places to pick up 52 Pickup. First I tried Midway Book, a venerable and well-stocked used bookstore in St. Paul’s Midway area. No luck.
Next I tried the Galaxie Library in Apple Valley, a St. Paul suburb. No luck there either.
There was, however, a definite silver lining for the independent scholar who blogs about sentencing policy. One of the Elmore Leonard titles that were on the shelf was Maximum Bob — a book whose very title points to teachable moments about judicial discretion.
I’ve enjoyed his work both on the page and in film adaptations. Over twenty years ago, I was tremendously impressed by the smooth writing and daring plot twists in the 3-novel collection Gold Coast.
On film, Get Shorty, with John Travolta and Danny DeVito, was a hoot. Out of Sight, with an emerging-from-ER George Clooney and a young Jennifer Lopez, was splendidly executed as well.
There is also a film version of Leonard’s 52 Pickup, which I haven’t seen. All year, however, I’ve been intending to pick up the book. It seemed fitting to do so, because that’s my age.
So today, I tried two places to pick up 52 Pickup. First I tried Midway Book, a venerable and well-stocked used bookstore in St. Paul’s Midway area. No luck.
Next I tried the Galaxie Library in Apple Valley, a St. Paul suburb. No luck there either.
There was, however, a definite silver lining for the independent scholar who blogs about sentencing policy. One of the Elmore Leonard titles that were on the shelf was Maximum Bob — a book whose very title points to teachable moments about judicial discretion.
Turns out there was a short-lived TV series in 1998 based on the book. I missed that entirely at the time. But ’98 was the year that I began my stint with the Iowa Legislature on its special sentencing commission. Considering that judicial discretion was a key topic on the commission, I’m surprised Maximum Bob didn’t come up during our work.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
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.
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.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
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.
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.
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