Sentencing

Criminal sentencing can be a confusing issue for journalists who are not well versed in court and corrections practices. A sentence can be straightforward, such as a set number of years, or it can be expressed as a time range that make it difficult to explain how long a defendant is likely to serve in custody. Terms that have become common in recent decades include mandatory minimum sentences, “three strikes” penalties, and sentencing guidelines. Their application differs from state to state, as do probation and parole practices. Before covering criminal cases, journalists are well advised to consult with experts in their jurisdictions about how the sentencing system works. Prosecutors often announce charges against suspects that they say could result in a very long prison term, but because of plea bargaining or weaknesses in the case, almost never is the maximum conceivable sentence imposed. Reporters should also be aware of the variety of sentencing possibilities and focus not only on time behind bars but also on such elements as fines, restitution to victims, and required treatment or other conditions of probation.

Prisons

The adult correctional population in the United States has been rising steadily since 1980, with nearly 2.4 million people behind bars at any time as of 2007 and another 5 million on some form of probation or parole. All told, 3.2 percent of residents, or 1 in every 31 adults, was under some form of official supervision. These populations are constantly changing: some 700,000 prisoners are released every year from state and federal facilities, and millions pass through local jails every year for short terms. The news media often pay little attention to prison and jail facilities unless there is a disturbance, partly because they can be difficult to access. This is changing somewhat as governments at all levels face budget shortfalls in 2009, which may result in deteriorating conditions and services, as well as early inmate releases. Like other aspects of the criminal justice system, prison and jail practices can vary widely by state and county. The sources listed in this guide can help journalists understand better what is happening behind the walls.

State Court Systems

(Links to public information officers in many state and localities can be found at this Web site: http://www.ncsconline.org/wc/courtopics/statelinks.asp?id=72&topic=PubInf )

Alabama: http://www.alacourt.com/

Alaska: http://www.appellate.courts.state.ak.us/
http://orca.courts.state.ak.us/names/

Arizona: http://www.supreme.state.az.us/publicaccess/default.htm

Arkansas: http://courts.state.ar.us/opinions/opinions.html

California: http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/

Colorado: http://www.cocourts.com/

Connecticut: http://www.jud2.state.ct.us/civil_inquiry/

Delaware: http://www.municipalcourt.org:81/connection/court/index.xsp?disclaimer=accept

District of Columbia: http://www.dccourts.gov/dccourts/superior/index.jsp

Florida: https://www.myfloridacounty.com/services/officialrecords_intro.shtml

Georgia: http://www.gasupreme.us

Hawaii: http://www.courts.state.hi.us/index.jsp

Idaho: http://www.isc.idaho.gov

Illinois: http://www.judici.com/
http://www.state.il.us/court/
http://www.cookcountyclerkofcourt.org/index.htm

Indiana: http://www.in.gov/judiciary/supreme

Iowa: http://www.judicial.state.ia.us/online_records/

Kansas: http://www.accesskansas.org/government/courts-corrections.html

Kentucky: http://www.kycourts.net

Lousiana: http://www.lasc.org

Maine: http://www.courts.state.me.us

Maryland: http://www.courts.state.md.us/dialup.html

Massachusetts: http://www.ma-appellatecourts.org/search.php

Michigan: http://www.courts.michigan.gov

Minnesota: http://www.courts.state.mn.us

Mississippi: http://www.mssc.state.ms.us

Missouri: http://www.osca.state.mo.us

Montana: http://www.lawlibrary.state.mt.us/dscgi/ds.py/View/Collection-79

Nebraska: http://court.nol.org

Nevada: http://court.nol.org

New Hampshire: http://www.courts.state.nh.us

New Jersey: http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/supreme

New Mexico: http://www.nmcourts.com/newface/clookup/disclaim.html

New York: http://www.courts.state.ny.us/home.htm
http://portal.courts.state.ny.us/pls/portal30/cms_dev.attorney_court_schedules.show

North Carolina: http://www.nccourts.org

North Dakota: http://www.court.state.nd.us

Ohio: http://www.sconet.state.oh.us

Oklahoma: http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/casesearch.asp

Oregon: http://www.ojd.state.or.us/index.htm

Pennsylvania: http://www.courts.state.pa.us/
http://ujsportal.pacourts.us/WebDocketSheets/WebDocketSheets.aspx

Rhode Island: http://www.courts.state.ri.us/default.htm

South Carolina: http://www.judicial.state.sc.us

South Dakota: http://www.sdjudicial.com

Tennessee: http://www.tsc.state.tn.us

Texas: http://www.state.tx.us/category.jsp?language=eng&categoryId=6.3

Utah: http://www.utcourts.gov/opinions

Vermont: http://www.vermontjudiciary.org/default.aspx
http://www.vermontjudiciary.org/Resources/docs/Opinions.htm

Virginia: http://www.courts.state.va.us/main.htm

Washington: http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/index.cfm

West Virginia: http://www.state.wv.us/wvsca/default.htm

Wisconsin: http://wcca.wicourts.gov/index.xsl

Wyoming: http://courts.state.wy.us

The U.S. Court System

Courts are organized on a federal, state, and local level. Each has varying jurisdictions, nomenclature, and rules. Their judges may be selected, assigned, and disciplined in different ways. By far, most cases in the United States are handled by state court systems. Each state has its own administrative structure for courts. Statistics on case filings are collected by a voluntary association called the National Center for State Courts; national data may be several years out of date. In addition to administrators of courts themselves, officers and staff members of state and local bar associations should be good sources on basic court issues, as are faculty members at law schools and lawyers who practice before the courts. The National Center for Courts and Media, part of the University of Nevada Reno, also is a good source for many court questions. Beware of variations in court names. A prime example is New York State, where the trial courts are called the “Supreme Court”—a label that in most states is reserved for the highest appellate court. News stories often confuse federal “circuit” courts, which make final decisions in the appeals on most federal cases, with state appellate courts.

Juvenile Justice (Youth Violence)

Youth violence has become a vast subject of research, especially since the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999, a seminal American crime event. School shootings make headlines, but some advocates have long argued that American schools—populated by 55 million students in grades K-12 and another 15 million in colleges and universities--are very safe, despite the deserved attention given to mass murders at Columbine and other schools, including the April 2007 shooting by an alienated student on the Virginia Tech campus that left 33 people dead. This source guide includes a wide array of contacts, from government and advocacy groups to experts on gangs and the post-traumatic stress disorder that typically follows school shootings. The website of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, linked below, has a trove of reports, studies and statistics on the subjects. The federal Centers for Disease Control is another good place to start for basic background facts. The CDC’s Youth Violence Prevention webpage, linked below, points out, for example, that a quarter of American students report gang activities at their schools, and that 38 percent of all public schools reported at least one violent incident in 2006.

State Resources for Drug-Related Crimes

Each state’s department of justice has a section that prosecutes drug-related crimes. Most state justice departments have a subordinate drug enforcement bureau that investigates narcotics cases and operates its own specialized operations.  These state bureaus usually include units that can locate and dismantle clandestine drug labs, train local law enforcement agencies and provide other services.

The narcotics unit of the California State Department of Justice is typical.  Established in 1927, it is called the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement and operates the state’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, a clandestine laboratory enforcement program, a drug prevention education unit, a financial investigations program aimed at money laundering and a host of other activities.

State narcotics divisions like the one in California usually work closely with federal and local law enforcement agencies in “task force” operations aimed at major traffickers.

Your state attorney general probably has a website that will have links to its drug enforcement unit, including the press office for the agency.

The National Association of Attorneys General, http://www.naag.org/, has a comprehensive listing of all state attorneys general with links to each AG’s website.

Advocacy Groups for Drug-Related Issues

In recent years there has been a growing movement to legalize or at least decriminalize many drug laws in the U.S.   Drug-war foes have won some major battles on this front and have succeeded in building public skepticism about the war on drugs.  For this reason, advocacy organizations break down roughly into groups that oppose the existing framework of drug control laws (opponents) and those who call for continuing criminal penalties for drug law violators (supporters).

Criminal Justice Links

Cecil Greek

Professor, Florida State University

Tallahassee, Fla.

(850) 644-4746

cgreek@fsu.edu

http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/p/cjl-main.php

Greek’s web site features exhaustive criminal justice links. For example, his “Community Policing” section under the “Police Agencies and Resources” heading includes 15 links.

Criminal Justice Resources

John Harrison, librarian

Michigan State University

East Lansing, Mich.

(517) 432-6123, ext. 123

harris23@mail.lib.msu.edu

http://www.lib.msu.edu/harris23/crimjust/index.htm

This web site, maintained by a Michigan State librarian, is another vast compendium of criminal justice links. Its index lists dozens of subjects, from campus shootings and crime mapping to police suicides and hate crime. 

Policing

This resource guide section includes some 75 sources in the broad subject of policing. It includes academics who specialize in patrol strategies, critics of racial profiling, think tanks that seek to improve police work through research and accountability, major sources for statistical information, and experts willing to speak with journalists about forensics, among many others.. 

Terrorism

As a topic of research and training expertise, terrorism has boomed since Sept. 11, 2001. Not coincidentally, the spigot of both government and private funding has been flowing wide open into the field. Thousands of potential sources now claim expertise in terrorism, from academics to think tanks to expert witnesses to for-profit firms that hawk anti-terrorism law enforcement or consumer products. (A Stanford University sociologist put together a research paper on the burgeoning subject—not terrorism, but terrorism experts: “The Rise of the Terrorism Expert: The Emergence of a New Field of Expertise.”) As always, journalists should be aware of the motivations of potential sources. This source list includes the RAND Corporation, the vast California-based nonprofit has one of the world’s largest and most venerable terrorism research divisions, with dozens of experts on staff who can speak to a number of terrorism-related topics. It might be a good place to start in the non-government sector.

Courts- Introduction

Courts are organized on a federal, state, and local level. Each has varying jurisdictions, nomenclature, and rules. Their judges may be selected, assigned, and disciplined in different ways. By far, most cases in the United States are handled by state court systems. Each state has its own administrative structure for courts. Statistics on case filings are collected by a voluntary association called the National Center for State Courts; national data may be several years out of date. In addition to administrators of courts themselves, officers and staff members of state and local bar associations should be good sources on basic court issues, as are faculty members at law schools and lawyers who practice before the courts. The National Center for Courts and Media, part of the University of Nevada Reno, also is a good source for many court questions. Beware of variations in court names. A prime example is New York State, where the trial courts are called the “Supreme Court”—a label that in most states is reserved for the highest appellate court. News stories often confuse federal “circuit” courts, which make final decisions in the appeals on most federal cases, with state appellate courts. 

Introduction to White Collar Crime

            The term “white collar crime” has been around since 1939, when Indiana sociologist Edwin Sutherland coined it to differentiate common thuggery from crimes “committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation." The computer age has expanded the white collar crime portfolio and served to dull any lingering notion of respectability that corrupt corporate titans may have enjoyed. White collar crime traditionally included fraud and financial crime--counterfeiting, bribery, embezzlement, insider trading, securities fraud, extortion, forgery, money laundering, kickbacks and tax evasion. Today, it includes much more: identity theft, computer and Internet crime (sometimes known as cyber-crime), credit card fraud, phone and telemarketing fraud, bankruptcy fraud, health care fraud, environmental law violations, insurance fraud, economic espionage and trade secret theft. The FBI estimates that white collar crime costs the United States more than $300 billion annually. Many white collar offenses can be prosecuted under both state and federal law. The U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause authorizes the federal government to regulate white collar crime, and various federal agencies—including the FBI, IRS and Securities and Exchange Commission—are involved in enforcement.

Introduction to Sex Crimes

Reports of sexual violence have followed the general crime trend in America, falling by two-thirds from 1993 to 2003, then stabilizing, according to the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey. But while overall sex crime has declined in the past 15 years, two specific types have gained vast attention in the media:  sexual solicitation of minors via the Internet and drug-facilitated sexual assault, commonly referred to as date-rape or club drugs. Some advocates complain that the focus on those “nefarious stranger” crimes has continued to obscure the larger truth about sexual assault: that seven in 10 victims say the offender was an intimate partner, relative, friend or acquaintance. This source list includes government resources, advocacy groups and individual experts. Citing safety considerations, some of the advocacy groups insist on contact by email and do not publish their phone numbers.

Introduction to Immigration

This source list includes a broad range of immigration experts and advocates, from academics and pro-immigrant groups to organizations that seek to limit the numbers of legal and illegal immigrants. The nexus of illegal immigration and local law enforcement has emerged as a political hot topic, with local law enforcers charging that the federal government has ceded its enforcement responsibilities to the locals. Likewise, the broad issue of crime among illegal immigrants also has emerged as a subject of scrutiny. For resources specific to crime, law enforcement and illegal immigration, see the source listings below for the Police Foundation’s “Local Police” initiative and Arizona State University’s project on Local Policing, Local Communities and Immigration. A number of academics listed below are conducting research on crime and immigration. They include Kristin Butcher, Scott Decker, Daniel Mears, Anne Morrison Piehl, Rubén G. Rumbaut and Robert Sampson.