Blog

High Court Blocks Suit Against CA Officers Over Defective Warrant

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:58:43 -0500

California police officers cannot be sued because they used a warrant that may have been defective to search a woman’s house, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today, 6 to 3, according to the Associated Press. The court threw out the lawsuit against Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Detective Curt Messerschmidt and other police officials. They were sued after searching Augusta Millender’s house looking for her foster son, who shot at his ex-girlfriend with a sawed-off shotgun.

The warrant said the police could look for any weapons on the property and gang-related material. The weapon and the shooter were not found but police confiscated Millender’s shotgun. Millender contended that the lawsuit was overbroad. Lower courts let her sue officers personally despite their claims of immunity. The high court reversed that ruling in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts; the court's three female members dissented.

School Crimes: 17 Student Homicides, 359,000 Violent Cases in Year

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:24:33 -0500

A new federal edition of school crime indicators says that of the 33 violent deaths in schools in the year ending June 30, 2010, there were 25 homicides, five were suicides, and three were "legal interventions." The cases included 17 student homicides and one student suicide.

In 2010, students ages 12-18 were victims of about 828,000 nonfatal victimizations at school, including 470,000 thefts and 359,000 violent victimizations, 91,400 of which were serious violent victimizations. In 2009, 31 percent of grade 9-12 students said they had been in a physical fight in the previous year.

IL Gov. Quinn Calls for Prison Closings, Including Super-Max

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:42:04 -0500

Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn will deliver a bad-news budget today, suggesting that the state close numerous prisons, mental health centers and social service offices, and other cuts, says the Chicago Tribune. The problem is the same as it's been for years: there's not enough money coming in while costs are rising.

The governor will suggest closing the controversial Tamms super-max prison in far southern Illinois, the women's prison in Dwight and juvenile justice centers in Joliet and downstate Murphysboro. Shutting down the super-maximum prison already is drawing plaudits from critics who contend the conditions at Tamms are so harsh that it qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment. John Maki of the John Howard Association, said Tamms is "overly harsh" on prisoners, who are kept in near-isolation. The prisoners face psychological damage that can make behavior worse, he said. While it would be cheaper to house super-max inmates elsewhere, Maki said, it "doesn't make sense" to close the women's prison at Dwight and it doesn't address cells that are "seriously overcrowded."

NYC Underage Drinking Cases Up, Enforcement Down

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:33:13 -0500

At a time when New York state’s booze patrol has downsized to its lowest level in 15 years, city hospitals have seen an alarming jump in emergency room cases stemming from underage drinking, reports the New York Daily News. The number of bombed teens in ERs has nearly doubled as the State Liquor Authority’s depleted staff has scaled back its routine enforcement to focus on bars and businesses with the worst records for alcohol infractions.

“The SLA says that they have zero tolerance when it comes to selling liquor to minors. I’d like them to put their money where their mouths are,” said City Councilman James Vacca. He said the agency’s skeletal staff depends on tips from the New York Police Department to root out establishments serving alcohol to minors or violating other rules of their liquor license. “If it wasn’t for the NYPD, there’d be an explosion of illegal sales,” said Vacca. “The NYPD is picking up the slack for the SLA.” Binge drinking by teens has become such a crisis that the city Health Department launched a $200,000 ad campaign in 2011 warning of the perils of alcohol abuse.

Supreme Court Limits Need for Miranda Warnings to Jailed Suspects

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:24:41 -0500

The Supreme Court yesterday limited the circumstances in which prisoners must be told of their rights before they are questioned, the New York Times reports. The question was whether an inmate's confession to a sex cime should have been suppressed because he didn't get Miranda warnings before he was questioned. The answer turned on whether he was in custody at the time.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote tor the 6-3 majority that “custody” for these purposes “is a term of art that specifies circumstances that are thought generally to present a serious danger of coercion.” The inmate, Randall Fields, was in a Michigan jail for disorderly conduct when he was taken to a conference room and questioned for five to seven hours by armed deputies who used a sharp tone and profanity. He was told he was free to return to his cell but was not given Miranda warnings. The key inquiry, Justice Alito said, was whether a reasonable person in those circumstances would have felt free to end the questioning and leave. He said the fact of imprisonment did not by itself provide the answer. On balance, Alito said, Fields was not in custody, and so no warnings were required.

PA Judge: Court-Appointed Capital Lawyer Pay "Grossly Inadequate"

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:03:34 -0500

A report to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court concludes that the pay for court-appointed lawyers in Philadelphia death-penalty cases is "grossly inadequate" and "unacceptably increases the risk of ineffective assistance of counsel," says the Philadelphia Inquirer. Last year, The Inquirer reported that scores of death-penalty cases had been reversed by appellate courts or sent back for new hearings because of serious errors by defense attorneys. Low pay is a key reason, critics say.

In Philadelphia, fewer than 30 of 11,000 lawyers are willing to take capital-case appointments for indigent clients and also meet minimum state requirements for doing so. Philadelphia pays less than any other county in Pennsylvania, according to defense lawyers who petitioned the Supreme Court to increase the fees or halt death-penalty cases until that happens. The high court said more information was needed and asked Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner, who oversees homicide cases in Philadelphia, to determine if the pay for court-appointed lawyers was "so inadequate that it can be presumed that court-appointed counsel are constitutionally ineffective." Lerner found that, the compensation of court-appointed capital defense lawyers in Philadelphia is grossly inadequate, both as to the dollar amount of the compensation and as to the compensation schedule provided by the present fee system.

How Informants Help FBI Break Major Terrorism Cases

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:43:25 -0500

An increasingly active informant pool is helping the FBI identify suspects involved in alleged plots against the U.S. from within, says USA Today. Since the 9/11 attacks, when virtually no anti-terror intelligence network existed, federal authorities have tapped into a vast network of informants — many in the Muslim community — who have assisted in the arrests of suspects. Civil rights advocates and defense lawyers have complained that the tactics smack of a disproportionate focus on Muslims.

"We are getting regular calls from people across the country who are being approached by the (federal government) to act as informants," said Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American Islamic Relations. "And we are concerned about what kind of pressure is being used to get that cooperation." FBI spokesman Paul Bresson said, "We do not investigate people based solely [ ] on their race, ethnicity, national origin or religious affiliation," In the complaint last week in a plot to bomb the U.S. Capitol, FBI agent Steven Hersem noted that the informant not only brought the suspect to the FBI but accompanied the suspect and the undercover agent Friday on the drive toward the Capitol where the suspect was arrested.

Judge Strikes Down LA Law Banning Sex Offenders from Social Media

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:10:53 -0500

A federal judge has struck down a Louisiana law that banned sex offenders from using social media sites, ruling that the law was overly vague and violated free-speech protections, reports The Hill. The law prohibited registered sex offenders who had been convicted of child pornography or another similar crime from using "social network websites, chat rooms and peer-to-peer networks."

The law defined the prohibited sites broadly. A "chat room" was defined as "any Internet website through which users have the ability to communicate via text and which allows messages to be visible to all other users or to a designated segment of all other users." Judge Brian Jackson noted that the law seems to ban offenders from using email, news sites that allow reader comments, Amazon, eBay and even government sites like Louisiana's official hurricane preparedness site or the website for the federal court. Lawyers for sex offenders said their clients were afraid to access the Internet at all, including to research safety and technical information related to their jobs.

Ohio's Capital Punishment System Could be On Its Own Death Watch

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:14:00 -0500

Ohio's capital punishment system could be under its own death watch as scrutiny over how the state executes prisoners has led to calls for significant changes of the death penalty, if not an outright repeal, says the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Despite the issues plaguing the state's execution process, Ohio officials say they are are getting this call on life-or-death right. "I feel that we have a solid protocol, and I know that we have the professionally trained staff to execute that protocol," said state corrections director Gary Mohr.

Mohr knows there are plenty of people from judges to former prison officials to anti-death penalty activists who have heavy concerns about the death penalty. They question why some criminals land on death row and others do not, whether the state's execution procedures are legal and whether the system can be revamped to restore waning public trust. Ohio has botched one execution, which had to be postponed, and had two others with lengthy delays, including one in which the inmate, while strapped to the gurney in the execution chamber, cried out, "This isn't working." Under legal duress, the state switched from a three-drug concoction to a one-drug dose for lethal injection, a change that is the subject of a lawsuit.

NRA Claims "Massive Obama Conspiracy" Against 2nd Amendment

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:52:00 -0500

Gun sales have skyrocketed since Barack Obama became president, says Bloomberg Business Week blogger Joshua Green. During that time, the stock of gunmaker Sturm Ruger (RGR) has outperformed gold. Analysts aren’t sure what’s causing the trend. Many anticipated a boost in sales from gun owners fearful that Obama might outlaw assault weapons — the “fear trade.” They expected a brief spike, no more. Instead, gun sales kept rising, and they’ve continued to rise even since last fall. Ruger, up 400 percent at the time, is now up more than 500 percent.

Despite the fact that Obama hasn’t made the slightest feint toward regulating guns, firearms enthusiasts have whipped themselves into a paranoid frenzy, convinced that this is all just part of some elaborate conspiracy. National Rifle Association executive director Wayne LaPierre told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) two weeks ago of a "a massive Obama conspiracy to deceive voters and hide his true intentions to destroy the Second Amendment during his second term." The website ammo.net has a graphic on just why Obama is, as they put it, the “greatest gun salesman in America”

Meth Busts Up 7% in Missouri; Database Gets Some Credit

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:49:00 -0500

Methamphetamine lab busts in Missouri increased 7 percent in 2011 but declined in areas where decongestants containing the key ingredient are available only by prescription, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Missouri finished 2011 with 2,096 lab seizures. Illinois, with twice Missouri's population, raided 584 meth labs. St. Louis saw one of the biggest jumps, a sixfold increase to 24 labs from four. City police already have seized eight meth labs so far this year, said Lt. Adrienne Bergh. "It's because a lot of the outlying areas are requiring prescriptions for pseudoephedrine products and it's still not a requirement in the city to have a prescription," she said.

A database financed by the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, which represents the pharmaceutical industry, began tracking purchases of pseudoephedrine on Jan. 1, 2011. The system blocked 49,000 consumers from topping monthly or annual sales limits. The association's Elizabeth Funderburk said the database may account for the increase in raids. "In terms of labs being on the increase, law enforcement has an effective tool to find methamphetamine labs and it stands to reason that when you have a good tool, you will find more labs — just like if you have a radar gun, you will catch more speeders," she said.

Newspaper: Give LA DA's Discretion to Avoid Mandatory Minimums

Ted Gest — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 06:07:00 -0500

No state in the nation, and no country in the world, sends people to prison at Louisiana's high rate. That's counterproductive in many cases, particularly nonviolent crimes by first-times offenders, says the New Orleans Times-Picayune in an editorial. The state also can't afford it. The inflexibility politicians added in recent decades to sentencing laws has contributed to the large prison population. Mandatory minimums throughout the criminal code eroded much of the discretion prosecutors and judges once had.

The state sentencing commission, after spending months forging law enforcement consensus, wanted to restore some of that discretion by recommending that district attorneys be allowed to seek sentences below the mandatory minimum for all crimes except murder and aggravated rape. Gov. Bobby Jindal's administration objected. At the request of the governor, the commission excluded all violent crimes and all sex crimes from its proposal to give district attorneys more discretion. Legislators should consider the sentencing commission's original proposals and give the justice system more discretion than what Gov. Jindal favored, the newspaper says.

Teen Dating Violence Often Part of a Pattern of Victimization: Report

Lisa Riordan Seville — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:31:00 -0500

Teen victims of dating violence are overwhelmingly more likely to have been victims of other forms of violence, such as sexual violence and child abuse, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center.

The research from national sample of more than 1,600 teens shows teen dating violence is typically part of a pattern of victimizations rather than a stand-alone phenomenon.

"We thought there would be overlap but had no idea that all dating violence victims are dealing with other forms of violence and abuse as well,” said UNH Crimes against Children Research Center research associate Sherry Hamby, lead author of the study and research associate professor at Sewanee, the University of the South.

Read the full report here.

2012 Harry F. Guggenheim Conference on Crime in America

Cara Tabachnick — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:33:35 -0500

Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy led a blue-ribbon list of speakers from the White House, leading police departments, think tanks, and universities for two days of discussions and briefings at the 7th Annual Harry Frank. Guggenheim foundation Symposium on Crime in America, on Feb. 6th and 7th, 2012 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Twenty journalists from around the nation joined participants from the criminal justice community to explore his year's topic,""The Problem That Won't Go Away: How Drugs, Race and Mass Incarceration Have Distorted American Justice (and What To Do About It)." There were six public panels, with 27 speakers, For an agenda of the conference, see HERE.

The journalism fellows (see list here) proposed reporting projects centered around the conference theme.

In addition to the main theme, the Symposium examined some of the newest and most innovative developments in the areas of prisoner re-entry and early release, and recent US and New Jersey Supreme Court rulings on eyewitness identification.

Symposium highlights: Risco Mention-Lewis, Assistant District Attorney from Nassau County, and Shelia Rule, founder of Think Outside the Cell Foundation, addressed : "After Prison What? Breaking the Mold on Prisoner Reentry." Some of the nation's leading corrections chiefs, including Matthew Cate, Secretary of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, and New York State Corrections chief Brian Fischer came together for a candid conversation about the state of the nation's prison systems and the impact of early release legislation.

William Black, a former top government regulator, discussed the notorious lack of prosecutions and convictions on fraud and white collar crime arising from the economic crisis. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and leading civil rights attorney Connie Rice spoke about the challenge of tackling juvenile gangs and violence.

Dr. Khalil Muhammad, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and Benjamin Tucker, deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy provided a perspective on America's long-running "war on drugs."

On this page you will be able to download podcasts of the panels and keynote addresses, explore some of the research material provided to participants at the Symposium, and see articles written by this year's Reporting Fellows as well as conference coverage. It will be updated as new material becomes available.

Please check it out regularly!

John Jay HF Guggenheim Prize for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting 2011-2012

Cara Tabachnick — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 12:27:53 -0500

Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones magazine are the winners of the John Jay College/Harry Frank Guggenheim 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Awards.

Trevor Aaronson of Mother Jones magazine won the 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (single-story category) for his investigation into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 15,000 nationwide informants charged with spying on Muslim-American communities.

Read the Mother Jones magazine story,"The Informants" here.

Gina Barton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel won the 2012 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award (series category) for "Both Sides of the Law," a multi-part series about lawbreakers on the Milwaukee police force. During an investigation that spanned over two years, Barton identified 93 officers on the force—from street cop to captain—who had been disciplined by the department for violating the laws and ordinances they were sworn to uphold.

Read the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story,"Both Sides of the Law" here.

Runner-up in the single-entry category was awarded to Kelly Virella of City Limits Investigates for "Behind Bars: Love, Sex, Rape and New York's Women Prisoners," which investigated intimacy between prisoners and correction officers in New York State. Marisa Taylor and Michael Doyle of the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau, were runners-up in the series category for "Military Injustice," which revealed troubling flaws in the military justice system.

Read the City Limits Investigates "Behind Bars: Love, Sex, Rape and New York's Women Prisoners" story here.

Read the McClatchy Newspapers Washington bureau story "Military Injustice," here.

The prize recipients were recognized at a special dinner in their honor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Feb 6,2012, hosted by college president Jeremy Travis. Former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, now at Yale University, delivered keynote remarks.

Jurors for the John Jay Prize for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting are Ted Gest, President, Criminal Justice Journalists; Joe Domanick, Associate Director, Center on Media, Crime and Justice; Alexa Capeloto, Associate Professor, Journalism, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Mansfield Frazier, Columnist, The Crime Report; and Jordan Smith, Reporter, Austin Chronicle.

Chicago Police Horses Getting "Riot Gear" For NATO, G-8 Summits

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:11:33 -0500

Horses in the Chicago Police Department’s Mounted Unit assigned to crowd control during the NATO and G-8 summits will be outfitted with riot gear, just like the officers riding them and those on the ground facing off against protesters, says the Chicago Sun-Times. Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration is soliciting bids for “police horse riot gear and training aids” in preparation for the May 19-21 summits expected to shine an international spotlight on Chicago.

The mounted unit has 30 horses, 30 officers and an annual budget of nearly $2.7 million.Police spokesperson Melissa Stratton said all 30 horses will be equipped with the new riot gear. She noted that the horses are “great crowd control tools” expected to provide “significant support to officers on the ground” during the summits. “This is not the first time we’ve had [riot] gear for the horses. [But] we are updating the equipment. We have had horses attacked in the past. If the horse is injured, it puts both the horse and the officer at risk. This equipment protects both the officer and the horse,” she said. An officer assigned to the Mounted Unit noted that some of the 30 horses “may not be street-ready” in time for the NATO and G-8 summits.

Detroit Cites Culture of Violence As Infant Dies in Gang Killing

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:51:35 -0500

A toy Jeep lay among shards of broken glass in the front yard of a Detroit where a shooting left a 9-month-old boy dead and an outraged community searching for ways to stop the violence, reports the Detroit News. A woman said she was asleep in her home early yesterday when shots rang out. As her son dozed on a living room couch, bullets pierced windows and walls, striking the boy. The shooting was gang-related, said Police Chief Ralph Godbee.

The killing was the 43rd homicide in the city so far this year, up from 35 during the same period last year. It's also the second murder of a youngster in Detroit within the past three weeks. Said minister Malik Shabazz: "This culture of violence, the culture of individualism, the culture of me, myself and I must end. You're never going to resurrect Detroit until you deal with the culture of violence that exists within the people." Part of that culture is the "no snitch" attitude that has frustrated police investigating murders. Godbee said key people have refused to provide information about yesterday's killing.

Will Taser's New Tiny Police Camera Defuse Stun-Gun Controversy?

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:37:34 -0500

Taser International is announcing a new a camera for police, a half-ounce unit about the size of a cigar stub that clips on to a collar or sunglasses of an officer and can record two hours of video during a shift, the New York Times reports. The information eventually is stored in a cloud-computing system that uses Taser’s online evidence management system. Taser has had its share of controversies over its electric-shock guns, which the firm says are used by 17,000 of the 18,000 U.S. law enforcement agencies.

The camera system, called Axon, is one way to defuse the controversies. Taser already has some 55,000 minicameras mounted on Tasers. But the camera is only triggered when the gun is drawn. It could do the same for police shootings. The video, however, would not capture the events leading up to that point and provides no context that might justify the weapon’s use. “One big reason to have these is defensive,” says Taser CEO Rick Smith. “Police spend $2 billion to $2.5 billion a year paying off complaints about brutality. Plus, people plead out when there is video.”

Indian Reservation Crimes 2 1/2 Times U.S. Average; DOJ Faulted

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:08:55 -0500

Indian reservations long have grappled with chronic rates of crime higher than all but a handful of the nation’s most violent cities. The New York Times says the Justice Department, which is responsible for prosecuting the most serious crimes on reservations, files charges in only about half of Indian Country murder investigations and turns down nearly two-thirds of sexual assault cases, according to new federal data.

The 310 U.S. Indian reservations have violent crime rates that are more than two and a half times higher than the national average. American Indian women are 10 times as likely to be murdered than other Americans. They are raped or sexually assaulted at a rate four times the national average, with more than one in three having either been raped or experienced an attempted rape. The low rate of prosecutions for these crimes by U.S. Attorneys has been a longstanding point of contention for tribes, who say it amounts to a second-class system of justice that encourages lawbreaking. Prosecutors say they turn down most reservation cases because of a lack of admissible evidence.

Texas Rate of Medical Paroles Dropping Despite Calls to Save Money

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:41:40 -0500

Despite calls to save money by releasing seriously ill and aging inmates, Texas’ parole board approves only a small portion of eligible prisoners, and the approval rate for this fiscal year is lower than usual, reports the Dallas Morning News. Inmate advocates and some fiscal conservatives cite cost savings as a reason to expand inmate medical releases. Parole board members and prosecutors say they concentrate on public safety, not cost. “We’re looking to see if that person, considering their medical condition, if they are a threat to society,” said Rissie Owens, chairwoman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Board members don’t know a prisoner’s medical care costs when making their decisions, she said. Along with the nature of the inmate’s crimes and ability for future criminal activity, the board looks at things like the prisoner’s degree of mobility, assistance needed for daily living, cognitive condition, and estimated life expectancy, Owens said. Prison officials and others couldn’t say why the rate of release approvals has dipped this year. Inmates who are terminally or seriously ill, who need long-term care or who are elderly, physically handicapped, mentally ill or mentally disabled may be eligible for the parole, technically called “medically recommended intensive supervision.” Prisoners who committed certain high-level crimes cannot be considered.

How Milwaukee Cops Talk People Out of Committing Suicide

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:30:20 -0500

Milwaukee County Sheriff's Deputy Steven Schmitt talked a man, 22, off a ledge Sunday, something he has done for two decades in law enforcement without losing anyone, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. How does he do it? He says: "You want to watch the tone of your voice, what you're saying. Just get them talking: 'Who do you live with? What's your name? Where'd you go to school?' Find things to talk about. 'What's your problem? What's your family doing?' Just talk, talk, talk. Pretty soon, it takes a little of the edge off. They're not thinking about all the problems that led them to this whole thing.

Time is on the negotiator's side, and people tend to mentally exhaust themselves by talking, said Lt. Alfonso Morales of the Milwaukee Police Department. "When we're sent in there, a lot of times we're the mediator, we're the problem solver. You name it. A lot of times, what we have to do is be the listener," he said. "The biggest thing with a person in crisis is that their emotions are either high or low. They're not thinking rationally." Brenda Wesley of the National Alliance on Mental Illness says, "It's our impression that with the economic downturn, people are stressed more than ever before. They're losing their houses, losing their homes. They react in ways they never thought they'd react." The Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office experienced an increase in calls for service for people with suicidal tendencies from 2008 to 2010.

Female Gun-Owning Demographic Is Growing Rapidly

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:09:08 -0500

There are pink guns, pink ear protection, and pink shell pouches. For your car, get a pink “Pistol Packing Princess” sticker. For packing heat at your favorite tea room, a purse with a special pistol holster is de rigueur, says the Des Moines Register. All of this is aimed at women who want to own a gun — for protection, for hunting or for sport shooting — a rapidly growing demographic.

The National Sporting Goods Association shows female participation in target shooting grew by 46.5 percent between 2001 and 2010. An October 2011 Gallup Poll found 23 percent of women own a gun. In Iowa, a law that took effect on Jan. 1, 2011, making weapons permits available to anyone who met criteria and passed a background check has resulted in huge increases in the number of permits granted to both men and women. In Polk County the number of women granted permits has outpaced those granted to men by more than two to one, skyrocketing more than 311 percent between 2010 and 2011. The Register talked with three Iowa female gun enthusiasts about why they shoot.

Social Media, Gay Rights Issues Surround NJ Student Suicide Trial

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:00:20 -0500

Dharun Ravi, the ex-Rutgers University student charged in the case involving Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide, will be subject to two very different judgments, in and out of the courtroom, says the Somerville (NJ) Courier News. "There is the trial of public opinion and there is the legal trial that will go on in the Superior Court," said attorney Edward Weinstein. "The entire public can and has weighed in on this on an international level." The trial is scheduled to start today.

Ravi is charged with 14 counts, including various degrees of bias intimidation, invasion of privacy, tampering with physical evidence, hindering apprehension or prosecution, and witness tampering. Clementi committed suicide by jumping off the George Washington Bridge in 2010. Presumably, Clementi was reacting to the alleged social-media outing of his sexuality and the live video stream taken by Ravi of Clementi's encounter with another man, only known as M.B., in the dorm room Ravi and Clementi shared. The incident sparked international outrage concerning cyberbullying and gay-teen suicide. Noting that it is a difficult case to prosecute, Weinstein said prosecutors are under pressure to "go for it" because of national attention. He explained that what makes the case so attractive to the media and the world is its connection to gay rights.

Some CA Justice Leaders Fighting Plan to Close State Juvenile Units

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:42:01 -0500

Some California criminal justice leaders will fight a plan by Gov. Jerry Brown to phase out the state's Division of Juvenile Justice over the next three years and return the most violent and troubled youths to county facilities, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Probation officials, district attorneys, and others say they will spend the next several months trying to persuade the Democratic governor to remove the proposal, which Brown says will save the state more than $100 million a year, from his budget.

Many county officials believe the plan will unduly give counties the burden of incarcerating serious juvenile offenders and put existing, successful rehabilitation programs at risk. The officials were relieved when Brown backed off a plan to shutter the state facilities this year, unless counties ponied up $125,000 a year per offender. Instead, the governor offered to work with county officials over the next year to come up with a smooth transition plan. Under Brown's plan, the state would stop accepting youths in January and close the Division of Juvenile Justice by June 30, 2015.

Glendale, Az.'s Steve Conrad Named Louisville Police Chief

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 07:02:00 -0500

Steve Conrad, a former assistant police chief in Louisville now chief in Glendale, Az., is the new Louisville police chief, says the Louisville Courier-Journal. Conrad left Louisville in 2005, having helped to shape the newly formed Louisville Metro Police Department. He joined the former city department as a patrol officer in 1980 and rose through the ranks to become assistant chief under former chief Robert White. White left Louisville in December to take the chief’s job with the Denver Police.

Conrad was chosen from a slate of five candidates who were interviewed by Mayor Greg Fischer the week of Feb. 6. The five finalists included the deputy chiefs, Yvette Gentry and Vince Robison. Two of the candidates are chiefs in other districts but formerly served with either the city or county department. They are Jeffersontown Chief Rick Sanders and Conrad. The other candidate, Glenn Skeens, has had a long career with the Owensboro Police Department, where he now serves as police chief.

Spotty Enforcement of Protection Orders Leaves Victims Vulnerable

Ted Gest — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:02:00 -0500

More than 30 years after Ohio enacted comprehensive domestic violence laws, spotty enforcement of protection orders still leaves victims vulnerable, reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Particularly perilous is some law enforcement officers' and agencies' reluctance to respond to civil protection orders, issued mainly by domestic relations courts. "They see it as a civil matter and they don't see it as having the same oomph of a criminal order," said Alexandra Ruden, a Legal Aid Society of Cleveland lawyer.

Legally, the civil orders hold the same weight and deserve the same attention as the criminal ones, she said. Too often that isn't what happens, say judges, magistrates, lawyers, and advocates. Criminal protection orders are temporary and often follow an arrest for domestic violence. The civil orders do not require a crime to have been committed but are granted by a judge or magistrate who can issue a temporary order based on a petition that outlines the person's fears and evidence of harm. It's common to hear from victims that they were shooed away by officers who tell them to go back to court or call their attorney after an order was violated, said Dan Clark, a former police chief who trains police across the country. "They tell victims there is nothing they can do about it," which is not true, he said, adding that many officers are either uninformed or misinformed.

Accounting for Bad Prosecutors

Lisa Riordan Seville — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 05:09:00 -0500

Early this month, a Texas judge recommended that the Texas Supreme Court convene an unprecedented court of inquiry to investigate whether former Williamson County prosecutor Ken Anderson (now a district judge) violated laws or ethical canons by hiding evidence from the defense lawyers for Michael Morton, who was exonerated by DNA evidence after serving 25 years for the 1986 murder of his wife, Christine.

Morton’s current lawyers charge Anderson with concealing a slew of evidence which supported Morton’s claim that his wife was murdered by an intruder: evidence that included the statements of neighbors who had seen a man in a van parked outside the Morton home and the story of the murder told by the Mortons’ three year old son, who said he had watched “a monster” (not his father) kill his mother.

Coming on the heels of the United States Supreme Court’s scathing reviews of similar prosecutorial practices in two New Orleans cases, the call for a court of inquiry added momentum to growing national efforts to force prosecutors who bury proof of innocence to face criminal or professional disciplinary consequences.

Prosecutors enjoy broad immunity from civil liability. Advocates argue that cases like Morton’s prove that some prosecutors abuse that protection. They insist that someone has to hold these guys accountable.

So, let’s start with Anderson.

If the allegations against Ken Anderson are true, he broke the rules and sent an innocent man to prison for 25 years. That’s bad enough; but by railroading Morton Anderson also helped the real murderer to escape and to kill again. (The man whose DNA was found at the Morton murder scene, exonerating Morton, is implicated by DNA in the 1988 murder of Debra Baker).

No one should lose any sleep if Anderson is disbarred or carted off in handcuffs.

But if whacking the occasional Ken Anderson is all we do, then we haven’t done enough. The criminal justice system can’t heal itself by chasing down and punishing one bad apple—or twenty bad apples.

We do need accountability. But we need a “forward looking accountability” that balances demands for individual responsibility with the need for learning and improvement.

We lack a vehicle for accounting for tragic outcomes like that of the Morton case, which allows for working on continuous quality improvement—a means for anticipating and preventing the next catastrophe before it happens.

Wrongful convictions like Morton’s don’t happen just because a single bad apple like Anderson is in play.

Wrongful convictions are systems errors: organizational accidents, like the Challenger launch decision or the Chernobyl meltdown. They result from many small mistakes combining with each other and with latent system weaknesses to create a tragedy.

They can never be fully explained by the failure of one component or a lone operator. The right answer to the question “who was responsible for this wrongful conviction?” is usually “everyone involved to one degree or another,” either by making an error or by failing to catch one.

The flagrant choices of a rogue prosecutor like Anderson mask this fact, but they don’t change it.

Did Anderson bury the police reports of the neighbors’ interviews describing a stalker? Even if a court of inquiry determines that he did, we are still left with the fact that the defense didn’t successfully interview the same neighbors.

Why not? Was it a training issue? A funding issue? A performance issue? Were the witnesses told to refuse interviews? Did the police know that their investigation had been edited by the prosecutor? Did they approve? Did they feel authorized to say anything?

Had the local judges shown a willingness to look the other way when prosecutors withheld disclosures?

And we are left with another fact. Anderson’s grotesque choices—so obviously wrong in hindsight—looked for some reason like good choices to Anderson at the time. We have to try to understand why.

If the conditions that convinced Anderson that hiding exculpatory material was a good choice still exist, the same calculations Anderson made (maybe adjusted ever so slightly to allow for the miniscule prospect of being punished if you are as careless about covering your tracks as Anderson was) will face the next prosecutor who comes along.

The temptation to do the same thing will remain: just try to do it more stealthily.

Sometimes failing to disclose evidence favorable to a defendant is a crime; more often it is a mistake.

Anderson’s case may turn out to fall on the criminal side of the line but most cases probably don’t. The question is how to eliminate as many mistakes as we can.

Prosecutors don’t bury evidence so that they can convict defendants they know are innocent; they bury evidence to hamstring the defenders’ ability to generate themes that will distract the jurors in the trials of defendants the prosecutors believe are guilty.

These prosecutors know that the rule of Brady v. Maryland might require disclosure, but—like many workers in many industries—they have developed a set of “covert work rules” that allow them to get on with the “real” job they believed has been assigned to them, thereby escaping the handicaps that following the formal rules would impose.

They deviate from the strict rules and make a small local accommodation. They’ve done it before, and they saw nothing bad happen. So they drew the erroneous conclusion that nothing will go wrong if they do it again. The deviation becomes the new normal.

But from this perspective, implausible evidence (“I saw a spaceship over the Mortons’ house”) isn’t worth burying; only the plausible evidence (“I saw a stalker in a van”) is a potential distraction.

The problem is that there’s some imperfect correlation between the plausible evidence and the truth, and in some cases like Morton’s when the plausible is suppressed it will be the truth that suffers.

When medicine was forced to confront a rash of treatment-caused patient deaths in the 1990’s, pioneering medical reformers like Dr. Donald Berwick quickly realized that the hunt for the bad apples is a futile, even dangerous, response to the problem.

It drives underground reports of mistakes that you should treasure as learning vehicles. It feeds the illusion that exorcising the last practitioner changes the situation confronting the next practitioner and protects an already safe system.

The patient safety movement chose another direction: it mobilized a cultural shift in teaching hospitals toward the development of a routine, non-blaming, all-stakeholders effort to analyze errors with all of their complexities and shared responsibilities and to disseminate the results.

Criminal justice can do the same.

Nothing will completely replace the need to discipline conscious wrong-doers, but following the trail medicine blazed will complement the disciplinary processes and encourage the practitioner to report errors and near misses that can be our early warning system against future risks.

Voltaire once witnessed the execution of a British admiral charged with cowardice for avoiding a battle. Horrified, Voltaire objected that since the battle was avoided either no one was guilty of cowardice or everyone involved was equally guilty. His British guide agreed with Voltaire’s analysis, but he wasn’t horrified by the execution. It was the settled custom in the British Navy, he explained, to execute an admiral now and then “to encourage the others

That wasn’t a good answer then, and it isn’t a good answer now. Whacking a few prosecutors “to encourage the others” doesn’t work. Or at least it works a lot better if we also concentrate on understanding and repairing the system we all work in.

James Doyle is a Boston attorney and the author of True Witness: Cops, Courts, Science and the Battle Against Misidentification (Palgrave 2005) a history of the clash between eyewitness science and legal traditions. He is a 2012 Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Justice. The opinions expressed here are his own. He welcomes comments from readers.

Drug Enforcement Administration Cases Hit 11-Year Low

Ted Gest — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:51:00 -0500

Federal criminal prosecutions referred by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have dropped to the lowest level in 11 years, say Justice Department data reported by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. In November 2011, the most recent month for which data are
available, 968 such prosecutions were filed, down 21 percent from the previous month's total of 1,219.\\

It was the third straight month that DEA prosecutions have fallen; they had averaged 1,337 per month during federal fiscal year 2011.

Oakland "100 Blocks" Plan To "Hack" At Roots of Crime Woes

Ted Gest — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:38:19 -0500

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan has offered the first details of a "100 Blocks" anticrime plan to focus city resources on the 100 most deadly blocks - areas where 90 percent of the city's homicides and shootings occur, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. Most are clustered around public housing. Some residents are skeptical. Many say they haven't seen any changes and didn't even know that their neighborhoods had been identified by city officials.

The plan calls for virtually every local government agency - including the Police Department, libraries, Parks Department, Public Works Department, public housing and the school district - to focus resources on the 100 blocks. The rationale is that most of the city's crime is somehow linked to those areas. If those neighborhoods can improve, then crime throughout the city will fall. "We don't want to displace crime, so it just moves elsewhere. We want to hack it at its roots," said Oakland police Sgt. Chris Bolton, chief of staff for Police Chief Howard Jordan. That means job fairs, cleaning graffiti and other blight, a free summer camp for kids, extra police officers on patrol, enhanced efforts to track parolees, more block parties and other efforts. Similar tactics have reduced crime in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, said Reygan Harmon, Quan's public safety policy adviser.

San Francisco Called Model In Handling Domestic Violence

Ted Gest — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:00:55 -0500

As San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi's trial on three misdemeanor counts related to domestic violence is set to begin Friday, many of his supporters have wondered why the case has wound up in court at all, says the San Francisco Chronicle. He allegedly grabbed his wife's arm hard enough to leave a bruise and did so in front of their 2-year-old son. Domestic violence activists say what has played out in the Mirkarimi case is exactly what's supposed to happen. They say the city is finally handling domestic violence cases appropriately.

A dozen years ago, the city averaged 10 to 12 domestic violence homicides annually. Then, a mishandled case prompted reforms across all branches of law enforcement - including the way 911 dispatchers handle calls, how police officers respond to them, and how the district attorney handles cases. Advocates credit the changes with a plunge in domestic violence homicides, now averaging one or two a year. San Francisco is now a national model in handling domestic violence cases, though advocates add that more work - including launching a long-delayed computer system to allow law enforcement agencies to easily share data - needs to be done. "We see a city that's made tremendous progress," said Kathy Black of La Casa de las Madres, a shelter for abused women.

TN Woman Faces Homicide Charges For Letting Drunk Friend Drive

Ted Gest — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 14:25:34 -0500

A Tennessee woman who had been out drinking one night gave her car keys to her boyfriend, thinking he was sober enough to drive. The night turned tragic when her boyfriend struck and killed two young men about their same age om Nashville, then drove her car across a median and hit a taxicab head-on, The Tennessean reports. Erin Brown’s boyfriend was charged with vehicular homicide and assault. She had been in the passenger seat. But in a rare use of the law, prosecutors are charging Brown with the same crimes.

She faces as many as three decades in prison. Police and prosecutors says Brown, 21, violated a state law that makes it unlawful for the owner of a vehicle to direct, require or knowingly permit the operation of a vehicle in any manner contrary to the law. Allowing someone to drive your car when you know they are drunk, prosecutors say, makes you criminally responsible for their actions. The vehicular homicide charge, a felony, against Brown is the first of its kind in Nashville. The unprecedented nature of the case has caught the attention of defense attorneys, who say their clients are often unaware they could be criminally responsible for someone else driving their car.

Outed AZ Sheriff Quits Romney Campaign, Continues Congress Run

Ted Gest — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:43:27 -0500

Known only as “Jose,” a Mexican immigrant outed Pinal County, Az., Sheriff Paul Babeu, an immigration-hawk congressional candidate who rose to conservative stardom after a cameo appearance in John McCain’s "Dang Fence" campaign ad. In an explosive story published in the Phoenix New Times, relates Newsweek/The Daily Beat, Jose claims that Babeu's lawyer threatened him with deportation if he spilled the beans about their alleged love affair.

Babeu called a press conference on Saturday during which he announced, “I’m gay." He admitted having a “personal relationship” with Jose but said “at no time” did he or anyone who worked for him threaten Jose with deportation. Babeu, 43, a Mitt Romney supporter, said he chose to step down as a co-cochairman of Romney's campaign. Babeu said the Republican Party had a big tent and he would continue campaigning for an Arizona congressional seat.

Police Anonymous Tip Line Helps Drive Down D.C. Crime

Ted Gest — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 13:33:01 -0500

Why is crime way down in Washington, D.C., in the last two decades? There are many reasons, but one of them, Police Chief Cathy Lanier tells Jeffrey Goldberg, writing for Bloomberg View, was that police have tried hard to convince residents of high-crime neighborhoods that law enforcement isn't the enemhy. Says Lanier: "We put beat people on the streets, handing out business cards with their cell numbers, BlackBerry numbers, and told them to call if they needed anything. After a shooting people don’t want to talk to an officer on the street, but they will call.”

This, Lanier said, brought the police closer to their goal of quickly inserting themselves into the retaliatory cycle that begins after each homicide. As many as 60 percent of last year’s murders, she says, were committed in retaliation for earlier killings. Homicide detectives are making arrests much faster these days, thanks to better street-level intelligence. In 2007, the average D.C. homicide investigation was closed in 52 days; by 2011 that number had been halved. Many of the arrests grow out of an anonymous tip line Lanier established. “In 2008, we got 292 tips,” she said. “By 2011 we were at over 1,200, and you would not believe the detailed tips we get. People are trusting us now much more.”

NYPD Has Monitored Muslim Students Throughout the Northeast

Ted Gest — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:09:00 -0500

The New York Police Department's intelligence division focused far beyond New York City as part of a surveillance program targeting Muslims, reports the Associated Press. Police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and 13 other colleges in the Northeast. They talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

Asked about the monitoring, police spokesman Paul Browne provided a list of 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the U.S. States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations. "I see a violation of civil rights here," said Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Muslim Student Association at Syracuse University. "Nobody wants to be on the list of the FBI or the NYPD or whatever. Muslim students want to have their own lives, their own privacy and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that everybody else has." AP has reported on secret programs the NYPD built with help from the CIA to monitor Muslims at the places where they eat, shop, and worship.

D.C. Boosts Homicide Clearance Rate by Including Previous Years

Ted Gest — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:50:58 -0500

Washington, D.C., Police Chief Cathy Lanier touts the city’s astronomically high homicide closure rate — 94 percent for 2011 — but the Washington Post calls the figure "a statistical mishmash." D.C. had 108 homicides last year; a 94 percent closure rate would mean that detectives solved 102. But only 62 were solved as of year's end, for a true closure rate of 57 percent.

Police achieved the high closure rate last year by including about 40 cases from other years that were closed in 2011. The cases date from 1989, records show. The pattern was first reported by the Web site homicidewatchdc.org. Lanier said the department followed FBI Uniform Crime Reporting guidelines. But James Trainum, a longtime D.C. homicide detective, said, "They’re fostering the false perception that they’ve accomplished something when actually what they’re doing is fudging their numbers." David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said it is “very confusing” to combine homicides from more than one year.

Breyer Robbery Points To Lack of Supreme Court Justice Security

Ted Gest — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:05:00 -0500

When Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer was robbed in his Caribbean vacation home 10 days ago, the crime was unremarkable except for one fact: a machete-wielding intruder was able to walk right into the residence of one of the highest members of the U.S. government, says the New York Times. In an era when many top officials are blanketed in security, the Supreme Court justices are exceptions.

According to longtime observers and Congressional budget requests, security arrangements vary depending on a justice’s location. In the capital, the justices are protected mainly by the court’s own small force, said spokeswoman Kathy Arberg. When the justices leave Washington, the United States Marshals Service takes over, and local police departments help, too. Protection may be relatively light because justices have worked to preserve their freedom of movement, and the Supreme Court has a lucky history — its members have not met with serious violence.

Profiting from Prisons

Lisa Riordan Seville — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 04:27:00 -0500

Early this year, the United Methodist Church Board of Pension and Health Benefits voted to withdraw nearly $1 million in stocks from two private prison companies, the GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

The decision by the largest faith-based pension fund in the United States came in response to concerns expressed last May by the church’s immigration task force and a group of national activists

“Our board simply felt that it did not want to profit from the business of incarcerating others,” said Colette Nies, managing director of communications for the board.

“Our concern was not with how the companies manage or operate their business, but with the service that the companies offer,” Nies added. “We believe that profiting from incarceration is contrary to Church values.”

It was an important success for a slew activists across the country who are pushing investors and institutions to divest in the private prison industry.

The National Prison Divestment Campaign, launched last spring, includes a broad coalition of immigrant rights, criminal justice and other organizations targeting private prison companies like CCA and the GEO Group, the two largest private prison corporations in the United States.

Affecting companies’ bottom lines is just one of the campaigners’ aims. Their larger goal is to raise public awareness about an industry they claim not only profits from incarceration, but also drives local and national immigration and criminal justice policy.

“Divestment is a way to engage people where they are,” said Bob Libal, an organizer with Grassroots Leadership, a team of community organizers based in North Carolina and a member of the campaign. “You might not have a private prison in your community, but I bet you have a Wells Fargo, or another institution that is invested in and buying stock in these corporations.”

“These are publicly traded corporations,” he added. “And they should be held accountable.”

16 Cities Targeted

On January 24, the campaign launched events in 16 cities—including Salt Lake City and Boston—during a coordinated national day of action. Activists, including some with Occupy Miami, were arrested in Boca Raton, FL, for protesting investors’ ties to prison companies and immigration detention centers at the GAIM hedge fund conference.

In the past year activists have staged protests at financial firms, including “occupations” of branches of Wells Fargo, which holds stock in the GEO Group. It has claimed some noteworthy successes in addition to the Methodist Church decision.

Last February, Pershing Square Capital Management, a powerful hedge fund run by investor Bill Ackman, unloaded about 3.4 million shares of its stock, despite having called it an “attractive investment” in a letter to investors only two months prior.

Pershing Square had been the campaign’s first target. Pershing bought into CCA in 2009, and at one time owned 10 percent of the company, the largest share of any single investor. But the partial sell-off spurred protesters to push the company even further.

On May 12, activists protested outside Ackman’s Manhattan apartment building during a day of action that saw other protests targeting Wells Fargo, Fidelity and other firms throughout the country. Days after the protest, Ackman had sold the rest of his shares—over 4 million.

All told, Pershing divested about $200 million from the company.

Pershing did not respond to requests from The Crime Report for comment

“[The Pershing divestment] was shocking to us,” said Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, executive director of Enlace, a coalition of labor and community organizations in Mexico and the United States. “Not that they divested, but that they divested so quickly.”

Profit Windfall

For decades, private prison companies have been seen as solid investments by banks and hedge funds like Pershing Square.

Founded in the 1980s and fueled by the increase in mass incarceration, companies such as CCA and the GEO Group saw explosive growth through the early 1990s. As tough-on-crime measures such as mandatory minimum sentencing, truth-in-sentencing and Three-Strikes laws helped to pack American prisons, corrections companies saw a windfall in profits.

In the early 1980s, there were hardly any private adult prisons in the U.S. By 1990, there were 67 privately run detention facilities, with an average population of 7,000 inmates.

Proponents of private prisons argue that they provide better services for lower cost. But critics counter that privatizing detention services—in addition to being morally questionable—leads to cost-cutting measures that hurt both employees and the incarcerated.

“There’s been a lot of research that shows that private prisons haven’t delivered on their promises to provide a better product,” said Prof. Michele Deitch, a prison expert at the University of Texas.

“They have higher levels of inmate assaults on staff, inmate assaults on other inmates, higher rates of escape, and employee turnover rates are higher in private facilities,” said Deitch. “Some studies have compared recidivism rates for those coming out of private and public facilities, and have found that there’s no real difference between them.”

CCA and the GEO Group declined to comment for this story.

Prison privatization profits hit a bump in the road during the 1990s.

While incarceration rates continued to rise through the decade, many states began exploring early-release initiatives and sentencing reform to reduce incarcerated populations, leaving companies like CCA, which had built “speculative” facilities in anticipation of growing demand, saddled with debt.

They were saved, in effect, by 9/11.

In the aftermath of the terror attacks, private prisons landed profitable contracts with the U.S. Marshals, the federal Bureau of Prisons, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which began to expand its detention of immigrants.

“It was because of [concerns about] immigration and the uptick in federal detention contracts that they were able to survive,” said Emily Tucker, advocacy policy director of Detention Watch. “Between about 2001 and 2011, it’s been a pretty solid investment.”

And a profitable one: by 2010, GEO Group and CCA combined were posting annual revenues of nearly $3 billion.

Although financial analysts still rate the GEO Group and CCA as solid investments, they note that budget constraints and trends toward decarceration will slow growth, unless states hard push for privatization.

In 2010, according to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the U.S. prison population—both state and federal—declined for the first time since 1972, to slightly over 1.6 million prisoners. About 16 percent of federal prisoners, and 7 percent of state prisoners, were housed in private facilities in 2010.

“There was a time when people could bank on legislators wanting to toughen the laws and lock everyone up for a long period of time,” said Prof. Deitch. “But we’ve come to a point where we’re looking for more cost-effective approaches to dealing with our offender population. A lot of legislatures have realized that they can’t keep growing our prisons.”

Private prison companies, however, have started to explore new approaches. In an unprecedented move to gain more control of state prison systems, CCA sent letters to 48 states in February offering to purchase state prisons outright in exchange for a 20-year management contract and the assurance the prison would remain at least 90 percent full.

CCA framed its offer as a remedy for “challenging corrections budgets.”

In investor statements and annual reports, private prison companies note that immigration detention is essential to their growth. Today, private prisons—including CCA, ICE’s largest contractor—hold about 50 percent of the 30,000 people detained for immigration offenses on a given day.

Does Profit Drive Policy?

While past divestment movements tended to frame privatization as a moral issue—that privatization is wrong, in and of itself—the current campaign focuses heavily on the growth of the immigration detention industry, and how private prison companies have fueled that growth.

“It’s not necessarily that privatization is bad,” Tucker said. “It’s about the way that the profit motive influences policy.”

The passage of SB1070, Arizona’s hardline immigration bill, three years ago was the real impetus for the campaign, added Cervantes-Gautschi. Companies like CCA and GEO are prominent members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a non-profit that connects lawmakers and heads of industry to collaborate on state and federal legislation. Reports by NPR and In These Times exposed CCA’s involvement in the controversial law, which allows Arizona law enforcement to stop and detain anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant.

Similar laws have been proposed across the country and implemented, most recently, in states such as Georgia and Alabama.

“It looked to us that one piece was missing,” Cervantes-Gautschi said. “If we weren’t able to raise public interest in the role of the financial industry and those giant players in developing this private prison industry, essentially creating a market by going after immigrants, that we were never really going to win any of these fights to get justice for immigrant communities and workers.”

A number of organizations have coalesced around the divestment campaign, including branches of the Occupy movement and unions representing prison guards and employees. Cervantes-Gautschi notes that the campaign is supported by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

He concedes that prison guards don’t necessarily share some of the larger prison reform goals of the campaigners.

“We don’t have precisely the same strategy, you might say, or the same solution to the problem,” he said. “But the reason there’s a growing number of people behind bars is because of these profiteering companies. On this point we’re in agreement, and we’re able to pull together.”

Organizers say one of the key factors in the campaign’s success is the participation of immigrant rights groups.

“There’s an increasing awareness of the role that private prisons are playing in immigration detention,” said Libal of Grassroots Leadership. “Legislation like SB1070 has firmly put private prisons on the map of the immigrant rights movement.”

Limitations of the Campaign

Globally, activists have used divestment campaigns as a way to raise public awareness, perhaps most notably during the struggle to end apartheid in the 1980s.

But the tactic, some point out, has limitations.

“When you sell something, you have somebody buying it,” said Alex Friedman, associate editor of Prison Legal News, a monthly magazine focusing on prison and human rights. Prison Legal News is also a partner in the campaign.

“You’re simply doing a lateral transfer of stock from one owner to another,” said Friedman. “From an activist standpoint, that’s a limited utility.”

Private prisons, Friedman added, are also a difficult industry to protest.

“Nobody can really boycott private prisons,” he said. “You don’t go to a grocery store and buy private prison beds.”

But targeting “brick and mortar” institutions, such as Wells Fargo, can be effective, he said—not only in making private prison stock be unattractive to companies, but also to raise public awareness.

There have been other divestment campaigns against the prison industry. In the late 1990s the student-led “Not With Our Money” campaign targeted the Paris-based food service company, Sodexho Alliance.

Sodexho, which provided food service for CCA, was also once its largest shareholder.

Students and other activists, citing record incarceration numbers and the rise of the American prison-industrial complex, protested Sodexho on university campuses where the company held contracts. Students held campus sit-ins and dining hall boycotts at universities across the country, garnering media attention in major outlets such as The New York Times.

In 2001, Sodexho divested from CCA.

“’Not With Our Money’ was very successful because it provided people with a highly recognizable target that they could see and interact with,” Friedman recalled. “Students could see it every day when they went to the dining hall for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

“Wells Fargo has branches people can protest in front of,” he added. “They are susceptible to bad publicity. If you have one of two banks you want to put your money into, and one has a bunch of protesters outside waving signs, you’re more liable to put your money somewhere else.”

It’s the raising of awareness, according to Cervantes-Gautschi, that may be most important.

“We took a chance on the strategy during the anti-apartheid movement,” he said. “But part of what the divestment strategy accomplished was educating a lot of people about apartheid, and how much our own government and our own institutions were invested in it.”

“The more that became public, the more people said no,” he added. “It’s not about divesting money; it’s about divesting our relationships.”

Hannah Rappleye is a freelance reporter based in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has appeared on MSNBC.com, The New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Mail & Guardian. She welcomes comments from readers.

Wilmington, De., With Stubborn Crime Woes, Tries High Point Strategy

Ted Gest — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 21:32:00 -0500

Wilmington, De., with the nation's third-highest violent crime rate among similarly sized cities in 2009 and 2010, will try the successful anticrime strategy used in High Point, N.C., Police Chief Michael Szczerba tells the Wilmington News-Journal. High Point has used the "focused deterrence" strategy to eliminate five violent drug markets, cut gang crime, and reduce robberies. It plans to target chronic domestic-violence offenders this month.

David Kennedy, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor whose work underpins the strategy, says it has to be viewed as a fundamental way of doing police work, not a special project. "When it becomes a program or a grant-funded project or somebody's pet, it gets swamped by business as usual," he says. "It is a tough switch to make, but lots of people have made it, so it's far from impossible."

Arrest in Capitol Bombing Plot Illustrates Lone-Wolf Terror Threat

Ted Gest — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 18:46:29 -0500

The arrest of a 29-year-old Moroccan living illegally in the U.S. has focused attention again on the danger posed by "lone-wolf" terrorists, CNN reports. Amine El Khalifi has been charged with plotting to bomb the U.S. Capitol and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction against federal property. He is alleged to have worked with others he believed to be al Qaeda operatives, who provided him with a suicide vest and conducted a demonstration of explosives in a quarry in West Virginia.

Such cases are among the worst nightmares of counterterrorism officials: individuals acting alone, untraceable through any contacts with other terror suspects, capable of teaching themselves how to launch a terror attack. President Barack Obama has said that a lone-wolf attack was "the most likely scenario that we have to guard against right now." He pointed to Anders Breivik, who went on a bombing and shooting rampage in July in Norway, killing 77. No evidence has been uncovered linking Breivik to other conspirators. In the past two and a half years, 11 of the 17 Islamist terrorist plots on U.S. soil involved individuals with no ties to terrorist organizations or other co-conspirators.

10 Million Doses of PCP Worth $100 Million Seized in L.A.

Ted Gest — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:57:00 -0500

About $100 million worth of PCP was seized this week in the Los Angeles area in what authorities described as a major bust of a national drug-trafficking organization, the Los Angeles Times reports. Officials found huge amounts of PCP — totaling roughly 10 million individual doses, which in the Los Angeles area sell for between $10 and $20 each — at several locations. They recovered nearly $400,000 in cash.

Authorities believe the trafficking organization included at least 10 individuals and that it was distributing to Texas, New York and Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. "They were shipping and moving and dealing a huge amount of product," said Lt. Scott Fairfield of the Los Angeles Interagency Metropolitan Police Apprehension Crime Task Force, known as L.A. IMPACT. "It's the largest PCP seizure I've ever heard of." Two suspects were arrested at a UPS store where they were allegedly trying to ship narcotics. One is believed associated with a street gang named Bounty Hunter Bloods.

KY Sheriff Finds 5-Year Fugitive Couple Via Facebook

Ted Gest — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 16:05:00 -0500

They were on the run for a half decade, but two Clay County, Ky., fugitives were caught in Texas, thanks in part to Facebook, reports WKYT-TV in Hazard, Ky. Clay County sheriff's officials did some digital detective work to find two fugitives who had been on the run for a long time. Jerry Lee Callahan, 44 and his wife, Rebecca, 40, were on the run for five years.

Officials tracked them down using social networking and found out they had even applied for a driver's license in the lone star state. The two were arrested in 2007. Between the two of them, they faced a combination of 20 counts of rape, sexual abuse, sodomy and incest. Someone who knew them chatted with them online, which enabled officials to locate them in Victoria county Texas. “They had been talking to them on Facebook, back and forth and we obtained some IP addresses,” said Clay County Sheriff Kevin Johnson. “Even if you are on the run you are going to stay in contact with friends and family which in the future it is going to be a tool that law enforcement will use and has used and will be continuing to use.”

Starbucks Policy At Center of War Between Pro- , Anti-Gun Carriers

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:43:12 -0500

Starbucks has reiterated its stance that it won't prohibit customers from openly carrying guns into its stores in states that allow it, reports the Christian Science Monitor. On one hand, the stand is a reflection of law: 43 states permit open carry. Yet other companies – such as Peet's Coffee, IKEA, and California Pizza Kitchen post signs against open carry, even in states where it's allowed. The ubiquity and popularity of Starbucks makes the chain a far more powerful symbol for both sides of the issue.

The National Gun Victims Council, which is leading a boycott, says Starbucks points to the need “to eliminate the risk of guns in public places and ultimately to bring sane gun laws to the US.” Its boycott aims to "reduce Starbucks’ stock price by an amount no rational company would allow.” Gun-rights advocates are responding with a "buycott" to support the chain. A coalition of secular, religious, and gun-control groups backing the boycott claim to represent 14 million Americans. The ability of gun control groups to influence the lawmaking process has waned in recent years, with gun-rights legislation outnumbering gun-control laws by a 3-to-1 margin, says an Associated Press analysis.

MA's Coakley Hails Crackdown on Johns; Hookers Object

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:56:19 -0500

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is pressing for huge fines and even jail time for johns under a sweeping new human-trafficking law — but some online hookers tell the Boston Herald they aren’t victims and don’t need the government doing them any favors. The law, effective Sunday, is largely aimed at protecting child prostitutes but also hits adult hookers’ clients with fines of up to $5,000 and up to 21⁄2 years behind bars, as part of a broad crackdown aimed at snuffing out prostitution by turning up the heat on both pimps and end-users of the illicit trade.

Women of the night are treated as victims of human trafficking, still facing the same misdemeanor charges but with new rights to sue those who exploited them. “The penalties we’ve had have been far too low,” Coakley told the Herald. “All we’ve done by the increase is make them appropriate for the kinds of offenses we’re talking about.” One high-priced online hooker said she’s no victim — and she doesn’t know any women who are. “If you are an escort, you go into it of your own free will,” she said. “Absolutely no one is forced into doing this. You don’t have to be affiliated with any agency. I’m not forced to do anything I don’t want.” The new law calls for at least five years in prison and a fine of up to $25,000 for the new state crime of human trafficking for sexual servitude.

Official TX Website Describes Border Violence; Feds Are Dubious

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:36:07 -0500

A Texas Department of Agriculture website, ProtectYourTexasBorder.com, publicizes assertions by farmers and others that violence from Mexico's drug war has spilled over the border, reports the New York Times. It has a more political mission as well: to challenge the Obama administration, which has called the belief that the border is overrun by violence from Mexican drug cartels “a widespread misperception.”

The Texas site paints a frightening portrait of life along the 1,254-mile border that Texas shares with Mexico. One man talks about quitting the farming business for fear for his family’s safety. There are police reports and news accounts of a ranch foreman getting injured by shattered glass after drug-smuggling suspects shot at his truck, vehicles being pursued by law enforcement crashing through farm fences, and workers clearing trees being told to stop what they were doing or else. “We need to be careful not to overstate it, but similarly we need to be careful not to understate this problem,” said Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. “The Mexican cartels are the most significant organized crime threat in Texas. This is not a political issue. This is a crime issue.”

Seattle Prosecutor Quits; Rebuked for Telling Jury of "Black Folk Code"

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:16:22 -0500

A longtime senior Seattle prosecutor who went on leave after being rebuked by the state Supreme Court for using racially charged language during a 2007 murder trial has resigned, reports the Seattle Times. Last year, the Supreme Court found that James Konat had engaged in "prosecutorial misconduct" in questioning witnesses during the 2007 trial of Kevin Monday, who was convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree assault, and sentenced to 64 years in prison.

During the trial, Konat questioned witnesses, many of them black, about a purported street "code" that he claimed prevented some from talking to the police. Konat referred to police as the "PO-leese." During his closing argument to jurors, Konat said that while witnesses denied the presence of such a code, "the code is black folk don't testify against black folk. You don't snitch to the police." The Supreme Court overturned Monday's conviction and awarded the man a new trial. Monday is black; Konat is white.

California Probation Failures Drop Under Incentive Plan for Counties

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:04:44 -0500

California's probation failure rate declined 23 percent in 2010 after a state law provided an incentive for counties to reduce such failures, says the Pew Public Safety Performance Project. The 2009 law awards counties that reduce the rate at which they send probationers to state prison by sharing 40–45 percent of the savings to the state from not housing revoked offenders. County probation departments are required to reinvest their share of the
savings into evidence-based probation, defined as programs and practices that have been scientifically proved to reduce recidivism.

Among changes being made by counties are use of risk and needs assessments to determine supervision levels and case plans, cognitive behavioral therapy for offenders, and the use of graduated sanctions and rewards to hold offenders accountable and encourage compliance with the terms of supervision, The California Department of Finance estimated that because of the reduction in revocations, 6,182 fewer probationers entered state prison in 2010, generating state savings of $179 million.

Milwaukee Burglary Rise Tied to Metal Prices, Foreclosures

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:54:28 -0500

Much crime in Milwaukee is declining, but burglaries, auto thefts, robberies, and arson increased last year, says the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Violent crimes are down more than 23 percent in five years, with burglary a clear exception, up 6.5 percent last year. Police attributed the uptick in burglaries and auto thefts to historically high scrap metal prices, which have led thieves to target abandoned and foreclosed homes.

"(Burglaries) may be up 6 percent compared to last year, but it's 11% over our five-year trend," said Police Chief Ed Flynn. That means something to us. I'm not someone that believes that when the economy goes bad, suddenly factory workers become robbers. But I do believe that if new markets exist, they create a condition in which more people will go into an illegal activity they don't perceive necessarily there's a victim. We all know the devastating impact an abandoned house that's been ripped up and gutted apart can have on a neighborhood's stability, so there are victims of that crime." Mayor Tom Barrett said the burglaries into vacant buildings ties directly into the mortgage and foreclosure crisis nationwide, and that more money is needed to tear down those buildings.

Jury Selection to Begin In First Trial of Catholic Official In Sex Abuse Case

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:43:13 -0500

Jury selection is to start next week in the case of Monsignor William Lynn, formerly the Archdiocese of Philadelphia's point person for allegations of clerical abuse, NPR reports. "He willingly oversaw numerous reports of child sex abuse," says Cardozo law Prof. Marci Hamilton. "And he willingly put these men in positions where they had second, third, fourth opportunities to abuse children in new settings." In most cases, the statute of limitations barred criminal charges. two cases have not expired, and prosecutors say Lynn criminally endangered two young men, allegedly raped when they were 10 and 14, by looking the other way.

Although other senior Catholic officials have been criminally charged for allegedly covering up sex abuse claims, Lynn is the first to go to trial. "Church people are watching this around the country very, very closely," says Nicholas Cafardi, dean emeritus and law professor at Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh.

National Database Assesses Campus Policies On Sex Assault

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:28:31 -0500

Do colleges and universities have at least one full-time person working on campus sex-assault? May rape survivors report attacks confidentially and/or anonymously? Does the school's policy cover the sex assault of a man? Is emergency contraception available in the school health center? These are the questions that students across the country are answering through the Campus Accountability Project, an open-access database designed for students, applicants and parents, reports Women's eNews.

The database finds plenty of schools failing to present friendly survivor policies. Of about 250 schools now in the database, 19 don't cover the cost of counseling after a sexual assault or rape, including such well-known universities as University of California-Berkeley and Cornell University. Only 30 offer victims amnesty from punishment for offenses surrounding the assault, such as violating school policy against underage drinking. The fear of being punished for such offenses is considered a major deterrent to bringing a report. The database is produced by a partnership between Students Active for Ending Rape, or SAFER, based in New York City, and V-Day, whose One Billion Rising campaign invites one billion women and their loved ones -- representative of female survivors of sexual violence worldwide -- to gather and dance on V-Day's 15th anniversary, February 14, 2013.

County Leader: Focus On Cutting Jail Populations as Well as Prisons

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:52:00 -0500

Many of the 64 percent of U.S. jail inmates who are awaiting trial could be safely released if sophisticated protocols were used to determine flight risk and danger to the community, speakers told a recent National Association of Counties symposium on justice and public safety in Atlanta, the association reports. Such statewide protocols have been developed in Minnesota and Ohio.

Declining revenues and budget shortfalls have forced counties to make hard choices about funding needed services such as public safety, health care, and human services. Counties are seeking partnerships and smart initiatives to improve their criminal justice systems. Sebastian County, Ar., Judge David Hudson, chair of NACo’s Justice and Public Safety Steering Committee, said the U.S. criminal justice system is an intergovernmental system and “therefore, the solutions must also be intergovernmental.” He noted that some states appear to be focused on lowering prison populations without sufficient regard to lowering jail populations. “It is simply inaccurate and ideological to focus only on the state role since it is just a part of the overall system,” he said.

AZ Prisons, Under Fire On Health Care, Face Questionable Choice

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:20:00 -0500

The Arizona Department of Corrections, under orders to privatize its troubled prison health-care system, faces a questionable choice, says the Arizona Republic. The department is expected soon to award a three-year contract to provide medical and mental-health care for the nearly 34,000 inmates in Arizona's 10 state-run prisons. The state must choose between two companies with checkered records and a third company that has no track record in correctional health care.

Corizon Inc. of Brentwood, Tn., a privately held company, is the country's largest provider of correctional medical care, operating at 400 prisons and jails in 31 states, with a total prison population of about 400,000. Corizon formed last June from a merger of fierce rivals, both of which repeatedly ran into problems providing adequate health care in other states. As soon as next week, a legal coalition representing Arizona inmates is expected to file suit alleging that the state has systematically and unconstitutionally denied medical care to inmates for weeks or months even for severe, life-threatening conditions.

U.S. Goes Overboard in Forefeiture Case Vs. MA Motel: Wash. Post

Ted Gest — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:11:00 -0500

The Washington Post criticizes the U.S. Justice Department for trying to seize the Motel Caswell near Boston via an asset forfeiture proceeding. The hotel owner is not accused of criminal wrongdoing but of being the scene of at least 100 drug investigations since 1994. For owners not accused of a crime, federal seizure of assets is undue punishment, asserts a Post editorial.

Local law enforcement groups that team up with the federal government may be awarded up to 80 percent of the proceeds from seizures. The Institute for Justice, which represents the motel owner, says such "equitable sharing" payments from the federal government to states have increased dramatically in recent years, from $200 million in 2000 to roughly $400 million in 2008. There are better alternatives to address legitimate public safety goals in cases like this, the Post says. Most jurisdictions have nuisance laws that can be used to force owners to literally and figuratively clean up their properties.

"The Gray Box": An Investigation of Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons

Lisa Riordan Seville — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 05:02:00 -0500

The box. That's the name for the solitary confinement cell where as many as 80,000 U.S. prisoners live in seclusion.

A new multi-media report by the Dart Society offers an intimate portrait of the men who live in those cells, often confined 23 hours a day to a cell the size of two queen-sized mattresses. Some stay for a few weeks. Others, for decades.

"It's a wasteland," says one inmate. "The gray box is a wasteland."

The investigation by Denver-based journalist Susan Greene includes interviews with inmates, prison officials and advocates for an unusually human look at criminal justice policy. Greene's report won an award this month from the Sidney Hillman Foundation.

Watch the full report, and read additional material from the investigation.

Huge Media Interest In Huguely Trial: A Question of Race?

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:01:57 -0500

More than 200 reporters, photographers, and TV producers are credentialed to cover the George Huguely-Yeardley Love murder trial in Charlottesville, Va., says the Washington Post. Among those who’ve registered to cover it are representatives from the three broadcast networks’ morning shows, CNN, “48 hours,” “Dateline,” “20/20,” the New York Times, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal and several authors researching books on the case. The Times of London is covering it, too. (Huguely and victim Love were young white college students.)

The only thing that’s stopped the case from turning into a full-blown circus is Judge Edward Hogshire's decision to ban TV cameras from his courtroom. Why, in a nation that averages more than 15,000 murders a year, do a few crimes or trials gain such attention? Scot Safon of the HLN cable network denies that factors such as the race, wealth, age and telegenic qualities of the victim or the accused are critical, but the Post says the almost all of the media spectacles surrounding crime and punishment have involved young white women, celebrities, or wealthy people. Says Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox: "Most readers and viewers are white. They identify with crimes involving white people. When it’s a black person, unfortunately, they don’t identify with the victim."

Denver Wrongful Arrest Cases Top 600; City Vows Fixes

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 09:12:00 -0500

At least 600 times since 2002, Denver authorities, armed with warrants, arrested or jailed the wrong person, the American Civil Liberties Union tells the New York Times. As described in a lawsuit, similar names, stolen identities, and inaccurate records were sometimes the source of errors made by the police and jailers. In other cases, the arrests and detentions seemed inexplicable. "Denver law enforcement has knowingly tolerated an unjustifiable risk and frequency of these mistaken identity arrests, causing hundreds of innocent persons to be jailed for hours, days, even weeks on warrants for someone else," said the ACLU's Mark Silverstein.

In one case, the Denver police mistakenly arrested a man on three different occasions who had a name similar to the actual suspect’s. Even after a warning was inserted into a criminal database, the wrong man was arrested a fourth time and jailed for eight days in 2007, says an ACLU lawsuit. Since 2009, the Denver police and the sheriff’s department here have set up a system in which claims of wrongful arrest and detention are investigated immediately; fewer than 10 officers are either disciplined or retrained each year because of such mistakes, said Police Lt. Matt Murray. A group of local police experts who specialize in the process of identifying criminals is studying how to reduce the problem, said David Edinger, chief performance officer for the city. The findings are expected within the next three weeks.

TX Woman Wins $20 Million For Landlord Not Warning Of Rape Risk

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:31:43 -0500

A Houston jury awarded $20 million in damages yesterday to a rape victim who sued her apartment complex for failing to notify residents about previous sexual attacks on the property, the Houston Chronicle reports. The woman lwas raped and sodomized for more than 10 hours at a west Houston complex in 2009. She charged that complex officials knew about a break-in next door to the woman's unit a few weeks before her ordeal in which a man tried to rape that resident and failed to notify other tenants about a sexual predator.

The woman renewed her lease shortly after the earlier incident without being told about its severity, said her lawyer, Troy Chandler. After a weeklong trial, the jury awarded $7 million for physical pain and mental anguish, $5 million for future mental anguish and $8 million for conduct forbidden by the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Police, on notice about a possible serial rapist, arrested Darryl Martin shortly after the woman's attacker fled and she called 911. Martin, now 24, pleaded guilty to sexual assault and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

DE Halts Medical Pot Plan; U.S. Threatens State-Worker Prosecution

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:19:41 -0500

Delaware's legalization of medical marijuana has fizzled amid legal opinions that growers, distributors, and state employees could be prosecuted under federal drug laws, reports the Wilmington News Journal. Gov. Jack Markell suspended the regulation-writing and licensing process for medical marijuana dispensaries -- effectively killing the program -- and criticized the federal government for sending mixed signals on law enforcement.

"[G]rowing, distributing and possessing marijuana, in any capacity, other than as part of a federally authorized research program, is a violation of federal law regardless of state laws permitting such activities," said U.S. Attorney Charles Oberly. "Moreover, those who engage in financial transactions involving the proceeds of such activities may also be in violation of federal money laundering statutes." Markell's office said that prevents the state from issuing licenses to medical marijuana dispensaries, whose employees and owners may be subject to federal raids and prosecution.

Sentencing Inconsistent For MA Teens Convicted of Murder

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:05:03 -0500

One Massachusetts teen served nine years in prison for killing her mother. Another fatally stabbed a schoolmate and is serving life without the possibility of parole. The cases illustrate profound inequities in the Massachusetts juvenile justice system since the passage of a tough sentencing law enacted 15 years ago and designed to punish the most depraved “super-predators” among teen killers, reports the New England Center for Investigative Reporting. The law is not being applied consistently to the most horrific juvenile murder cases, as it was intended.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider this spring whether it is “cruel and unusual” punishment to sentence juveniles 14 and under to life without parole for murder. In Massachusetts, there is no obvious pattern as to why some killers are sentenced to life without parole and others — who committed shocking, grisly crimes such as fatally beating a 2-year-old — escaped the harsh sentence. Juveniles whose crimes approach the cruelty of the teen whose case triggered the the 1996 law, Edward O'Brien, have escaped the severe sentence, while spontaneous acts of violence by teenagers with little prior record are punished with life behind bars.

Sen. Paul Blocks Bill To Outlaw Synthetic Recreational Drugs

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:51:13 -0500

Three senators took the unusual step of going to the Senate floor to denounce a "hold" by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) on bills to outlaw synthetic recreational drugs across the U.S., reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Let's hear what the objections are, and then pass these bills," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), who has been taking aim at a group of chemical compounds marketed as so-called bath salts, herbal incense, and research chemicals.

Despite a bipartisan coalition for anti-drug legislation -- a House version passed by wide margin in December -- Klobuchar and her allies find themselves bollixed by Paul, who by Senate tradition can single-handedly hold up legislation. Paul spokeswoman Moira Bagley said he believes "law enforcement of most drug laws can and should be local and state issues." She said that Paul's hold does not prevent Senate leaders from bringing the bills up for a vote, however it might be delayed. Long-time congressional watchers say the tactic has been used with increasing frequency in recent years, particularly by Paul, a libertarian Republican who, like his father, presidential candidate Ron Paul, is unafraid of challenging the Washington establishment.

Some States Pursue New Ways of Fighting Prescription Drug Abuse

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 07:23:00 -0500

Governors and legislators in some states are taking steps to tackle the growing scourge of prescription drug abuse, says Stateline.org. All but two states and the District of Columbia have enacted some kind of prescription drug monitoring program, but many state officials argue that this is not enough. “This growing problem is so frightening because while FDA-approved prescription opiates are easy to get, many are just as addicting and dangerous as street heroin and crack cocaine,” says Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin.

Shumlin has proposed giving law enforcement personnel access to the state’s prescription drug monitoring system, currently accessible only to doctors and pharmacists, who enter a record in the database any time a patient is prescribed a potentially-addictive drug, classified as a schedule II, III, or IV controlled substance. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam also is taking aim at his state’s prescription drug database, which only requires prescribers to record that they’ve written a prescription. In a Haslam-backed bill, all prescribers and drug dispensers would be required to check the database prior to prescribing a controlled substance, and Tennessee would be able to share data with other states to cut down on doctor-shopping.

PA Jails Not Meeting Reproductive Health Needs of Women: ACLU

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:54:00 -0500

In a report, Reproductive Health Locked Up: An Examination of Pennsylvania Jail Policies, the American Civil Liberties Union says Pennsylvania jails "are not meeting the reproductive health needs of incarcerated women," reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Jails built largely for men face a changing demographic: The rate of incarceration among women has increased twice as much as that for men since 1977, says the Institute on Women and Criminal Justice.

That's driven largely by a steep increase in drug charges against women. More than half of women in prisons are there for drug or property crimes. Health care for women at the Allegheny County Jail has come under criticism. Amy Lynn Gillespie, a 27-year-old pregnant inmate, died in 2010 after her pneumonia was misdiagnosed, charges a federal lawsuit filed by her mother. "We're open enough to say, 'How can we do better,'" said Bruce Dixon, director of the Allegheny County Health Department, which created the nonprofit agency that handles health care at the jail.

Serpas Quickly Drops Idea of Orange Stickers on Homes Searched for Drugs

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:41:00 -0500

New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas has cancelled what the New Orleans Times Picayune calls a "dreadful idea" of plastering bright orange stickers on homes that were searched for drugs based on anonymous tips. In an editorial, the newspaper says that "shining the light of public suspicion on someone's home -- even in cases where police found no drugs and made no arrests -- could have unfairly subjected innocent people to ridicule and embarrassment without accomplishing any real good."

Public reaction to the program was quick and negative. Serpas cited lack of support as a reason for not going forward. "I recognize that without widespread community support, the placarding strategy will not be successful, so we will not move forward,'' he said. Declares the Times Picayune: "A modern-day scarlet letter isn't necessary. Arresting drug dealers and putting them behind bars is the best way to show people that their tips matter."

MA Agrees To Provide Better Care to Mentally Ill Inmates

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 06:30:00 -0500

Years after an alarming series of suicides by inmates in state prison segregation units, Massachusetts has reached a landmark agreement with advocacy groups to provide better care for prisoners with severe mental illnesses, the Boston Globe reports.

The agreement, which needs a judge’s final approval, calls for the Department of Correction to maintain two new units at high-level security prisons as alternatives to disciplinary segregation for prisoners with mental illness. The full article is available only to paid subscribers.

Amid Misinformation On Islam, Who Should Do Anti-Terrorism Training?

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 05:40:00 -0500

Tennessee police officers and deputies will gather in Nashville in two weeks for training on how to fight terrorism, reports The Tennessean. They’ll hear from experts from the national Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council and the Combating Terrorism Task Force at West Point. Muslim speakers will explain Islam and its code of conduct. What they won’t hear at the event, organized by the U.S. Attorney, is anyone from Strategic Engagement Group, the Virginia-based nonprofit that is training the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office this week. Its leaders have drawn criticism for painting Muslims as violent believers who follow a law not protected by the Constitution.

Rutherford County Sheriff Robert Arnold defended a training event led by the group this week, saying there are few courses available about Islam and terrorism. Finding training isn’t a problem, anti-terrorism experts say. Finding the right training is. “There is a lot of misinformation out there from people who don’t understand Islam,” said Jonathan White of the Homeland Defense Initiative at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mi. Last year, the New York City Police Department showed the film The Third Jihad, which says Muslims are waging a modern holy war, to nearly 1,500 officers as part of its anti-terrorism training. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg denounced that move.

Group Contends AZ Private Prisons Not Cost Effective, Hard to Monitor

Ted Gest — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 04:10:00 -0500

Arizona's private prisons are not cost-effective for taxpayers and are more difficult to monitor than state prisons, says a new report by a prison watchdog group that is calling for a moratorium on any new private prisons in the state, says the Arizona Republic. The report examined the five prisons that have contracts to house Arizona prisoners and six private prisons that house federal detainees or inmates from other states, including California and Hawaii.

Based on public-information requests and other data, the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that works on criminal-justice reform, concluded that Arizona paid $10 million more for private prison beds between 2008 and 2010 than it would have for equivalent state beds. Arizona's pending plan to contract for another 2,000 private-prison beds would cost taxpayers at least $38.7 million a year, at least $6 million a year more than incarcerating those inmates in state prisons. Plans to add 500 maximum-security beds in state prisons would add almost $10 million a year. The report questioned whether those beds are needed, since the prison population has declined over the past two years by more than 900 inmates, to 39,854.

Florida Senate Kills Big Prison Privatization Plan

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:31:35 -0500

A massive expansion of private prisons in Florida collapsed in the Senate as nine Republicans joined a dozen Democrats in handing a setback to Senate leaders and a victory to state workers, reports the Tampa Bay Times. The state will not undertake what would have been the single greatest expansion of prison privatization in U.S. history, affecting 27 prisons and work camps in 18 counties and displacing more than 3,500 correctional officers.

Senate leaders said they would have to cut education and health care programs by $16.5 million, the amount supporters had said privatization would save in the first year. Yesterday's vote was a triumph for a rebellious group of Republicans who rejected supporters' arguments that for-profit prisons would save tax dollars and increase efficiency. All 12 Democrats also voted no, putting the minority party in the unaccustomed role of being on the winning side.

New Orleans to Label Properties Searched For Drugs; ACLU Protests

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:09:15 -0500

New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas says officers will begin putting bright orange stickers on properties they have searched for drugs, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The hexagonal, saucer-sized stickers will be affixed to homes that are under investigation and have been singled out through anonymous tips to Crimestoppers Inc. The signs will go up after officers execute a warrant at the property, regardless of whether drugs are found or arrests made.

Serpas said he wants the public to know that officers are following up on drug-related tips, even though those investigations are done in a clandestine manner.The new sticker-initiative was met with near instant criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana. "This is like a scarlet letter tattooed onto the homes of otherwise innocent people, giving them no presumption of innocence," said director Marjorie Esman. "People who have not even been arrested, let alone tried or convicted, will be singled out and have their homes marked."

Photographers Protest Baltimore Threat to Arrest for Taping

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:59:06 -0500

Hours after Baltimore police officials told 3,100 officers they can't arrest or seize cameras from people merely for photographing or videotaping them, officers were caught on tape seemingly doing just that, reports the Baltimore Sun. The National Press Photographers Association voiced its concern to Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld. The new video showed officers threatening to arrest a man near a market for taping an arrest.

"While it is understandable that your officers had a heightened sense of awareness during this incident, that is still no excuse for them not to recognize a citizen's right to record a matter of public concern occurring in a public place," the photographers say. "Law enforcement agencies are established to uphold and enforce existing laws, not to use them as a pretext to punish someone exercising their free speech right to take photographs/videotape in public. This activity is protected by the First Amendment and may not be restricted by officers wishing to avoid the documentation of their actions."

TX May Be Running Out of Execution Drug Again; Disclosure In Doubt

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:24:13 -0500

Texas again might be running out of a key drug used to execute its condemned criminals, says the Austin American-Statesman. Prison officials said they have enough to carry out the next six scheduled executions. What happens after that might be anyone's guess, thanks to a new no-disclosure policy imposed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on details about the execution drugs.

Two years ago, the prison system revealed its drug supplier and the amount of drugs on hand after Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued an opinion saying it was public information. The prison system had sought to keep the information secret, arguing that releasing details about the drug supply might trigger violent protests outside the execution chamber or embolden death penalty opponents. Officials say a state Supreme Court ruling could have changed the situation. The case, filed by the American-Statesman and other newspapers, sought travel vouchers for the governor's security detail under the Texas Public Information Act. The court ruled that safety concerns might trump laws mandating public disclosure of information that reveals how a government spends taxpayer money.

Pennsylvania State Lab DNA Analysis Backlog Nearly 8 Months

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:10:01 -0500

In the eight months since armed robbers burst into the TriStar Market, in Yeadon, Pa., store owner Patel Bharat has turned his counter and sandwich station into a $15,000 bulletproof glass cage, says the Philadelphia Daily News. The State Police's Bureau of Forensic Services still hasn't processed three pieces of evidence - a gun, clothing, and gloves - that were left behind at the scene and may hold the DNA clues to solving the case. In the meantime, Bharat's store has been robbed twice more at gunpoint, and by the same two men, he believes.

"I think the police are not interested, but it matters to me," he said. "These guys are still out there. How do I take care of myself? If they don't catch the people, they will keep doing this. How much time do they need?" The wait time for DNA processing at the State Police's Bureau of Forensic Services averages 227 days, but not because it takes long to do the scientific work - 24 to 48 hours in a rush. It can take nearly eight months for a DNA sample to be processed. The backlog - more than 1,700 cases - is so bad that law-enforcement officials say it jeopardizes and delays investigations, allowing criminals to remain free, potentially to commit crimes while evidence crawling with their DNA sits at the State Police's only DNA lab, near Pittsburgh.

Justice Department Cites Record $4.1 Billion Health Care Fraud Recoveries

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:49:45 -0500

The Justice Department says it has logged a record year in health care fraud recoveries, with investigations yielding $4.1 billion in returned money in fiscal year 2011, reports MainJustice.com. Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed the three-year old Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team yesterday.

The Justice Department recovered $2.4 billion in civil action brought under the False Claims Act. In one high-profile case, GlaxoSmithKline paid $600 million to resolve allegations that it produced tainted medications. The company also paid $150 million in criminal fines. Holder said U.S. Attorney's offices opened 1,100 health care fraud cases and charged 1,400 defendants in 500 cases, getting 700 convictions.

TV Reporter Quits Teen Drinking Stories As Kids Are Harassed

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:30:00 -0500

Andrea McCarren, a veteran reporter for Washington, D.C.,'s CBS affiliate WUSA-TV, pulled herself off of stories on underage drinking when her two teenage children were harassed at school by peers and on Facebook by “friends,” the Washington Post reports. "My kids were targeted," she said. "That's where I drew the line."

The episode began after her Feb. 1 report about a liquor store that allegedly sold alcohol to minors as young as 14. McCarren and a news photographer collected footage of teens carrying out 12-packs of beer. The news crew recorded statements, using hidden microphones, from the minors about how easy it was to buy booze at the store. The report drew e-mail and Facebook denunciations of McCarren from young people apparently angered that she had exposed an easy supply of illicit alcohol. One online post said McCarren "just ruined weekends for all kids underage." While reporters in foreign locales are often harassed and sometimes injured or killed, local TV journalists rarely face a sustained bullying response to their stories, said Mike Cavender of the Radio Television Digital News Association. He said McCarren’s experience is "not one I’ve encountered” in 25 years in the news business.

CT Recidivism Rate Pegged at 80% Within Five Years

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:49:00 -0500

Of the 14,400 men released from Connecticut prisons in 2005, nearly 80 percent were rearrested by 2010, and just under half returned to prison with new sentences, says a report quoted by the Hartford Courant that contains the most detailed data ever compiled on the state's recidivism rate. The report, by Office of Policy and Management statistical guru Ivan Kuzyk, separately tracked sex offenders within the group and found that only a small number committed new sex crimes.

That suggests sex offenders respond well to supervision and treatment, and don't commit new sex crimes at the rate the public thinks they do, said Michael Lawlor, Gov. Dannel Malloy's chief of criminal-justice policy. The overall recidivism rates in the report — 78.6 percent of the 14,400 rearrested; 49.8 percent returned to prison with new sentences — appear to jibe with national rates and are higher than those some states, but lower than others, said Kuzyk. Lawlor said the report establishes benchmarks that will allow the state to track the progress of reform. He said it's possible to reduce recidivism rates by adjusting the way probation and parole officers supervise, and by improving the way the system assesses low-, moderate- and high-risk inmates before and during release.

The ‘Politics of Terror’

Lisa Riordan Seville — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:44:00 -0500

G.W. Schulz is the homeland security reporter at the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Investigative Reporting. A Kansas native, he worked for several years at the San Francisco Guardian, and was an early contributor to the Chauncey Bailey Project, a team investigation by a group of California journalists into the murder of the legendary editor of the Oakland Post. He now lives in Austin, Texas, a state that has spent heavily on homeland security in recent years.

Since taking on the homeland security beat at CIR in 2008, he has immersed himself in the world of domestic anti-terrorism, teasing stories from documents obtained through open records requests, and culling leads from his wide reading of news, trade publications and blogs.

Schulz and I started talking via Twitter in 2009, and have kept up a conversation--mostly about fusion centers, budget lines and government contracts--ever since. I met Schulz in person late one evening last April at U.C. Berkeley’s annual investigative reporting conference, the Logan Symposium. Some of the best investigative reporters in the business stood in the rosemary-lined courtyard, talking, eating and drinking wine liberally poured. Schulz told me he was working on a big project that examining homeland security ten years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. That project became America ’s War Within.

Schulz spoke to me about the project, his beat and his reporting approach from his apartment in Austin, which doubles as his office. He watches CSPAN full volume while working with his cat, Charles, for company.

The Crime Report: You started this job in 2008 seven years after 9/11. Even then, “homeland security” was an unusual beat. Talk about what sparked this project.

G.W. Schulz: I remember thinking before 9/11, ‘I wonder if there will be an event like Pearl Harbor that defines my generation, that just so messes with the psyche of the country?’ Then it happened. Nine-eleven was our generation’s Pearl Harbor. The reaction in every corner of public life was intense.

Congress did what it knows how to do best, which is shovel money at the problem. Initially they told federal and local agencies you’ve got to spend it as fast as possible. If you don’t spend it, you lose it. In those early years, they spent it on anything they could conceive as a potential for a security risk. The thinking was, ‘if 9/11 can happen, anything can happen. Any expense is justified.’ Ten years later, we’ve gone on like that because of the politics of terror. We spend endlessly toward a dream of 100 percent security, but you can’t achieve that. In the absence of trying to figure out exactly the cost of any possible threat, we just spend like crazy.

When we started this, I wanted to become enough of an expert that we could add to the conversation--inject some perspective in. That’s where I wanted us to get to.

TCR: Were there challenges early on?

GWS: It was harder to get records [about] some homeland security spending than we thought it would be. The big one was Department of Homeland Security grants. We thought there had to be a good database in Washington of what the money had been used for.

It turned out—and this is the case in a lot of federal grants—that Washington shoved the responsibility for oversight onto the states. We had to go state by state with open records requests. Some states that we called said all that documentation exists only in paper form. This is in the 21st century.

One guy in Alabama was hilarious. He honored my public records request, and he did so by saying, ‘Well son, if you want to back up a xerox machine in a truck, you can cart away any records you want.’ He didn’t deny my request, but there was no way I could do a meaningful story. In other states, like Texas, the state had generated one spreadsheet that documented every single transaction. Thousands of rows. But I can work with that.

TCR: In your story on the Mall of America, you found that 1,200 people are stopped and questioned every year as part as the counter-terrorism effort there.

GWS: We were really intrigued by the amount of energy that Janet Napolitano was putting into suspicious activity reports. When she took over the Department of Homeland Security, hardly a public speech went [without her making the point that] she invested an enormous amount of political capital in suspicious activity reports [known as SARS].

We didn’t think we could do the story well without figuring out how this was playing out in the street. We really wanted to see some SARs.

[Major Douglas Reynolds], the head of security at the Mall of America testified before Congress a couple of years ago, saying, ’We generate more actionable intelligence for the state’s fusion center than anyone else.’ A private company had generated more actionable intelligence in the state than anybody else. As a reporter I was intrigued by that. We wanted to know what that actionable intelligence looked like.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Read there story Schulz did with CIR reporter Andrew Becker and NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling and Margot Williams here.

TCR: How did you report it?

GWS: We submitted a public records request to the local police department saying we want all of your communications with the mall. They came back with more than 1,000 pages of suspicious activity reports that were almost entirely un-redacted. You could tell it was part of a momentum building of sharing information. So we had these records, and we had a great story.

TCR: Then you teamed up with National Public Radio, including reporters Daniel Zwerdling and Margot Williams. One of the things I liked about your story is that it made this document-based homeland security story a people story.

GWS: These people had no idea there were SARs on them until we knocked on their door. We weren’t out for a specific reaction. People could say they thought this was justified. People could be outraged. But it was compelling to hear their reactions on air. You could hear them turning the pages, looking at the reports. That was, to me, great radio.

The comments on NPR’s site were great too. There were a lot of really smart things from all sides of the political spectrum. An idealistic journalist hopes only for that—a really cool smart discussion from people with different perspectives.

TCR: Is that kind of conversation the ultimate goal of your stories?

GWS: It is. We’re just trying to contribute to the discourse. That’s why I always wanted to be a reporter and not an activist. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything ideologically. I just want to ask: what’s happening there? Is there anything deeper there? All I want to do is report it straight down the line.

TCR: You have spent several years basically immersing yourself in the world of homeland security. Are there more reporters who are also almost experts in a field?

GWS: I think it’s moving in two directions. In Silicon Valley, you have reporters doing all kinds of great work and analyzing what’s going on, for example. Lots of newspapers have mostly general assignment reporters, but fewer beat reporters. That means that sometimes--not always--you have people without a lot of institutional knowledge running out and reporting big stories, like oil spills.

That’s why I follow U.S. Coast Guard blogs and try to pay closer attention to those than a daily story. Those people are really knowledgeable about this kind of thing.

TCR: It does seem easier now to tap into those worlds. All these institutional voices are really accessible with a Google search.

GWS: Totally. Take Lawfare .com. The writers are Army lawyers. They’re legal experts in this stuff. They know what’s up. They’re not Gay Talese, but they are really, really smart.

TCR: You started this beat on your own in 2008. Now you regularly work with fellow CIR reporter Andrew Becker. Talk to me about reporting solo versus as part of a team.

GWS: Team reporting is really valuable. A lot of reporters want the byline real estate all to themselves. I don’t care about that. We work so well together because he’s as interested in this stuff as I am.

The stories we’ve worked together have worked well. Especially if someone will challenge you on certain ideas. We’re both really good about doing that with each other. It makes you feel so much better about the story when it runs. Each person brings to the table a certain skill. Andy works sources like crazy. And 24 hours a day I'm playing with documents. I’m sending out public records requests just constantly.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel with the data. We start calling people, that’s when he turns on the magic.

TCR: You have a really creative way of thinking about sources--not just Freedom of Information Requests and Nexis, but newsletters, government databases and budgets. Talk to be about sourcing.

GWS: I think of it as my responsibility to know what’s out there. If there is a source, a database, a tool, I think I should know about it. There are resources like that on the Internet and I’m obsessed with trying to keep track of them. There’s no excuse for me not to know that.

Sometimes I’ll read something that says the ‘the government doesn’t track XYZ,’ and I know that’s not true. I know there is a way to tell how much business a company does with the government: you go to USASpending.gov. You spit out a spreadsheet that shows you every contract.

TCR: It’s almost like a puzzle.

GWS: You have to let your curiosity drive you and keep pushing for it. There is detailed data on every single wiretap deployed by local police departments in the United States. Amazing data. You could do such crazy analysis with it. The Coast Guard retains data on every chemical spill in the United States. Before I go to something like Nexis, I always try to think, might there be more reliable data out there?

TCR: Do you dig into data, then go to people sources?

GWS: Definitely the latter. If I get data from a guy at the Department of Defense, I’m emailing this guy every day. Every time I have a question. I don’t want to mis-characterize stuff in a story. So I’m interacting with this guy every day to make sure the language I use is appropriate.

By the time the story runs, there are no surprises. The “no surprises” thing is big with me. Everyone should know what’s coming well before that story runs. People appreciate that.

TCR: It sort of shows you’re not out to get them.

GWS: That’s totally it. If they see a reporter taking steps to get it right. Law enforcement tends to be wary of media. They forget they use media for investigations, especially when things don’t go their way. But when you’re up front, even if they don’t like what you’re reporting, they’ll appreciate that process. Often it means they’ll pick up the phone next time. Maybe they say okay, not all reporters are assholes.

TCR: So you do all of this digging, but how do you get people to care? “Homeland security spending” doesn’t have quite the sex appeal of a lot of other news.

GWS: You can’t expect all 300 million Americans to care about every single thing. It’s also the case that we underestimate how much Americans care. These are stories about privacy, civil liberties, tax money. People get involved.

Either way, you can’t let it stop you from trying to get cooler stories. And you can’t sex it up either. You still got to play by the rules. My stories are not going to take off the way a Charlie Sheen coke story will. I can’t change that. But I can keep going, and keep doing good stories.

EDITOR’S NOTE: for another take on homeland security policies, read TCR’s Q&A with Ohio State University Professor John Mueller, “How Much is Security Worth?”

This interview has been edited and condensed. Lisa Riordan Seville is deputy managing editor of The Crime Report. She welcomes reader comments.

NV Police Abuse of Motorist Prompts Calls for More Cameras in Cars

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:41:00 -0500

It was only because a Nevada Highway Patrol cruiser was equipped with a camera that the public learned a motorist in the throes of a diabetic episode had been held down and kicked by police officers, reports the Las Vegas Sun. Outrage over the incident included calls for all police vehicles to be equipped with cameras, but there is disagreement over how quickly it could happen.

The head of the union representing Las Vegas Police said installation of dashboard cameras would have to be negotiated under future contracts. A county commissioner said that isn’t the case. The Sun reported on the Highway Patrol video showing a Henderson police officer kicking driver Adam Greene, who was restrained on the ground. The city has settled with Greene and his wife for about $250,000. At the time of the 2010 incident, Henderson police did not have dashboard cameras in their vehicles, but the Highway Patrol did. Last year, Henderson used a $1.2 milliion federal grant to install them in 150 vehicles.

Defense Attorneys Say Denver Police Computer Records Flawed

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:40:00 -0500

Witness descriptions of Denver criminal suspects often are overwritten in computer records to reflect the descriptions of suspects later taken into custody by police, says a police detective's testimony reported by the Denver Post. Defense attorneys say the system's flaws hide potentially exculpatory evidence. The police department denied that any evidence is intentionally overwritten or withheld.

Inaccurate or incomplete information from police, defense attorneys say, affects a prosecutor's ability to determine whether to pursue charges and the ability of the accused to build effective defenses. "Their method is completely flawed," said defense attorney Michael Sheehan. "Who knows how many people's due-process rights have been violated?"He discovered the discrepancies "by accident" during a trial in December — and quickly became alarmed.

Blagojevich Gets Colorado Prison Choice, Lockup with Good Reputation

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:23:00 -0500

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will serve his 14-year sentence at a federal prison in scenic Englewood, Co., reports the Chicago Tribune. Blagojevich, who is due to report to prison by March 15, hopes to enroll in a substance-abuse program at the prison, which could shave off up to a year of his sentence. Englewood has a reputation for being less crowded and violent than other facilities in the federal system.

Scott Fawell, a co-defendant of former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, said, “Most of the guys I knew (that were familiar with Englewood) said it was nice. It beats being in the middle of cornfields. Most places where they build prisons are not nice. They’re (dumps).” The flamboyant former governor will become Englewood's most famous resident, though it also houses disgraced Enron executive Jeffrey Skilling. Prison staff tend to take a hard line with high-profile inmates, especially early in their sentence, Fawell said. Being in an area where the staff will know less about him might mean he gets a little kinder treatment, he said.

St. Louis Police Pension Costs Soar, Prompting Layoff Talk

Ted Gest — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:47:00 -0500

Retirement costs for St. Louis police officers are poised to rise by a record $8 million this coming fiscal year, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. That leaves the Board of Police Commissioners with at least a $3 million shortfall in the department's $168 million budget. Some fear such a gap could lead to salary cuts, benefit cost increases or even officer layoffs.

The staff of Mayor Francis Slay, who sits on the police board, said layoffs should be the last resort. There is still plenty of time for the board, the chief and the city to deal with the shortfall. The mayor's office is meeting with the union, the police board, and the pension system to come up with solutions. The shortfall came to light in an actuarial report on the Police Retirement System of St. Louis. Actuaries told the system's board that costs to city taxpayers would need to grow by $8 million this coming year, plus an additional $6 million next year.

In Shift, Private Corrections Firm Offers to Buy State Prisons

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:11:59 -0500

Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest operator of for-profit prisons, has sent letters to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy for "challenging corrections budgets," reports the Huffington Post. In exchange, the company is asking for a 20-year management contract, plus an assurance that the prison would remain at least 90 percent full. The move reflects a significant shift in strategy for the private prison industry, which until now has expanded by building prisons of its own or managing state-controlled prisons. It also represents an unprecedented bid for more control of state prison systems.

Corrections Corporation has been a swiftly growing business, with revenues expanding more than fivefold since the mid-1990s. The company capitalized on the expansion of state prison systems in the '80s and '90s at the height of the so-called 'war on drugs,' contracting with state governments to build or manage new prisons to house an influx of drug offenders. During the past 10 years, it has found new opportunities in the business of locking up undocumented immigrants. CCA's offer of $250 million toward purchasing existing state prisons is yet another avenue for potential growth. The company has billed the "corrections investment initiative" as a convenient option for states in need of fresh revenue streams: The state benefits from a one-time infusion of cash, while the prison corporation wins a new long-term contract.

Growing Trend in NYC: 'Community Guns' Shared by Criminals

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:11:50 -0500

The New York Times says community guns, hidden and shared by a small group of people who use them when needed, appear to be rising in number in New York. It is unclear why, but money may be one reason. “The gangs are younger, and their resources are less,” said Ed Talty, an assistant district attorney in the Bronx.

The hiding places include keyed mailboxes, car wheel wells, light pole compartments and garbage pails. “Behind some bushes or under a building,” said State Senator Malcolm A. Smith, who has visited the scenes of shootings in his Queens district that were linked to community guns. The police believe that a community gun is now in play in a series of gang-related shootings in East New York, Brooklyn, between the Rock Starz and their colorfully named rivals, the Very Crispy Gangsters. Sharing guns predates the Wild West, but the sophistication of maintaining today’s community gun can be striking. “You call it a community gun, so that name has to be able to market itself,” Senator Smith said. “You have a business model behind this concept, a schedule, which is a shame. If they used that intellect for something positive, who knows how successful that person could be?”

Texas Murders Highlight Dilemma of 'Open Line' Calls to 911

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:11:40 -0500

"Open line" silent calls to 911 during urgent emergencies have long plagued dispatchers, reports the New York Times. To those on the receiving end of the line, the silence can signify a prank, a pocket-dial or, just as easily, something haunting. The paper cites an open-line call on Christmas Day 2011 to 911 in Grapevine, Texas, where a dispatcher heard only static, a few muffled comments and breathing. In fact, a gunman named Aziz Yazdanpanah was in the process of shooting six relatives.

Across the country, policies on open-line calls vary, depending on the size and resources of the city. Some require dispatchers to investigate every call, reaching out to cellphone service providers for more information if necessary. Faced with the uncertainty of an open line, dispatchers sometimes send officers into comically innocuous settings, some of which make the local newspapers. In 2008, when a dispatcher in Shrewsbury, Mass., heard a child screaming in the background, the responding officer reported that an “8-year-old child was given a timeout and called 911.” And last winter, a dispatcher in Glenburn, Me., sent a deputy to an empty house, where a pug named Lucy was found chewing on the phone that had dialed 911.

'Speed Freak Killer' Brings Spotlight to His Northern CA Hometown

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:11:22 -0500

Authorities are searching near Linden, Calif., after a man on death row for murder claimed that he and a boyhood friend killed many others and dumped their remains there. Serial killer Wesley Shermantine says he was a partner in murders committed by a neighbor, Loren Herzog. Shermantine, 46, was condemned for killing women with Herzog in the 1980s and '90s. A neighbor called them "total trouble" and "scary speed freaks," reports the San Francisco Chronicle. So far, more than 300 bone fragments have been dug up near Linden, along with shoes, jewelry, coats and a purse.

Herzog, 45, hanged himself on Jan. 16. When Shermantine and Herzog were arrested in 1999, they were dubbed the Speed Freak Killers for committing a string of methamphetamine-fueled slayings throughout Central California. Between them, they were convicted of seven murders, but investigators believe they killed more than a dozen people. Shermantine started doling out details of body locations to several people, including a local bounty hunter, a Stockton Record reporter and a retired FBI agent, this winter in hopes of getting reward money to pay off debts and buy candy bars and other goodies prized in prison. Bounty hunter Leonard Padilla struck a deal to pay Shermantine $33,000 for the information.

Assaults Up But Sexual Attacks Down at TX Juvenile Lockups

Ted Gest — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:11:21 -0500

Assaults between youths at secure juvenile offender facilities in Texas has tripled in the past five years, reports the Texas Tribune. Attacks on staff members also apparently increased, although statistics indicate reductions in violence perpetrated by staff and in all types of sexual assaults. Cherie Townsend, executive director of the juvenile justice agency, acknowledged there is room for more work, but she said that reforms are making the facilities safer.

Advocates and experts, however, say the rise in youth-on-youth assaults and attacks on staff indicate there is still critical work to be done. “It’s really disappointing,” said Deborah Fowler, deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit organization that advocates juvenile justice reform. “The implementation has not been what we hoped for.” In 2007, following reports that staff at what was then the Texas Youth Commission had sexually and physically abused youths in their custody, legislators passed laws intended to improve conditions at the lockups. They gave counties incentives to keep low-level offenders in their communities, where they could be close to treatment services and support systems. The average daily population at the secure facilities has dropped to about 1,200 in 2011 from nearly 3,000 in 2007.

Soros Donates $500,000 to CA Three-Strikes Ballot Initiative

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:55:42 -0500

Billionaire investor George Soros has given $500,000 to the effort to overhaul California's three-strikes law, reports the Sacramento Bee. The donation to the "Three Strikes Reform Act of 2012" was reported Friday by the ballot drive's fundraising committee, sponsored by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, records show. Stanford University professor David Mills, the measure's proponent, invested an additional $250,000 last week. He cumulatively has contributed $603,000, records show.

The campaign must collect 504,760 valid voter signatures by May 14 to qualify for the November ballot. The initiative would amend California law to require that only serious or violent felonies qualify as a third strike punishable by prison sentences of 25 years to life. The measure also would allow some offenders to appeal if they were sentenced under "three strikes" law after conviction of minor crimes.

Las Vegas Celebrates Criminal Roots With New Mob Museum

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:55:41 -0500

On the 83rd anniversary of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Las Vegas on Tuesday opened a new $42 million museum dedicated to the mobsters that helped create the desert Sin City, reports the Associated Press. Las Vegas has long been enamored with its gangster roots. Its longtime former mayor played himself in the mob flick “Casino” and hotels here often promote their nefarious origins. But the publicly funded Mob Museum, located downtown, represents a new height in its devotion to lawlessness.

It’s the second mob-themed attraction to open in Las Vegas in the past year. The Mob Experience at the Tropicana casino on the Las Vegas Strip quickly shut down because of slow ticket sales and other problems. It’s slated to reopen later this year under the name Mob Attraction Las Vegas. City officials said their version will perform better because it’s an authentic examination of the decisions and circumstances that made Las Vegas an international symbol of debauchery and excess. The museum is housed in a former Depression-era federal courthouse where the seventh of 14 U.S. Senate hearings on organized crime was held in the early 1950s.

VA Gun Law Repeal 'Unfathomable,' Says WashPost Editorial

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:39:52 -0500

In an editorial, the Washington Post takes Virginia legislators to task for discarding a law, passed 20 years ago, that imposed a one-a-month limit on gun purchases. The law was a response to the state's standing as a leading supplier of guns linked to crimes committed out of state. A study later showed that the limit reduced by 66 percent the number of Virginia-bought guns recovered from crimes scenes in the Northeast corridor. But last week, both chambers of the Virginia legislature approved eliminating the one-gun-a-month limit. The only thing standing in the way of the bill becoming law is the signature of Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, who voted for the limit as a state delegate but has since reversed course.

The Post says, "The law worked, which is why it is unfathomable that the state is on the verge of throwing it out..Virginia advocates of repeal argue that limiting law-abiding state residents to one purchase per month spits in the face of their Second Amendment rights. Does the Second Amendment guarantee a right to purchase dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of deadly weapons each month? Even with the one-gun-a-month limit, collectors and those who could show a need for additional guns for personal or business protection were permitted to petition the state for an exception; the vast majority of these requests were approved. To discard a law that has been effective for almost 20 years makes no sense."

MI Group Portrayed at Trial as Social Club or Dangerous Militia

David Krajicek — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:39:51 -0500

Was Michigan's Hutaree organization a harmless social club or a dangerous militia preparing for war with the government? Those were the opposing narratives presented Monday, by a federal prosecutor and a defense attorney, as the group's seditious conspiracy trial began in Detroit, reports the city's News. Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Graveline told jurors the group "wanted a war." Attorney Todd Shanker replied, "Calling this group a militia is pushing it. It's really a social club."

Defense lawyers framed the case as a First Amendment fight. William Swor, defense lawyer for alleged Hutaree leader David Stone Sr., said, "David Stone was exercising his God-given right to blow off steam and open his mouth." Members of the group were arrested two years ago with national fanfare after Hutaree was infiltrated by an undercover agent and a paid informant.

A Hold-The-Line Budget at Justice May Avoid Conservative Fire

Ted Gest — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:36:18 -0500

In troubled economic times, President Barack Obama's Justice Department spending plan for next year is a balancing act: a few tiny increases for popular programs, $1 billion in "efficiencies, savings and rescissions," and holding the line on most everything else.

Overall, the $27.1 billion budget sent to Congress today would be an 0.4 percent drop from this year.

Among the few items that would get more money: prosecution of financial crimes, civil rights enforcement, combating human trafficking, and increasing prison and detention capacity. Steady funding was assured for national security and Southwest border work.

Attorney General Eric Holder has been under fire from Republicans for the botched "Fast and Furious" gun-running operation on the Arizona border with Mexico. The proposed fiscal 2013 budget seems designed to forestall other criticism that the Obama administration is in any way soft on crime.

Obama would maintain many items favored by leaders of both parties, including the Violence Against Women Act, the Second Chance Act for prisoner re-entry, and anticrime aid to state and local governments, the so-called Byrne JAG program.

One item that Republicans don't like much, the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program dating from the Bill Clinton era, would stay but at $257 million, a far cry from higher appropriations in earlier years.

By supporting more prisons, the Obama budget plan annoyed advocates of sentencing reform like Julie Stewart of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), who expressed disappointment that the administration avoided "bold changes" that "rethink the use of incarceration, for example, following the lead of forward-looking states that are using probation and alternative sentences more frequently for nonviolent, low-level offenders."

Stewart noted that even conservatives like Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform and Republican Asa Hutchinson, former Drug Enforcement Administration chief, back such changes.

Juvenile justice advocates said they were pleased that the Obama budget would set aside $140 million for aid to state and local efforts to reduce juvenile crime and rehabilitate young offenders, but the total was below the $175 million sought by the Act-4-JJ Campaign, a coalition of 300 groups.

The $70 million proposed for state "formula" grants would be $30 million higher than Congress appropriated this year, and $40 million for the Title V delinquency prevention program would be $20 million higher than Congress granted.

Campaign leaders Liz Ryan of the Campaign for Youth Justice and Nancy Gannon Hornberger of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice said they would try to raise state formula funding to $80 million, but they noted that the account has been cut 55 percent over the last decade.

They also said that the Title V funds had been "gutted" in recent years, with money "allocated for other than statutory purposes."

The budget would include a new $20 million "evidence based" juvenile justice grant program.

In cutting back on spending, the Justice Department still seems to be suffering the public-relations effects of what turned out to be an erroneous report by the department's own Inspector General that the agency spent $16 apiece for muffins for attendees at a conference.

Even though the allegation was retracted (it turned out that $16 covered an entire breakfast at a hotel), the department instituted changes to limit its spending on conferences--a move protested by criminal justice organizations that say conferences can help accomplish needed changes nationwide.

Ted Gest is president of Criminal Justice Journalists and a contributing editor of The Crime Report. He welcomes comments from readers.

Getting Justice Reform Right

Cara Tabachnick — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:38:00 -0500

In their State of the State speeches last month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie announced sweeping criminal justice proposals that, if implemented, will save taxpayers millions of dollars and significantly reduce crime.

Christie called for mandatory treatment for all low-level drug offenders, diverting them from prison to locked residential treatment programs.

Cuomo announced a progressive reform that will transfer primary responsibility for all but the most seriously delinquent youth from the State to the City—giving those young men and women the opportunity to live closer to their families and receive the support services and resources they need to become productive, successful members of their communities.

Both of these sweeping reforms will prove to be effective in cutting down crime and downsizing prisons. But only if they are done right.

Before the New York legislature approves Cuomo’s plan, it is of the utmost importance to set standards for how it will be applied in New York City. What are the goals of the services? What are the expected outcomes? What resources are available?

Those questions must be answered in the legislation to make it work. We also need a system for monitoring and tracking the dollars saved in order to make sure that money goes back into the rehabilitation services provided by the community.

For Christie’s plan to deliver positive results, the New Jersey legislature needs to take into consideration that one size does not fit all. For some individuals, being locked in residential treatment programs is the best option for a successful recovery. For others, living near their families, working and using rehabilitation services in the community may work best.

New Jersey leaders must use a nuanced approach that is tailored to the needs of each individual.

The two governors should be applauded for promoting reforms that focus on rehabilitating adults and young people outside of prison. Their efforts will save lives, make our communities safer and save money.

Elected officials across the country should follow their examples and implement policies and programs that invest money in proven, effective alternatives to incarceration and reentry programs, save money, and contribute to the overall success of communities.

In his State of the State address, Cuomo said: “prison development is not economic development.”

This is a core value for The Fortune Society, where I serve as President and CEO. By providing men and women in the criminal justice system with job training, support, housing and mental health and substance abuse treatment services, we are the embodiment of economic development.

Alternative To Incarceration programs (ATI) are a big part of that equation.

Supported by both sides of the legislative aisle, here in New York State they achieve considerable cost savings to the state. In New York, it costs $171 and $71 per day, respectively, to incarcerate a person in jail and prison. Last year alone, Fortune’s ATI programs helped participants avoid more than 88,000 days in jail and prison, saving more than $8 million in one year.

Every dollar invested in Fortune’s ATI programs saves $3 in incarceration costs.

The key question is: here are all of the savings going? From what we have seen in the prisoner reentry field, not enough is going to ATI and reentry programs, the very same programs that save the state money in the first place.

Fortune and other reentry organizations have experienced considerable cuts in funding, including the loss of millions of dollars in local and state-level legislative support. Because of these cuts, vital programs have had to make drastic cuts.

CASES has eliminated its drug treatment education and referral program serving 4,000 Brooklyn misdemeanor defendants.

The Fortune Society has closed its discharge planning and reentry program that served detainees leaving Rikers Island; The Osborne Association eliminated El Rio substance abuse treatment services for Bronx misdemeanor defendants.

In tough economic times, our elected officials should be strategically investing their limited criminal justice resources to help take proven-effective programs to scale.

Recent reforms to the state’s harsh mandatory minimum drug laws and the closure of surplus prisons was a step in the right direction, but instead of reinvesting the dollars saved in expanding programs that work, since 2008, New York State in particular has experienced a steady erosion of our nationally recognized and highly effective network of ATI and reentry programs.

These programs have been critical to New York’s success in simultaneously reducing crime and reducing its reliance on mass incarceration. To achieve the Cuomo’s goals of reforming our criminal justice system and keeping our troubled youth out of prison, we need to strategically invest more money into the solution—ATI and reentry programs that already demonstrate long term success.

Precluding necessary funding for ATI programs will diminish their capacity to serve clients at a time of increased need and erode their ability to remain an equal partner in the state’s efforts to reduce crime and recidivism.

We ask our state leaders to provide the financial support we need to achieve our shared vision and values—reducing crime, increasing public safety and saving taxpayers millions of dollars.

JoAnne Page is the President and CEO of The Fortune Society, a New York City-based non-profit prisoner reentry organization. She welcomes readers comments.

Obama Justice Budget Would Spend More On Financial Crime Probes

Ted Gest — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:32:48 -0500

In a $27.1 billion request for the Justice Department for the next fiscal year, the Obama administration is seeking a $55 million increase for investigation and prosecution of financial crimes and $5 million more for investigation and deterrence of intellectual property crime. The budget proposal, sent to Congress today, also promises "activation of completed but not yet occupied prisons to address population growth." The overall budget request is down .4 percent below current levels. The White House said "savings are acheived by prioritizing uniquely federal responsibilities and streamlining programs and operations."

The proposed budget would continue funding of programs to combat violence against women at $413 million per year. It includes $257 million for "first responders" and the hiring and retention of police officers and sheriffs deputies, which the budget said "builds on the $166 million in COPS hiring grants" in the current budget. It also would provide $153 million for prisoner re-entry and jail diversion programs, including $80 million under the Second Chance Act and $52 million for problem solving grants supporting drug courts, mentally ill offenders assistance "and other problem-solving approaches."

Whitney Houston--Another Victim of Prescription Drug Abuse?

Ted Gest — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:09:11 -0500

Singer Whitney Houston apparently drowned in her bath after ingesting a cocktail of prescription sedatives - the latest in a string of accidental celebrity overdoses on legal pills, says the New York Daily News. An autopsy was performed Sunday, but officials may not have definitive answers until drug tests are completed in several weeks. Witnesses say Houston seems to have slipped beneath the water's surface in a drug stupor before the Grammy awards in Los Angeles.

Cops found a pharmacy's worth of sedatives and anti-anxiety medications in her hotel room, including Valium, Xanax, Lorazepam, and another sleeping pill, said a law enforcement official quoted by Radaronline.com. From Michael Jackson to Heath Ledger to Anna Nicole Smith to Brittany Murphy to Corey Haim, prescription drugs have claimed more high-profile lives in recent years than hard drugs like heroin or cocaine. The Centers for Disease Control say overdoses of prescription pain meds are up 90 poercent since 1999 and accidental ODs now kill more Americans than car crashes. When used alone, Valium, Xanax, or Lorazepam can cause drowsiness and impaired motor function. When combined, they can easily cause death.

800 Cops Found Driving 90-130 MPH on South Florida Highways

Ted Gest — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:06:00 -0500

Police officers sworn to uphold our traffic laws are among the worst speeders on South Florida roads, says the South Florida Sun Sentinel. A three-month investigation by the newspaper found almost 800 cops from a dozen agencies driving 90 to 130 mph. Many weren't on duty — they were commuting to and from work in take-home patrol cars.

The extent of the problem shocked police brass. All the agencies started internal investigations. "Excessive speed," Margate Police Chief Jerry Blough warned his officers, is a "blatant violation of public trust." The evidence came from police SunPass toll records. The Sun Sentinel obtained a year's worth, hit the highways with a GPS device and figured out how fast the cops were driving based on the distance and time it took to go from one toll plaza to the next. Speeding cops can kill. Since 2004, Florida officers exceeding the speed limit have caused at least 320 crashes and 19 deaths. Only one officer went to jail — for 60 days.

NYC Police Go After Prostitution, One Crime Not Declining

Ted Gest — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:01:08 -0500

Amid successes in New York City’s fight to drive down crime, street prostitution is a stubborn exception, reports the New York Times. Though the police deploy various stings and strategies to clean up neighborhoods, prostitution-related arrests are logged at a fairly steady clip, averaging around 4,200 per year since 2006. Market forces and the Internet have pushed some sex work off the street, to where clients with more time and more money go.

Such indoor workers include escorts, who work in brothels or independently, in their own homes; strippers who connect with prospective clients in bars and make dates for later meetings; and dominatrixes, according to a report by the Urban Justice Center’s Sex Workers Project. This has not diminished the vibrancy and persistence of the old-fashioned street hustle. Using decoys armed with remote audio systems and aided by “arrest teams” and undercover officers, New York police over three days last month made 195 arrests and seized 55 vehicles in what police officials called Operation Losing Proposition. The crackdown spanned all five boroughs in 28 precincts.

The High Cost of Prisons: Using Scarce Resources Wisely

Cara Tabachnick — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:24:00 -0500

It is no secret that prisons are expensive. Except for Medicaid, corrections is now the fastest-growing budget item for states. What may surprise taxpayers is that prisons are even more expensive than we thought, because of costs paid by state agencies outside of corrections departments.

As states strive to get the best possible returns on their spending, it is important to know the total price of policy choices—in order to use prison resources judiciously and to rely on incarceration only when necessary to protect public safety.

According to a new report by the Vera Institute of Justice, prison costs that fall outside state corrections budgets are substantial. In many states these costs include fringe benefits, pensions, and retiree health care benefits for corrections employees (and the underfunded portion of these benefits in states that do not fully fund their annual payments).

Although in 2010 it cost more than $31,000 to keep someone in prison for a year, the study also found a wide range in the cost of imprisonment: from $14,603 per inmate in Kentucky to $60,076 in New York. But a state’s per-inmate cost has little to do with efficiency or effectiveness.

It is not necessarily a positive to have low per-inmate costs (as the result of overcrowding, for example) or a negative to have higher per-inmate costs (which may be due in part to interventions that help reduce recidivism).

The better goal is to be cost-effective: to spend resources wisely to get the best possible outcomes, both on an individual level for those who return to the community and, more broadly, as reflected by improved public safety.

Operating a safe, secure, humane and well-programmed prison is, and should be, an expensive proposition.

'Total Institutions’

Prisons are “total institutions” that provide everything necessary for inmates to live there—some for the rest of their lives. This includes adequate levels of security staff, food, treatment and programming (particularly those practices known to enhance staff and inmate safety and reduce recidivism), infrastructure maintenance, and appropriate health care for a population with significant levels of physical and mental illness.

Rather than focus on reducing per-inmate costs, the result of which may be poorer outcomes for security and recidivism, states should focus on limiting the use of prison for people who pose a real threat to public safety. Research tells us that continuing to increase the size of our prison systems will be only marginally effective at reducing crime.

We know, for instance, that targeted policing strategies, effective community-based reentry programs and increased high school graduation rates can improve public safety at far lower costs.

Declines in Prison Populations

We also see examples of states that have decreased their prison populations while simultaneously reducing violent crime. In New York and New Jersey, violent crime has declined dramatically at the same time that both states have relied less on the use of incarceration. From 1999 to 2009, the incidence of violent crime declined by 30% in New York and 19% in New Jersey, while going down by only fivev percent in the rest of the country.

At the same time, the prison population decreased by 18% in both New York and New Jersey after changes in policing and parole practices, as well as sentencing reform. In the rest of the U.S., , the prison population has increased by 18% during the same period. (In recent years, however, prison populations have declined in Maryland, Michigan, and Mississippi, while violent crime reached 10-year lows in all three states.)

It’s important to have an accurate picture of how much states spend on corrections.

This matters not only in terms of taxpayers’ dollars, but to ensure that our justice systems are effective and fair, and that society’s responses to crime reflect an offender’s risk to public safety. The question officials need to ask is not “How can we run a cheaper prison?” It is “How can we best use scarce resources to keep the public safe?”

EDITOR’S NOTE: For additional notes and table showing change in prison costs and prison populations, please click here.

Michael Jacobson is director of the Vera Institute of Justice. He is a former commissioner of the New York City Departments of Correction and Probation and a former deputy budget director for the City of New York. He welcomes reader’s comments

Federal Judges Resisting Many Tough Child Porn Penalties

Ted Gest — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 14:41:50 -0500

As law enforcement officers and policy makers toughen prosecutions for the distribution and possession of child pornography, they are encountering increasing resistance from federal judges in what has become a caustic conflict over the appropriate punishment for a heinous crime, the Boston Globe reports. In 2010, federal judges deviated below advisory sentencing guidelines in child porn cases 43 percent of the time, copared with 18 percent for other crimes, says the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Patti Saris in Boston, chair of the commission, sentenced a man to 21 months in prison for possession of child pornography - far lower than the 63 months he faced under sentencing guidelines, and even lower than the 30 months prosecutors had recommended as part of a plea deal. “As far as I’m concerned, there are some problems with the guidelines,’’ she said. U.S. District Court Judge Michael Ponsor sentenced a man in 2010 to four years of probation, though prosecutors asked that he serve the 6-to-8-year sentence called for by the guidelines.

FL Law-Enforcement Crash Toll: 20 Deaths, $25 Million Damage

Ted Gest — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 13:55:31 -0500

Every day, about 20 Florida police cars crash into something: another vehicle, a person, a utility pole. Every year, reports the Orlando Sentinel, those crashes kill 20 people, hurt 2,400 others and cause $25 million in property damage. The Sentinel analyzed five years of Florida vehicle-crash data — 1.6 million crashes — to determine how often law-enforcement officers crash in department vehicles and how often they're at fault.

About 7,400 crashes a year involve cops. In one of every four, they're at least partially to blame, and they eldom are ticketed. Average drivers receive citations if they are at fault in crashes 64 percent of the time; officers are cited less than 11 percent of the time. "We're in the public-safety business [ ] we need to get a handle on it and have an understanding of what's causing these crashes," said Paul Sireci, president of the Florida Police Chiefs Association and chief of the Tampa International Airport Police Department.

Pennsylvania's "Bonusgate" Has Yielded 21 Convictions So Far

Ted Gest — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:46:23 -0500

When Democratic leaders in the Pennsylvania House awarded nearly $2 million in bonuses to staffers in 2007, Majority Leader Bill DeWeese asked recipients to keep quiet about it, but they did not. Word quickly leaked out, says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, spawning outrage and an investigation into illegal use of government funds for political purposes. In five years, it has resulted in 25 arrests and 21 convictions, including a jury verdict Monday that DeWeese was guilty of felony corruption.

Three other lawmakers have been convicted and another awaits trial. "This is the most sweeping investigation and criminal prosecution that we're aware of," said Nils Frederiksen, spokesman for the state attorney general's office, noting that some of the most powerful figures in the Legislature were convicted. "We prosecuted individuals who broke the law, who crossed the line, who used state resources, taxpayer resources for their own personal gain. We certainly feel it's had an impact. We've taken criminals off the streets and out of the General Assembly. If there wasn't a clear line before, this serves as a clear line to everyone."

Police Stun Gun Use Up In Poughkeepsie Area: FOI Search

Ted Gest — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 14:18:00 -0500

Police stun-gun use in the Poughkeepsie, N.Y., area is growing, finds a Poughkeepsie Journal database analysis of 467 stun-gun reports obtained under the Freedom of Information Law from 19 local police departments. In 2006, 30 people were shocked with the so-called electronic control weapon or conducted energy device, the Journal research showed. By 2010, the number had more than tripled to 100.

Among those stunned: a drunken and hysterical 15-year-old girl pulled off a school bus, a man believed to have broken the eye socket of another man, a suicidal woman who had slashed her arm with a knife, and a man holding a box cutter to his throat. The reports open a rare window on the frightening, chaotic, and adrenaline-laced life of a modern-day police officer.

Should NC Prosecutor Be Removed Over "Elastic" Standard?

Ted Gest — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 11:10:00 -0500

Court proceedings often concern whether someone broke a law. An inquiry Monday into the conduct of suspended Durham, N.C., District Attorney Tracey Cline will focus on whether she has violated a vague legal standard written to ensure that prosecutors are fit for duty, says the Raleigh News & Observer. Cline faces possible removal from office for lambasting Durham's chief judge in lengthy motions, and not following the law in how she did it.

A judge is set to hear arguments on whether Cline's actions merit her removal under a state law that punishes "conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice which brings the office into disrepute." No dictionary defines what conduct is covered by that rubbery phrase. Legal experts say the broad and indefinite language is deliberate. "It has to be kind of elastic and vague," said James Drennan, a professor of public administration at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Government and a former state court system director. "It's intended to cover the full range of conduct that court officials - in this case DAs, but in other cases, judges - engage in, which is in a wide range of activities."

Police Chiefs Ask For Remote Shutdowns of Stolen Phones

Ted Gest — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:33:15 -0500

Police chiefs are asking regulators and wireless-network operators to allow stolen smartphone devices to be shut down remotely through unique identification numbers within them, says the Washington Post. That could make it less likely that robbers would point a gun at a victim, knock someone down, or grab a smartphone from a subway rider because the device’s resale value would plummet. “This is a national issue,” says Washington, D.C., Police Chief Cathy Lanier. “We have done all we can at the local level.”

Lanier wants wireless companies to use existing technology to let people who report stolen phones ask their service providers to shut them down using IMEI numbers, a unique registration akin to a fingerprint. The United Kingdom uses a similar system. Lanier has sent a request, endorsed by other big-city police chiefs, asking the Federal Communications Commission to require mobile companies to “disable stolen mobile devices to deter the commission of these thefts.” Said Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey, president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, "It's a simple way to alleviate it. Why would [mobile companies] not want to do it?”