By Margaret Colgate Love
“Felon” is an ugly label that confirms the debased status that accompanies conviction, says former pardon attorney Margaret Love. It identifies a person as belonging to a class outside many protections of the law, someone who can be freely discriminated against, someone who exists at the margins of society.
Read full entry »
By Wendy J. Murphy
The language in media reporting on the Penn State scandal has been almost universally inappropriate, both in print and television coverage. The media are pervasively using inappropriate language to describe the harm done to Jerry Sandusky's victims.
Read full entry »
By Robin L. Barton
To describe the recent U.S. and international media coverage of the Amanda Knox case in Italy as intense would be an understatement. One of the key criticisms of this coverage was that it primarily focused on the defendants—or at least one of them—with the victim, Meredith Kercher, almost forgotten.
Read full entry »
By Robin L. Barton
On April 18, 2011, Crystal Mangum was indicted for murder...
Read full entry »
By Robin L. Barton
Crime reporting is especially susceptible to...
Read full entry »
By Anne Seymour
My shock at the alleged gang rape of an 11-year-old girl by 18 young men and boys was closely matched by my shock at The New York Times' coverage of this horrible crime. One of the "unanswered questions" faced by the community of Cleveland, Texas, according to reporter James McKinley, was "if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?"
I've been a victim advocate for nearly 30 years, and know for an absolute fact that rape is not something assailants are "drawn into."
It is a heinous, violent crime that a rapist chooses to inflict upon another person, whether the survivor is known to the sex offender(s) or not. It is a crime of power and control that has a devastating and ongoing impact on its victims― physically, psychologically, socially, spiritually and financially.
When reporters like Mr. McKinley make a conscious decision to interview subjects whose opinions - not facts - cast dispersions on a victim and actually report such unfounded observations, it brings victim-blaming to new, sorrowful heights. Such "hearsay" would not be allowed in a court of law, which makes it difficult to understand why these comments from unidentified persons were allowed in an article published by The Times.
Whether or not Mr. McKinley intended to evoke sympathy and support for the alleged rapists is beside the point. Strong evidence in this case points to the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl, and this child is the one who is deserving of―and who is going to need― empathy and support to help her cope with the tragic consequences of the conscious, collective decisions of 18 young men to harm her beyond the comprehension of a civilized society.
Anne Seymour is a national victim advocate affiliated with Justice Solutions, a nonprofit in Washington DC. She is former public affairs director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and co-founder and communications director of the National Victim Center, now National Center for Victims of Crime.
Read full entry »
By Robin L. Barton
The Fugitive (both the TV show and movie) is said to be...
Read full entry »
By Robin L. Barton
When Jared Loughner was arrested after opening fire in a Tucson strip mall on Jan. 8, his life became an open book subject to the scrutiny of the media and the general public. In an effort to learn more about the man responsible for this tragedy, the media descended upon his parents. They kept silent for several days, but eventually issued a brief statement saying in part, “We ask the media to respect our privacy.” Should the media honor this request?
In the eyes of the criminal justice system, an individual arrested for a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Yet in the eyes of the media, the opposite is often the case. And although the legal system is restricted by the safeguards in place to protect a defendant’s privacy, journalists aren’t so hampered and generally feel free to dig into every aspect of the defendant’s life. There’s a strong case to be made that anything and everything about a defendant is fair game. But it’s not necessarily appropriate for journalists to turn the lives of the defendant’s family—his parents, spouse, siblings, children—upside down.
When the media turns its attention to a defendant’s family, this scrutiny can cost the family its privacy. According to reports, Loughner’s parents, Randy and Amy, have always been very private people. Their neighbors seem to know very little about them, describing them as “antisocial.”
After the shooting, reporters gathered on the Loughners’ street and in front of their house. At one point, an overzealous photographer jumped their back fence to get a picture of what appeared to be a skull and candles, forcing Randy Loughner to call the police. Otherwise, the Loughners have stayed in seclusion.
No one understands more about the loss of privacy that the Loughners are experiencing than Susan Klebold, mother of Dylan Klebold, who was responsible for the Columbine shootings with Eric Harris. In an article Klebold wrote for O magazine in 2009, she describes the immediate aftermath: “Helicopters began circling overhead to capture a killer’s family on film. Cars lined the road and onlookers gawked to get a better view.”
The media firestorm that can be result from a high profile case can itself cause a tragedy. For example, the loss of privacy for Bernie Madoff’s family in the wake of his arrest and guilty plea coupled with the subsequent civil lawsuits and negative publicity may have driven Madoff’s son Mark to suicide. But he and his brother were apparently under investigation for their role in their dad’s Ponzi scheme. So perhaps Mark wasn’t an innocent bystander.
Going hand in hand with the loss of privacy is the blame inevitably heaped on a defendant’s family by the media. Susan Klebold said that although she felt like another victim of the tragedy, the rest of the community didn’t see it that way. In fact, according to a newspaper survey taken in the wake of Columbine, 83% of respondents blamed the shooters’ parents.
The jury is still out on Loughner’s parents. But blame is already beginning to fly in their direction. For example, reports suggest that there were warning signs about their son’s mental state that they ignored. Of course, it appears that Loughner’s friends and teachers as well as members of law enforcement may also have missed opportunities to help this troubled young man.
In the coming months, we’ll likely learn more about Loughner’s life and the role his upbringing played in his actions on Jan. 8. Did the Loughners raise a monster and so “deserve” all this scrutiny and criticism? Or are they simply victims who weren’t trained to recognize the possible signs of a serious mental disorder and were unprepared to handle a son with one?
It’s certainly appropriate for the media to ask these questions and explore the answers. But until all the evidence is in, the media would do well to reserve judgment on Loughner’s parents and try to respect their plea for privacy in what they’ve described as “a very difficult time.” After all, as Shakespeare said in The Tempest—and Columbine shooter Eric Harris wrote in his day planner on Mother’s Day—“Good wombs have borne bad sons.”
Robin L. Barton, a legal journalist based in Brooklyn, NY, is a former assistant district attorney in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. She worked in the trial division, Serious Offender Unit in the Office of Special Narcotics and Rackets Bureau, where she developed and supervised investigations that targeted high-level narcotics trafficking, gambling and racketeering in the construction industry and related labor unions.
Read full entry »Too much of the initial response to the terrible tragedy in Tucson calls to mind the kind of reflexive response which health specialists refer to as a spinal reflex arc. The best example is when you touch a hot stove – your arm recoils in a jerky, sudden manner, before you ever consciously feel the pain. This is so because the brain is not involved in the response. The painful stimulus travels from your finger up the sensory nerve to the spinal cord, triggering a motor response back down the motor nerve that pulls the arm back.
No brain required for this response. But we have seen it, unfortunately, many times over the past few days.
The reason for this response style is the demand of the 24-hour news cycle for talking heads, even if the heads may not really know what they are talking about. This cycle is driven by our human need for a definitive answer, even when a definitive answer is hard to find. The best example I have ever seen of this irrational need is “forty two”, which, according to Douglas Adams, in his remarkably sage Hitchhiker’s series, is “the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything.” The problem is – what’s the question? And yet, the answer “forty two” sounds so certain that it satisfies us, if we don’t spend too much time thinking about it.
Unlike many esteemed (and not so esteemed) mental health professionals, I believe that it is irresponsible and unethical to render a diagnosis on an individual whom I have never seen nor evaluated professionally. It is said that the alleged killer Jared Loughner has “schizophrenia,” and he may well suffer from that or some similar illness.
The little that I have seen of his writings and videos certainly seems bizarre and perhaps frankly delusional. Some of my friends and coworkers have apparently concluded that his psychosis (if he has one) renders the politics behind his actions irrelevant. To take this view to its logical conclusion, if only we had better/more accessible/cheaper mental health care, this tragedy would have been avoided.
Others have concluded that Loughner was a right-wing “wing-nut”, and they see his behavior stemming from any number of politically driven motives. In this explanation, if only our political discourse was more civil and respectful, the tragedy could have been avoided.
Still others view the ease of access to weapons in Arizona as the “lowest common denominator” here. While I personally find this to be among the most reasonable arguments, it is, like all of the other “obvious solutions,” incomplete. Even if Arizona had more restrictive gun laws, we all know that guns are readily available through extra-legal channels, and that had Loughner been suitably motivated, he would have been able to obtain the weapons he needed. However, proponents of this argument assert that with stricter gun laws, the tragedy could have been avoided. As H.L. Mencken once observed, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”
I have heard and read about individuals who claim that “if only” any one of these solutions were in place, this tragedy never would have occurred. I believe that such “easy solutions” do more to make us feel better than they do to resolving the complexities of human behavior. In my own practice, I have worked with a number of individuals charged with committing crimes on school grounds.
For example, Florence was charged with trespassing on school grounds at the community college where she was taking classes. A 47-year-old returning student, Florence was observed by her classmates spraying an unknown substance on her desk and wiping it off. She also sprayed the floor around her seat. When approached by the instructor and asked to stop, Florence pulled out a small knife from her purse. The campus police were called, and they removed her from the campus. She was subsequently suspended for a semester, after an administrative review. When she later returned, she was charged with trespassing.
In court, Florence appeared odd and disorganized, and appeared to be unable to understand the court proceeding. She was found incompetent to stand trial and committed for treatment. She responded to medication, her thoughts became more organized, and she agreed to follow her outpatient treatment.
Is Florence the next Jared Loughner? She is likely to return to school, as she wants to obtain her degree. Her family is supportive of her continuing treatment, recognizing that she suffers from a mental illness. But will she follow her doctor’s recommendations? How can any of us really know?
These sorts of incidents happen all the time, all over the country. For every Jared Loughner, there are literally thousands of others dealing with mental illness, with varying levels of compliance to their treatment plans, who never engage in such extreme violence.
What about politics? From the little I have seen, it appears to me that Jared Loughner built a set of beliefs around his extreme political views. I have had people tell me that if he has schizophrenia, his politics are irrelevant and meaningless. Frankly, I find this to be an extreme example of “all or nothing” thinking.
Any mental health professional has been involved with people who build delusions around aspects of reality in their world. We have all heard of the paranoid delusion that “the CIA is after me” as a motivator for engaging in defensive actions, such as covering windows with heavy material. Well, the CIA really is after some people – this is reality. Whether the CIA is actually after my patient is rather more doubtful, but it is certainly possible, isn’t it?
In this case, it appears to me from where I sit that the most likely truth is that Jared Loughner built a complex delusional system around his political views. Does this mean that Sarah Palin or anyone else is personally to blame? Of course not. Does it mean that the nature of our political discourse plays a role in the extreme views that Loughner developed? Perhaps. (That said, anyone interested in extreme political discourse should review some of the political literature of the eighteenth century, both before and after the Revolution—some of which led to a fatal duel between Hamilton and Burr.)
Now, as to guns: it is clear to me that had Loughner not had access to the weaponry he obtained, he would have had a more difficult time perpetrating this tragedy, as he is alleged to have done. But it is simplistic to lay all of this on easy access to guns, without considering the role of the gun owner. The Crime Report has already discussed gun ownership and mental illness, and this will continue to be problematic in a country that so values its liberties. Personally, I believe guns should not be easy to obtain, and it strikes me as problematic that guns are so easy to obtain while mental health care is so hard to obtain, and getting harder.
I am aware that in the past few years, services have been cut around the country—and in Arizona—in the face of our budgetary struggles. I see this every day in my own work, and I have already written about this.
Do I believe mental health care should be more accessible? Yes. Do I believe that it should be easier to force treatment on the unwilling? Now, that’s a more complex question that requires the balancing of personal liberty with public safety, isn’t it? For those who would like to see this as a psychotically driven act divorced from politics, an argument I have seen primarily from those on the right, how do you answer this question while still arguing for less government intrusion into our lives? If one wants to view this simplistically as all schizophrenia, it logically follows that “we the people” must provide adequate funding for more and better services, something that runs counter to the “cut taxes and make government smaller” platform. Further, those who want to see this as psychotically driven and not as politically motivated should be satisfied with a finding of “not guilty by reason of insanity” (a very unlikely result), rather than of guilt.
This was a terrible tragedy. On that we all agree. While I have seen many reflexive responses, absent among them is a recognition of the following two truths:
First, predicting violence or aggression is very difficult. Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals in many jurisdictions are asked to do just this. While we may have some ability to forecast in the near term, our predictive power over time diminishes rapidly. A proper assessment is complex and time consuming. The best way to understand what we do is to think about our work as more akin to a weather forecast than it is to a true prediction. We are more accurate when considering the likelihood of an event occurring in the near future.
Second, violent events are prevented every single day, many times a day, by our public safety and, yes, our mental health professionals around the country. Each day, in our streets, in our schools and in our emergency rooms, people in crisis are assessed, helped to find safer places, and escorted to treatment settings, and tragedies are avoided. The problem is: how do we prove a negative?
So, for those still reading, here is my conclusion: There is no one single answer to this problem, which is complex and, like most, multi-determined. The genesis of Loughner’s alleged actions will be found in politics, in mental illness, and in easy access to guns. All of these issues should be addressed in a logical, thoughtful manner—not by reflex, not without thinking.
What makes us human is our ability to consider passionate issues in a dispassionate manner. We need to respect each other, while still asserting our views and ideas. But at the end of the day, it is our higher level cognition and ability to think things through, and not our reflexive ability to avoid pain, that is likely to lead us to the best possible answer.
Erik Roskes is a forensic psychiatrist and currently the Director of Forensic Services at the Springfield Hospital Center in Maryland. The opinions expressed are those of the author only, and do not represent those of any of Dr. Roskes’ employers or consultees, including the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Read full entry »In a time of turmoil for American journalism, investigative reporting on criminal justice is alive and well, but it appears unevenly across the nation That was a central message last week from the annual convention of the largest group of news reporters in the U.S., Investigative Reporters & Editors (IRE).
Meeting in the unlikely location of a Las Vegas casino, IRE staged at least half a dozen panel discussions on hot criminal justice topics, four of which were organized by Criminal Justice Journalists, the co-operator of this website. The subjects included police fudging crime statistics, a new way of "justice mapping," bail reform, and covering prisons during a budget crunch.
The leadoff speakers were Tanya Eiserer and Steve Thompson of the Dallas Morning News, which did a series of stories on Dallas' underrreporting crimes to the FBI. "Dallas police had gone to a system where many car burglaries and thefts start out unfounded and stayed that way until proven otherwise," said the reporters. After their story, the police department made major changes in their system, and the police chief retired.
Jeremy Kohler of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Detroit tv reporter Steve Wilson, now organizing a Michigan Center for Investigative Reporting, told similar tales from their cities. Wilson illustrates another journalism trend: the sprouting of local non-profit journalism websites. They are now active in cities as diverse as San Diego, St. Louis, and Minneapolis.
The justice mapping concept was discussed by Eric Cadora of the New York City-based Justice Mapping Center. With support from the Pew Center on the States, Cadora is planning to issue this month an "atlas" with data showing the locations of probationers and parolees in more than 20 states. Not surprisingly, they typically are concentrated in a few neighborhoods, raising questions about the often inadequate level of local social services.
Two other non-journalists spoke to the group later: Tim Murray of the national Pretrial Justice Institute said that journalists often miss the story that many jail inmates are incarcerated solely because of a lack of funds to pay for bail; Mike Donovan of the American Bail Coalition, representing the commercial bail bond industry, argued that Murray's organization fosters a "tax-funded criminal-release program." Ben Holden, a journalist who has become director of the National Center for Courts and Media at the University of Nevada Reno, urged a closer look at how online social media are affecting court proceedings.
Among other tips, John Diedrich of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which carries extensive crime and justice coverage, noted that "criminal justice is a web of agencies, people and paperwork. All are supposed to work together but sometimes don't." Reporters should probe the "rivalries and jealousies" in the system, he said. Ryan Gabrielson, an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California Berkeley pointed out many of the gaps in police data on clearance rates and response times, and the problems with conviction rates. Journalists should request logs of all cases police send to prosecutors and look for types of crimes that don't result in charges, he said.
A report on the session on prisons can be seen at this site: http://www.ire.org/IREConference2010/police/covering-prisons-and-corrections
This was just a sampling of the rich material discussed by journalists at the convention.
Several of IRE's key awards went to stories on criminal justice issues. San Diego Magazine won a medal for an inside look at Mexico's drug cartels that found a justice system "at least partially populated by honest officers risking -- and losing -- their lives." The Kansas City Star won an award for reporting on the U.S.government's unfulfilled promises to stop human trafficking. The Lake Oswego (Or.) Review spent a year investigating the local police department; the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found flaws in the Wisconsin DNA evidence database that allowed a serial killer to stay in business; and students at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism showed that the New York State system for compensating those who are wrongly convicted is broken.
While the these and other journalistic efforts cited at the IRE convention were impressive, they represented only a small fraction of U.S. localities. Reporters from many big city newspapers and broadcast outlets weren't present, some because their employers wouldn't pay their travel expenses, others because they had taken buyouts or were otherwise out of work.
As many newspapers and television stations lay off staff members, the question now is who will fill the gap, if anyone. Several of the new news-reporting websites have expressed interest in criminal justice issues, but it remains to be seen whether the news media will be performing their watchdog roles so aggressively in the years ahead.
Read full entry »
