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Japanese Support for the Death Penalty Grows
Japan may have recently elected a center-left government, but still, Japanese voters don't want to let the death penalty go. In fact, a new poll finds that despite official opposition to the policy, voters are more supportive of the death penalty than ever. What’s going on?
Two Million Prisoners' Wasted Potential
Published February 09, 2010 @ 08:53AM PT
Nearly two and half million people are locked in our country's prisons and jails. Most of them will someday be freed, only to get locked up again within three years.
In a great Huffington Post piece this week, Alan Elsner reminds us of this fact as he goes inside a New Hampshire state prison for women to take part in a writer's forum with prisoners. What he found there, he writes, was a world of wasted potential and missed opportunities.
Elsner, who has written extensively about the criminal just system, says he was impressed by the women's passion and intelligence, but saddened to think that so many would serve years inside without learning the skills they need to survive once they leave. When they're released, they're starting already lagging in the game.
It's an issue I write about frequently here, but the picture painted by Elsner caught my attention. What if every American had the chance to visit a prison and see what Elsner saw last week? Maybe then we wouldn't stand for three-strike laws and 10-year sentences for nonviolent crimes.
Japanese Support for the Death Penalty Grows
Published February 09, 2010 @ 06:24AM PT
Official support for the death penalty may be waning in Japan, but still, the people don't want to let the policy go.
A new Japanese government survey found that a record 85.6% of Japan's population supports capital punishment for murder. This is a jump of four percentage points from 2004 and, surprisingly, comes at a time when the Japanese death penalty could finally be on its way out.
The current center-left government took power in September, and since then, no executions have been carried out (there are 102 people on death row in Japan). Shortly after Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama took office, he appointed Keiko Chiba, an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, as the country's top justice minister.
So what's going on? Is the overwhelming public support for capital punishment a reaction to the slowdown in executions?
Federal Judge Protests Absurd Jailing of Immigrants
Published February 08, 2010 @ 03:22PM PT
"Neither meritorious nor reasonable" -- not the zingiest barbs out there, but considering they were hurled by a federal judge questioning the actions of U.S. prosecutors, not too milquetoast, either.
In fact, by making those comments, Judge Sam Sparks, of Austin, TX, may have become the first federal district judge to formally protest the growing trend of criminally prosecuting undocumented immigrants. After all, says Sparks, many of the immigrants he sees have committed no major crime, save to try and reside in the United States without permission. So why lock them up (helping fuel a $1.7 billion prison population in the process) at all?
In one case Sparks has faced inside his courtroom, taxpayers paid over $13,350 to jail three Mexican citizens who crossed over the U.S. border without authorization. (And that's not even getting into the costs associated with prosecutors, defense lawyers and court employees.) None of the men had any significant criminal history, Sparks says.
The Beginning of the End of Marijuana Prohibition
Published February 08, 2010 @ 07:32AM PT
Ethan Nadelmann is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change. Mr Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Even I can't believe the way that the marijuana issue is opening up right now.
There's been steady progress on medical marijuana -- as evidenced by the Obama administration's new guidelines directing federal drug agents not to arrest legitimate patients and suppliers in medical marijuana states. Then there's the recent victories in Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Washington D.C., -- not to mention the medical marijuana bills making progress in numerous other states around the country. Last month's ABC News/Washington Post poll reported a record 81 percent support for medical marijuana. If ballot initiatives could be held in all 50 states, voters would approve it in all but a small handful.
What's even more remarkable is the recent jump in support for taxing and regulating marijuana. I was pleasantly stunned by the Gallup poll late last year finding that support for making marijuana legal jumped from 36% in 2005 to 44% in 2009. Fifty-four percent of Democrats, 53% of people living in the West, and roughly half of Independents and 18-49 year-olds now support making marijuana legal. In the past year, legislative proposals to tax and regulate marijuana have prompted hearings in California, Washington, and New Hampshire -- and California voters will have their say this November at the ballot box.
What does all this mean?
Who's Guarding the Roost at Private TX Prisons?
Published February 08, 2010 @ 06:55AM PT
At least one Texas private prison is giving away its keys to, well, just about anybody.
Or so one recent inspection at the Coastal Bend Detention Center in Robstown, Texas would suggest. The inspectors found that fully 72% of prison guards had only temporary licenses, meaning they hadn't yet undergone mandatory training and testing.
Not surprisingly, the prison already had a terrible track record. In December, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards classified Coastal Bend as an "at-risk" facility, because guards had erroneously released one prisoner due to a mistaken identity (the prisoner's still at large). Giving "at-risk" status to the facility meant it would remain under intense scrutiny for 90 days, subject to "surprise" inspections. Although the inspections could happen at any time without notice, I put surprise in quotes because prison officials knew they were coming eventually and could have cleaned up some cobwebs.
Temporary jailer licenses are perfectly legal in Texas (though people holding them must complete training and testing within a year). So the prison passed its inspection, and is now on its way to getting off the "at-risk" list. And sure, this inspection is an improvement over a previous one, which found that 24 guards didn't even have temporary licenses. But the results are still disturbing.
The Uphill Battle Against Racial Profiling
Published February 06, 2010 @ 10:05AM PT
It's hard to stamp out racial profiling in law enforcement when you've got lawmakers like U.S. Sen. James Inhofe and New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind running around saying it's a good idea. Inhofe, for one, says he "believe[s] in racial and ethnic profiling." Hikind is more demure, saying he's against the concept, but that it's wholly justified as part of the war on terror.
Some recent numbers should make both lawmakers happy. 'Frisked while brown' is alive and well, at least in New York. The NYPD's 2009 stop-and-frisk statistics should come out soon, but meanwhile, Bob Herbert cited numbers
from the first nine months of the year, and they're appalling. More than 80% of the 450,000 people frisked by the NYPD in the first three quarters of 2009 were black or Latino. Only about six percent of these stops end in arrest.
NYC Cops Take a Stand Against Doodling
Published February 05, 2010 @ 03:43PM PT
New York is the "safest big city in America," as Mayor Bloomberg would repeatedly have you know. So he must be feeling pretty gratified now that cops have finally been able to start going after those last low-grade perpetrators left in the mix: middle-school students.
Or something like that. This week, they decided to haul a 12-year-old girl in Queens out of her school in handcuffs and detain her. Why? Well, they had to rush the classroom because, you see, a girl named Alexa Gonzalez was...doodling in class.
Just some bizarre extension of the Broken Windows theory? Let one kid doodle, and before you know it, they'll be rioting in the streets?
But hey, let's be fair. It could've gotten ugly there. "I love my friends Abby and Faith," the suspect had written on her desk, with a lime-green Magic Marker. And that was even before she added, "Lex was here, 2/1/10" -- and drew a smiley face.
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