Change.org's Criminal Justice Blog

Tragedies and Gun Laws

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-06T15:55:00-08:00

Two tragic, violent shooting sprees in two days. Even in a country as desensitized to violence as the U.S., the events of this week have been jarring. These tragedies should remind us why gun control laws are important and should be expanded.

First, I want to say that the victims of these horrible crimes -- and their families and communities -- are in my thoughts. I don't mean to dishonor the memories of the victims by turning my attention to gun control. Instead I hope we can take this moment to consider policies that will prevent crimes like these in the future.

You know the detaiils: an Army psychologist allegedly opened fire yesterday at Fort Hood in Texas, killing 13 people and injuring at least 27. It's believed to be the most deadly shooting on an American military base in history. Today in Orlando, a 40-year-old man apparently entered an office building where he used to work and shot six people, killing one of them.

I don't know if their guns were legally or illegally obtained. But these crimes should demonstrate that we should be extremely careful about who has the right to a gun in our society -- and how many guns we sell. I agree with Paul Helmke, the President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who spoke out today about the Fort Hood shootings. He said:

“America has seen an epidemic of horrific gun violence at churches and synagogues, workplaces, health clubs, high schools, universities, police stations and now Army bases. This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places. Enough is enough.”

He went further, too, arguing that these murders demonstrate why Congress should reject a proposed law that would allow people who are determined to be mentally incapacitated by the VA to own guns.

“In light of what happened yesterday - a violent attack by an emotionally unstable soldier - it is even clearer that the proposal being pushed by Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina should be rejected," Helmke said.

Burr shot back, accusing Helmke of being disrespectful:

"It is a shame that this process has gotten to a point where some feel that they can exploit the senseless murder of American soldiers in the quest to secure personal triumph," Burr said.

Burr's press statements about the bill -- S669 -- indicate that he believes veterans are being denied their Constitutional rights on technicalities. If someone hands their financial matters over to someone else, they may also lose their right to own a gun, Burr says.

I don't know enough about this bill to have an opinion. But my immediate reaction on hearing about these two tragedies is to wonder why we have laws that allow things like concealed weapons and bulk purchases at gun shows. In a society obsessed with guns, violence follows.

Photo by Jason Sansone.

Trimming the Budget, Skipping Death Sentences

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-06T07:14:00-08:00

One county in Mississippi has announced that it won't be seeking the death penalty in upcoming cases because it just doesn't have the money. Slowing death sentences by any means is progress, but this story makes me wonder if prosecutors are cutting fair trials to save a few bucks.

The exorbitant cost of capital cases and executions has caught the attention of the public recently, with a report from the Death Penalty Information Center, an editorial from the New York Times and more columns and comments than I can count.

The cost argument is one I employ often when talking about why the death penalty should be abolished. But it gives me pause to see Hinds County, Mississippi, cut back on scientific experts, investigators and sentence mitigation reports that would be used in a death penalty case. Aren't these resources we as a society should be providing in life without parole cases, as well?

The death penalty costs millions more than life sentences, from trial to execution. The increased cost of housing death row prisoners is unnecessary (California spends $90,000 more per prisoner on death row and just approved a new $400 million death row facility).

But it's important to ensure that the money saved by cutting capital trials goes into resources the system badly needs -- investigators in cases from misdemeanors to serious, violent felonies, lab testing, defense representation, victims services ... I could go on.

The recession argument can be an effective tool against the death penalty and the drug war, but it's a double-edged sword. Cutting resources too broadly from the criminal justice system could mean less justice for everyone.

Photo by zaldylmg

Innocent and Deported

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-05T16:35:00-08:00

I've got bad news to share. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the case of cousins Julio Maldonado and Denis Calderon. Unfortunately, I came to the story too late. The day after I wrote, Maldonado was deported to Peru -- a country he left when he was three. He doesn't speak Spanish and found housing with distant relatives. He's stuck in a foreign land because of an injustice that started when he was jumped 13 years ago.

The Philadelphia City Paper has the sad story of Maldonado and Calderon, who is still detained in the U.S. and scheduled to be deported next year. The injustices suffered by these men never seem to end.

The cousins say they were wrongfully convicted of murder aggravated assault for a 1996 fight. They say they were the victims of a hate crime. They were involved in a scuffle after a group of white men began yelling racial epithets on a Philadelphia street and attacked them. Even prosecutors agree that the white men started the scuffle. Maldonado and Calderon then grabbed a steering-wheel lock and a baseball bat -- they say to defend themselves -- and critically injured a man who prosecutors say was an innocent bystander a man who prosecutors say was an innocent bystander ended up in a coma (he may have gone into a coma because of a pre-existing blood clotting condition, more below). The man died two years later. The white men were never charged.

And now the prosecutor who convicted them -- Seth Williams -- has been elected as Philadelphia's next attorney general.

The judge at their bench trial said Calderon and Maldonado had been justified in using force, but convicted them because they had allegedly beaten a bystander. They won an appeal when the judge learned that there was no trauma to the man who had died -- he apparently wasn't beaten. The judge at one point chided a prosecutor, saying: "I also remember these two individuals who had no records, going around the corner to get a beer and being attacked by these racists, you understand me?"

They never got their new trial, however, because their convictions were reinstated when prosecutors appealed the case. They served their sentences and moved onto the deportation conveyor belt. Maldonado's date came due on October 23 and he was deposited in Lima.

He says he will continue to fight, and hopes to come back to his adopted homeland soon:

"I just can't see myself staying away from the United States for so long," he says. "I think I had to go through all this so someone would finally notice there was an error somewhere down the road. The experts are the ones who need to resolve this, because the 'experts' were the ones who just kept making the case worse."

And there's still time for Calderon. Visit the family's website and get involved here.

[11/5/09, 9 p.m. ET: I updated the facts above when Philadelphia-based blogger and attorney Dave Bennion set me straight. In addition to the graf with the strikethrus, I edited the second sentence of the fifth paragraph because it was inaccurate before] Read the full facts here, though, because it's a complicated case and I'm not doing it justice (no pun intended).

The Constitutional Right Not to Be Framed

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-04T09:11:00-08:00

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this morning on the limits of prosecutorial immunity, and in arguing for universal protection from lawsuits, the Iowa prosecutors involved didn't mince words. There is no freestanding constitutional "right not to be framed," they wrote.

The prosecutors in this case aren't alone in this stark -- and saddening -- view. They were joined by the Obama administration, 28 states and several prosecutors' professional organizations.

On one side of the case are two men who served 25 years in Iowa prisons for a murder evidence shows they likely didn't commit. On the other, prosecutors who allegedly fabricated evidence during the investigation of a murder and hid evidence of another suspect's guilt.

The decision on this case, Pottawattamie County v. McGhee, will hinge on whether the court is willing and able to restrict prosecutorial immunity to the trial phase only, allowing defendants in stark cases such as this to sue based on evidence showing that prosecutors engaged in misconduct during the investigation. It'll be interesting to see what happens this morning in oral arguments and where the court comes down in the months ahead.

Here's some media and analysis on the case:

NPR's Morning Edition covered the case in detail this morning, with striking details onthe lengths to which prosecutors went to convict these two men.

Erin Miller offered some good analysis at SCOTUSblog.

The Washington Post opined that the "prospect of being held liable will help to keep ('renegade' prosecutors) in line or, at least, hold them accountable."

SCOTUSwiki has the briefs and filings.

Shipping Prisoners Out of Sight

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-04T06:46:00-08:00

More bad news from California's prisons: the state has inked a deal with the Corrections Corporation of America to ship another 2,336 to private facilities outside of the state.

California's overcrowded, dangerous prisons continue to serve up a windfall for companies like CCA while the state refuses to address the underlying problem and reduce incarceration rates. A federal court has ordered the state to reduce its prison population by 40,000 (27%) in two years, but the Governator is fighting the decision tooth and nail.

California is making an an enormous mistake by shipping prisoners far from their families and support networks and replacing them in crowded prisons with new bodies. Cowardly politicians are afraid to make sensible moves on sentencing and parole because they're afraid of the soft-on-crime label, and the public either follows the tough-on-crime propaganda or fails to give the issue serious thought. The result: prisoners remain invisible, prisons remain overcrowded and the system stays in crisis.

I've written before about the sickeningly strong business outlook for our country's private prison companies (CCA is the biggest), and the costs of incarcerating Americans thousands of miles from home. These two issues combine to create a dangerous cocktail of a prison industry that misses a critical chance to focus on easing the reentry for the 700,000 Americans freed from prison each year.

The wonderful folks at Thousand Kites are doing something about this problem. They are collecting stories of prisoners and families affected by these destructive policies and will be focused on reforms to keep prisoners closer to home in the coming months. Learn more about their campaign and their partners at the Virgin Islands Prison Project here.

Iran Demonstrates the Importance of a Human Rights Award

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-03T09:06:00-08:00

For the first time in the 18-year history of the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, the recipient won’t be allowed by his country to accept the honor in person.

Iranian activist and journalist Emaddedin Baghi has campaigned for years against the death penalty and on behalf of prisoners' rights in his country, and has been sentenced to prison and reprimanded dozens of times for speaking out against Iran's cruel criminal justice system.

Yesterday, Iran prevented him from traveling to receive the human rights award in Geneva. The award is given to human rights advocates who speak out despite considerable risk, and Iran managed to demonstrate the risk under which Baghi works by denying him a travel visa.

The award jury said he Baghi was given the award "for his courage to stand up for his conviction that the Koran condones neither the death penalty nor arbitrary killings and detention." Read more about the award here.

Despite Baghi’s work and increased world awareness of injustice in the country following this year’s contested elections, demonstrations and mass arrests, Iran hasn’t slowed its frenzied pace of executions. A man who accepted responsibility for a suicide bombing was hanged yesterday, bringing the total number of executions so far in Iran this year to 243.

What We Believe

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-03T06:59:00-08:00

Thanks to Gideon at A Public Defender, I recently came across some powerful essays from prisoners on the beliefs they hold at their core.

The essays come from “This I Believe, ” an essay and podcast series exploring the core beliefs we hold in our day to day lives, inspired by a 1950s radio show hosted by Edward R. Murrow. I’ve heard some incredible personal stories on this podcast and on NPR over the last few years, and this group of prisoner essays is no exception.

John, a prisoner in Massachusetts, writes of the cruel Catch-22 of his life: it wasn’t until he got to prison that he realized he had value to others, and now that he’s there he worries that he can’t have the impact he’s meant to have:

The worst part about prison isn’t the violence or the loss of freedom, it’s not being a part of anything that’s good and decent. And it’s the fear that I don’t matter to anyone.

A man named Jim writes that he doesn’t know what he believes -- and maybe that’s why he ended up at a federal prison camp. The president of Oglethorpe University in Georgia writes about the human dignity he saw on a visit to Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison.

Carla, a prisoner in Florida, asserts that she has yet to find a person who is all bad, and that people have an essential goodness. “I believe that no person is defined by their worst action, decision or mistake,” she writes.

Gideon added his own “This I Believe” essay to the mix, on his blog.

“Man is neither inherently good nor bad,” he writes. “I believe that we all have a breaking point; a point at which “we” become “them”. Some of the nicest, most docile men that I have met are those that have taken another life. Some of the angriest, most close-minded men are those that seek to judge others without recognizing the same capacity in themselves.”

There’s nothing like crime and punishment and freedom and incarceration to force us to consider what we believe -- and what we’re willing to do for those beliefs.

Here's my own: I believe that by raising the level of awareness and discussion about justice and our prison system, we can reexamine the way we treat prisoners, defendants and victims of crime, and we can build a more effective, and more human, system.

These podcasts and essays, from Gideon and the prisoners who share their stories, are helping us move along this path.

Will Russia Reinstate the Death Penalty?

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-02T20:14:00-08:00

Russia is at a crossroads on capital punishment.

Ten years ago, the Russian Constitutional Court introduced a moratorium on death sentences until the country made the switch to the jury system. The country's leaders also pledged to abolish the practice as they were joining the Council of Europe, and the jury delay was seen as a step toward abolition.

The switch to juries is nearly complete, and human rights advocates and death penalty abolitionists are watching Russia's next steps on capital punishment.

Jury trials are now standard practice throughout most of the Russian Federation, with only Chechnya left to make the switch. On paper, the Chechen Republic is scheduled to be start jury trials on January 1, but it doesn't look like that will happen. No preparations have been made for the switch, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is expected to say in his upcoming state of the nation address that the death penalty moratorium will continue, Russian website Gazeta.ru reported over the weekend.

Gazeta also reports that the government isn't ready to either fully abolish the death penalty or reinstate it right now, so delaying the jury switch in Chechnya might be an escape hatch. But if the Council of Europe has a say, the moratorium will last until abolition is finally possible.

Via Death Penalty News -- Photo by Alan Cordova

The CSI Effect, Fact or Fiction?

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-02T06:39:00-08:00

The overwhelming popularity of crime and forensics TV shows like CSI, Law & Order and NCIS is having a profound impact on how our society views crime, but the storied effect of these shows on juries may be a myth.

A new study shows that watching these shows leads us to drastically overestimate the frequency of violent crime in our country.

The new research, from Purdue University, finds that frequent TV crime viewers estimated that the number of murders was 2-3 times higher than it is in reality. But true-crime junkies also think cops and lawyers are everywhere. They guessed that each group made up more than 16 percent of the American workforce. They're really less than one percent each.

So how does this altered perception of crime translate to the courtroom?

Prosecutors complain that these shows have raised juror expectations about forensic science, making them less likely to convict in cases without scientific proof (although only a small percentage of cases involve forensics). Defense attorneys worry about the flip side: that if prosecutors throw out any type of science or shiny pseudo-science, jurors will be star-struck by the CSI-like witnesses and will be more likely to convict. This is one reason we need forensic standards -- to ensure that nobody is being convicted based on untested brain waves or bootprints or voice stress analysis.

But are these worries based in reality? Maybe not. Two prominent studies focused on the prosecution's concerns found that while crime-drama viewers had different expectations and interpretations of evidence, they weren't more or less likely to convict base don forensics.

One 2006 study, from a judge and two Eastern Michigan University law professors, finds crime-drama viewers had a higher expectation for forensic evidence, but their votes to convict or acquit weren't affected. (Summary here, full study PDF here).

Another, from two Arizona State professors in 2007, found that CSI-lovers were more skeptical of questionable forensics and more confident of their verdicts, but once again, their verdicts weren't significantly different from jurors who didn't watch these shows.

There's more study to do, but in the meantime, it looks like the CSI Effect -- on juries at least -- may be more legend than fact. Whether our obsession with crime influences our political debate toward tough sentences, or whether it has us more worried about personal safety than we need be, those questions are still open.

Hat tip: Mike Smithhhhhhhh

Our Morally Unacceptable Criminal Justice System

Matt Kelley — 2009-11-01T15:31:00-08:00

In an excellent new article in the New York Review of Books, author and law professor David Cole delivers a broad, thoughtful condemnation of the American criminal justice system as grossly inefficient and morally unacceptable. This piece should be required reading for members of Congress and state lawmakers.

Looking at new books by three leading thinkers on these issues, Cole focuses much of his story on the glaring racial disparities in our prison system and the role of race and socioeconomic inequality in our government's refusal to act. “If white male babies faced anything like such prospects, the politics of crime would look very different,” he writes.

Cole examines books by Paul Butler, Glenn Loury and Anthony Thompson. I’ve written briefly about Loury and Butler in the past, but not about Thompson, whose book Releasing Prisoners, Redeeming Communities, focuses (according to Cole) on the critical issue of providing opportunities for the 700,000 people freed from our prisons each year.

"Thompson proposes a variety of sensible reforms," Cole writes... "eliminating laws that irrationally bar ex-offenders from jobs and housing, providing health care and counseling to help smooth the transition back to life outside of prison." He challenges Thompson, however, for failing to answer the big question: 'Where is the political impetus for such reform?'

Cole also questions Butler on his suggestion that American citizens engage in jury nullification, by acquitting defendants even when they believe the prosecution has proved its case. Cole says the suggestion is not practical and should be understood as a "a symbolic act of resistance rather than a concrete solution to the problems of race and class inequality." That's an issue for another post on its own. I'll put it on my list.

This isn't new territory for Cole. His own 1999 book No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System examines these issues as well. He makes a convincing case for change. If you know people who are interested in these issues but perhaps not as well-versed in the injustices of our prison system, send them Cole's article. You'll add another solider to the fight for reform.

I'll leave you with Cole's conclusion:

Our addiction to punishment should be troubling not only because it is costly and often counterproductive, but because its race and class disparities are morally unacceptable...

The very fact that the US record is so much worse than that of the rest of the world should tell us that we are doing something wrong, and the sheer waste of public dollars and human lives should impel us toward reform. But as the authors of these three books make clear, we will not understand the problem fully until we candidly confront the fact that our criminal justice system would not be tolerable to the majority if its impact were felt more broadly by the general population, and not concentrated on the most deprived among us.

Thanks to change.org community member Mark Schmanke for sending this article my way.

Let the Naked Pumpkinheads Run

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-31T08:16:00-07:00

It's Halloween hysteria in Boulder.

Police in the idyllic Colorado city have said they are committing to stopping tonight’s 11th annual naked pumpkin run. And if anyone insists on running naked through the street with a pumpkin on their head, the cops will charge all participants as sex offenders.

The run sounds silly and it’s surely offensive to some - but it’s a prank (or, to those inclined to give a big benefit of doubt, it's performance art). For a decade now, drunk college students and other Boulderites sprint through the city's downtown in their birthday suits, with a pumpkin on their head. It’s scheduled for 11 p.m. so there won’t be (many) kids around. Adults can handle seeing their neighbors anonymous and naked. To invoke the sex offender registry is beyond ridiculous.

The Boulder city council, the mayor and the local district attorney have all expressed concern with the police plan. The ACLU, of course, advocates for the right of runners to run. One lawyer -- maybe stretching just a bit -- compared the anticipated police action to recent events in Tehran.

This story makes the problems with our sex offender registry system as clear as can be. The Boulder police don't think the pumpkin runners are dangerous criminals, they're using the tools at their disposal to prevent an event they don't like. And this is a pervasive problem with the registry --for example, this post shows how countless kids are now on the registry for "Romeo and Juliet" or show-me-yours-I'll-show-you-mine incidents.

If we want our sex offender registry to work, we can't have it be full of pumpkinheads and experimenting teens. To have an effective crime prevention system, our parole officers and community corrections systems must be able to focus on people who post some threat to society.

Cracking down on the pumpkin run is a bad idea. Putting runners on the sex offender registry is potentially devastating.

The Boulder Magazine and blog elephant has been on top of this story, and reports that the run may move to an undisclosed location. More info here.

Penn. Court Tosses 6,500 Juvenile Convictions After Scandal

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-30T07:31:00-07:00

It was one of the most upsetting, egregious judicial corruption stories in recent memory. Two former Pennsylvania judges are awaiting trial for allegedly accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks from private detention facilities to convict juveniles and send them to be incarcerated.

To Pennsylvania's credit, though, the state is taking appropriate action to rectify the damage caused by these evil, greedy former judges -- Michael Conahan (left) and Mark Ciavarella (right). The state supreme court yesterday dismissed thousands of convictions heard by Ciavarella. A juvenile justice advocacy group said more than 6,500 juveniles were affected and most won't be retried.

"This is exactly the relief these kids needed," said Marsha Levick, the legal director of the Juvenile Law Center. "It's the most serious judicial corruption scandal in our history and the court took an extraordinary step in addressing it."

In another extraordinary step in the case, a federal judge in August overturned a plea bargain deal accepted by the two judges, who have admitted to accepting $2.8 million from the private prison operator. The men had pled guilty to fraud and tax evasion and were expecting a sentence somewhere around 87 months. The judge said the men hadn't accepted responsibility for their actions and tossed the guilty pleas. They're now awaiting trial on a 48-count indictment.

I have to stick to my guns in this case and say that seven years sounds like a sufficient sentence (just because hundreds of thousands of Americans are serving outsized, ineffective, overly harsh sentences doesn't mean we have to exact vengeance on the very guys who were handing down those sentences, although it is tempting). I would, however, like to see these guys convicted of something other than tax evasion.

And I hope yesterday decision to overturn convictions brings some healing to the thousands of families these men impacted through their greed. Juveniles who spent unnecessary time in detention won't get that time back, but they can now hopefully move on with their lives.

Smart on Crime in North Carolina

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-30T06:19:00-07:00

A few years ago, the West End neighborhood of High Point, North Carolina, had a serious crime problem. Drug dealers controlled entire blocks, gun shots rang out at night. But now the streets are safer. Violence is down. And locals say a targeted, community-based approach to drugs and crime brought the change they needed.

A great story last week in the Economist checks in on High Point and finds solid evidence that the 'smart-on-crime' approach works.

High Point Police Chief Jim Fealy tells the Economist that his department did the normal thing for years, where officers would “come rolling in like an occupying army" and descend upon West End's rough blocks. It didn't work.

John Jay Professor David Kennedy -- whose thoughtful crime prevention techniques are gaining momentum across the country -- came to High Point and recommended a new approach. Police determined that just 16 drug dealers controlled most of the traffic in the neighborhood, and only three were regularly violent. They stepped up investigation on the violent suspects and arrested them when caught in the act. The rest were called into a meeting.

Their grandmothers, their neighbors -- and the local cops -- told these drug dealers that they could change their ways and they wouldn't be prosecuted. Community support was offered for education and jobs. It worked. Most of the dealers and criminals changed their ways. Crime in the city is down significantly since 2003. Drugs and violence aren't gone, but the streets are safer.

The Economist points to another tactic that works in situations like this -- short, sure sentences. I've written before about this hypothesis offered by UCLA Professor Mark AR Kleiman in his book "When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment." Kleiman has been making the rounds in the media lately (including a great three-post series on Volokh Conspiracy this week), and I'm happy to see his perspective gaining some traction -- he says it isn't the threat of a 30-year sentence that deters crime. It's the threat of a real sentence.

He points to the example of Judge Steven Alm in Hawaii, who sparked significant reform by handing out instant, short sentences for parole violations. Instead of a five-year sentence that may or may not happen after months of continuances and delays, violators got a sure-thing week in jail. This was enough to stop them from violating parole, and this is at the heart of Kleiman's thinking, too. For most felons, a sentence past a few years is a waste of our tax dollars. A sure sentence is more effective than a long sentence.

Busting up street corners only stops crime in the short term. Community policing and alternatives to incarceration will bring about real change in the system, and these models are finally getting a chance in some communities.

On Judicial Diversity, I'm with Clarence

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-29T07:16:00-07:00

In a talk last week at the University of Alabama, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said he wants to see more diversity (geographic diversity, at least) on the Supreme Court, and presumably, on lower courts throughout the land.

"My goal is to have a court that is fair, and I think it's fair when we are fair in selecting people from all parts of the country, from all walks of life," Thomas said. He went on to say that he prefers to hire clerks from modest backgrounds.

It's an odd sentiment to hear from the mouth of an outspoken opponent of affirmative action.

To his credit, Thomas has stuck to his philosophy of supporting people who may not have had a gilded path to the Ivy League. His beef is with racial quotas; he does support casting a wide net and looking past the traditional (white, male, wealthy) candidates for law schools, clerkships and the federal bench. But if he really supports diversity on the federal bench, isn't he splitting hairs?

I wrote recently that President Obama is off to a strong start on racial and gender diversity with his first 16 picks for the federal courts. In a great post yesterday at the Brennan Center, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy expanded on this meme:

With 96 federal judgeships vacant, President Obama has a golden opportunity to continue to diversify the bench in many dimensions. As Professor David Fontana has suggested, President Obama could grow the ranks of future legal leaders by appointing younger judges to the federal bench. As Justice Thomas suggests, good judges can come from all over the country. But race and gender do still matter. So Obama should draw from more than the pool of sitting judges since the feeder courts at the state level often lack diversity. As the Brennan Center has pointed out, judicial diversity is in need of improvement, since 24 state supreme courts are all white and two are all male.

Obama should seize this opportunity, and there are signs that this is exactly what he's beginning to do. If getting a more diverse federal bench means passing over a few well-qualified white men from Ivy League schools, so be it.

A Typewriter in Kenya, and the Need for Global Justice Journalism

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-28T15:51:00-07:00

The Global Post -- an excellent source of news from around the world -- ran a story recently on a Kenyan prison with a paralegal class and a single typewriter.

It's an inspiring -- and frustrating -- story. A Christian legal organization called CLEAR runs a paralegal training class in Kenya's Kisumu prison. Prisoners help one another with appeals and they learn a trade they'll be able to practice once they're released.

But here's the frustrating part: the prison office has a single typewriter, and every appeals goes through it. Since appeals in Kenya need to have seven copies, it takes a while to get a single document written. The appeals process was paralyzed recently when the typewriter broke down.

This case tells us a great deal about justice in the developing world, and I've written before about how something as simple as paperwork can cause terrible injustices. But I want to focus for a moment on the reporting itself.

Global Post is a startup site launched last year by a cable news executive and a foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe. The site aims to build a community of correspondents around the world into a new type of news organization. It's a unique model and one worth watching. This story about Kenya was written for Global Post by Ian MacLellan, a Tufts student studying abroad. This is one of Global Post's projects: training students to be international reporters while they study abroad and publishing their content on the web. I'm interested to see where it leads.

I believe we need more stories like the one MacLellan wrote in Kenya. The mainstream media isn't doing it, and the world's justice systems are suffering from a lack of open, reliable information. Models like Global Post and Global Voices have the potential to raise the level of reporting and discussion on justice issues around the world, something that's badly needed.

Then, once we start getting reliable stories about what works -- and what doesn't -- in the justice systems around the world, we need the mechanisms to act on this information. This leads me to something else I've written about here in the past the need for more social enterprise ventures in the world of criminal justice. (I just came across a post of mine on this from one year ago today. Time flies.) A single computer for this prison would streamline the appeals process, it might help identify the wrongfully convicted prisoners and correct a few injustices.

There are countless stories like the Kenyan typewriter, where a computer or a shipment of medical supplies or a construction project could bring about sweeping positive change in a prison or a court or a justice ministry. By connecting the world's information and rethinking the social justice model, we can do a better job of sparking criminal justice reforms around the world.

Photo by welcometoalville

Sidestepping Immigration to Focus on Solving Crimes

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-28T06:28:00-07:00

When federal and local officials work on identifying, detaining and deporting undocumented immigrants, there's something else they're not doing: investigating, solving and preventing crime.

A great op-ed yesterday in the Los Angeles Times by LAPD Chief William Bratton makes a forceful and eloquent case for police departments to keep their priorities straight.

Police officers should concentrate their energy on solving crime, and undocumented immigrants shouldn't be afraid to come into contact with police if they witness a crime, or even more importantly, if they are the victims of a crime.

Unfortunately, police departments across the country are moving in the opposite direction. More than 65 law enforcement agencies across the county have entered into a partnership with the federal government, called 287(g). This program gives police officers the power to act as agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a monumentally bad idea. Bratton argues, rightly, that this program takes critical emphasis away from crime investigation and prevention.

Bratton writes that our country needs immigration reform to bring our neighbors out of the shadows, so they can get the protection they deserve from police. He cites a report this year from the Police Foundation that "confirms that when local police enforce immigration laws, it undermines their core public safety mission, diverts scarce resources, increases their exposure to liability and litigation, and exacerbates fear in communities that are already distrustful of police."

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona, is at the other end of this spectrum. While he has been on his wackball rampage of immigration raids and prisoner abuse, his department has left thousands of cases open, letting perpetrators of violent crime walk free while it arrests and imprisons mothers and children. Do you think an immigrant who witnesses a crime will walk up to Joe's office to report it?

But Joe's not the audience for Bratton's op-ed. He's too far gone. It's the thousands of police chiefs across the country who should be listening. There's temptation to jump on board with the Obama administration and fight the immigration battle on home turf. Our local law enforcement agencies should resist the draw of this misguided federal program and focus instead on crime at home.

Photo by jondoeforty1

A Community Option for Alabama Juveniles

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-27T15:24:00-07:00

It was the tough-on-crime, war on drugs 1970s and 1980s. America feared a dangerous outbreak in juvenile crime, and lawmakers cracked down -- passing legislation to ensure that kids were incarcerated for breaking the law -- even if they were non-violent first-time offenders.

Alabama's prison system grew faster than the rest of country during the tough-on-crime years, but not by much. From 1977 to 2000 Alabama prisons grew by 373%, compared to 364% for the country as a whole. We were all swept up in the hysteria.

Well, things are definitely changing, in Alabama and elsewhere. Last year, Alabama legislators passed laws requiring judges to choose community sentences and other alternatives to incarceration for non-violent juvenile offenders. This means kids who make a mistake might have a chance to stay with their families, stay in school, get some special training -- the opportunities that research shows actually prevents crime later in life.

The tough-on-crime policies of the 70s, 80s and 90s were the seed that grew into an incarcerated nation. Kids who may have turned their lives around through an alternative sentence instead went to a juvenile detention facility and learned that society didn’t want them. They formed friendships with violent individuals. As Linda Tilly, the Executive Director of Voices for Alabama’s Children, wrote in a recent column in the Montgomery Advertister, they got a chance to do some “networking that society does not need.”

Last year, Tilly’s group conducted a review of kids detained in juvenile facilities in several Alabama counties. Eighty percent of incarcerated kids in the study were there for non-violent crimes. This needs to change, and the Alabama legislature is right to act now to change it.

“Ultimately, successful community-based programs will enable our nonviolent youth to live healthy, law abiding lives while we all move forward in a stronger, safer Alabama,” Tilly wrote.

I never thought I'd say this, but Alabama is leading the way by reimagining its juvenile justice system, and other states need to take notice.

Via Reclaiming Futures

Two Posthumous Pardons in South Carolina

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-27T07:07:00-07:00

Last week, the South Carolina pardon board voted unanimously to clear the names of two men executed in 1915 for a murder they may not have committed. The men -- Meeks and Thomas Griffin -- were great uncles of syndicated radio talk show host Tom Joyner (left), who sought the pardons after learning last year about the men’s story.

It was the first posthumous pardon ever granted in a capital case by the state of South Carolina.

I wrote about this case a couple of weeks ago, and I’m excited to be able to report on this positive outcome. Joyner was delighted with the news:

“It’s good for the community, it’s good for the nation. Anytime you can repair racism in this country is a step forward,” he said.

Although resources in wrongful conviction cases should focus first on cases where innocent people can be freed from prison, investigating posthumous cases is also vital to progress in our system. We know that our criminal justice system has a spotty past and that the overt racism of the early 20th century dominated countless cases against people of color. Uncovering specific cases of injustice helps us understand history and inspires us to work harder to avoid such injustice today, nearly a century later.

For the facts of this case, see my last post here.

In a related case in Texas, the family of Timothy Cole is still seeking a posthumous pardon for Cole, who died in prison of a heart attack in a Texas prison while serving a 25-year sentence for a rape DNA now proves he didn’t commit. While Cole was alive, the real perpetrator in the case was writing letters to anyone who would listen -- admitting guilt in the case and trying to exonerate Cole. It's a shame that nothing was done while Cole was sitting in a prison cell for a crime he didn't commit, but now he deserves a posthumous pardon.

And of course, the case of Cameron Todd Willingham has stayed in the headlines this month: evidence shows that Willingham was wrongfully executed in Texas in 2004. He was convicted of allegedly setting a fire that killed his three young daughters, but several independent reviews of the case since his conviction have pointed to his innocence.

Seeking to prove innocence after death is important and worthy, but cases like those of Cole and Willingham show us that by investigating legitimate innocence claims now, we can save a life and avoid a posthumous pardon later.

Pot and the Safe Driving Myth

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-26T06:19:00-07:00

Advocates for marijuana reform frequently argue that the drug should be legalized because it's safe. This is generally true, and I support legalization for this and many other reasons. But when it comes to driving and safety, legalization advocates often go a step too far -- claiming that driving under the influence of marijuana is not dangerous and that marijuana causes zero deaths each year. These misleading arguments are harming the reform movement.

It's a fact: marijuana impairs driving ability. Reliable scientific studies have shown that marijuana usage causes slower reaction time, impairs eye tracking and lateral awareness and that drivers fail to reliably regulate speed and the distance between their car and the car ahead of them. Driving ability is especially bad when the a person has smoked recently. The authors of the recent book "Marijuana is Safer" agree that driving while high shouldn't be condoned, though they focus on the decreased risk when driving high is compared to driving drunk.

It's true: driving drunk is worse than driving high. Legalizing marijuana may lead to a decrease in drunk driving deaths, and this is a good thing. But it's no reason to turn a blind eye to driving under the influence of drugs. We should be working now to advocate against ever driving under the influence of pot, and when marijuana is legalized, tax income from pot sales could be used in part to support a public awareness campaign about the dangers of driving under the influence of marijuana.

So, I want to say to the commenters who frequently write here and elsewhere that driving under the influence of marijuana is not risky: you're wrong. Not only are you wrong, but you're spreading a dangerous myth that could cause deadly accidents and will hurt the chances for marijuana reform in the United States. To those who cite that stat that alcohol causes 75,000 deaths each year in the U.S. and marijuana causes zero: you're wrong, too. Marijuana causes far, far fewer deaths than alcohol (maybe 0.1%) , but the number is not zero. Fatal accidents like this one and this one confirm that.

To show that we're serious about responsible reform, marijuana reformers need to take a stand against driving under the influence of pot. Each of us can do our part.

Great photo by PhotoDu.de - a five minute exposure while he drove on I-88.

Rape is not a Preexisting Condition

Matt Kelley — 2009-10-25T11:51:00-07:00

We need health care reform in this country for so many reasons, one of which is to ensure that victims of crime get the treatment they need.

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund reported horrifying tales of several women who were denied health insurance because they had received treatment after being the victims of sexual assault. I read this piece right after a great post by change.org Women's Rights blogger Jen Nedeau explaining how just being a woman can be considered a pre-existing condition and detailing instances of discrimination against women by insurers.

Both posts managed to make me angry, and both should serve as reminders of why the fight for health care reform needs our support. No one should be denied coverage, because of their gender or any other reason. Denying a person healthcare because he or she received treatment following a sexual assault is terrible and it's wrong.

The HuffPo story tells the story of a woman who was given preventative HIV medication after she believed she had been drugged and sexually assaulted. Insurers then refused to sell her a policy because they didn't want to take the chance that she had AIDS. Another woman was treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder after a sexual assault, and then denied coverage because of the history of treatment. These stories aren't anomalies, and it's a disgrace.

Providing services to the victims of violent crimes is critical for this country's criminal justice system to work and to improve. It's just another reason we need to fix healthcare in the U.S.