CrimProf Blog

FBI Report Shows Number of Violent Crimes Decreased Once Again

From washingtonpost.com: The number of violent crimes reported nationwide dipped slightly in the first half of 2007, signaling the first notable decline in violence in two years, the FBI said today.

Violent crimes, including murders and robberies, fell 1.8 percent from January to June last year when compared with the same period in 2006, according to new preliminary FBI statistics. Property crimes fell also, by 2.6 percent, the data show. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Article Spotlight: Persuasion and Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America

University of Kentucky CrimProf Mark Peffley and University of Pittburgh CrimProf Jon Hurwitz recently released Persuasion and Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America. Here is a description:

Although there exists a large and well-documented “race gap” between whites and blacks in their support for the death penalty, we know relatively little about the nature of these differences and how the races respond to various arguments against the penalty.

To explore such differences, we embedded an experiment in a national survey inwhich respondents are randomly assigned to one of several argument conditions. We find that African Americans are more responsive to argument frames that are both racial (i.e., the death penalty is unfair because most of the people who are executed are black) and nonracial (i.e., too many innocent people are being executed) than are whites, who are highly resistant to persuasion and, in the case of the racial argument, actually become more supportive of the death penalty upon learning that it discriminates against blacks.

These interracial differences in response to the framing of arguments against the death penalty can be explained, in part, by the degree to which people attribute the causes of black criminality to either dispositional or systemic forces (i.e., the racial biases of the criminal justice system).[Mark Godsey]

USF Report Shows that the US is one of two Countries Who Sentence Children to Life

A new report from the University of San Francisco School of Law's Center for Law and Global Justice finds that the United States is one of only two countries in the world to sentence juveniles to life without parole.

The practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to die in prison by imposing life without parole (LWOP) has been abolished by the vast majority of countries in the world, yet thousands of children are serving the sentences in prisons across the United States, according to a new report from the USF School of Law's Center for Law and Global Justice.

With at least 2,381 children sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in the United States, and seven such cases in Israel, the two countries are the only remaining nations continuing to impose the sentence, which violates international law.

"The sentence violates customary law binding all nations, and is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is the harshest sentence that can be given short of execution," said Michelle Leighton, director of human rights programs for the USF Center for Law and Global Justice.

The juvenile death penalty was eliminated in the United States in 2005 by the Supreme Court's ruling in Roper v. Simmons. In that decision, the court cited a brief authored by USF Law Professor Connie de la Vega, director of the Frank C. Newman International Human Rights Law Clinic, which pointed out that most countries prohibit the execution of criminals who were under 18 at the time of their crime.

"By clarifying the law and facts surrounding the use of life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders, this new report highlights how alone the United States is as a violator of the prohibition against such sentences," said de la Vega, who co-authored the report with Leighton. "Documentation of the abuse is but the first step in remedying that violation. We hope that it helps to mobilize shame in the international community as well as in the United States so that steps can be taken to stop it."

The center's report, the most comprehensive of its kind, is the next step in bringing the United States into compliance with international law guiding juvenile justice. The authors hope the report will raise awareness of the issue among the United Nations, individual governments, and the general public.

The report already made an impact on juvenile justice in Tanzania, which had been listed with the United States and Israel as a country with LWOP for juveniles. But in September, with help from Professor Nick Imparato of USF's School of Business and Management, Leighton met with the Tanzanian Ambassador to the United Nations and other officials and prevailed upon them to review the case of the one juvenile offender said to be serving a LWOP sentence and to agree to bring the country's laws into compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. 

"I believe our meetings with Tanzanian officials were successful in raising the case to the highest levels of the government, including the president and minister of justice. Our meetings and exchanges with these officials, including the Ambassador to the United Nations, give us every reason to believe that the country will follow through with the commitment of the presidency to review the one child's sentence and otherwise prevent a term of life without parole," Leighton said.

According to the report, children of color in the United States are 10 times more likely to receive life without parole than white child offenders. In some states, including California, the rate is 20 to 1. California lawmakers in January will consider a bill that would abolish the practice. The California Supreme Court is also considering the case of a 14-year-old boy who is the youngest person ever to be given the LWOP sentence for a crime involving no physical injury to the victim.

Full Report. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Report on Prison Growth

The JFA Institute, a group of academics based in Washington, has just published this report, Unlocking America, on the growth of the prison population, its consequences and solutions. [Jack Chin]

FBI Report States that Hate Crimes Rose by 8 Percent

Hate crime incidents rose nearly 8 percent last year -- more than half motivated by racial prejudice, the FBI reported Monday, as civil rights advocates increasingly take to the streets to protest what they call official indifference to intimidation and attacks against blacks and other minorities.

Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability. That was up 7.8 percent from 7,163 incidents reported in 2005.

Although the noose incidents and beatings among students at Jena, La., high school occurred in the last half of 2006, they were not included in the report. Only 12,600 of the nation's more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies participated in the hate crime reporting program in 2006 and neither Jena nor LaSalle Parish, in which the town is located, were among the agencies reporting.

Nevertheless, the Jena incidents, and a subsequent rash of noose and other racial incidents around the country, have spawned civil rights demonstrations that culminated last week at Justice Department headquarters here. The department said it investigated the Jena incident but decided not to prosecute because the federal government does not typically bring hate crime charges against juveniles.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Mental Health Courts=Reduced Rate of Recidivism

From pn.psychiatryonline.org: Criminal defendants with mental illness stay out of jail longer when they are enrolled in programs that divert them from the prison system to the mental health system. 

Mental health courts offer an alternative to sending still more people with mental illness to jail. Judges, public defenders, district attorneys, case managers, therapists, probation officers, and psychiatrists together closely supervise defendants selected for these diversion programs, helping with housing, medical care, psychotherapy, education, and job training or coaching. 

The goal is to prevent these defendants from committing more crimes and to help them find a place in the community. Offenders who complete the program can have charges dropped or expunged. 

About 90 mental health courts operate around the country, yet little is known about the extent to which they reduce the chances of a defendant's committing another crime. 

Now a study of the mental health court in San Francisco documents reduced levels of recidivism, as measured by the time to re-offending, although questions remain about what accounts for outcomes and who gets to participate in the programs. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

UCLA Study Finds that LA's Clean Up Initiative has Harmed the Homeless

From latimes.com: A UCLA study found that the LA's year-old Safer City Initiative to clean up skid row has reduced crime but that few additional social services have been initiated.

"There have been unintended consequences that have negatively impacted the homeless and mentally disabled people, with unpaid citations for jaywalking leading to people going to jail and a focus on small-quantity drug buys ending up with ordinary addicts being sent to state prison," said author Gary Blasi, a UCLA law professor.

But top Los Angeles Police Department officials said Tuesday that the study cannot deny the more than 35% drop in serious crime in skid row as well as a similar drop in the number of homeless people on the streets since the initiative began last September.

"It is more than numbers. We are saving lives with the Safer City Initiative. That alone is a measure of its success. We used to pull dead bodies out of tents, parks and outhouses," said Cmdr. Andy Smith, head of the LAPD's Central Division, which leads the effort.

The push to clean up skid row is centered on the LAPD's addition last year of 50 more patrol officers.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

FBI report Shows Violent Crime is on the rise

From FBI.gov: Accordingto the FBI's report "Crime in the United States," at the national level, the report shows an increase of 1.9 percent in the amount of violent crime compared to 2005. The volume of property crime fell by nearly the same amount. While the rate of violent crime—473.5 per 100,000 inhabitants—rose for the second straight year, it is the third lowest total in the past two decades. Property crimes rates dropped to their lowest level since 1987.  Read Report. . . [Mark Godsey]

Report Shows that Schools Underreport Crime

From stateline.com: Schools and colleges across the country do not report crime and violent incidents on campus consistently or accurately — in many cases because they are not required to, according to safety experts and a new report by 27 state attorneys general.

A patchwork of state and federal laws intended to tally assaults, robberies, drug use and other crime at primary and secondary schools — as well as colleges and universities — fails to provide a clear picture of the scope of the problem, critics charge. Out-of-date, incomplete statistics are common and authorities have few effective tools to penalize institutions that do not comply, including fines that observers say amount to a “drop in the bucket.”

Making matters worse, school and college officials are reluctant to release more comprehensive information on their own because of stigmas that can be attached to institutions with frequent occurrences of crime, said Ronald Stephens, executive director of the California-based National School Safety Center which advocates for safer primary and secondary schools.

Stephens and others stressed that high crime rates do not necessarily reflect administrative failures, and that the absence of accurate information hinders efforts to understand and prevent illegal activity.

“Good crime data can provide a summary of what crimes are occurring, where they are happening and when they are happening,” Stephens said in an e-mail to Stateline.org. “When this information is available, school officials can develop more effective prevention and remediation programs and provide responsible adult supervision to those areas where the difficulties are occurring.” Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Justice Department Study Shows African Americans Disproportionately Victimized

From washingtonpost.com: Nearly half the people murdered in the United States each year are black, part of a persistent pattern in which African Americans are disproportionately victimized by violent crime, according to a new Justice Department study released yesterday.

The study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics also found that from 2001 to 2005, more than nine out of 10 black murder victims were killed by other blacks, and three out of four were slain with a gun. Blacks, who make up 13 percent of the population, were victims in 15 percent of nonfatal violent crimes.

The new findings underscore the enduring problem of crime that plagues many African American communities, even during a period when the incidence of violent crime dropped or held steady overall, according to criminologists and other experts.

Some experts said the study also illustrates that encounters with criminals are often more likely to turn deadly for black victims than for victims of other races, in part because black victims are more likely to be confronted with firearms. Rest of Article . . . [Mark Godsey]

Study Show Hight Number of Internet Offenders Who Have Offended in Real Life

From nytimes.com: Experts have often wondered what proportion of men who download explicit sexual images of children also molest them. A new government study of convicted Internet offenders suggests that the number may be startlingly high: 85 percent of the offenders said they had committed acts of sexual abuse against minors, from inappropriate touching to rape.

The study, which has not yet been published, is stirring a vehement debate among psychologists, law enforcement officers and prison officials, who cannot agree on how the findings should be presented or interpreted.

The research, carried out by psychologists at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, is the first in-depth survey of such online offenders’ sexual behavior done by prison therapists who were actively performing treatment. Its findings have circulated privately among experts, who say they could have enormous implications for public safety and law enforcement.  Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Study Shows Public Defender Benefits in Federal Cases

From NYTimes.com: Some poor people accused of federal crimes are represented by full-time federal public defenders who earn salaries, others by court-appointed lawyers who bill by the hour. A new study from an economist at Harvard says there is a surprisingly wide gap in how well the two groups perform.

Both kinds of lawyers are paid by the government, and they were long thought to perform about equally. But the study concludes that lawyers paid by the hour are less qualified and let cases drag on and achieve worse results for their clients, including sentences that average eight months longer.

Appointed lawyers also cost taxpayers $61 million a year more than salaried public defenders would have cost.

There are many possible reasons for the differences in performance. Salaried public defenders generally handle more cases and have more interactions with prosecutors, so they may have a better sense of what they can negotiate for their clients. Salaried lawyers also tend to have superior credentials and more legal experience, the study found.

The study will add a new layer to the debate over the nation’s indigent defense systems. In 1963, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Gideon v. Wainwright that poor people accused of serious crimes were entitled to legal representation paid for by the government.

The federal system handles about 5 percent of all criminal prosecutions and is relatively well financed. The implications of the new study for the states may therefore be limited.

But more than half the states use a combination of public defenders and appointed lawyers, and most indigent defendants are not represented by staff public defenders at the trial level.

In the federal courts, roughly three-quarters of all defendants rely on lawyers paid for by the government, about evenly divided between salaried public defenders and appointed lawyers paid by the hour. Most of the rest hire their own lawyers, with about 2 percent representing themselves.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Report Says Number of Jane and John Does Are Twice the Acknowledged Number

From USATODAY.com: American medical examiners and coroners held at least 14,000 sets of unidentified human remains as of 2004 — more than twice the number of John Doe cases acknowledged by the FBI, the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics says.

In a report due out Monday, the agency says the backlog of unidentified remains — murder and accident victims and missing or homeless people who die of natural causes — grows by about 1,000 each year.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Study Shows that Caribbean Nations Have World's Highest Murder Rate

From realcities.com: Caribbean nations, which most Americans perceive as sun-soaked paradises, are overwhelmed by the economic toll of the world's highest murder rates and need international help, according to a report released Thursday.

A one-third reduction in the region's murder rate would more than double its per-capita economic growth, according to the study by the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Caribbean nations have been battling drug-fueled crime by bolstering their police forces, but the report says crime rates are so bad that Caribbean governments need help from rich nations and multilateral institutions.

"The report is a starting point of putting crime on the development agenda," said Caroline Anstey, the World Bank director for the Caribbean.

The high crime rate not only is killing young people and adding to the cost of business, but it also keeps tourists in safe beach enclaves rather than having them spend more money exploring other parts of the Caribbean, Anstey said.

The overall murder rate in the Caribbean is 30 per 100,000 people, compared with 26 in Latin America and seven in the United States. Those numbers are from 2002, the last year for which worldwide comparisons are available, and murders since have since risen in the Caribbean and declined in some parts of South America, according to the 231-page report.  Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

African Americans and Latinos are More Likely to be Searched and Arrested During Traffic Stops

From washingtonpost.com: Black, Hispanic and white drivers are equally likely to be pulled over by police, but blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to be searched and arrested, a federal study found.

Police were much more likely to threaten or use force against blacks and Hispanics than against whites in any encounter, whether at a traffic stop or elsewhere, according to the Justice Department.

The study, released Sunday by the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, covered police contacts with the public during 2005 and was based on interviews by the Census Bureau with nearly 64,000 people age 16 or over.

"The numbers are very consistent" with those found in a similar study of police-public contacts in 2002, bureau statistician Matthew R. Durose, the report's co-author, said in an interview. "There's some stability in the findings over these three years."

Traffic stops have become a politically volatile issue. Minority groups have complained that many stops and searches are based on race rather than on legitimate suspicions. Blacks in particular have complained of being pulled over for simply "driving while black."

"The available data is sketchy but deeply concerning," said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau. The civil rights organization has done its own surveys of traffic stops, and he said the racial disparities grow larger, the deeper the studies delve. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Study Results: Nearly Half of College Students Binge Drink or Abuse Drugs Once a Month

From USATODAY.com: Nearly half of America's 5.4 million full-time college students abuse drugs or drink alcohol on binges at least once a month, according to a new study that portrays substance and alcohol abuse as an increasingly urgent problem on campuses across the nation.

Alcohol remains the favored substance of abuse on college campuses by far, but the abuse of prescription drugs and marijuana has increased dramatically since the mid-1990s, according to the study released today by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

CASA, which called on educators to move more aggressively to counter intensifying drug and alcohol use among students, first studied students' drug and alcohol habits in 1993. Today's report — the center's second on the subject — involved a survey of 2,000 student and 400 administrators as well as analyses of six national studies. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Reports Founder in Which White House Originally Suggested Firing All U.S. Attorneys

From WashingtonPost.com: The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

The dismissals took place after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in October that he had received complaints that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, according to a White House spokeswoman.

Gonzales approved the idea of firing a smaller group of U.S. attorneys shortly after taking office in February 2005. The aide in charge of the dismissals -- his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson -- resigned yesterday, officials said, after acknowledging that he did not tell key Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress.

Lawmakers requested the documents as part of an investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated. While it is unclear whether the documents, which were reviewed yesterday by The Washington Post, will answer Congress's questions, they show that the White House and other administration officials were more closely involved in the dismissals, and at a much earlier date, than they have previously acknowledged.

Seven U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7 and another was fired months earlier, with little explanation from the Justice Department. Several former prosecutors have since alleged intimidation, including improper telephone calls from GOP lawmakers or their aides, and have alleged threats of retaliation by a Justice Department official. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Study States that Over Confident Witnesses Can Hurt More than the Under Confident

A new study authored in part by a University of California Professor Robert J. MacCoun of public policy and law throws cold water on a common theory that a confident witness who errs in trial testimony is still more credible than a less confident witness who similarly slips up.

The researchers concluded that self-assured witnesses who make a mistake - even on issues of little importance - undermine their credibility by raising doubts about their competency, their ability to judge their own abilities and their motivations.

"People giving testimony, or advice, or opinions should therefore be careful to express appropriate degrees of confidence in their assertions," the researchers write in a summary of their report in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science. "Otherwise, the 13th stroke of the clock will cast the other 12 in doubt."

The researchers included Robert J. MacCoun of UC Berkeley, a professor at the Goldman School of Public Policy and at the School of Law (Boalt Hall); Elizabeth Tenney, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of Virginia; Barbara Spellman, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia; and Reid Hastie, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago.

MacCoun said the team's findings challenge the frequent tendency of attorneys to pressure their witnesses to project a strong sense of confidence and to minimize the use of hedges like "I think" or "maybe." Academic experts encounter similar pressures when asked to testify before policy makers, he said. But this first-of-its-kind study shows that such a strategy can backfire if a cocky witness gets caught in a mistake. Rest of Story. . . [Mark Godsey]

Study Shows Problem With Suicides in Mass. Prisons

From boston.com: An independent study of the state prison system, requested by the Department of Correction and due to be released tomorrow , has found serious shortcomings in the state's handling of inmates who are at risk of committing suicide.

The report, commissioned after a sharp increase in prisoner suicides in 2005 and 2006, concludes that prison policies and practices are contributing to the problem:

• Guards and other staff members do not have enough training in suicide prevention.Guards fail to check frequently enough on some inmates at risk of suicide.
• Some cells used to house suicidal inmates have not been stripped of features they could use to harm themselves.
• Inmates under suicide watch become even more isolated because they are denied visits, showers, phone calls, and time outside their cells,
• Ten inmates killed themselves in state prisons in 2005 and 2006.
• Another prisoner was left brain dead by a suicide attempt.
• Five of the 11 inmates had recently been on suicide watches, and six had documented histories of mental health problems.

Prisoner rights groups have repeatedly criticized the state prison system for failing to address the needs of inmates with mental illnesses. Lindsay M. Hayes , a national specialist in prison suicide prevention who wrote the report, said suicidal inmates are being punished instead of being helped.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Study Finds States With Highest Number of Guns=Highest Number of Deaths

From NYTimes.com: States with the greatest number of guns in the home also have the highest rates of homicide, a new study finds.

The study, in the February issue of Social Science and Medicine, looked at gun ownership in all 50 states and then compared the results with the number of people killed over a three-year period.

The research, the authors said, “suggests that household firearms are a direct and an indirect source of firearms used to kill Americans both in their homes and on the streets.”

The researchers, led by Matthew Miller of the Harvard School of Public Health, drew on data gathered by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2001, the agency surveyed more than 200,000 people and asked them, among other questions, whether they had a gun in or near the home.

In states in the highest quarter of gun ownership, the study found, the overall homicide rate was 60 percent higher than in states in the lowest quarter. The rate of homicides involving guns was more than twice as high.

Among the possible explanations for the higher homicide rates, the study said, is that states with high gun ownership tend to make it easier to buy guns. There are also more guns that can be stolen. And the presence of a gun may allow arguments and fights to turn fatal.

Rest of Article. . . Get Report. . . [Mark Godsey]

Dept of Homeland Security Report Reveals the Continued Ill Treatment of Detainees

From NPR.com: Some non-U.S. citizens detained by the government for violating immigration laws are kept in rat-infested, cramped detention centers, fed noxious food and denied basic hygiene items such as clean socks and underpants.

Those are the findings of a new study from the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, the agency's internal watchdog. The report found that the agency violated the government's own guidelines on the treatment of immigrant detainees in jails and prisons.

Christina Deconcini helped write the Justice Department's official guidelines for the treatment of immigrant detainees in the 1990s. She says the average U.S. citizen would be appalled by the allegations in the report and failure to respond to grievances which it documents.

"I think they'd be amazed by some of the allegations of abuse and the lack of response to that," Deconcini says.

The Homeland Security Department detains hundreds of thousands of non-citizens every year in county jails and federal prisons. Most of these people are being held on charges of violating civil immigration laws. Thousands of others are detained while they apply for asylum.

Listen. . . Get Report. . . [Mark Godsey]

When We Thought it Couldn't Get Any Worse, New Report Reveals More Guantanamo Horrors

From apnews.myway.com/TalkLeft.com: FBI agents documented more than two dozen incidents of possible mistreatment at the Guantanamo Bay military base, including one detainee whose head was wrapped in duct tape for chanting the Quran and another who pulled out his hair after hours in a sweltering room.

Documents released Tuesday by the FBI offered new details about the harsh interrogations practice used by military officials and contractors when questioning so-called enemy combatants.

The reports describe a female guard who detainees said handled their genitals and wiped menstrual blood on their face. Another interrogator reportedly bragged to an FBI agent about dressing as a Catholic priest and "baptizing" a prisoner.

Some military officials and contractors told FBI agents that the interrogation techniques had been approved by the Defense Department, including directly by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The documents were released in response to a public records request by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing Rumsfeld and others on behalf of former military detainees who say they were abused. Many of the incidents in the FBI documents have already been reported and are summarized in the ACLU's lawsuit. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Audit Reveals State Law Enforcement Depts Are Shortchanged by Feds

From washingtonpost.com: Lax oversight of federal law enforcement grants tied up hundreds of millions of dollars for eight years and potentially shortchanged state and local crime-fighting programs, a Justice Department audit found Wednesday.

The report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that leftover money from thousands of expired grants between October 1997 and December 2005 sat unused because officials failed to keep close track of the programs once they ended.

If the offices had dealt with expired grants in a timely fashion, "hundreds of millions of dollars in questioned costs could have been used to provide the DOJ with additional resources to fund other programs or returned to the federal government's general fund," the audit concluded.

A Justice Department spokesman did not have an immediate response.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Decline in Domestic Violence: Silent Suffering or Steady Improvement?

From latimes.com: In a sweeping study of crime in the American household, the Justice Department reported Thursday that domestic violence, one of the most common offenses against women, has fallen by more than half since 1993.

Assaults, rapes, homicides and robberies against a current or former partner dropped from about 10 per 1,000 women in 1993 to four per 1,000 in 2004, researchers found.

The downward trend in violence by "intimate partners" — current and former spouses, boyfriends or girlfriends — mirrors an overall national decrease in violent crime since the early 1990s, justice officials said. While the study did not attempt to explain the decline in domestic violence, some experts have credited more vigorous law enforcement, increased education and an expanded network of services for battered partners, said Shannan Catalano, a bureau statistician and the report's author.

But she and others emphasized that the report may not reflect the actual level of violence taking place behind closed doors. Indeed, the apparent decline could mean that women are choosing to suffer in silence rather than seek help. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

The ABA and the NDAA Agree on Criminal Recommendations Reports

From abanet.org: The American Bar Association Commission has submitted for consideration by the ABA House six reports with recommendations. The reports deal with alternatives to incarceration and conviction; improvements in parole and probation supervision; employment and licensure of convicted persons; access to and use of criminal records for non-law enforcement purposes; representation relating to collateral consequences; and training in the exercise of discretion.

These six reports were originally submitted to the House last summer, but were withdrawn for further consideration and discussion with the National District Attorneys Association. As a result of the Commission's discussions with NDAA a number of revisions were made to the recommendations, and the NDAA agreed to co-sponsor four of the six sets of recommendations. The Criminal Justice Section and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association also renewed their co-sponsorship of the recommendations.

Among other things, the NDAA and the ABA agreed on recommending:

• Community based alternatives to incarceration that also avoid a conviction record, including diversion and deferred adjudication, should be available to all but the most serious offenders;
• People under community supervision should only be returned to prison for serious violations of their conditions of release, such as where a new crime has been committed or lesser sanctions have failed;
• Public access to criminal records should in general be limited, in light of the government's interest in encouraging successful offender reentry and reintegration, people should be able to challenge the accuracy of their records, and only law enforcement agencies should have access to records of closed criminal cases that did not result in a conviction;
• All criminal justice professionals -- including judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, probation and parole officers, and correctional officials -- should be trained in understanding, adopting and utilizing factors that promote the sound exercise of their discretion.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Article Spotlight: Toward an International Criminal Procedure: Due Process Aspirations and Limitations

From SSRN.com: University of North Dakota School of Law CrimProf Gregory Gordon recently published "Toward an International Criminal Procedure: Due Process Aspirations and Limitations."  Here is the Abstract: 

The breathtaking growth of international criminal law over the past decade has resulted in the prosecution of Balkan and Rwandan mass murderers, the development of a substantial body of atrocity law jurisprudence and the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court with jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

The growth of international criminal procedure, unfortunately, has not kept pace. Among its shortcomings, critics have pointed to lengthy pre-trial detention without a real possibility of provisional release, the use of affidavits and transcripts instead of live witnesses at trial, the absence of juries, and the right of prosecutorial appeal. Existing literature has pointed out these deficits but has failed to offer a systematic or comprehensive explanation for them. While such literature is helpful in identifying the problem, it has failed to provide a conceptual framework necessary for formulating solutions.

This article constructs such a framework and uses it to provide a starting point for expanding international due process protections. It contends that three separate phenomena contribute to the restriction of international due process growth: (1) fragmentation of enforcement; (2) integration of conflicting legal systems; and (3) gravity of the crimes involved. It also analyzes the interplay among these three restricting phenomena and argues that any future growth of due process will hinge on efforts to achieve greater degrees of structural globalization, procedural hybridization, and transnational public awareness.  [Mark Godsey]

FBI Report Shows that the Number of Police Feloniously Killed Has Declined

From FBI.gov: The FBI reported today that 55 law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty last year; 67 officers died in accidents while performing their official duties; and 57,546 officers suffered assaults while on duty.

The deaths occurred in 24 states and Puerto Rico. The number of officers feloniously killed in 2005 decreased by 2 compared with the 2004 figure (57 officers). A 5-year comparison shows a decrease of 15 line-of-duty deaths compared with the 2001 number (70 officers) and a decrease of 6 compared with the 1996 figure (61 officers).

Of the officers feloniously killed, 15 were handling traffic pursuits or traffic stops. Eight of the slain officers were handling arrest situations, and another 8 were ambushed. Seven of the slain officers were answering disturbance calls, and another 7 were investigating suspicious persons. Of the remaining 10 officers who were feloniously killed in the line of duty, 4 were pursuing investigative activities, such as surveillance; 3 were in tactical situations; 2 were handling mentally deranged persons; and 1 had custody of a prisoner for transport.

An analysis of the data by region showed that 28 of the felonious deaths occurred in the South, 10 in the West, 10 in the Midwest, and 5 in the Northeast. Two of the deaths took place in Puerto Rico. Law enforcement agencies identified 57 alleged assailants in connection with the 55 felonious line-of-duty deaths. All of the assailants were male, and 54 of them had previous criminal arrest records.

Get Report. . . [Mark Godsey] 

N.C. Study Finds Many People on Death Row Had Substandard Representation

From DPIC.com: The Common Sense Foundation of North Carolina recently released a study on that found that at least 37 people now on death row had trial lawyers who would not have met today’s minimum standards of qualification.  Nearly a third of the cases where sufficient data was available fell into this substandard category.

The study also lists the names of 16 people who have been executed whose trial lawyers did not meet these same standards. Over half of the executions in the state where data was available were of defendants whose attorneys would not meet the current state standards.

The study noted that after the state legislature created the Office of Indigent Defense Services (IDS) in 2001 requiring that appointed capital defense attorneys have some experience and knowledge of capital defense, the number of N.C. death sentences declined sharply.  However, the new rules do not apply to those who have already been sentenced to death.

Get Study. . . [Mark Godsey]

Hit and Runs are On the Rise

From USATODAY.com: The number of pedestrians killed by hit-and-run drivers has jumped 20% since 2000 and is at its highest level in a decade.

The increase compounds the problems of investigating hit-and-run cases, which investigators say are among the most difficult crimes to solve because they often happen at night with no witnesses.

Of the 4,881 pedestrians killed last year, 974 died in hit-and-runs, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration records show. The total number of pedestrians killed nationwide increased by about 2% since 2000, but hit-and-run deaths increased at almost 10 times that pace, the USA TODAY analysis found. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

BJS Report: Majority of Inmates Abused Drugs Before Prison

p The latest Bureau of Justice Statistical Report presents data from the 2004 Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities on prisoners' prior use, dependence, and abuse of illegal drugs. Tables include trends in the levels of drug use, type of drugs used, and treatment reported by State and Federal prisoners since the last national survey was conducted in 1997. The report also presents measures of dependence and abuse by gender, race, Hispanic origin, and age. It provides data on the levels of prior drug use (with an in-depth look at methamphetamine use), dependence, and abuse by selected characteristics, such as family background, criminal record, type of drug used, and offense.

Highlights include the following:

• Among drug dependent or abusing prisoners, 40% of State and 49% of Federal inmates took part in drug abuse treatment or programs since admission to prison.
• Among both State and Federal prisoners, white inmates were at least 20 times more likely than black inmates to report recent methamphetamine use.
• Violent offenders in State prison (50%) were less likely than drug (72%) and property (64%) offenders to have used drugs in the month prior to their offense.

Get Report. . . [Mark Godsey]

Justice Dept Report: Federal Prisons Fail to Monitor for Terrorism

From USATODAY.com: The Justice Department issued a damning account of the federal prison system's failure to monitor potentially criminal communications of convicted terrorists and other inmates at some of the nation's most secure government facilities.

In a 100-page report released Tuesday, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine found that the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) fails to adequately monitor prisoners' mail, telephone calls, visitor communications and cell-block conversations that could be part of criminal enterprises.

The bureau also lacks the staffing and expertise to translate communications conducted in foreign languages or to assess possible threats, the report found.

"The BOP incarcerates international terrorists inmates who require sophisticated monitoring and analyses of their communications and activities," the report concluded. "The BOP's monitoring procedures, intelligence analysis and foreign language capabilities have not evolved to that level."

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

The Answer to Preventing Teen Drug Use: Eating Dinner

From latimes.com: Research by a substance abuse center at Columbia University shows that one of the most effective ways to keep children off alcohol and drugs is for parents to simply to sit down with them at dinnertime.

The annual teen survey, conducted by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, has consistently revealed a strong correlation between the frequency of family dinners and teen substance abuse risk. This year, 58% of teens reported having dinner with their family at least five times a week — the same as in the last few years and an increase since 1996, the first year the survey was done.

The obstacles to family dining are clear. One out of four teens say both their parents work late. Twenty-two percent say their family is too busy, and 21% say conflicting schedules are to blame. Also, 18% said that either the family does not choose to eat together or is watching television at mealtime. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

ABA Report Points Problems With Florida's Death Penalty System

From PalmBeachPost.com:  The American Bar Association recently released a review of Florida's death penalty today, highlighting serious problems with the fairness and accuracy of execution in the Sunshine State.

In the 454-page report, a team of influential Florida lawyers — both supporters and opponents — recommended a panoply of changes and urged further study of racial disparity, finding the process is clearly not color-blind."It appears that those convicted of killing white victims are far more likely to receive a death sentence and be executed," according to the report.

The review also called for two independent commissions to investigate wrongful convictions and innocence claims.Florida leads the nation in Death Row exonerations, 22 of them since the penalty was reinstated in 1973. During the same time, Florida executed 60 Death Row inmates. "Over one exoneration for every three executions," according to the report

The ABA report, two years in the making, was highly critical of the cloaked process of clemency, a procedure under which convicts can ask for forgiveness or mercy from the governor and his Cabinet members. They have the power to commute death sentences to life in prison. In the Sunshine State, the governor can deny clemency at any time, for any reason, without any hearing. Clemency has not been granted to an inmate sentenced to death in 23 years. Yet, its full and proper use is essential to guaranteeing fairness in the death penalty, according to ABA findings.

Rest of Article. . . Full Report. . . [Mark Godsey]

Report Results: Maryland Spends Far More on Incarcerating Substance Abusers than Treating Them

washingtonpost.com: The Justice and Policy Institute, D.C.-based think tank, report found that Maryland has made "slow progress" in diverting nonviolent offenders from jail and prison. For each dollar spent to put them behind bars, the state provided just 26 cents through its Alcohol and Drug Abuse Administration to treat drug-dependent adults referred by the criminal justice system, the report estimated.

"We can afford to treat people," said the report's author, Kevin Pranis. "The resources are being misspent."

But Pranis credited Maryland with attempting to move away from a "war on drugs" mentality. The number of people admitted to drug treatment through court referral rose 28 percent between 2000 and 2004, while the number of people sentenced to prison for drug offenses fell by 7 percent.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

The Thought Behind the Stats

With the release of the FBI's annual crime report came a list of the 10 Largest US Cities, ranked in order of safety, the safest (#1) to the most dangerous (#10):

1. New York: one crime per 37.38 residents.
2. San Jose, Calif.: one crime per 34.46 residents.
3. Los Angeles: one crime per 25.97 residents.
4. San Diego: one crime per 24.09 residents.
5. Chicago: one crime per 21.9 residents.
6. Philadelphia: one crime per 17.96 residents.
7. Houston: one crime per 14.17 residents.
8. San Antonio: one crime per 14.12 residents.
9. Phoenix: one crime per 14.10 residents.
10. Dallas: one crime per 11.79 residents.

Blue Bayou has a good point about city rankings of any sort.  [The FBI's statistics includes the following disclaimer]:

Each year when Crime in the United States is published, many entities--news media, tourism agencies, and other groups with an interest in crime in our Nation--use reported figures to compile rankings of cities and counties. These rankings, however, are merely a quick choice made by the data user; they provide no insight into the many variables that mold the crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region. Consequently, these rankings lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting cities and counties, along with their residents.

"It goes on from there to discuss why these rankings are flawed. But people like lists, and so the list is there. But here's one obvious problem: what constitutes a city is different in different parts of the country. In Washington, the city ends at the boundaries of the District of Columbia, and doesn't include some intensely crime-ridden areas just outside. Or some incredibly safe areas. In Houston, the city stretches on for miles, including what would be remote suburbs on the east coast. In Dallas, the city itself is smaller--though the "metro area"--(I can't make myself use that horrifying word, "metroplex," though I will note that Dallas uses the name of a Transformer's character to describe itself...) is larger than Houston's, so I'd guess that it includes lots of poor and crime-ridden areas but relatively fewer safer areas." More. . . [Michele Berry]

FBI Report: Violent Crime Was on the Rise in 2005

From FBI.gov: According to the FBI's annual report, violent crime was on the rise throughout 2005.

• Although violent crime totals grew over 2004, they have dropped 3.4 percent since 2001 and 17.6 percent since 1996;
• Burglaries—up 0.5 percent—were the only property crimes to rise in 2005;
• Murders were up 3.4 percent and arrests of juveniles for murder were up nearly 20 percent over 2004;
• Forcible rape decreased 1.2 percent, the only violent crime category to fall;
• Property crime victims lost an estimated $16.5 billion last year;
• Of the 14.1 million arrests made by law enforcement in 2005, drug violations accounted for more than any other offense.
• According to the Crime Clock 2005, a violent crime took place every 22.7 seconds and a property crime every 3.1 seconds in this country.

Rest of Report. . . [Mark Godsey]

Study Finds More than 50% of All Inmates Have Mental Problems

From DeathPenaltyInfo.org: According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Study released September 6, more than half of all prison and jail inmates, including 56% of state prisoners, 45% of federal prisoners, and 64% of local jail inmates have mental health problems. 

The study was based on reporting of symptoms by inmates rather than through medical diagnosis.  Among state prisoners with mental problems, 43% had symptoms of mania, 23% had major depression, and 15% had psychotic disorders.  Having mental health problems was closely correlated with violence and past criminal activity.

Other significant findings regarding those prisoners with mental problems included:

• 74% of those in state prison were dependent on or abusing drugs or alcohol in the year before their admission
• 13% of those in state prison were homeless in the year before their incarceration
• 27% of those in state prison reported past physical or sexual abuse.

Get Study. . . [Mark Godsey]

Bureau of Justice Report: Violent Crimes Have Slightly Decreased

Fromdeathpenaltyinfor.org/ojp.usdoj.gov: According to a Bureau of Justice Statistics Report released on September 10, violent crime in the United States decreased slightly in 2005, continuing a decade-long trend in fewer victimizations.  Comparing two-year periods, violent crime was lowest in the Northeast region of the country in 2004-05, and that region also experienced the largest decrease in violent crime from 2002-03 to 2004-05. Since 1993, violent crime has decreased by about 58% in the U.S.

The BJS survey of crime victimization does not include homicides.  However, the report did cite figures from the FBI's Uniform Crime Report for 2004 and preliminary numbers for 2005.  In that survey, the national murder rate decreased by 2.4% in 2004, but increased by 4.8% in 2005.  Blacks and whites were about equally represented among victims of homicide. More. . . [Mark Godsey]

Preventable Factors Lead to High Number of College Students Killed in Off-Campus Fires

From USATODAY.com: According to a USA TODAY study, 54 college students killed in off-campus fires since 2000. Though such devastating fires are infrequent, they follow patterns that largely are preventable.

One-quarter of these fires followed a party, and in 59% of them, at least one of the dead students had been drinking, the USA TODAY analysis found. In 21 cases in which an autopsy report showed the deceased's blood alcohol content, the median level was .12%, and the highest was .304%. A person with an alcohol reading of .08% is considered by the nation's traffic laws to be too drunk to drive.

Deliberately set fires were a common thread in the incidents studied by USA TODAY. They played a role in one-fifth of all fires studied and one-fourth of the 54 off-campus deaths.Also, in at least 28% of the fatal fires studied, smoke detectors were either missing or disconnected. Investigators suspect that number is higher, but because infernos destroy the devices, whether the smoke detector sounded could not be determined in more than half of the fires that killed college students.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

GAO Report Says Anti-Drug Advertising Campaign Does Not Work

From USATODAY.com: A $1.4 billion anti-drug advertising campaign conducted by the U.S. government since 1998 does not appear to have helped reduce drug use and instead might have convinced some youths that taking illegal drugs is normal, the Government Accountability Office says.

The GAO report, released Friday, urges Congress to stop the White House's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign unless drug czar John Walters can come up with a better strategy. President Bush's budget for 2007 asks Congress for $120 million for the campaign, a $20 million increase from this year.

The report by the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, confirmed the results of a $43 million, government-funded study that found the campaign did not work. That evaluation, by Westat Inc. and the University of Pennsylvania, said parents and youths remembered the ads and their messages. But the study said exposure to the ads did not change kids' attitudes about drugs and that the reduction in drug use in recent years could be attributed more directly to a range of other factors, such as a decline in high school dropouts. The Westat study also said youths could interpret the ads to suggest that marijuana use is more common than it actually is.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Prison Sexual Abuse Study Claims Report Numbers are Low

From USATODAY.com: Fewer than three prisoners in every 1,000 report they were sexually abused or harassed, but that probably is not the whole story, a government study says.There may be far more sexual violence in prisons than is reported, the study's authors said, because inmates fear reprisal, adhere to a code of silence, do not trust the staff or are embarrassed.

The study released Sunday by the Justice Department agency is based on reports to corrections officials in 2005.The bureau looked at more than 1,800 correctional facilities holding some 1.7 million inmates — 78% of the adult prison population.The report is the second one required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which was an attempt to solve a problem believed to be widespread.

"What gets reported is the tip of the iceberg," said Cindy Struckman-Johnson, professor of social psychology at the University of South Dakota and a member of the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission. Struckman-Johnson said her studies found 10% of ma