Sigh. Another weekend, another winter storm. The good news: it’s perfect weather for cuddling up next to a roaring fire with a cup of hot cocoa, a warm blanket, and the JD Supra Weekend Reader:
What to do if you’re involved in a federal criminal investigation? Good question, but the wrong…
(Source: neoretro, via bourbonandpearls)
In light of my recent tour of the LA County Men’s Central Jail, I bring you this article (about my home state!) and its infographic, which reveals that California had 723 people on death row in January, 2012, and has executed 13 people since 1976. By way of comparison, Maryland had 5 people on death row and has executed 5 since 1976.
TMZ is now reporting that Jack Swagger has been charged with DUI, marijuana possession, and speeding. These charges are all misdemeanors
Post-DUI Insurance is Complicated
How much more complicated is it to settle your licensing and insurance after a DUI? Read more»
Post DUI insurance can be a huge hidden cost, if not handled correctly.
The New York Times reports that 40 or so sex offenders in Long Island’s Suffolk County live in two government-supplied trailers, one of them located in the parking lot of a prison, largely because residence restrictions make it almost impossible for them to find a legal home after they are released:
In New York State, laws prohibit sex offenders on parole or whose victims were younger than 18 from residing within 1,000 feet of schools or other child care facilities. In 2006, Suffolk [County] passed a law extending the distance for all sex offenders to a quarter mile. Southampton [a Suffolk County beach town] later stretched that to up to a mile.
As I explained in a 2011 Reason article about sex offenders, there are several problems with such rules:
There is no evidence that residence restrictions prevent crime and little reason to think they would. Sex offenders are free to move around over the course of a day, and residence restrictions do not even notionally prevent them from finding victims more than 1,000 feet, a quarter mile, or a mile from their homes. Furthermore, data from the Justice Department’s National Crime Victimization Survey indicate that more than 90 percent of sexually abused minors are assaulted by relatives or acquaintances, not by strangers who happen to live near a playground or school.
Residence restrictions are indiscriminate. The rules are supposed to be aimed at people who pose a special threat to children. Yet New York’s law applies to all sex offenders on parole, whether or not their crimes involved minors. Even a sex offense involving a minor, which triggers lifelong residence restrictions under New York’s law, does not necessarily mark someone as a menace to children. An 18-year-old who had consensual sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend, for instance, is not exactly a child molester. The same might be true, depending on the details, of the Southampton trailer dweller who was convicted of “disseminating pornography among minors.”
Residence restrictions promote recidivism. By effectively banishing sex offenders from most (sometimes nearly all) of a city or county and forcing them to live together in trailers, in cheap motels, in campgrounds, orunder bridges, often far from therapy and employment opportunities, the restrictions impede reintegration and rehabilitation, making new crimes more likely. They also undermine the registration systems championed by the same people who support residence restrictions, since it is hard to keep tabs on homeless sex offenders.
Even some advocates of residence restrictions concede they have gone too far:
“When you propose a law restricting sex offenders to 1,000 feet from any bus stop, that’s just not going to work,” said Laura A. Ahearn, executive director of Parents for Megan’s Law and the Crime Victims Center, who lives on Long Island. “You have to be reasonable.”
Since their costs are clear and their benefits are unproven at best, it is hard to see how any residence restrictions count as reasonable. All they seem to offer is emotional satisfaction and a false sense of security.
Today my Criminal Law class went to visit the LA County Men’s Central Jail. The picture above is from an ACLU visit to that jail. When we walked down the line, the men in these cells said things to us like, “Don’t feed the animals!” and yelled out how long their sentences were. Sadly, it really did feel a lot like we were watching animals in a zoo.
The LA County Men’s Central Jail is different from most others because it is a “free roaming” jail, which means the general prison population gets to walk from place to place around the jail unattended. This is partially because there simply aren’t enough officers to escort the 4500 inmates around. The officers told us that there are now only 50 officers to watch over the entire population.
The most interesting part of the jail (to me) was the “homosexual block.” Gay inmates are housed together in a series of four blocks. They’re separated from the general population for their own safety, according to the officers. Unlike the general population, the gay blocks don’t have individual cells. Each block is basically a big room full of bunk beds, with a small open area that has some pay-phones, toilets, and a pull-up bar. The showers are in another corner, basically open to the room.
I asked how the officers tell that someone is gay, and the officer said they self-identify when they come in. Many general population inmates try to identify as gay because the living space is better in the gay block, so the officers developed a questionnaire to weed out the liars (and boy do I want to know what questions are on that quiz!). Even when some straight inmates ace the quiz, the gay prisoners soon figure it out and rat them out to the warden.
The officers were saying that the gay inmates have a very tight-knit community, don’t segregate themselves by race like the general population does, are generally less violent, and they even threw a New Year’s Eve party together. Some of the handmade decorations were still hanging from the ceiling when we visited today. It almost seemed like the officers liked the gay inmates better than the general population. Some are trans women, and one of the officers talked with me about how he had gotten used to referring to them as “she” and “her,” which I found really surprising, given the stories you hear about officers’ general intolerance and homophobia.
It was definitely not what I was expecting to see. But it was eye-opening and important. If my career in law takes me to a DA’s office, I can guarantee I’ll always remember that the people we send to jail end up in places like the one I saw today: overcrowded, dirty, violent, and boring.
(Source: lawsofmodernman, via thefewtheproud)
(Source: airows)
(Source: airows)
