Monthly Archive: December 2021

Does the Electorate Want More Prison or Less?

by · Dec 8, 2021 12:08 pm

With a hat-tip to Sentencing Law and Policy, I bring you this poll from the Pew Research Center, a center-left outfit that often does useful research.  The question it asked was whether respondents thought people convicted of crime spend too much, too little, or about the right amount of time in prison.  The results will not come as good news to those campaigning for “decarceration” (and thus, though they refuse to admit it, more grisly episodes like the Waukesha massacre).

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FBI releases 2020 incident-level crime statistics

by · Dec 8, 2021 10:52 am

On December 6, the FBI released detailed 2020 crime data for offenses reported to law enforcement in the United States. According to the 2020 data, nearly 9 million crimes were reported to police in 2020. 60.5% (about 5.4 million) were property crimes, 25.2% (about 2.2 million) were crimes against persons, and 14.3% (about 1.3 million) were crimes against society. The most commonly reported offenses were larceny/theft, assault, and drug/narcotic offenses, respectively.

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Risky Drug Dealing

by · Dec 8, 2021 5:34 am

Mental states are imperative for ascribing blame for most crimes.  We care whether someone does something purposefully, knowingly or recklessly.  Selling heroin is risky and unlawful behavior.  It is, of course, risky because you may get caught and go to prison.  But it is fraught with risk to those who buy the drugs.   People sometime die from the poison being sold to them.

But what if you are told by others that the heroin you are selling is unusually strong? Suppose further, those drugs eventually cause the death of another person?   Is that sufficient evidence of recklessness for a manslaughter conviction?

Apparently not in New York, according to the Court of Appeals in People v. Gaworecki.   New York uses the familiar Model Penal Code definition of recklessness, which requires evidence that a person consciously disregards a substantial and unjustified risk.  Even though the defendant in Gaworecki was told by another that the heroin he sold was exceptionally potent, the Court finds the fact that “[t]he People presented no evidence that defendant had been told that other people had overdosed or died after using the heroin he had sold them” (slip op. p. 8) as persuasive that that the evidence was insufficient for conviction.

To Progressives, Deaths Due Low Bail & Early Release Are Acceptable

by · Dec 6, 2021 3:50 pm

In a 2007 interview regarding his push for reducing cash bail for arrestees, Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm told reporters “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, who’s going to go out and kill sombody?  You bet. Guaranteed.  It’s guaranteed to happen, but it does not invalidate the overall approach.”  Rebecca Rosenberg and Michael Ruiz of Fox News report that this statement, and Chisholm’s success at implementing what one prosecutor call “the most lenient bail in all of Wisconsin,” has come back to haunt him in the aftermath of massacre at the Waukesha Christmas parade on November 21.  The suspect, habitual violent felon Darrell Brooks, was released in Milwaukee on $1,000 bail two weeks after his November 2nd arrest for running over his ex-girlfriend.  The the woman, the mother of Brooks’ child, was hospitalized with dislocated femur and fractured right ankle.

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School resource officers are also being defunded

by · Dec 3, 2021 3:55 pm

As communities across the nation evaluate their policing institutions amidst the “defund the police” movement, many school districts are examining their use of “school resource officers” (SROs), i.e., the use of sworn police officers in schools. Police presence in schools was once viewed as a critical resource in reducing violence in public schools, but recently the conversation has shifted as some call for complete elimination of SRO programs. Critics of SRO programs believe they do more harm than good, citing racial and ethnic disproportionality in school arrests and criminalization of adolescent behavior. At present, jurisdictions from all regions of the country have opted to eliminate their SRO programs, such as Oakland, Portland, Minneapolis, Rochester (NY), Seattle, and Denver. Others, such as Los Angeles, have voted to reduce budget allotments to school police departments.

Proponents of eliminating SRO programs believe in replacing school police with counselors, social workers, and other community-based providers to de-escalate and reduce disturbances while relying on police to respond during emergencies. This decision has sparked controversy though, and a number of jurisdictions remain divided on the issue (e.g., Memphis, the District of Columbia, and San Francisco, to name a few). Regarding California in particular, students have had a state constitutional right to safe schools since 1982, a right widely ignored and rarely even mentioned in conversations regarding the elimination of SRO programs. Students’ rights to safety in schools are even more relevant currently in light of increases in unexpected mass shooting incidents occurring at schools, and many believe that elimination of SRO programs could decrease school safety.

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Revered LA Philanthropist Murdered by Career Criminal

by · Dec 3, 2021 2:31 pm

The progressive dismantling of California’s criminal justice system has been going on for over ten years.  The ballot measures and legislation reducing or eliminating consequences for crimes have enjoyed the support of rich democrats living in and outside of the state.  While one of the primary contributors has been New York billionaire George Soros, dozens of rich California liberals living the in the San Francisco bay area and in the most expensive neighborhoods in Los Angeles County have also contributed millions to elect the legislators and the Governor who passed AB109 (so called Public Safety Realignment)  and ballot measures including Proposition 47 (the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act) and Proposition 57 (the Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act).   None of these measures had anything to do with public safety, but with enough campaign contributions the democrats were able to convince an unaware public that they would make them more safe.  When the data started showing that criminals benefiting from these policies were robbing, injuring and killing innocent Californians, the politicians and their allies in the press called it “fear mongering” and dismissed the statistics showing rising crime by noting that most of the state was far safer than it was 30 years ago, during the last statewide crime wave.

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Nearly 1,500 Homeless Died in LA During Pandemic

by · Dec 2, 2021 11:16 am

A UCLA study examining deaths among LA’s homeless population during the Covid-19 pandemic reports that 1,493 died in shelters and on the streets.  Nicholas Morgan of the International Business Times reports that most of the deaths over the 17 month study period (March 2020 to July 2021) were not attributed to the virus.  Roughly 40% of those who died on the streets and 60% who died in temporary housing were killed by drug or alcohol overdoses.   So while most Americans were sheltering in their homes, limiting their interaction with others, wearing masks for protection, and being vaccinated, the homeless, who did none of these things were overdosing on drugs or drinking themselves to death.   The fact that the rate of dying from these causes was much higher in government-funded housing than for those sleeping on the sidewalks is disturbing.  Maybe housing should not be the main focus of efforts to address the homeless.  Perhaps putting the homeless in a controlled environment focused on detox, mental health treatment along with job and life skills development might reduce deaths and actually restore some to self sufficiency.  The study also reveals the fact that homeless deaths in LA have been steadily increasing every year since 2014 and has been over 1,000 annually since 2018.