Lessons from Crime and Punishment in El Salvador

by · Dec 9, 2022 9:56 am

Hans Bader has this post at Liberty Unyielding: “The murder rate has fallen by two thirds since 2018, and crime has fallen by 75%, in El Salvador as it has imprisoned large numbers of criminals. The country has put a hefty 2% of its adult population in prison. This is due to the anti-crime policies of its current president, Nayib Bukele.”

Bader quotes an essay by Edgar Beltrán at Law and Liberty:

In 2015, El Salvador reached a sky-high 103 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. The year before Bukele came to power, it was 51 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Now, it is 17.6, about half the rate of American cities such as Philadelphia or Chicago…. Bukele is, by far, the most popular, democratically elected leader in the world. Independent polls have his local approval rating around 80 or 85%. The explanation is relatively simple: El Salvador went from being one of the most violent countries in the world, absolutely dominated by criminal gangs, to reducing crime by 75%. Bukele promised to end crime and he delivered … by putting in jail almost 2% of the adult population of the country.

Continue reading . . .

Gascon Policy Reduces Charges for Illegal Alien Criminals

by · Dec 8, 2022 9:41 am

In an effort to protect them from deportation, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has announced a policy that requires prosecutors to drop or reduce the charges against offenders in the country illegally.  Louis Casiano and Bill Melugin of Fox News report that the new directive requires deputy DAs to make their charging decisions based upon whether or not they would effect the possibility an offender being deported, including aliens legally in the country.   As a sanctuary state, California law prohibits local police from cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities regarding illegals, but ICE can still track down and arrest offenders who have been convicted of serious or violent crimes, without help from local police.  In many cases the new policy will result in dropping gun and gang enhancements which could trigger deportation.  This policy creates two classes of criminals in Los Angeles;  legal and illegal alien criminals who will be undercharged or diverted to avoid deportation, and U.S. citizens who break the law and face the full consequences for their crimes.  While the policy is almost certainly unconstitutional, it demonstrates how little regard for public safety or equity Gascon and his supporters have.

New U.S. Supreme Court Rules

by · Dec 5, 2022 3:22 pm

The U.S. Supreme Court has amended its rules, effective the first of the year. Among the changes, people filing “friend of the court” briefs no longer have to ask consent of the parties. The clerk’s comments on the changes note, “While the consent requirement may have served a useful gatekeeping function in the past, it no longer does so, and compliance with the rule imposes unnecessary burdens upon litigants and the Court.” Amen. Continue reading . . .

Sentencing Length and Recidivism: A Review of the Research

by · Dec 5, 2022 2:49 pm

We previously announced a working paper, Sentence Length and Recidivism: A Review of the Research, in May 2021 and announced an update last June. We are pleased to announce that the review has now been published in a peer-reviewed journal, Federal Sentencing Reporter, in the October issue. (Vol. 35, No. 1) The permanent link to the published version is https://doi.org/10.1525/fsr.2022.35.1.59. The paper is also available on CJLF’s website.

Here is the abstract:

In response to prison overcrowding concerns in recent years, many U.S. officials have undertaken efforts to reduce sentence lengths for certain crimes. However, it is unclear how these changes affect recidivism rates. Among the research on incarceration and recidivism, the majority of studies compare custodial with noncustodial sentences, while fewer examine the impact of varying incarceration lengths. This article reviews the research on the latter. Overall, the effect of incarceration length on recidivism appears too heterogeneous to draw universal conclusions, and findings are inconsistent across studies due to methodological limitations. For example, many study samples are skewed toward people with shorter sentences while others include confounds that render results invalid. Of the studies reviewed, some suggested that longer sentences provide additional deterrent benefits in the aggregate, though some studies also had null effects. None suggested a strong aggregate-level criminogenic effect. We argue that a conclusion that longer sentences have a substantial criminogenic effect, large enough to offset incapacitative effects, cannot be justified by the existing literature.

That last sentence is important. Continue reading . . .

SCOTUS Monday

by · Dec 5, 2022 8:14 am

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued an orders list from last week’s conference. No new cases were taken up. There are no criminal cases on this week’s oral argument docket.

The Court currently seems to be less interested in criminal law issues than in past years. To some extent, no news is good news. Federal constitutional limitations on state criminal law run only in the defendant’s favor. In addition, changes in the law in the defendant’s favor often have retroactive effect, while changes in the prosecution’s favor rarely do. So lack of change is, at least in part, good for law enforcement.

On the other hand, there are a lot of rules with no real basis in the Constitution that one might think that an originalist-dominated Supreme Court would want to get rid of. One possible explanation is that the Court has a sort of budget for turmoil and has spent it all in other fields for the time being. That could change as the storms from last term’s decisions subside. Continue reading . . .

CA Gives Thousands of Sex Offenders Early Release

by · Dec 1, 2022 11:04 am

An investigative report by Josh Boswell of the Daily Mail discovered that thousands of sex offenders are being release from California prisons and jails after serving only a fraction of their sentences.  Using the search function in the state’s Megan’s Law database, which tracks sex offenders in the state, Boswell found that over the past several years over 7,000 offenders convicted of molesting children under 14-years-old spent less than a year behind bars.  This does not include 365 pedophiles convicted of continuous sexual abuse of a child, who were also released after less than a year.  The article lists multiple offenders who spend just a few days in jail after conviction.  On example is Gualterio Lopez Contreras, who was convicted of lewd and lascivious acts on a child, for continuous sexual abuse including sodomy by force.  He was sentenced to three years in prison, and walked free after less than a year.

Continue reading . . .

A Fascinating Video on Men and Our Culture

by · Dec 1, 2022 7:16 am

It is well known that the largest factor associated with crime is biological: being a man. However, the etiology of crime in most other respects is driven by culture.  NYU Professor Scott Galloway provides a fascinating interview that covers many topics, including the crisis (and it is a crisis) of masculinity in modern America.  Not all will agree with every point he makes, but it is a sobering account of what is wrong and what can be done.

Missouri Executes Cop Killer

by · Nov 30, 2022 3:20 pm

A Missouri felon, who executed a St. Louis police officer in 2005, was put to death by lethal injection yesterday.  Jim Salter of the Associated Press reports that the state Supreme Court had twice denied to stay Kevin Johnson’s execution and the Governor refused to grant him clemency.   Johnson was on probation for beating his girlfriend when on July 5 police officers, including Sergent William McEntee, came to his house to investigate the ownership of a vehicle he allegedly possessed.  As officers approached the house Johnson told his 12-year-old brother to run next door to his grandmother’s home.  Facts presented in the Missouri Supreme Court’s 2013 decision denying habeas corpus relief indicate that once the brother, who had congenital hear disease, got next door he had a seizure and died later in the hospital.  While officers attended to the boy and called an ambulance, McEntee kept the grandmother from entering the house.  The officers eventually left the neighborhood, but hours later Sergent McEntee returned to investigate a report of illegal fireworks.  As he was in his patrol car talking to some teens, Johnson approached saying. “you killed my brother’ and shot McEntee five times.

Continue reading . . .