mrclay.rg

The Hard Road Ahead

I’m starting to believe the only way out of this recession and national deficit is through tough choices that offend the ideologies of every political party: higher taxes for everyone spending cuts, including the military bailouts for state/local safety nets that ease real human suffering, not select industries finding and migrating to foreign aid measures

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Cato on Cops and Cameras

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$374B of Bloody Cartel Money Laundered through U.S. Banks

I’ve been waiting for a story like this to come along. “It’s the banks laundering money for the cartels that finances the tragedy,” says Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009. Woods says he quit the bank in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling

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California’s upcoming Cannabis ballot initiative

In November Californians will see on their ballot the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. The act would basically “legalize” cannabis—all involved in such an industry would remain in violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act, and subject to the whims of the federal DEA and Dept. of Justice—for adults 21 and up,

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SCOTUS: Florida handed out cruel & unusal sentences

The Supreme Court today ruled that juveniles cannot be sentenced to life without parole for nonhomocide crimes. Good. How does Florida fit in the picture? Seventy-seven of the 129 American juveniles sentenced to LWOP are in Florida. Either Florida’s teens are the most evil in the nation or something in the CJS is wrong. Today

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Another Great Drug War Moment

From Radley Balko: In February, I wrote the following about a drug raid in Missouri: SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family’s pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on. They found a “small amount” of marijuana, enough for a misdemeanor charge. The parents were then charged with child endangerment.

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Yet Another Sexting Prosecution Attempt

You know what could help teens deal with the new pressures that technology brings to adolescence? Felony records and “sex offender” labels! The latest case brings felony charges against kids of 12 and 13 (via Radley Balko). I’ve been meaning to write about this issue, but just read these instead: Radley Balko: “Ruining Kids in

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HOPE Turns Into a Bill

Sent to my House Representative Corrine Brown (links added here): Ms. Brown, I encourage you to support H.R. 4055, Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) Initiative Act of 2009. Hawaiian Judge Alm’s probation and parole reform program has shown we can significantly reduce both crime and imprisonment. The program is a clear winner all around:

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Latest 9/11 Victim: our Justice System

Greenwald makes a pretty convincing case that Bush/Obama’s “justice system” for accused terrorists is merely for display purposes only. If you’re accused of being a Terrorist, there’s not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you

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Top 5 Random Depressing Problems in Criminal Justice

(Written in August) Forensic science is already shaky and, if DNA can be fabricated, it’s about to get even shakier. The public defender system is poorly funded and in shambles. Poor, mentally ill youths generally end up dumped in jail Florida sends a lot of teens to prison for life Our prisons are no longer

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Thoughts on The Wire Season One

(From January 7) Over the break Kathleen and I watched a bunch of movies, but season 1 of The Wire delivered beyond the hype it got from friends. It gives a crash course on the frustration and futility of local cops fighting drug gangs on the street level in West Baltimore. The police jump through

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Skateboarding and the (Fake) Broken Windows Theory

Nike’s latest glossy skate video “Debacle” is stitched around several highly-realistic, faked acts of vandalism and assault, but none shocking if you’ve watched a lot of skate videos; I just assumed they were real until the disclaimer appeared at the end. I’ve seen pros show off how they cut chains to break into schools; accidentally

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Kleiman on Crime and Punishment

Remind your fiscally conservative politician that all these have severe public costs: Crime Prison cells Disease spread in overcrowded prisons Reduced number of working citizens Broken families and lack of role models Public fear of victimization Evidence shows we can have a criminal justice system that actually convinces most criminals to give up crime while

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Why Our Government Shouldn’t Kill

From a comment on a Radley Balko post about Troy Davis: …the state can’t be trusted to sort the innocent from the guilty with the 100% accuracy necessary for executions to be morally defensible, even if death is a theoretically just punishment… From what I read everyday it’s abundantly clear that this is true. The

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