ONE IN FIVE CALIFORNIANS

According to a new survey released on Thursday, 1 in 5 Californians has been a victim of a crime in the past five years. Surprisingly, of those crime victims surveyed, the majority did not favor tougher laws, but rather wanted wanted prisons that were more rehabilitative and, in certain instances, favored treatment programs for certain kinds of crimes, rather than incarceration.

The survey, which was commissioned by Californians for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that advocates for criminal justice reform, reported among its findings that:

– Two-thirds of crime victims reported negative emotional affects in the aftermath, namely “anxiety, stress, and difficulty with sleeping, relationships or work,” often lasting six months or more

– Victims surveyed preferred investments in mental health and drug treatments by a three-to-one margin over incarceration.

-- Three in four victims believed that prisons either make inmates better at committing crimes or have no impact at all. Only a small minority believes that prisons rehabilitate people.

– When asked about California’s rates of incarceration, 36 percent of the victims surveyed said that we send “too many” people to prison, 33 percent said, “too few.”

-- The victims wanted a focus on supervised probation and rehabilitation by a two-to-one margin over prisons and jails (50 percent to 23 percent)

– 65 percent of the victims favored realignment, Gov. Jerry Brown’s AB109 program of sending low-level felons to county jail instead of state prison, and 24 percent opposed realignment.

A SNAPSHOT OF CRIME VICTIMS

“These findings will surprise people,” said David Binder, head of David Binder Research. His firm conducted the study in April 2013 with 2,600 Californians that matched the state’s demographics and geographies according to the 2010 Census.

According to Binder, the full survey was conducted with the 500 respondents who identified as crime victims. “We found that a small portion of the population–mostly young men of color—experiences the lion’s share of crime, whereas a larger majority experience none at all.”

“This report turns on its head the notion that victims only care about tough-on-crime sentences,” said Lenore Anderson, Director of Californians for Safety and Justice. Anderson said that crime victims want leaders to be “smart on crime. They believe we send too many people to prison, and they want more investment in education, mental health and drug treatment, supervised probation, and rehabilitation. In that way, their views very much align with overall public opinion, despite victims’ unique and often tragic experiences with crime.”

WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO SPEAK FOR VICTIMS & SURVIVORS?

Indeed, the survey’s results fly in the face of the points of view expressed by traditional crime victims advocacy organizations like Crime Victims United of California that, for the last 30 years, have been among the state’s most powerful lobbying forces. By aligning themselves politically and fiscally with the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., the union that represents the state’s prison guards, and with the state’s district attorneys associations, these victims rights (VR) groups were able to push for tough-on-crime legislation that, in turn, ushered an interweave of sentencing statutes that has made California’s prison system the second largest in the nation (behind Texas).

These traditional victims groups, however, represent a specific demographic as they are made up largely of white women and some white men.

When the survey came out, Harriet Salarno, director Crime Victims United of California declared herself “outraged” by the report, which she characterized not “a true representation of how victims feel.”

Yet, the new survey indicates—and other research supports—that the majority of crime victims tend to be young African American or Latino males, most of whom reported that they had friends and family who had also been victimized, and the majority of whom do not appear, in general, to share the opinons of Salarno’s group and the rest of the long-established and influential victims of crime movement.

A DIFFERENT DIALOGUE WITH VICTIMS

In addition to measuring attitudes toward crime and punishment, the survey—which bills itself as the first ever survey of California crime victims—also looks at the unmet needs of this crime victims and survivors demographic, and and asks the respondents about their experiences with victim services, and about whether they reported the crime to law enforcement.

In addition, Californians for Safety and Justice has a line-up of crime victims and survivors who work with the organization, one of whom, the widow of a police officer, spoke affectingly to reporters during Thursday morning’s phone-in press conference. [See videos above and below.]

The survey—and the testimonies—are an interesting way of rebooting a conversation about state policy that, heretofore, has been dominated by one very narrow definition of victims.

Let us hope the conversation continues.

One of California’s most committed, practical, gets-his-hands-dirty, knowledgable and impassioned advocates for locked-up kids is Scott Budnick—who in his day job is the executive producer for all three of the insanely successful Hangover movies.

Yeah, that Scott Budnick.

(The above videos give glimpses into Budnick’s two worlds.)

Michael Mechanic interviews Budnick for Mother Jones Magazine.

We think you’ll find the whole interview quite interesting, but to start you off, here’s a clip from the intro, and another from the interview itself:

“I was very skeptical when I first met him,” recalls Julio Marcial, who oversees violence prevention programs for the California Wellness Foundation, one of Budnick’s primary funders. That introduction took place at the Sylmar branch of LA County’s juvenile hall, circa 2003. Budnick was volunteering at the time (and still does) with InsideOUT Writers, a Hollywood nonprofit that brings journalists and creative types into juvie to help incarcerated kids find positive ways to express themselves. “I’ve seen Hollywood folks come and go. I’ve seen people do this to make themselves feel better,” Marcial says. “But when I asked the kids why this program was so important to them, they said Scott was the consistent adult in their lives. He became a fatherlike figure to them.”

“He’s the real deal,” confirms my friend Alex Busansky, a former prosecutor who has served on the Los Angeles County Commission on Jail Violence and now runs the National Council on Crime & Delinquency.

And now here’s a snipped from the Q & A:

SB:…when I moved out here, I spent my first few years working in Hollywood and kind of staying within the bubble, going out to nice restaurants and bars and hanging out with other assistants and talking about the business. After three or four years, I just found that so incredibly boring. And luckily Matthew Mizell, a friend of mine who works for another filmmaker, said—it was 2003 at this point—”Come down to Sylmar, I teach this creative writing class.” So I went. It was truly one of the most humbling, mind-blowing mornings of my life. And that kind of started my journey.

MJ: What was so striking about it?

SB: It opens your eyes to what’s really happening in our cities. I sat at a table with 12 kids, 14 to 17 years old, who were all facing life in prison. None of them had fathers and they’d all been physically or sexually or emotionally abused, and very poor schools and poor peers and very loose family structure—not enough discipline and not enough love. Most of them came from the foster care system. Then one day they decide not to be victims anymore and they commit a crime and they hurt somebody, and to me it’s like society threw them away and forget about them. The idea that intrigued me the most was, “They go from the kids that we pour our hearts out to to the kids we are terrified of because of one action?” I thought, you know what, I think I can have an effect here. I can understand these kids’ stories. I tried to just go in and be there for them.
…

[BIG SNIP]

MJ: What do the kids think about this rich guy coming in and spending time with them?

SB: I think at first I was looked at as this rich guy from Hollywood who probably wears cool tennis shoes or something that’s intriguing to them. But after a while that goes away, and they’re wondering if this is really a guy who will fight for them. So it takes time. Once they realize what I’ll do if they show that they are serious about changing their lives and really doing the right thing, then I think that ends up defining our relationship. By the way, when I go into prisons, inmates are coming up to me literally every five seconds going, “Aren’t you the Hangover guy? Aren’t you the Hangover guy?” It definitely is an interesting identity….

Read on to find out how Budnick (who—full disclosure—is a pal of WLA’s) got into the “Hangover” business, and his next goal in helping to reform the state’s lock-up policies.

SANTA CLARA’S GRAND GAMBLE ON A NON-PUNITIVE YOUTH RANCH HELPS TRIGGER NEW BILL

In 2006, Santa Clara County Probation Chief Sheila Mitchell took a leap of faith and invested in some of her most visionary juvenile probation supervisors and got the necessary $3 million to turn the county’s main juvenile lock-up—the William F. James Boys Ranch—into a facility that emphasized helping lawbreaking kids change their lives, rather than simply trying to force them to correct their behaviors. Since the latter strategy had been notably ineffective judging by juvenile recidivism rates in Santa Clara and around the state, Mitchell decided it was time to try something different.

Brian Goldstein, a policy analyst with the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, writes for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange about how Santa Clara’s gamble paid off, in lives and in statistical outcomes, and how a new California bill—AB915—aims to incentivize the creation of similar youth facilities by other California counties.

Here’s a clip:

…Increasingly, experts are recognizing that the best way to improve public safety is to rely less on state correctional institutions for treating youth offenders, and more on the dynamic therapeutic approach delivered at the county level.

In late April, the staff of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice (CJCJ) toured a facility that exemplified this trend, the William F. James Boys Ranch in California’s Santa Clara County.

James Ranch is a co-ed, 96-bed residential facility for young people between the ages of 15 ½ and 18, situated in the rolling foothills south of San Jose. The facility and staff are not only driven by a passion for improving the lives of local justice-involved youth, but challenge the conventional thinking by showing that they can receive successful, positive treatments locally. The facility has adopted many components of what is now recognized as a model system, including small dorm facilities, staff focused on youth wellness, and therapeutic programming that is gender-specific and culturally competent.

The ranch wasn’t always this way. Previously, the facility operated under a model focused more on behavioral regulation, which the county’s probation department now recognizes as antithetical to successful outcomes. The correctional approach was expensive, yet resulted in many escapes, numerous violent incidents and high recidivism rates.

Read the rest for details on AB 915, which basically takes a percentage of the $$ savings realized when the counties send fewer high risk kids to the state juvie facilities, and uses those savings to create “a funding stream for developing the model practices and leadership such as those found at James Ranch.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: WLA has also visited the James Ranch as part of a series on California’s juvenile facilites that we have planned for the fall. We too were extremely impressed by what we saw.

MORE ON LA ARCHDIOCESE’S SECRET FILES ON ALLEGED MOLESTATION CASES

The LA Times’ Victoria Kim has an interesting article in Tuesday’s paper about the Catholic Church’s tradition of keeping a second set of books on sensitive subjects within the church, things like a priest’s history of child sexual abuse allegations. In other words, rather than destroying any problematic documents, the church simply tucked them away in confidential files or C-files, that were only for church higher-ups to see.

The docu-dump of clergy abuse files that occurred earlier this year was largely from this cache.

Here’s an explanatory clip from Kim’s story:

Since the time of the Enlightenment, the Catholic Church has maintained two sets of records: one for the mundane and a second “secret archive” for matters of a sensitive nature. The cache — known as sub secreto files, Canon 489 files, confidential files or C-files — was to be kept under lock and key, only for the eyes of the bishop and his trusted few.

After the files became known to prosecutors and plaintiff’s lawyers, the American justice system has pried open the doors to an archive long kept sealed. Thousands of additional pages are set to become public in coming months, as more than a dozen Catholic orders — Salesians, Claretians, Vincentians and others — prepare to bare their own secrets pursuant to agreements with victims. L.A. County Superior Court Judge Emilie Elias could set the date for their release at a hearing Tuesday.

It was, however, at the very end of the article that Kim noted the reason that this whole C-file business should be of special interest to Los Angeles:

Terry McKiernan, founder of BishopAccountability.org which collects clergy sex-abuse related documents from across the U.S., said [retired Cardinal Roger] Mahony was clearly a far more meticulous keeper of records than his predecessors and that may have hurt him when the archive was made public.

“I don’t know of any other diocesan archive where scheming to manipulate reporting laws and access of law enforcement to these cases is as explicit as in these L.A. documents,” he said.

That last sentence is interesting. How exactly, one wonders, did Mahoney limit access of law enforcement to cases of child molestation that were actually reported? Were there instances that members of LA law enforcement allowed themselves to be persuaded by Mahoney not to aggressively pursue certain cases? Or were they as much in the dark as everybody else?

FAMILIES AND ADVOCATES GATHER TO CELEBRATE FOSTER MOTHERS

This past Sunday, the non-profit organization Foster Care Counts hosted the Fifth Annual Foster Mother’s Day event in LA, home to the nation’s largest foster care system. Fifteen-hundred foster moms and their families gathered to celebrate Mother’s Day and National Foster Month with food, family activities, and entertainment.

We received some excellent photos of the festivities, like this foster mother with her sweet baby…

…and this happy group of kids getting ready to play some carnival games:

As journalists, we so often cover the tragedy and letdowns in foster care, it’s nice to take a moment and recognize the many decent folks who are giving kids homes.

WILL LAUSD VOTE TO BAN SUSPENSIONS FOR “WILLFUL DEFIANCE?”

Tuesday, the LAUSD Board of Education will vote on a resolution authored by LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia to ban suspensions for “willful defiance,” and to provide new guidelines for school discipline. (For more on the resolution, hop over to our April post.)

The LA Times’ Teresa Watanabe has the story. Here’s how it opens:

Damien Valentine knows painfully well about a national phenomenon that is imperiling the academic achievement of minority students, particularly African Americans like himself: the pervasive and disproportionate use of suspensions from school for mouthing off and other acts of defiance.

The Manual Arts Senior High School sophomore has been suspended several times beginning in seventh grade, when he was sent home for a day and a half for refusing to change his seat because he was talking. He said the suspensions never helped him learn to control his behavior but only made him fall further behind.

“Getting suspended doesn’t solve anything,” Valentine said. “It just ruins the rest of the day and keeps you behind.”

But Valentine, who likes chemistry and wants to be a doctor, is determined to change school discipline practices. He has joined a Los Angeles County-wide effort to push a landmark proposal by school board President Monica Garcia that would make L.A. Unified the first school district in California to ban suspensions for willful defiance.

BROOKLYN D.A. REVIEWING FIFTY MURDER CONVICTIONS INVOLVING RENOWNED NYPD DETECTIVE

The Brooklyn D.A.’s office has ordered a review of around fifty closed homicide cases involving retired NYPD Detective Louis Scarcella. The review comes after the release of wrongfully convicted David Ranta, who was locked up for twenty-three years on a false confession obtained by Scarcella. It was also triggered by the findings from an NY Times review of a dozen other cases.

We urge you to read the entirety of this wild and alarming tale.

The New York Times’ Frances Robles and N. R. Kleinfield have the story. Here’s a clip:

The office’s Conviction Integrity Unit will reopen every murder case that resulted in a guilty verdict after being investigated by Detective Louis Scarcella, a flashy officer who handled some of Brooklyn’s most notorious crimes during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s.

The development comes after The New York Times examined a dozen cases involving Mr. Scarcella and found disturbing patterns, including the detective’s reliance on the same eyewitness, a crack-addicted prostitute, for multiple murder prosecutions and his delivery of confessions from suspects who later said they had told him nothing. At the same time, defense lawyers, inmates and prisoner advocacy organizations have contacted the district attorney’s office to share their own suspicions about Mr. Scarcella.

The review by the office of District Attorney Charles J. Hynes will give special scrutiny to those cases that appear weakest — because they rely on either a single eyewitness or confession, officials said. The staff will re-interview available witnesses, and study any new evidence. If they feel a conviction was unjust, prosecutors could seek for it to be dismissed.

MIRANDA AND DZHOKHAR TSARNAEV: WHEN WE’RE SURE THAT SOMEONE HAS DONE SOMETHING TERRIBLE, WHEN MUST WE READ HIM HIS RIGHTS?

Of course we want the feds to have gotten everything possible our of Dzhokar Tsarnaev before he started clamming up. But is that merely an emotional position or a legally justifiable one? (Do remember, that the rights we give away in exceptionally moments often tend to stay given away.)

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev talked for 16 hours before he was read his rights. Emily Bazelon of Slate thinks that’s too long. Here’s a clip from her discussion-provoking essay on the matter.

According to the AP, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev answered questions for 16 hours before he was read the Miranda warning that he could remain silent and could ask for a lawyer. Once Tsarnaev was told that, he stopped talking. (So much for the idea that everyone has heard Miranda warnings so many times on TV that they have become an empty ritual.) The AP also reports that the investigators questioning him were “surprised when a magistrate judge and a representative from the U.S. Attorney’s office entered the hospital room.” The investigators “had planned to keep questioning him.”

Wow. That’s bad no matter your point of view. If you think Tsarnaev doesn’t deserve the normal protections American law affords criminal suspects, then you’d want the FBI to keep at him as long as they chose. Or if, like me, you’re worried about how far the Obama administration’s Justice Department has stretched the limited “public safety” exception the Supreme Court has allowed for questioning suspects about ongoing danger without Miranda warnings, 16 hours sounds expansive.

It’s true that Miranda offers protection only after the fact. Technically, the rule is violated not when investigators fail to give the warnings, but when they try to introduce in court a confession or other facts a suspect revealed before he was read his rights. It’s also true that given the mountain of evidence against Tsarneav, he could be convicted without his own statements. But that may not be true with the next terrorist suspect—or the next hated man for whom the government decides to stretch the public safety exception. The Justice Department is setting a precedent here. And how does that precedent directly involve public safety, when all of law enforcement reassured the public that safety had been restored once Tsarnaev was captured Friday night, and that the authorities strongly believed he and his brother, Tamerlan, had acted alone?

Read on. There’s a lot more.

CAN I SAY I’M SORRY? IS THERE A PLACE FOR APOLOGIES IN CRIMINAL COURT?

This research paper on the value of—and legal difficulty with—apologies by defendants in criminal court, by Professor Michael Jones of the Phoenix School of Law, covers an interesting question.

Here’s the abstract:

This paper is written for the purpose of addressing the power and possibility of early apologies in the criminal justice system. As constructed, our criminal justice system rewards defendants that learn early in their case to remain silent, and punishes those that talk. Defendants that may want to offer an apology or allocution for the harm they’ve caused are often required to wait until a sentencing hearing, which may come months, or even years after the event in question. This paper proposes that the Arizona Rules of Criminal Procedure be modified to provide an exception for apology to criminal defendants. Apologies can play an invaluable role in the healing process for victims, defendants, family members and others tied together by the unfortunate events of a criminal prosecution. This paper seeks to further the comprehensive law movement approach that promotes a healing process for those involved in the criminal justice system.

An here’s the full paper if you’d like to take a look.

(A thank you, once again, to the excellent Doug Berman of Sentencing, Law & Policy, for flagging this paper.)

THE KOCH-BROS, THE LA TIMES, AND A NOT-SO-MODEST PROPOSALS

Now that the shock of the Koch duo’s possible purchase of the LA Times and other Tribune Corp papers is nearly a week old, a whole second wave of reactions has been surfacing, some of them….odd.

Take, for example, this somewhat untethered column by the Washington Post’s Steve Perlstein in which Perlstein breathlessly suggests that he knows a sure fire way that the LAT employees can save the paper from the marauding Koch-sters.

Ready?

Everyone should quit. (Right, Steve. That’d show ‘em.)

“If the Times journalists,” he writes…

….”….decide collectively to walk out the door one day, the readers and advertisers are almost certain to follow.

“A new owner, of course, could hire new journalists, and certainly there are plenty of them out there looking for a job. But it would take time to attract them, get them working as a team and weed out the inevitable clunkers…

“And in the meantime, competing news organizations would be quick to pick up Tribune’s stars and use them to lure away readers and advertisers at a time when circulation and revenue are already under pressure. Hell, in the age of the Internet, the rebellious journalists could easily start their own news organizations and grab a good chunk of their old readership within weeks.
This is a rare moment for Tribune’s beleaguered journalists. For the first time in a long time, they actually have leverage. They’d be crazy not to use it….”

This is, of course, quite nuts.

But read the rest anyway.

WA PO’S HEROLD MEYERSON SAYS MANY TIMES STAFFERS

Washington Post columnist Herold Meyerson spent years as a political journalist in LA, so it’s understandable that he would feel moved to weigh in on the possibility of the Koch brothers as buyers for the LA Times, and about the necessity of remembering that a newspaper isn’t just a business; it’s also a civic trust.

Here’s a couple of clips:

On May 21, Los Angeles voters will go to the polls to select a new mayor. Who will govern Los Angeles, however, is only the second-most important local question in the city today. The most important, by far, is who will buy the Los Angeles Times.

The Times is one of the eight daily newspapers now owned by the creditors who took control of the Tribune Co. after real estate wheeler-dealer Sam Zell drove it into bankruptcy. Others include the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun, the Orlando Sentinel and the Hartford Courant. The Tribune board members whom the creditors selected want to unload the papers in favor of more money-making ventures.
Fans of newspapers are a jumpy lot these days. And in the past couple of weeks, their apprehension has gone through the roof with word that right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch are looking to buy all eight papers.

[BIG SNIP]

Being human beings, all newspaper owners have politics of their own. Since the 19th century, however, most haven’t gone into business primarily to advance a political perspective. Profit, professional and civic pride, and recognition have largely motivated them. It’s hard to see how any of these factored into the Koch brothers’ calculations.

In their very brief no-comment on the sale rumors, the Kochs took care to note, “We respect the independence of the journalistic institutions” owned by Tribune, but the staffs at those papers fear that, once Kochified, the papers would quickly turn into print versions of Fox News. A recent informal poll that one L.A. Times writer conducted of his colleagues showed that almost all planned to exit if the Kochs took control (and that included sports writers and arts writers). Those who stayed would have to grapple with how to cover politics and elections in which their paper’s owners played a leading role. It’s also unclear who in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most liberal cities, would actually want to read such a paper, but then the Kochs don’t appear to view this as a money-making venture.

Though slimmed down from its glory days, the L.A. Times remains a great newspaper, as its recent stories on increasing employer surveillance of blue-collar workers illustrate. But the paper that, under the reign of publisher-owner Otis Chandler in the 1960s and ’70s, moved to the apex of American journalism has suffered a string of indifferent-to-godawful owners, ranging from Mr. Chandler’s cousins to Mr. Zell — that rare journalism mogul who actively hated journalism and journalists….

MEANWHILE…Marcelle Pacatte writing for Crains Chicago Business urges his fellow Chicagoans not to be afraid of the “big, bad Koch Brothers.”

When I woke up from surgery, as I was laying in ICU, I started to hate the man who shot me. I hated him with a passion. I hated him so much. Every breath of air I took was to hate him. He was sentenced to life in prison. But I wasn’t satisfied with that. I wanted him dead. He should be dead for what he did to me. I didn’t care if the state of Wyoming killed him, or another inmate killed him, I wanted him dead.

-Wyoming Highway Patrolman, Steve Watt

Before he was shot five times— once in the eye, and four times in the lower back—-Steve Watt was, in his own words, a pro-gun Republican who believed “if you’re not a cop or a family member of a cop, you’re a dirtbag.”

After Watt was gunned down by an armed bank robber whose car Watt unwittingly stopped when the robber was on his way out of the county, the injured patrolman, once a man who depended on his physical strength, struggled miserably with recovery. He was in pain every day, due to the damage caused by the bullets. In the winter, the eyelid covering his artificial eye would freeze to the fake eye and had to be repeatedly unstuck.

His emotional state was no better. Even on the best days, Watt felt he was being eaten alive by the rage and hatred that had forcibly commandeered his psyche, post shooting.

“I finally couldn’t take anymore,” he said. “I couldn’t hate any more. I couldn’t be angry and bitter at him any more.”

But Watt didn’t know what to do instead. In desperation he did something that, at the time, struck him as crazy: he sat down and wrote a letter the man who shot him, his enemy, the object of his hatred. His assailant wrote him back. And, for the first time since he got out of the hospital, something new began to happen for Watt.

Victims of violent crime (and their wounded families, also victims)—have well-funded political lobbying organizations. But many find little in the way of effective emotional help as they try, painfully, to reweave functional lives out of the shattering that a terrible crime produces.

“Unlikely Friends,” a documentary by award winning filmmaker Leslie Neale—which has a special benefit screening this Saturday [see below]—profiles crime victims who take an unusual path to healing that is gaining increasing currency under the heading of restorative justice , an approach which postulates that the harm done by crime cannot be repaired merely through punishing the perpetrators.

Neale said she got the idea for this film years ago when working on another film, Road to Return a documentary about a unique prison reentry program. In the course of filming, she met victims who were struggling painfully with the after effects of crime. She also met perpetrators who wanted to face up to what they’d done and make some kind of amends, but had no clue how to do so. One such dyad Neale encountered, like Watt and his shooter, ended up meeting. Over the years, Neale heard many more accounts of healing for victims emerging out of confronting—and ultimately forgiving—the person who caused them harm.

Neale (who is married to former Doors drummer, John Densmore) has produced and directed a string of highly regarded documentaries that have strong social justice components. I met her when she was just finishing up “Juvies” a deeply affecting film about kids tried as adults in California, narrated by Mark Wahlberg. I have been a fan ever since. Thus I was not surprised that this new film of Neale’s packs such a wallop.

In some cases the victims Neale met could not talk to their perpetrators; the prison wouldn’t allow it. Or they found that their perpetrators were the angry ones, blaming everyone but themselves for the wreckage their actions had created. So the victims instead talked to others like their attackers, or their loved ones’ attackers. In the film, a mother of a murdered son talks to a room full of murderers, most of whom will never get out of prison. The surrogate process we witness, while not curative—for some wounds nothing is curative—is nonetheless visibly powerful and mysteriously salving .

Unlikely Friends, which I strongly urge you to see, is not any kind of feel good movie. It is not about forgiving and forgetting. It’s not about not holding people accountable.

It is, however, about a more radical accounting that—according to the victims who have experienced it— contains within it the seeds of healing that retribution alone does not.

Watching the film is an emotional experience that has its own healing effect.

Anyway, see Unlikely Friends. Then tell me what you think.

“UNLIKELY FRIENDS” SATURDAY BENEFIT SCREEENING, 5 PM

A special benefit screening of “Unlikely Friends,” is being held at the Barnsdall theater. It’s $25 for the screening and a reception that, I promise, will feature an interesting and varied crowd of people.

Click here to RSVP if you wish to attend.

All money raised from the screening will go to the Amity Foundation.

AND IN OTHER NEWS….PROBATION CHIEF JERRY POWERS SAYS THAT STATE ABSOLUTELY CANNOT EXPAND ON REALIGNMENT PLAN

As pressure is put on Jerry Brown to further cut the state’s prison population, county probation chiefs push back—LA County Probation Chief Jerry Powers among them.

KPPC’s Rina Palta has the story. Here’s a clip:

California has about a week and a half to come up with a plan for lowering its prison population by about 9,000 additional inmates by the end of the year.

L.A. County Chief Probation Officer Jerry Powers wants to be clear that one option is not on the table.

“Under no circumstances are counties interested in expanding the current realignment population,” Powers said.

Powers, appearing before the L.A. Board of Supervisors Tuesday, said he was just back from a meeting in Sacramento with officials from the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Powers said he and officials from other counties made it clear they’re not willing to take on any more new offenders.

CITY OF LA SETTLES FOR $4.WITH NEWSPAPER WOMEN SHOT AT BY POLICE DURING DORMER HUNT

Fox News Latino has the story. here’s a clip:

The city of Los Angeles reached a $4.2 million settlement on injury claims brought against the police department by two women who were hurt when police mistakenly opened fire on them during the manhunt for disgruntled ex-cop Christopher Dorner, an official said Tuesday.

City Attorney Carmen Trutanich announced the sum to KNBC-TV Los Angeles, and an attorney representing the women has confirmed the amount to The Associated Press.

The settlement means the women cannot pursue any future injury claims against the city.
The agreement is in addition to a $40,000 settlement reached earlier for the loss of the women’s pickup truck.

HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY GIDEON V. WAINWRIGHT – THE RIGHT TO AN ATTORNEY

We have all heard the text of the Miranda warning recited in films and on episodic TV shows at least a zillion times:

You have the right to remain silent.
Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
You have the right to an attorney.
If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.

What most of us don’t know or don’t remember is the fact that the last line—the thing about a lawyer being provided for those who can’t afford one—is a right that is only half a century old.

Monday, March 18, marks the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Gideon v. Wainwright, which guarantees the right to counsel for criminal defendants in state courts who
cannot afford an attorney.

But, despite this remarkable Supreme Court decision that changed American legal history, and despite the hard work of many dedicated public defenders, the system, say experts, is close to broken, with overloaded public defenders often able to spend little more than 3 hours on a clients entire case.

The AP’s Mark Sherman has a story on the topic. Here’s a clip:

….So that was the promise of Gideon — that a competent lawyer for the defense would stand on an equal footing with prosecutors, and that justice would prevail, at least in theory.

A half-century later, there are parts of the country where “it is better to be rich and guilty than poor and innocent,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former prosecutor. Leahy said court-appointed lawyers often are underpaid and can be “inexperienced, inept, uninterested or worse.”

Regardless of guilt or innocence, few of those accused of crimes are rich, while 80 percent say they are too poor to afford a lawyer.

People who work in the criminal justice system have become numb to the problems, creating a culture of low expectations, said Jonathan Rapping, a veteran public defender who has worked in Washington, D.C., Atlanta and New Orleans.

Rapping remembers walking into a courtroom in New Orleans for the first time for a client’s initial appearance before a judge. Several defendants in jump suits were shackled together in one part of the courtroom. The judge moved briskly through charges against each of the men, with a lawyer speaking up for each one.

Then he called a name and there was no lawyer present. The defendant piped up. “The guy said he hadn’t seen a lawyer since he was locked up 70 days ago. And no one in the courtroom was shocked. No one was surprised,” Rapping said.

A new award-winning documentary called “Gideon’s Army” gives a visceral feeling for the problem, and the idealism of some of the young public defenders who are trying to make a difference, despite the odds.

GIRLS & BOYS ARE DIFFERENT—SO WHY DO WE PRETEND OTHERWISE WHEN WE LOCK THEM UP?

The juvenile justice system was—and in most ways still is—-designed for boys. And that’s a problem.

Yes, boys greatly outnumber girls in the justice system but girls’ numbers have been growing. Between 1991 and 2003, girls’ detentions rose by 98 percent, compared to a 29 percent increase in boys’
detentions.

More recently, as the number of juvenile arrests has dropped in the U.S., the drop is far bigger for boys than for girls. (In 2010, boys’ arrests had decreased by 26.5 percent since 2001, while girls’ arrests had decreased by only 15.5 percent.)

Girls come into detention facilities for different reasons and with different needs from those of their male counterparts, and yet they are often treated with a cookie cutter sameness.

For instance, 19 percent of boys in juvenile detention facilities had tried to commit suicide, while 44 percent of girls had.

In terms of physical abuse, the split was 22 percent boys, 42 percent girls.

And 8 percent of boys admitted to being sexually abused; 35 percent of girls had been sexually abused.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to differences—and the needs they suggest.

The Sunday LA Times has a story by Anna Gorman on the subject. And it is an important topic that we’ll continue to return to over the next year.

Here’s a clip from Gorman’s report:

Latrice lifts the sleeve of her gray sweatshirt to reveal small, dark lines — scars from slicing her forearm over and over to drown out pain from years of sexual abuse. She says she was an alcoholic, dropped out of school in the eighth grade and got pregnant at 16.

Now 18, she is in Los Angeles County’s juvenile justice system because she violated probation. Latrice says she has been locked up more than 20 times in four years. Petite and talkative, she has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and takes antidepressants.

Her health issues — and those of about 9,400 girls in juvenile detention centers around the nation — are serious and complex. Many of the girls don’t have regular doctors, so their physical and emotional problems often go undiagnosed and untreated. That continues when they enter a system that was designed for boys and has been slow to adapt to girls.

“Their health needs are different; they are more severe and more complicated than boys’,” said Catherine Gallagher, a George Mason University professor and an expert in juvenile justice. “They come in underserved…. They remain underserved.”

More than one-third of girls in custody nationwide have a history of sexual abuse, compared with 8% of boys. Girls also have had more physical abuse, suicide attempts and drug-related problems, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Few juvenile justice centers have shown they meet minimum healthcare standards, and girls are less likely than boys to get the care they need.

Both the Atlantic Monthly and NPR did good stories —both by reporter Jenny Gold—on the needs of girls that are worth reading and/or listening.

Here, also is one of the studies from the Department of Justice with some of the facts and figures.

SHERIFF LEE BACA AGAIN PROPOSES NEARLY $1 NEW BILLION JAIL

Christina Villacorte of the Daily News has the story:

With the inmate population steadily increasing, Sheriff Lee Baca will ask the Board of Supervisors Tuesday to study replacing the dilapidated and violence-plagued Men’s Central Jail with a $932.8-million high-tech facility, and consider relying more on electronic monitoring devices and other alternatives to incarceration.

The proposal at this stage is to hire a contractor to prepare a conceptual design and environmental impact review.

In a letter to the board, Baca and county chief executive officer William Fujioka said it was “critical” to begin the process of replacing the aging MCJ with a more efficient facility that would hold high-security and medical inmates.

The proposed new jail would be built on the site of the half-century-old MCJ in downtown Los Angeles. It is envisioned to house up to 3,500 high-security and medical inmates in two towers.

Baca and County CEO are also scheduled to ask for $22 million in order to restore adequate patrols in the county’s unincorporated areas. (So what happened to that independent audit that was going to be done on the department’s budget to find out where the money was going. Here’s that story—also from Villacorte at the DN.

EDITOR’S NOTE: THERE’S NOT REALLY ANY NEWSWORTHY REASON FOR POSTING THE VIDEO ABOVE OF SHERIFF LEE BACA ON BLACK BELT TV. WE JUST KINDA LIKED IT.)

THE CONSERVATIVE CASE AGAINST MORE PRISONS

The latest issue of The American Conservative has an interesting article by Vikrant Reddy and Marc Levin about how it is conservatives who are leading the charge against lowering America’s prison populations.

Leading the charge might be an overstatement. But conservative groups are having an important and measurable effect on policy, where all but the most liberal of democrats are lagging behind.

The reform of 3-Strikes in California simply would not have passed had it not been for the help of some of the conservatives from the Right on Crime movement.

Plus Right on Crime and related conservative groups like Prison Fellowship Ministries are pushing for reforms of disastrous zero tolerance policies in schools, and in the realm of juvenile justice.

In any case, here are a couple of clips from TAC’s story.

Since the 1980s, the United States has built prisons at a furious pace, and America now has the highest incarceration rate in the developed world. 716 out of every 100,000 Americans are behind bars. By comparison, in England and Wales, only 149 out of every 100,000 people are incarcerated. In Australia—famously founded as a prison colony—the number is 130. In Canada, the number is 114.

Prisons, of course, are necessary. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne observed that “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil… as the site of a prison.” As long as there are people, there will be conflict and crime, and there will be prisons. Prisons, however, are not a source of pride. An unusually high number of prison cells signals a society with too much crime, too much punishment, or both.

There are other ways to hold offenders—particularly nonviolent ones—accountable. These alternatives when properly implemented can lead to greater public safety and increase the likelihood that victims of crime will receive restitution. The alternatives are also less costly. Prisons are expensive (in some states, the cost of incarcerating an inmate for one year approaches $60,000), and just as policymakers should scrutinize government expenditures on social programs and demand accountability, they should do the same when it comes to prison spending. None of this means making excuses for criminal behavior; it simply means “thinking outside the cell” when it comes to punishment and accountability.

[SNIP]

Between 1992 and 2011, the U.S. prison population increased by nearly 73 percent. To the extent that the recent rise in incarceration incapacitated violent offenders, it was valuable. For nonviolent offenders who are not career criminals, however, incarceration can be counterproductive. As is sometimes said, prisons are graduate schools for crime. This is more than apparent in numerous states where recidivism rates exceed 60 percent.

Unnecessary incarceration of nonviolent, low-level offenders also destroys families. Mitch Pearlstein at Minnesota’s Center of the American Experiment has pointed out that incarcerated men “are less attractive marriage partners, not just because they may be incarcerated, but because rap sheets are not conducive to good-paying, family-supporting jobs.” It is common sense that neighborhoods suffering from high incarceration rates also suffer a plague of single-parent homes and troubled children.

This, in turn, leads to dysfunctional communities that are mistrustful of law enforcement. Most American children are taught that they may always ask the police for help. In some American neighborhoods, however, children are taught never to engage with the police.

For this—high recidivism rates, ravaged families, and maladjusted neighborhoods—Americans pay dearly. In 2011, Americans spent over $63 billion on corrections, a 300 percent increase since 1980. Prisons are the second-fastest growing component of state budgets, trailing only Medicaid….

Read more here.

YES, THERE HAVE BEEN SOME ANECDOTAL PROBLEMS WITH REALIGNMENT, BUT THE PROBLEMS WE’D HAVE HAD WITHOUT COULD HAVE BEEN FAR WORSE

I realize we’re starting to get boring on this topic. But a refreshingly sane editorial in the Ventura County Star, gave us an opportunity to harp on this issue that has been dreadfully reported by many journalists around the state (with some notable exceptions, like the LA Times, which has been great).

Here’s a clip from the VC Star Op Ed by Thomas Elias:

As crime statistics for 2012 gradually filter in from around the state, gripes about the 15-month-old prison realignment program have begun rising in newspaper headlines and talk show airwaves.

There are two major complaints: One is that crime rose as realignment cut the inmate populace by more than 24,000.

The other is that some criminals are being released earlier than before the program began in October 2011, in part because local jails in a few counties are overcrowded.

A typical gripe comes from Tyler Izen, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the state’s largest police union. “Our members are terribly concerned that we are allowing people out of prisons who are likely to recommit crimes and victimize the people of our city,” he said in a telephone interview.

He claimed probation departments have lost track of some former prisoners, but could offer no specific examples. “All I have is anecdotal information,” he conceded.

It turns out that only one of those big gripes has any proven merit…

Read the rest here.

SOME FINE-TUNING OF REALIGNMENT LIKELY TO COME BEFORE THE STATE LEGISLATURE

California legislators are introducing a cluster of bills, each of which would fine tune some part of the realignment structure put into place by California’s massive AB109.

The Capital View reports:

Democratic Assembly members Susan Talamantes Eggman, of Stockton, and Ken Cooley, of Rancho Cordova, introduced Assembly Bill 601 to allow parole violators to be returned to state prison for up to one year.

AB 2, authored by Assemblyman Mike Morrell, R-Rancho Cucamonga, would return sex offenders who violate their parole back to prison “to serve any sentence ordered for that violation.”

Sen. Ted Lieu, D-Torrance, earlier proposed Senate Bill 57, which would make removal of a GPS monitoring device an additional crime requiring a prison sentence of 16 months, two years or three years

WitnessLA agrees that some fine tuning and closing of certain loopholes is needed, but the devil will be in the details. What we do not want to see is an emotional rush to return to the bad old days that produced overcrowded prisons with little or no positive effect on public safety.

PREDICTIVE POLICING: THE PROS AND CONS OF USING ALGORITHMS TO DRIVE PROACTIVE COP WORK

The LAPD has been running a pilot program of a strategy called predictive policing that uses a combination of updated crime statistics, technology and algorithms to predict areas ripe for crime so that police can be ready and move in to prevent crime and/or make arrests in the moment rather than trying to solve the crimes afterward.

The program, known as PredPro, has reportedly been used so successfully in the LAPD;s Foothill Division that now other places like Santa Cruz and, more recently Seattle have signed up as a way to police smarter in an era of budget cutting.

An intriguing article in the Gardian by columnist/author Evgany Morzov cautions that, while the program seems very promising now, targeting crime before it happens can be a mighty slippery slope.

Here’s a clip from the close of his story:

The promise of predictive policing might be real, but so are its dangers. The solutionist impulse needs to be restrained. Police need to subject their algorithms to external scrutiny and address their biases. Social networking sites need to establish clear standards for how much predictive self-policing they’ll actually do and how far they will go in profiling their users and sharing this data with police. While Facebook might be more effective than police in predicting crime, it cannot be allowed to take on these policing functions without also adhering to the same rules and regulations that spell out what police can and cannot do in a democracy. We cannot circumvent legal procedures and subvert democratic norms in the name of efficiency alone.

And, of course, it bears remembering that it was those Masters of the Algorithmic Universe—the Wall Street genius “quants”—who, to a great degree brought us the 2008. So, yeah, full speed ahead, but with ethics intact, and a good hold on common sense and caution.

Los Angeles Magazine wants you to help catch a serial killer and rapist who preyed on both northern and southern Californians between 1976 and 1986, committing, it is believed, fifty rapes and ten murders. He would be about 60 plus years old now. And he has never been caught.

According LA Mag, law enforcement officials believe this serial murderer/rapist—whom the magazine calls “The Golden State Killer” or GSK—is still alive.

The magazine’s March issue has a fascinating true crime feature about the cold case, which has attracted a couple of obsessed cops, and a network of amateur laptop slueths, including Michelle McNamara, who wrote this month’s story about The Golden State Killer. (McNamara also blogs on true crime at http://truecrimediary.com/ and is married to stand-up comedian/writer, Patton Oswalt).

With McNamara’s help, LA Magazine is launching a sort of virtual manhunt to, McNamara writes, “help authorities identify the Golden State Killer.”

Key pieces of evidence are being released for the first time, she says, “including a hand-drawn map, a page of journal-like writing, and a never-heard before recording that investigators believe may be the killer’s voice.”

So, read the story, stare at the clues and evidence, then, if you are so inclined, summon forth your inner Philip Marlowe, your hidden Harry Bosch, your secret Kinsey Millhone, and get on with it.

According to McNamara, tips on the case should be forwarded to either serialkillerclues@ocsd.org or earinfo@sacsheriff.com.

40 YEARS OF ROE V. WADE MARKED WITH RALLIES AND COUNTER RALLIES IN SF AND ELSEWHERE

THere were rallies marking the 40′s anniversary of Roe v. Wade all over the county this past weekend. Matthai Kuruvila from the San Francisco Chron has an account of the rally and counter rally in San Francisco. Here’s a clip:

The account of the events in San Francicso. Abortion activists on each side of the issue converged on San Francisco Saturday, creating parallel universes testifying to what 40 years of reproductive rights have wrought.

At Justin Herman Plaza, pro-choice activists danced and spoke about liberating women from the horror of back alley abortions conducted by coat hanger-wielding quacks.

Before legal abortions, what might happen to you “was a terror in the back of your mind,” said Chris Malfatti, 64, of San Francisco, who knew someone who lost her fertility to an illegal abortion.

Katheryn Smith of Politico covered the events in DC.

RELEASE OF CORONER’S REPORT FUELS CONTROVERSY OVER CULVER CITY MAN SHOT MULTIPLE TIMES BY DEPUTIES

The newly released autopsy report on the shooting death by sheriff’s deputies of Jose De La Trinidad shows that De La Trinidad was shot 7 times, all from the rear, five of the shots striking the Culver City father in the back.

The LA Times Wesley Lowery has more on the story. Here’s a clip:

A Culver City man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies after a pursuit in November was struck by bullets five times in the back and once each in the right hip and right forearm, also from behind, according to an autopsy report obtained by The Times.

Jose de la Trinidad, a 36-year-old father of two, was killed Nov. 10 by deputies who believed he was reaching for a weapon after a pursuit. But a witness to the shooting said De la Trinidad, who was unarmed, was complying with deputies and had his hands above his head when he was shot.

Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating the shooting.

De la Trinidad was shot five times in the upper and lower back, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s report dated Nov. 13. The report describes four of those wounds as fatal. He was also shot in the right forearm and right hip, with both shots entering from behind, the report found.

“Here’s a man who complied, did what he was supposed to, and was gunned down by trigger-happy deputies,” said Arnoldo Casillas, the family’s attorney, who provided a copy of the autopsy report to The Times. He said he planned to sue the Sheriff’s Department…

THE PRICE OF A STOLEN CHILDHOOD

In a deeply affecting story for this week’s New York Times Magazine Emily Bazelon writes about two young women with the first names of Nicole and Amy who, as children, were sexually abused, with their rapes recorded on video and distributed to thousands of men. In the cases of Nicole and Amy, however,the court has ruled that they can both obtain monetary restitution from those who downloaded the videos of them to mitigate the harm that was done to them. Bazelon’s article explores, among other things, if financial restitution actually helps victims of child pornography.

Here’s a clip:

The detective spread out the photographs on the kitchen table, in front of Nicole, on a December morning in 2006. She was 17, but in the pictures, she saw the face of her 10-year-old self, a half-grown girl wearing make-up. The bodies in the images were broken up by pixelation, but Nicole could see the outline of her father, forcing himself on her. Her mother, sitting next to her, burst into sobs.

The detective spoke gently, but he had brutal news: the pictures had been downloaded onto thousands of computers via file-sharing services around the world. They were among the most widely circulated child pornography on the Internet. Also online were video clips, similarly notorious, in which Nicole spoke words her father had scripted for her, sometimes at the behest of other men. For years, investigators in the United States, Canada and Europe had been trying to identify the girl in the images.

Nicole’s parents split up when she was a toddler, and she grew up living with her mother and stepfather and visiting her father, a former policeman, every other weekend at his apartment in a suburban town in the Pacific Northwest. He started showing her child pornography when she was about 9, telling her that it was normal for fathers and daughters to “play games” like in the pictures. Soon after, he started forcing her to perform oral sex and raping her, dressing her in tight clothes and sometimes binding her with ropes. When she turned 12, she told him to stop, but he used threats and intimidation to continue the abuse for about a year. He said that if she told anyone what he’d done, everyone would hate her for letting him. He said that her mother would no longer love her.

Nicole (who asked me to use her middle name to protect her privacy) knew her father had a tripod set up in his bedroom. She asked if he’d ever shown the pictures to anyone. He said no, and she believed him. “It was all so hidden,” she told me. “And he knew how to lie. He taught me to do it. He said: ‘You look them straight in the eye. You make your shoulders square. You breathe normally.’ ”

When she was 16, Nicole told her mother, in a burst of tears, what had been going on at her father’s house. Her father was arrested for child rape. The police asked Nicole whether he took pictures. She said yes, but that she didn’t think he showed them to anyone…..

The idea of the kind of restitution Bazelon’s story describes is not without controversy. It seems that, as terrible as such crimes are, creating tough laws that don’t also capture in their net the wrong people along with the predators, can be challenging, as Jennifer Bleyer of Slate points out.

THREE STRIKERS NEWLY RELEASED FACE A MULTITUDE OF CHALLENGES, OFTEN WITH NO HELP

Tracey Kaplan at the Contra Costa News has the story. Here’s a clip:

In an unforeseen consequence of easing the state’s tough Three Strikes Law, many inmates who have won early release are hitting the streets with up to only $200 in prison “gate money” and the clothes on their backs.

These former lifers are not eligible for parole and thus will not get the guidance and services they need to help them succeed on the outside, such as access to employment opportunities, vocational training and drug rehabilitation.

The lack of oversight and assistance for this first wave of “strikers” alarms both proponents and opponents of the revised Three Strikes Law — as well as the inmates themselves.

“I feel like the Terminator, showing up in a different time zone completely naked, with nothing,” said Greg Wilks, 48, a San Jose man who is poised to be released after serving more than 13 years of a 27-years-to-life sentence for stealing laptops from Cisco, where he secretly lived in a vacant office while working as a temp in shipping and receiving.

[SNIP]

“We want these people to succeed,” said Michael Romano, director of Stanford’s Three Strikes Project. “We don’t want them committing crimes and creating more victims.”

Proponents say the main reason they didn’t foresee the situation is that the rules regarding parole changed significantly — after officials had already approved the ballot language for Proposition 36.

Under California’s realignment of its criminal justice system, the role of supervising most nonviolent offenders is shifting in stages from the state to county probation officers. But neither the realignment statute nor the Three Strikes Law made provisions for monitoring released strikers.

Romano said the issue is now being litigated in Los Angeles County, where a prosecutor claims strikers should be supervised by probation officers. But even if they are, he said, many counties lack the resources to help the mostly male population of former lifers make a successful transition….

Photo of San Francisco rally for 40 years of Roe v. Wade by Christine Duong

POST SANDYHOOK, LIZ RYAN ABOUT WHAT WORKS TO PROTECT KIDS FROM VIOLENCE

Liz Ryan, president and CEO of the Campaign for Youth Justice (among other accomplishments), has this thoughtful and informative essay at The Crime Report on the initiatives that, in combination—–according to some of the nation’s best youth advocates—are the most likely to reduce gun violence against children and teenagers, in addition to reducing violence in our communities.

Yet, one of the advantages of this essay is that, while Ryan is very knowledgeable, she does more here than opine. She provides lots of good links to recent and relevant studies and reports, thereby giving you the resources with which to make up your own mind about the issues.

Here’s a clip from Liz’s essay:

….the nation’s educational leaders, including the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, have stated emphatically that, “Guns have no place in our schools.”

Others have suggested more police presence.

But research has shown that increased police presence has not made schools safer. In fact, it has resulted in the criminalization of young people in the justice system.

University of Delaware Professor Aaron Kupchik, author of “Homeroom Security” says that while armed guards are already in many schools, “their presence has effects that help transform the school from an environment of academia to a site of criminal law enforcement.

Instead of more guns and more police presence, education experts such as Barbara Raymond of The California Endowment point to the importance of counselors, social workers, psychologists and evidence-based programs. One example is the school-wide positive behavior support program to improve learning environments in schools and help children resolve conflict.
The Sandy Hook killings also underscore the need to improve access to quality, community-based behavioral mental health services for children and young people.

An interdisciplinary group of more than 200 violence prevention researchers, practitioners and professional associations recommends that, “these efforts should promote wellness, as well as address mental health needs of all community members while simultaneously responding to potential threats to community safety.

“This initiative should include a large scale public education and awareness campaign, along with newly created channels of communication to help get services to those in need.”
Additionally, a comprehensive approach must address the root causes of violence, and focus resources on proven violence prevention and juvenile delinquency prevention programs such as the University of Colorado’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence’s “Blueprints for Violence Prevention” programs.

Easy access to guns that kill 7 young people a day and injure 43 more is a challenge addressed by the bipartisan national coalition of 750 mayors led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston. The coalition has created comprehensive recommendations to severely reduce the easy access to guns and assault weapons in the U.S.
Finally, there must be a focus on healing….

There’s more. Ryan points to the huge report that was just released by the Attorney General’s National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence, that looks at the affect that deleterious effects that exposure to violence has on kids, and what we can do about it. Anyway, take a look.

US ATTORNEY SAYS PROSECUTION OF AARON SWARTZ WAS “APPROPRIATE”

Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz evidently spoke to reporters after an unrelated news conference, saying she was terribly upset about Aaron Swartz’s suicide, but that the federal prosecutors acted appropriately.

David Kravets at WIRED has the story about the MA U.S. Attorney’s . Here’s a clip:

Carmen Ortiz, the U.S. attorney in Massachusetts, said Thursday the government’s “conduct was appropriate” in its handling of the Aaron Swartz prosecution.

The President Barack Obama appointee’s first public comments on the matter come nearly a week after the internet sensation, who was under federal indictment in Massachusetts on hacking and other charges, hanged himself in his Brooklyn apartment.

Swartz’s family, in part, blamed the suicide of the executive director of Demand Progress on what they said was an overzealous prosecution. Prosecutors in Ortiz’s office had offered the 26-year-old a six-month prison sentence in exchange for his guilty plea to more than a dozen counts of computer hacking and wire fraud over the illicit downloading of millions of academic articles from a subscription database at MIT. It was a plea agreement Swartz rejected.

“As a parent and a sister, I can only imagine the pain felt by the family and friends of Aaron Swartz, and I want to extend my heartfelt sympathy to everyone who knew and loved this young man. I know that there is little I can say to abate the anger felt by those who believe that this office’s prosecution of Mr. Swartz was unwarranted and somehow led to the tragic result of him taking his own life,” Ortiz said. “I must, however, make clear that this office’s conduct was appropriate in bringing and handling this case. The career prosecutors handling this matter took on the difficult task of enforcing a law they had taken an oath to uphold, and did so reasonably.”

The Boston Globe (among others) also has a report that, for those slightly obsessed with this story, is worth a read.

Also, while—whether one agrees with her legal POV or not (I don’t happen to at all), Ortiz at least handled the press interaction with dignity and respect.

Not so, it seems her husband, Tom Dolan, who early on took his feelings about criticism of his wife to Twitter. (His account has since been deleted.)

FireDogLake (among many others) has that story.

Dolan evidently forgot that in such unbearable circumstances the grieving family gets to say whatever they want, especially about a public figure, like a U.S. Attorney. The public figure’s spouse does not have such license, and certainly does not get to start shooting back through social media at the people who lost their son/brother/friend.

One more thing, just to be clear, yes, Aaron Swartz was offered a plea deal (as we mentioned in an earlier story), but when the defense and the prosecution couldn’t agree upon a deal, the 35 year sentence comes back into play.

So to those who contended that a 35 year was not in fact a threat, it was, actually. The big bad possible sentence is the gun that prosecutors hold to a defendant’s head, to get him or her to plead out. That’s the game. And it’s an ugly one.

A TALE OF A MISSISSIPPI COLD CASE AND A DECADES OLD MISSISSIPPI SCANDAL THAT MAY HAVE COMPROMISED A FRIGHTENING NUMBER OF CASES OVER DECADES

Huffington Post’s talented criminal justice writer/reporter, Radley Balko has this fascinating two-parter about the solving of the 15-year-old murder of Kathy Mabry by the unlikely team of two Innocence Project attorneys, in the course of which, a brewing subrosa scandal involving a pair of shoddy forensic analysts has been brought irrevocably into the light, finally (hopefully) making it impossible for Mississippi officials to ignore.

Here’s a clip:

The [Mabry] case went unsolved for 15 years, until December, after a casual courtroom conversation led lawyers from the Mississippi Innocence Project to investigate it. That two attorneys for an organization better known for getting the wrongly convicted out of prison would take it upon themselves to solve a cold case is remarkable enough. Their search covered the state, from Columbus in the northeast, to Oxford in the northwest, to the crime lab in Jackson, to a dusty attic in the Humphreys County courthouse, deep in the belly of the Delta.

The reason they felt compelled to act is part of a larger scandal currently unfolding in Mississippi. The original police investigation into Mabry’s murder hinged on the forensic analysis of Steven Hayne, a longtime Mississippi medical examiner, and Michael West, a dentist and self-proclaimed bite-mark expert. Hayne was a doctor in private practice who at the time performed nearly all of the state’s autopsies. West was one of his frequent collaborators. The two men have been at the heart of the Mississippi death investigation system for two decades. West has testified in dozens of cases, Hayne in thousands, including a number of death penalty cases.

Media investigations over the years, however, including my own for The Huffington Post and Reason magazine, have revealed that both Hayne and West have contributed critical evidence that led to the convictions of people who were later exonerated, and routinely and flagrantly flouted the ethical and professional standards of their respective fields. West, for example, once claimed he could match the bite marks in a half-eaten bologna sandwich found at a murder scene to the teeth of the prime suspect. In a more recent case, Hayne claimed the bullet wounds in a murder victim showed that two people held the gun when it was fired, not one. In the Mabry case, West used bite-mark analysis to nab an innocent man for Mabry’s murder. That man spent nearly a year in jail. But the Mabry story also shows that the victims in this scandal include not just the wrongly accused, but the families of the victims, the future victims of the actual perpetrators, public officials like Roseman, and even entire towns.

Mississippi officials have thus far resisted calls for a thorough review of Hayne and West’s work. In particular, the Mississippi Supreme Court has shown little concern over the possibility that Hayne and West may have put an untold number of innocents behind the razor wire at Parchman penitentiary. Neither has Attorney General Jim Hood, whose office continues to defend convictions won primarily on the testimony one or both of the men have given on the witness stand. To concede there’s a problem would implicate many state officials who used the two men during tenures as prosecutors. It would also open hundreds, perhaps thousands of cases to review.

Tucker Carrington, the director of the Mississippi Innocence Project, says he and his colleague Will McIntosh decided to pursue Mabry’s killer themselves after they attempted to bring the case to the attention of the prosecutor in Humphreys County, and then to Hood’s office, and received no response from either.

“When you take on a case and it reveals a glaring injustice like this — something that could easily be taken care of if someone would just give it some attention — you can’t just turn a blind eye to that,” Carrington says. “In the end, I guess we saw this through because no one else would.”

Photo from Library of Congress collection, 1930-1940, (Creative Commons)