We want our kids to be informed, thinking, confident compassionate, educated people, such a goal is in everyone’s interest, for heaven’s sake, and yet increasingly, as the economy continues to wobble, the commitment to this obviously worthy goal on the part of those with resources seems to be faltering.

It doesn’t help that education has been slashed to a horrific degree. while, at the same time, nonprofits that serve kids and families at risk have watched their funding shrink down to nothing.

And now LA Youth, the Los Angeles based newspaper for and by kids— the largest of its kind in the nation, and an institution that always seemed safe—-is right at the edge of closing its doors at the end of this school year, one more possible casualty of the economic tsunami of 2008.

(Thanks again, Wall Street. Really. Your giant vampire squid-osity is a gift that keeps on giving.)

However, all is not lost. What LA Youth needs to rescue it from disaster is $500,000 in operating funds, and then it can make do with some of the other grants it will receive for specific programs.

They’ve already raised some of what they need, but it ain’t close to enough. They must hit that $500K mark by May 15.

I’ve been a friend and admirer of LA Youth for years now, and have spoken to kids and read essays by other kids, who explain in detail how their lives and sense of self would be far, far different had it not been for the mentoring they received as writers/editors/mentees for this stellar organization.

The video above is by a teacher at Locke High School, where LA Youth runs a weekly program. Just listen. She explains how writing for the newspaper allows kids—many of whom come out of risky personal circumstances—to discover that they count for something, that they have a voice, that what they think/feel/perceive/know can matter.

Put another way, a lot of kids who were struggling in school have now graduated from college, because of the intellectual/emotional lifeline this program tossed to them.

Okay, that’s the pitch. You can check out LA Youth here, and CLICK HERE to donate, if you are so moved. I am told that every little bit helps. (And if you happen to know a wildly wealthy philanthropist, feel free to drop a hint.)

with Taylor Walker

SUPREME COURT COULD OPEN THE DOOR FOR HUGE NUMBERS OF DEPORTED IMMIGRANTS TO HAVE THEIR CRIMINAL CASES RECONSIDERED.

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Padilla vs. Kentucky, that a an immigrant who is a permanent legal resident but who, after being charged with a felony, agreed to a guilty plea on the bad advice from a defense attorney without being told that his or her plea will result in automatic deportation, can have that guilty conviction vacated.

Now the court is set to decide this year whether or not Padilla should be made retroactive.

Michael Strickland from UPI has more of the details. Here’s a clip:

Is the U.S. Supreme Court about to open the appeal floodgates for legal aliens who committed crimes in the United States, pleaded guilty but weren’t told they would face deportation under federal law?

Maybe. Argument on the issue will be heard next term, which begins on the first Monday of October.

The genesis of the dispute arose in 2010, when the Supreme Court ruled in Padilla vs. Kentucky that non-citizens who pleaded guilty to felonies, but weren’t advised by their lawyers they automatically would be deported, were unconstitutionally deprived of their Sixth and 14th Amendment rights to effective counsel.

The vote was 7-2.

Now the Supreme Court has agreed to review whether the Padilla ruling should be made retroactive. In other words, should it be applied to any non-resident who pleaded guilty to a felony without effective counsel from 1996, when the deportation law was passed, to 2010, when the decision was handed down.

How big a universe would be affected is up for speculation….

One thing: although Strickland implies otherwise, a guilty plea does not always mean the person pleading actually committed the crime. Most times it does, of course. But far from always. These days 90 percent of all criminal cases are settled by plea bargain and people take pleas for all kinds of reasons, a common one being someone who has already spent a year or two in jail waiting to go to trial when his attorney tells him if he just pleas out, he will be released for time (already) served. So he takes the plea—whether he committed the crime or not.. And, if he’s a perfectly legal resident, but not a US citizen, he (or she) will be immediately deported for the rest of his or her life.

In any event, this will be an interesting matter to watch.

HORRIBLY ABUSED WOMAN WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN RELEASED AFTER 12 YEARS FOR MANSLAUGHTER, FINALLY GETS OUT AFTER 27

SF woman Wanda Brown was released after serving fifteen years longer than the maximum she should have spent behind bars. Her release was based upon a new retroactive law that allows domestic abuse testimony to be considered in old cases. Getting out also required the work of a young but determined pro bono attorney.

San Jose Mercury News columnist, Scott Herhold has the story:

Here’s how it opens:

Wanda Brown killed Willie Kelley. There was never any question. In a frenzy in 1984, the 22-year-old woman stabbed the San Francisco shopkeeper 64 times with a pocket knife. As lawyers say, it looked like bad facts. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. A judge gave her 16 years to life.

With no evidence of premeditation, her lawyer, a San Francisco public defender, told her she’d likely be out in eight and a half years. That was the standard back in the mid-’80s.

Then California politics lurched toward an unforgiving stance on crime. More than 27 years later, Wanda Brown was still at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, rejected three times for parole.

On this one, you really do need to read the rest.

SHOULD PROSECUTORS BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE WHEN THEIR MISCONDUCT CAUSES INNOCENT PEOPLE TO LOSE YEARS OF THEIR LIVES?

With more and more innocence cases turning up evidence of prosecutorial misconduct, the fact that prosecutors are legally protected from accountability in most of such cases is becoming an increasingly pressing matter.

The Innocence Project’s Barry Scheck has an essay on the issue in Sunday’s Austin Statesman.

Here’s a clip:

In February, Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson affirmed the finding of state District Judge Sid Harle that there was probable cause to believe former Williamson County prosecutor Ken Anderson had violated the criminal laws of Texas by disobeying a court order to disclose evidence pointing to the innocence of Michael Morton, who in 1987 was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. A court of inquiry will now try Anderson on these charges.

The case against Anderson (who is now a state district judge and denies wrongdoing in the Morton case) made national headlines because, as a recent article in the Yale Online Law Review thoroughly documents, our system rarely disciplines, much less brings criminal charges against, prosecutors who have engaged in acts of intentional misconduct. Far too often, prosecutors, who wield enormous power over our lives, aren’t investigated at all, even for intentional misconduct that has led to a wrongful conviction, much less “harmless” intentional misconduct in cases in which the defendant was guilty.

TWO SMALL TOWN NEWSPAPER REPORTERS BRING DOWN A CORRUPT SHERIFF—AND GET DEATH THREATS

Be sure to watch this 60 Minutes story about how a small town newspaper did what even the feds couldn’t manage. (Video link here.)

And here’s a clip from the written version:

Prescription drug abuse has become an epidemic in America. Few places have been hit harder than Kentucky, a state that has also been ravaged by addiction to crystal meth. In Whitley County, Kentucky – in the heart of Appalachia — matters were made worse when the man suspected of being at the center of the drug trade was the county’s top law enforcement officer, Sheriff Lawrence Hodge.

There had long been suspicions that Sheriff Hodge was dirty, but nobody – not even federal agents – could prove it.

That’s when two local journalists — both in their 20s — launched their own investigation. And they soon discovered poking into the affairs of a powerful county sheriff can be risky business.

Adam Sulfridge: You know you’re 20 years old, and you’re taking a shower one day and getting ready for class and you get a call from a federal agent because there’s a credible threat against your life. Everything about it is just so surreal. You know. You don’t– you don’t think a whole lot about it. Then later that night you start thinking, you’re like, “Geez, somebody wants to kill me. That’s a little odd.”

And it’s the sheriff. The sheriff wants to kill you.

Read and or watch the rest.

CAN CANDY SALES TRANSFORM LIVES? CRITICS AREN’T SO SURE

Ex gang-leader-turned-pastor Jesse Sanchez’s Coachella Valley group home requires hours of candy sales by parolees and recovering addicts without providing any rehabilitative programs for the residents.

The Desert Sun’s Rebecca Walsh has the story. Here’s a clip:

At Victory Life, treatment for as many as two dozen men seems to consist of days of chocolate-selling punctuated by church services Sunday morning and Tuesday evening. There is no counseling, no job or life skills training. Residents simply beg, day in and day out, for their upkeep.

“That would never happen in any of our programs,” says Bill Sessa, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. “Where a parolee goes to find comfort with a church is their business. But that is very different from what we consider rehabilitation.”

Read on. It’s an interesting tale.

IS DEATH PENALTY A DETERRENT?

More than three decades after the moratorium against capital punishment was lifted, the prestigious National Research Council released a report that, after reviewing dozens of studies, failed to find reliable evidence that the death penalty is actually a homicide deterrent. In fact, the Committee of Deterrence and the Death Penalty said that any past research on the subject should be disregarded in death penalty debates as incomplete and unsupportable.

The LA Times has the story.

Here’s a clip:

The Committee of Deterrence and the Death Penalty concluded that studies on the death penalty and its potential effect on homicide rates — both pro and con — contain fundamental flaws that essentially make them moot.

For example, the studies do not include the effects of other forms of punishment – such as life in prison without possibility of parole, and whether it too acts as a deterrent. The studies, study authors wrote, don’t “consider how the capital and noncapital components of a regime combine in affecting the behavior of potential murderers.”

In other words, previous studies don’t determine whether potential killers think about the possibility of spending their lives in prison or ending up on death row before they commit their crimes.

The lack of comprehensive information makes the research inconclusive, the study authors said. “We recognize this conclusion will be controversial to some, but nobody is well served by unfounded claims about the death penalty,” committee Chairman Daniel Nagin said in a telephone news conference.

“Nothing is known about how potential murderers actually perceive their risk of punishment,” he said.

SLASHING NATIONAL JUVENILE JUSTICE FUNDS

Funding for juvenile justice programs is likely about to get slashed—again.

The Crime Report’s Ted Gest has the story.

Here’s how it opens:

Federal funding for state and local juvenile justice programs seems likely to take another big hit as Congress continues to slash federal “discretionary” spending.

The Republican-controlled House committee that appropriates money for the Justice Department today issued its proposal for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. It would cut juvenile justice funding to $209 million–a figure that stood at $424 million in fiscal year 2010.

Federal aid for juvenile justice already had fallen more than 50 percent to its lowest level in more than a decade, says the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, which represents state advisory committees in Washington, D.C. The coalition is asking Congress for $80 million for “formula grants” that helps states comply with mandates in a key 1974 juvenile crime law, such as separating juvenile and adult defendants in jail and keeping minor offenders out of custody.

House appropriators, rather than adding funds for those purposes, would cut them to $33 million.

The Obama administration’s funding request of $140M for three important juvenile justice programs would be slashed to just $53M under the House committee’s proposal.

FIRST RACIAL PROFILING HEARINGS SINCE 9/11

A Senate committee hearing for the End Racial Profiling Act featured testimony from 225 different organizations on Wednesday. If passed, the legislature would forbid officers from using race as a component in standard law enforcement decisions.

Salon’s Jefferson Morley has the story.

Here’s a clip:

….as profiling has become entrenched in drug enforcement, counterterrorism and immigration control, said criminologist David Harris, research shows it is an ineffective law enforcement tool. “In many contexts, in many types of police agencies, the results all fall in the same direction: when racial or ethnic profiling is used, police are less likely, not more likely, to catch bad guys,” Harris said.

Ron Davis, police chief in East Palo Alto, Calif., said his experience as a cop on the streets confirmed that finding. Admitting that he himself had engaged in profiling, he called profiling “an ineffective tactic that wastes scarce law enforcement resources and it harms our relations with communities whose cooperation we need.”

Davis said passage of S. 1670 would help police nationwide.

“Without the legislation and updated Department of Justice guidance we will continue business as usual and only respond to this issue when it surfaces through high-profile tragedies such as Oscar Grant case in Oakland, Calif., and the Trayvon Martin case in Sanford, Fla.,” he said.

The Obama Administration has yet to have joined the bill’s supporters.

EDITOR’S NOTE: SHOULD THE LA TIMES HAVE PUBLISHED THOSE PHOTOS?

There has been, and continues to be, a lot of controversy around whether or not the LA Times should have posted the two graphic photos of American soldiers posing with dismembered Afghan corpses. The Pentagon asked the Times not to publish the photos, contending that the publication would incite violence.

It is a thorny question. I happen to think the Times did the right thing.

Yet, I’m grateful that I wasn’t one of those who had to make the decision.

On To the Point, Warren Olney interviewed David Zucchino, the award-winning LA Times reporter who wrote the story accompanying the photos.

The New York Times has a report on the Pentagon’s objections—and how the Times’ came to be in possession of the photos in the first place.

And here the Poynter Institute weighs in, with two stories.

As of this writing, there are more than 2000 comments on the LA Times website regarding the issue.

Photo by Phil Sandlin for the AP

NOTE: I don’t know why the video vanished between last night and this morning. I”m at the jails commission right. Will figure it out when I get back.

The Young Turks, which is partnered with YouTube, is billed as the worlds largest online news show, and has gained further popularity now that it is also airing on Current TV.

The Point is the newest show on The Young Turks Network and launched earlier this year.

With all this in mind, when show producer Malcolm Fleschner told me that The Point was doing an all criminal justice themed show, and asked me to be a panelist, I agreed right away. I was interested in the topic, of course. But also I welcomed the chance to get an inside look at the new web-only model that the very smart Young Turks folks (and others like them) are pioneering with The Point and the rest of the shows on the TYT network.

My esteemed fellow panelists are actor and longtime activist and death penalty expert, Mike Farrell, and LA Deputy District Attorney and one-time DA candidate, Steve Ipsen.

The show is hosted by TYT’s Chief Operating Officer Steve Oh—who, as you’ll see, is himself a former prosecutor and is impassioned and informed on issues of criminal justice.

The conversation centers around the death penalty, but winds through other issues as well.

In any case, enjoy.

Since the news described in the following story broke, we have been bothered by the seemingly blithe disregard for the lives of those most affected, on the part of those who really ought to have known better. So we asked WitnessLA reporter David Lynn to look into the matter. This is what he found.

THE VERY PUBLIC OUTING OF THE MANHATTAN BEACH 18
by David Lynn

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Devices known as pillory stocks have been used for centuries to shame public offenders by trapping their head and hands and forcing their body into a ninety-degree angle stoop. They were all the rage in colonial America, but at some point we got it together and decided enough was enough. Fret not, colonial enthusiasts – thanks to the Internet, the good old days are back.

After the Manhattan Beach Police Department wrapped up its sting investigation of a beach bathroom they say had recently become a popular sex den for gay men, eighteen men were arrested on charges which include soliciting or engaging in lewd conduct in a public place, loitering in and around a public toilet for the purpose of engaging or soliciting a lewd or unlawful act, utilizing a restroom peephole, invasion of privacy, resisting arrest and indecent exposure. All of the charges are misdemeanors.

Once the objects of the sting were safely booked, the Manhattan Beach PD thought it would be a swell idea to distribute the booking photos, names, birth dates, and cities of residence of the eighteen men arrested to media outlets. They did so in the form of a press release.

Upon receiving the release, a string of the news outlets dutifully posted, published and/or broadcast the 18 mugshots. The Daily Breeze was one of the first to post the photos and personal information to their website. The L.A. Weekly followed suit and later wrote, “We were a little surprised ourselves to receive said PDF from the Manhattan Beach Police Department….”

They may have been surprised, but they sure ran with it, taking the time to also post links to some of the suspects’ Twitter accounts, LinkdIn and Facebook profiles and, in the case of one suspect, his IMDB profile.

KTLA and NBC4 covered the story in their broadcasts, both of which featured footage of MBPD’s press release. The L.A. Times posted KTLA’s video to their website and the Huffington post did the same with NBC4’s coverage.

WitnessLA spoke to MBPD’s Press Information Officer, Stephanie Martin, and asked her what exactly the department was thinking in posting photos of the 18 men, one as young as 20-years old, none of whom have actually been convicted of anything.

“Whenever we issue a press release and we have access to mugshots and booking information at the time, we include it. Even in the case of misdemeanor crimes,” Martin said.

Well, did Officer Martin think the MBPD foresaw this press release gaining the amount of attention that it has?

“We anticipated that it was going to be a fairly large story since it was a significant arrest for us,” said Martin, “but really it’s just another arrest, another press release.”

There is no question that using public spaces for sex acts—straight or gay—is illegal. The offenders should have been arrested and given due process. But should they have been publicly shamed for it, especially without having the benefit of a conviction? By posting their names, faces and towns of residence online, the MBPD and their media collaborators effectively pilloried these men in a virtual town square. In the age of Google, even if some of the men are found to be innocent of any charges, they will never really be released.

WitnessLA contacted the Daily Breeze’s Assistant City Editor, Josh Grossberg for comment, since his paper was among the first to publish the information.

“We always run mugshots and booking information when it’s available. It’s not any different than anything else we’ve covered,” Grossberg said. “We also put up a picture of the mother who killed her family who was arrested for texting in her car while holding a baby on her lap.** We have a long record of doing this, it’s not the first time. If it’s an issue because they may be gay, then you’re asking us to exclude people based on their sexuality.”

Well, no, that’s not what we’re saying. The bathroom sting is not a high profile case where the public’s right to know demands immediate and detailed reporting. We are talking about men arrested for misdemeanor offenses, but misdemeanors that, in many circles still carry a daunting social stigma.

The day after the mugshots hit the news, The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center issued a statement to that effect.

“The consequences of being ‘outed’ or perceived as gay in such a homophobic society are very real. The publication of these photos serves no purpose other than to embarrass them, and has the potential to destroy their lives,” said the center’s press release.

When we questioned the Center further, Communications Manager Stevie St. John told WitnessLA in an email that since the story broke, “…at least three of the men arrested have contacted the Center for counseling. From one of the callers, we learned that one of the 18 made a suicide attempt.”

WitnessLA spoke to attorney/journalist and law professor Henry Weinstein about the ethics of the matter. Weinstein, a former longtime staff member at the L.A. Times, is currently a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine.

“I would love to hear their rationale for why they chose to run those men distinct from other, more serious criminals. A lot of people are accused of crimes and most don’t have their pictures in the paper. Murderers, sure. But what about mortgage fraud or armed robbers?” When was the last time we saw them in the papers, Weinstein asked.

“It seems like a double standard to me, and a troubling one at that,” said Weinstein. “Society has made a lot of progress, but there are still places where there’s a stigma to being gay. If someone chooses to keep their sexual orientation a secret, they’re entitled to that privacy.”

One would think.

With the 43rd anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, an event which many credit as the start of the Gay Rights movement, only a few months away, it seems like a good time to take the pillory stocks out of the town square once and for all.

**CORRECTION: I have no idea how we garbled this quote so thoroughly. But, Daily Breeze editor Josh Grossberg has kindly given us the correct reference. WitnessLA strives to be extremely careful with the words of others entrusted to us. Thus we are grateful for the note informing us of our error.

TODAY, MONDAY, SCOTUS BEGINS HISTORIC HEARINGS ON HEALTH CARE—OR MAYBE NOT

Say what? Can it be true that, after all this lead up, the Supreme Court won’t begin hearings on the Affordable Health Care Act on Monday? Really????

Uh, yeah. Apparently it’s quite possible the Supremes may decide that, legally speaking, they’re jumping the gun in hearing the case—or at least on the most important part of the challenge. (No matter what, the court will hear the Medicare expansion part of the arguments on Wednesday).

Both David Savage of the LA Times and Robert Barnes of the Washington Post have stories on this perplexing turn of events.

As an introduction, you need to know that everybody involved—the Obama Administration and the challengers from the various states, et al—want this sucker—ahem….this Constitutional challenge—to move forward now, for crying out loud.

Here’s a clip from Savage’s article (which I’ve excerpted from the Sac Bee, although it will also be in the LA Times but, as I write this, it isn’t on the LAT site yet).

The Supreme Court’s opening day of arguments on the health care law will not focus on whether the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. Instead, the justices will consider whether the legal challenge to it has arrived too soon.

The problem is the Anti-Injunction Act, which dates to 1867. It says, “No suit for the purpose of restraining the assessment or collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person.”

Question: How does this figure in the health care case?

Answer: It could block a suit against this key part of the health care law if it imposes a tax. The law seems to say that no one can sue over a tax provision until he or she has paid the tax.

Q: How is the Affordable Care Act a tax law?

A: During the debate over it, President Barack Obama insisted it did not impose new taxes. However, people who do not have minimum health coverage in 2014 will be assessed a “penalty” to be paid on their tax return, which will be due in April 2015.

And here’s a clip from Barnes in the WaPo.

The Supreme Court begins its constitutional review of the health-care overhaul law Monday with a fundamental question: Is the court barred from making such a decision at this time?

The justices will hear 90 minutes of argument about whether an obscure 19th-century law — the Anti-Injunction Act — means that the court cannot pass judgment on the law until its key provisions go into effect in 2014.

[SNIP]

At the heart of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the requirement that almost all Americans either obtain health insurance by 2014 or pay a penalty. The question the court will consider Monday is whether that penalty should be considered a tax. And if it is, does the Anti-Injunction Act mean that courts must stay out of the way until someone is actually required to pay it?

The first time that could occur is when someone files a tax return in 2015, because that is how the penalty would be collected.

TRAYVON MARTIN AND THE “BLACK MALE CODE”

Thus far, WLA hasn’t commented or reported on the heart-shattering story of Trayvon Martin’s death, in part because so much has already been said and written, thus I wasn’t sure what exactly we could add to the conversation.

But speaking personally, the main reason I’ve not written about the issue is because every time I stare at Travon’s photo, rather than being inspired to post something wise and meaningful, I find that I am simply struck dumb with grief for his mother—and for his dad, and the rest of his family of course too. But I am a mother of a son, so it is to Sybrina Fulton that my deepest sorrow goes.

If course, Trayvon is far from the only young person to die tragically and violently these past weeks. LA’s Youth Justice Coalition head, Kim McGill, tells me they’ve buried five of their own young members in the past two months. (I’ll have more on the five in the future.)

But some deaths get to you more than others; perhaps in that way they stand in for stand in for all the others. Travon Martin’s is one of those deaths.

Still, as much fearful empathy as I feel for Travon’s mother Sybrina, I do so with the understanding that there is one part of her experience that I cannot adequately feel into, at least not in the bone-deep way that many other American parents, sadly, can.

That difference has to do with the fear described in this story by Jesse Washington writing for the Associated Press. It is titled “Trayvon Martin, my son, and the Black Male Code,” and I’ve excerpted it below. But I urge you to read the whole thing.

I thought my son would be much older before I had to tell him about the Black Male Code. He’s only 12, still sleeping with stuffed animals, still afraid of the dark. But after the Trayvon Martin tragedy, I needed to explain to my child that soon people might be afraid of him.

We were in the car on the way to school when a story about Martin came on the radio. “The guy who killed him should get arrested. The dead guy was unarmed!” my son said after hearing that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman had claimed self-defense in the shooting in Sanford, Fla.

We listened to the rest of the story, describing how Zimmerman had spotted Martin, who was 17, walking home from the store on a rainy night, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. When it was over, I turned off the radio and told my son about the rules he needs to follow to avoid becoming another Trayvon Martin — a black male who Zimmerman assumed was “suspicious” and “up to no good.”

As I explained it, the Code goes like this:

Always pay close attention to your surroundings, son, especially if you are in an affluent neighborhood where black folks are few. Understand that even though you are not a criminal, some people might assume you are, especially if you are wearing certain clothes.

Read the rest. It’s worth it.

WHY DID THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA TAKE SO LONG TO BEGIN REPORTING ON THE TRAYVON MARTIN STORY?

Howard Kurtz asked that question on CNN on Sunday, and opened it for a round-table discussion you can read here.

I can’t say that the discussion is brilliant or even all that insightful, frankly, but listening in may stimulate your own thinking. (Really, I think Jon Stewart had the right take when he said of another big story that the media has two settings: blackout….and circus.

In truth, I think, the better question is what made the mainstream media finally snap awake. I credit Trayvon’s parents who refused to let the injustice of their son’s death go unnoticed and, together with supporters, were able to frame a clear narrative around the shooting of their son, together with a good picture, that gradually got the press’s attention—and has kept it. In a similar way, Kelly Thomas’s father in Fullerton exhibited the same well-focused determination, in which he was clear about what the story needed to be, and managed to keep it in the news rather than letting it be reported on once or twice and then vanish without a trace. As a result, Jim Thomas may get some kind of justice for his son.

Moreover, the rest of us should be grateful that Trayvon’s parents did not let their son’s death go unrecognized. As a consequence, out of their sorrow we are being shoved into having another round of the national conversion about race that we very much need to continue to have, but too often avoid.

AND SPEAKING OF THAT CONVERSATION….

Here’s Marion Wright Edelman (pictured above) president of the Children’s Defense Fund, with her own thoughts about Trayvon Martin, what his death should signify.

Here’s a clip:

….Just as sadly, Trayvon’s death was not unique. In 2008 and 2009, 2,582 black children and teens were killed by gunfire. Black children and teens were only 15 percent of the child population, but 45 percent of the 5,740 child and teen gun deaths in those two years. Black males 15 to 19 years-old were eight times as likely as white males to be gun homicide victims. The outcry over Trayvon’s death is absolutely right and just. We need the same sense of outrage over every one of these child deaths…

Photo by AP, for the Children’s Defense Fund

On January 6, of this year Ira Glass’s This American Life aired a show about the FoxConn factory in China, where so many of our nice, shiny, perfect Apple products are made (including, I assume, my brand new iPad), and which has become infamous for its brutal working conditions.

The TAL broadcast, which was to become the most downloaded in the show’s history, centered around monologuist Mike Deasey’s popular one man show about Apple and Foxconn called “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

The TAL segment was such a powerful and disturbing portrayal of factory conditions that it triggered a slew of other media reports on the Chinese factories used by Apple and other American tech companies.

Then last Friday, TAL’s creator and host, Ira Glass, announced that although the show had vetted a lot of Deasey’s material, it hadn’t been able to vet it all, and Glass and crew had now discovered that some of Deasey’s “facts” were far more theatrical than truthful.

But Glass didn’t stop with the written statement. He and his producers turned all of this past weekend’s show into one giant retraction that included a deconstruction of the various errors, an interview with Deasey’s Chinese translator, and a painfully uncomfortable conversation between Glass and Deasey— all of which turned out to be wildly compelling radio.

The retraction, and Deasey’s subsequent blogging remarks after the TAL broadcast has triggered a flood of commentary from other journalists and media types.

The collective discussion about truth, facts and journalism has been largely a very good one, and worth your while to wander through if you have a mind.

But first listen to the two TAL episodes. They are utterly fascinating, especially given what we know now.

Here are some links to and clips from some of the better commentary.

This is from the NY Times’ David Carr:

Is it O.K. to lie on the way to telling a greater truth? The short answer is also the right one.

No.

It’s worth examining that question now that we have learned about the lies perforating the excerpt of Mike Daisey’s one-man show on Apple’s manufacturing processes in China, broadcast in January on the weekly public radio show “This American Life.”

No one is suggesting that everything about Apple’s supply chain is suddenly hunky-dory, but the heroic narrative of a fearless theater artist taking on the biggest company in the world is now a pile of smoking rubble.

Mr. Daisey’s one-man show, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” closed its very successful run at the Public Theater in New York on Sunday. The show played a significant role in raising public consciousness, not just about the ethics of offshore manufacturing, but about whether those of us who fondle those shiny new iPads every day are implicated as well….

And this is also from the NYT, this time from Charles Isherwood:

in his own statement on Friday Mr. Daisey said: “What I do is not journalism. The tools of the theater are not the same as the tools of journalism.” He also said he regretted allowing parts of his work to be heard in the context of a factual program.

Mr. Daisey may not claim to be a journalist, but there is little question that in his show, which he has been performing since 2010, he gives no indication that some of the events he describes as having witnessed himself were embellished or based on incidents that took place elsewhere. The program at the Public Theater described it as “nonfiction.”

Nonfiction should mean just that: facts and nothing but the facts. For its part the Public released a statement saying: “Mike is an artist, not a journalist. Nevertheless, we wish he had been more precise with us and our audiences about what was and wasn’t his personal experience in the piece.”

Certainly Mr. Daisey uses language more evocative than a reporter would in describing his encounters with workers at the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen. But in an hourlong segment of “This American Life” released for broadcast on Friday that delved into the reasons behind the retraction, it became clear that this was not a matter of reordering events or using colorful description for maximum theatrical effect, but of presenting as firsthand experience incidents that never happened.

Rebecca Greenfield has some good stuff to say at the Atlantic.

Here’s a link to the story by Rob Schmidt, the NPR Marketplace reporter who flagged some of Deasey’s truthiness in the first place.

MORE COMMENTARY ON THE JUVENILE LWOP CASES THAT THE SUPREMES WILL HEAR TUESDAY (TODAY)

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in the matters of Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, the twinned cases that aim to test the constitutionality of sentencing a 14-year-old killer to life without parole.

Professor Douglas Berman of Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, along with a group of second and third-year students at Moritz filed an amicus brief in the two cases. In the video above, Doug Berman explains in layman’s terms what’s in the brief and what are some of the things you should know is you’re watching these cases. (Doug Berman also runs the wonderful Sentencing, Law and Policy.)

With an eye toward the SCOTUS hearing of the cases, Sandra McElwaine at the Daily Beast interviewed former inmates who were convicted of murder as teenagers but who did not get life. Their insights regarding the paths of their own individual redemption is very much worth reading.

Andrew Cohn over at Atlantic Wire has a well-reasoned look at which justices might go what direction in the juvenile LWOP cases, and that the fact that Chief Justice Roberts has two kids who are about to become teenagers may have bearing on the matter. (But in the end, it’ll likely come down to Justice Kennedy—again.)

The Guardian’s story on the twinned cases features a video with an incarcerated man in his 20’s named Quantel Lotts who killed his stepbrother when he was fourteen.

Here’s a clip from the Guardian’s article on the cases:

There is a singularly brutal quality to this aspect of US justice. America is the only country in the world, bar none, that is known to sentence children to die in prison without any hope of release. Even in a country that practices the death penalty it has the ability to shock, because this is a living death.

“All I want is another chance,” says Lotts. “A shot at living an actual life. I’ve been in prison since I was 14, so I don’t know too much about anything – I’ve never been anywhere, done anything. I’ve never lived a life.”

LA author, blogger, provocateur Andrew Breitbart died Thursday morning. He was 43.

He was what Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan called a worthy opponent, the media landscape will be less interesting in his absence.

Kevin Roderick at LA Observed has a good gathering of tributes and obits—from both sides of the fence.

The photo of Breitbart is taken from the cover of his book, Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World!.

There is a strong movement afoot to slam closed the door that Judge Michael Nash unlocked last week with his order to open LA’s Child Dependency Courts to the press.

Two LA Times reporters and one LA Times columnist actually observed hearings last week. (I linked to the resulting article by reporters, Garrett Therolf and John Hoeffel here and columnist Jim Newton has a wonderful essay, just published this morning.) Somehow it seems no children were hopelessly traumatized by having another stranger or two sit quietly in the room. (Life for children in the midst of dependency hearings is already, sadly, loaded with strangers.)

Yet, many believe that Nash’s order will not stand for long—not because his order was wrong, but simply because those who want to yank that door closed again may have the power to manage it.

Here’s part of what Sunday’s LA Times’ well-written editorial said about the matter, now that they’d had reporters visit.

There were furious objections to the presence of these observers, a reminder that the idea of openness is profoundly unsettling in a courthouse accustomed to doing its work in private. But privacy has bred arrogance and resistance to notions that otherwise suit society well: that the public has a right to observe its institutions at work, and that public servants should not be allowed to hide behind secrecy to disguise inefficiency, incompetence or worse.

Secrecy is absolutely the issue—and not in a good way. A child’s privacy must always be protected, but it does not take re-closing the courts to do that. What must no longer be kept secret is the process by while decisions are made for children’s lives.

Another Sunday editorial, this one by Steven Greenhut from the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, writing for the North County Times, laid things out even more plainly.

Here are some clips:

….These courts and the entire children and family services systems are plagued by controversy and allegations of mismanagement and corruption. In few areas of American life do government officials have so much unchecked power, yet are allowed to operate in nearly complete secrecy. Maybe there’s a connection there.

No reforms or inquiries ever fix the situation, which is no surprise because the public doesn’t get to look at the inner workings of these agencies or delve into the details of specific cases. Los Angeles County has been a particular mess, where more than 70 children have died under the supervision of county social workers since 2008, and many of those deaths have been blamed by county leaders on mismanagement.

[SNIP]

It’s so frustrating how every serious policy issue in this state is driven by what’s best for government employees, not the public. In support of the Feuer bill [which tried to institute a pilot program to open some courts], the San Jose Mercury News opined: “Three years ago, Mercury News reporter Karen de Sá documented the troubled state of this system. Her yearlong investigation found that overwhelmed, undertrained lawyers weren’t properly representing their clients, that older children were too often excluded from proceedings affecting their lives, and that parents’ and children’s rights were routinely at risk.”

That’s exactly right. And, according to the Times report, Nash argued: “There is a lot that is not good (in the dependency courts), and that’s an understatement. Too many families do not get reunified … too many children and families languish in the system for far too long. Someone might want to know why this is the case.”

Yet Nash’s thinking is treated as something that’s almost radical. The simple and humane reform he imposed in his courtroom is being challenged in court by the same self-interested parties that have stopped reform in the Capitol. Openness is the rule in 17 states, so this isn’t some uncharted territory.

This is a very delicate matter to navigate well. And the court has to have broad discretion to protect kids. But the secrecy has to stop.

We’ll be tracking this issue closely.

NOTE: Here’s a clip from the LA Times’ Jim Newton’s column on his experience in court last week, which was published after I posted. By the way, to fend off challenges by DCFS lawyers Newton brought his own lawyer. (Smart move.)

Read the rest of this entry »

NEW STUDY SAYS AGING PRISONERS FASTEST GROWING LOCKED-UP POPULATION

The fact that aging prisoners are a growing issue has been reported on a lot lately as reporters and policy makers start to snap awake to the fact that locking up more people for longer is going to eventually produce a bunch of old guy (and old girl) inmate.

California, with its long troubled prison health care system, is one of the states that cannot help but be hit hardest by the demands of an aging inmate population.

Human Rights Watch has issued a new report that looks at the scope of the problem nationally. Here’s a clip from their press release:

Human Rights Watch found that the number of sentenced state and federal prisoners age 65 or older grew at 94 times the rate of the overall prison population between 2007 and 2010. The number of sentenced prisoners age 55 or older grew at six times the rate of the overall prison population between 1995 and 2010.

“Prisons were never designed to be geriatric facilities,” said Jamie Fellner, senior adviser to the US Program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Yet US corrections officials now operate old age homes behind bars.”

All in all, HRW has produced a thoughtful, informative report that surveys the issue, makes some practical recommendations, and then asks a series of questions that challenge us to ask ourselves from a common sense perspective about when imprisonment might no longer be justified or sensible, as certain kinds of prisoners gets older.

Read the whole report here.

The New York Times also has a story on the issue.

AND WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT OF PRISON COSTS: A NEW VERA INSTITUTE REPORT SAYS THE REAL COST OF PRISONS TO TAXPAYERS HIGHER THAN REALIZED

The Vera institute has just released a new report titled The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers. The report shows that however much we think our prisons are costing us as taxpayers—we’re likely wrong. They’re costing us more than we think.

On a state by state basis, the Vera people looked at such extra costs as staff pensions and retiree benefits— and more—that, in many cases, are not listed in a state’s corrections budget.

In California, for example, our corrections budget is $7 billion. But when we look at the full cost, as Vera calculates it, the budget goes up to $7.9 billion—nearly a billion dollars more than our corrections budgets would suggest, bringing the cost of locking up each inmate in our prisons to $48 thousand per year, one of the higher price tags in the nation..

And if we look at the collateral costs of incarceration, (costs that Vera mentions as important, but that they did not cover in this report) the taxpayer’s bill goes still higher:

When a person is in prison, taxpayers may incur additional—or indirect—costs, such as the costs of social services, child welfare, and education, for example. For the most part, these indirect costs are borne by government agencies other than the department of corrections. They are not included in the calculations presented here, however.

Incarcerated men and women also bear economic and social costs associated with prison—as do their families and communities.* As a 2005 study concluded, “Incarceration impacts the life of a family in several important ways: it strains them financially, disrupts parental bonds, separates spouses, places severe stress on the remaining caregivers, leads to a loss of discipline in the household, and to feelings of shame, stigma, and anger.”** Although these costs—typically referred to as collateral costs—are important for policy deliberations, they are no tallied in this report.

LA MAGAZINE EDITOR MARY MELTON TALKS ABOUT WHAT’S MISSING IN LA JOURNALISM

A smart new LA blog called Frying Pan News did an interview with LA Mag’s editor Mary Melton about what the LA Times is doing wrong—and more.

Here’s a clip:

What is missing from the city’s journalistic landscape?

The mainstream press needs to reintroduce beats, cover California and L.A. issues, have more reporters devoted to local politics and politicians. Websites don’t have the resources to do deep reporting.

If you were editor of the L.A. Times, what would you do to change things?

The first thing I would do is hire a fleet of buses and have everyone in the building get on one and go see the city. Too many people at the Times never leave the building. I remember during the 2000 Democratic Convention, which was in downtown. I was working at the Times, and I decided to go over to check it out. I tried to get some folks to come with me, and everyone said, “It’s so far.” What?

I like the bus idea. (But way better to get on public transportation, not that hired fleet.)

THE IDIOTIC “I MIGHT HAVE A TACO” MAYOR GETS MORE THAN 2000 TACOS

The group Reform Immigration for America delivered a whole lot of texts and tacos on Thursday to East Haven, CT, Mayor Maturo—along with an invitation to have an open dialogue with the Latino community in his city, following his insensitive remarks this week.

MSNBC has more on the story-–and the back story:

A Connecticut mayor who sparked a firestorm of criticism for quipping “I might have tacos” when interviewed by a TV reporter about the arrest of four town police officers accused of racially profiling and bullying Latino residents got more than he bargained for.

More than 2,000 tacos were delivered to the office of East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo on Thursday, ordered by people who found his comments insensitive racially offensive. The send-the-mayor-a-taco campaign, which took off via tweets, cellphone texts and social-media shares, was organized by Reform Immigration for America, a group that advocates comprehensive immigration reform.