CALIFORNIA SUPREMES DECIDE WHETHER JUVENILES CAN GET “STRIKES.”
Today, the California Supreme Court will hear a case called People v. Nguyen, which will determine whether kids can get strikes when they are tried for crimes in the juvenile system (which means without a trial, by the way) that could subject them to the threat of the three strikes statute for the rest of their lives, should they ever break the law again—in one year or twenty.
The Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus brief along with the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center, Youth Law Center, National Center for Youth Law, Juvenile Division of the Los Angeles Public Defender and Alternate Public Defender, arguing that using delinquency adjudications to enhance (meaning lengthen) an adult criminal sentence violates U.S. Supreme Court precedent as well as California’s longstanding commitment to maintaining a separate juvenile justice system.
Look we either have juvenile courts or we don’t. If we want to try all our children as adults, let’s just admit that we’re hypocrites and that we acknowledge that kids are not the same as adults only when it suits us. We don’t give them the vote. We don’t let them drink, buy cigarettes or go to racy movies. But when it comes to crime and punishment, we have an entirely different standard.
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A SMART COP WITH A RADICAL FIX FOR A BROKEN SYSTEM?
LAPD Lt. Sunil Dutta is an usual police officer. He has a PhD in botany, was a scientist before he entered law enforcement, plays classical Indian music, and translated several books of Indian poetry with his father-in-law, Robert Bly.
Sunil also loves policing.
And he enjoys thinking and writing about how policing and other aspects of the criminal justice system might be better.
Most recently he’s had an idea about how the criminal justice system as a whole could be radically overhauled. It appeared as an OpEd in the Daily News over the weekend.
Here are some clips:
Our criminal justice system is broken. Despite spending exorbitant sums on law enforcement, prosecution and packing our prisons (no other nation in the world has imprisoned so many as we have), we have not enhanced public safety. We fail in crime prevention, intervention, reintegration and rehabilitation of criminals. We fail in preventing people from being victimized; we fail in preventing lives of innocent people from being destroyed.
The failure is based upon two reasons: the punitive approach to law enforcement and the fragmented criminal justice system. Why continue to perpetuate a disastrously expensive and wrong approach to public safety?
[SNIP]
I propose a radical approach to law enforcement by creating a new public safety agency that would make us true servants of the public, enhance transparency in law enforcement operations, and provide proper support to the victims, law violators, and their families. This approach would focus on rehabilitation and make the society safer for far less cost.
Read the rest here.
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LOCKE HIGH SCHOOL – WHEN “PROBLEM” KIDS REACH FOR OPPORTUNITY
The LA Times has a terrific piece on how Locke High School—the large formerly failing school that has been Green Dot’s first conversion project—has a terrific Opportunities program to help the so-called problem kids, the students that other LAUSD schools tend to try to get rid of as quickly as possible.
It is a story worth reading, I promise.
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THE REAL STORY OF THE COLUMBINE SHOOTINGS
A new, painstakingly-researched and reported book about the Columbine school massacres—‘Columbine,’ by Dave Cullen— has recently been released. It tells, among other things, how inaccurately the story was reported by journalists who blew it—to often repeating each other’s mistakes rather than finding fact.
David Ulin writes the very smart review of the book in the LA Times.
Your “smart cop” is pretty idealistic. He might as well be reading poetry and playing a sitar to prevent crime.
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On Columbine, the liberal press jumped on the story that supported its own biases, like they always do. To them, it was a story screaming “gun control” rather than about psychos.
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So, two of the four smart stories today came from the LAT. Maybe it’s doing better than when you stopped subscribing.
If you want to find out what really happened at Columbine I suggest you read what the eyewitnesses had to say:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/columbineeight.php