Archive: Oct 2005

if you are my age or younger and live in the united states, serious street crime has now fallen to the lowest levels recorded in your lifetime. according to the just-released 2004 fbi uniform crime reports, the murder rate is at a forty-year low and the overall violent crime rate is the lowest in thirty years. the ucr numbers are based on crimes known to the police, but they are really the most reliable and valid data source for homicide. ucr rates for rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, auto theft and larceny-theft were also down again this year, as were rates of property crimes such as burglary, larceny-theft, and shoplifting. for offenses other than homicide, these numbers should be considered alongside trend data in victimization and self-reported offending. in triangulating these sources, however, one generally gets an encouraging impression. the local picture is murkier, with serious crime trending upward in several important categories. nevertheless, here too the trend is decent if not encouraging — particularly since the “murderapolis” days of 1995-1996.

so do you feel safer than you did 5 or 10 or 20 years ago? if not, why not? because 16,000 u.s. murders is still way too many murders? or, has the street crime effect on safety diminished relative to other concerns for you? do you think support for harsh anti-crime measures will diminish if the downward trend continues, or will punitiveness be cited as the reason for diminishing crime rates?

if you are my age or younger and live in the united states, serious street crime has now fallen to the lowest levels recorded in your lifetime. according to the just-released 2004 fbi uniform crime reports, the murder rate is at a forty-year low and the overall violent crime rate is the lowest in thirty years. the ucr numbers are based on crimes known to the police, but they are really the most reliable and valid data source for homicide. ucr rates for rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, auto theft and larceny-theft were also down again this year, as were rates of property crimes such as burglary, larceny-theft, and shoplifting. for offenses other than homicide, these numbers should be considered alongside trend data in victimization and self-reported offending. in triangulating these sources, however, one generally gets an encouraging impression. the local picture is murkier, with serious crime trending upward in several important categories. nevertheless, here too the trend is decent if not encouraging — particularly since the “murderapolis” days of 1995-1996.

so do you feel safer than you did 5 or 10 or 20 years ago? if not, why not? because 16,000 u.s. murders is still way too many murders? or, has the street crime effect on safety diminished relative to other concerns for you? do you think support for harsh anti-crime measures will diminish if the downward trend continues, or will punitiveness be cited as the reason for diminishing crime rates?

although there are far more men than women in the u.s. criminal Justice system, female correctional populations have risen significantly in the past decade. today women make up roughly 7 percent of prison inmates, 12 percent of jail inmates, 13 percent of parolees, and 23 percent of probationers.

a conference devoted to women in the system, the 11th national workshop on adult & juvenile female offenders, takes place today through wednesday at the marriott hotel in bloomington, mn. an informative ap story on the conference emphasizes some of the minnesota programs for mothers in prison and their children.

when i interviewed minnesota prisoners about their political life a few years ago, i started by doing ten interviews in a women’s prison, then moved on to a men’s facility. my impression was that the first interviews were much “easier” — more women than men seemed to have developed a vocabulary for talking about things such as civic participation and their past and future roles in the community. so, i got a little spoiled as an interviewer. the men were immediately on top of issues such as individual rights, liberties, and voting but seemed to have given less thought to communitarian issues.

i didn’t draw any big generalizations from a handful of interviews and this didn’t become a theme in the books or articles from the project. still, it made me think about something i heard from a warden at a women’s prison long ago but didn’t believe at the time. she said, “female prisoners aren’t anything like male prisoners — they are a lot more like women in the community.” consistent with the conference and the mission of the apfo, the warden was deeply skeptical of a “just add women and mix” approach to correctional programming.

although there are far more men than women in the u.s. criminal Justice system, female correctional populations have risen significantly in the past decade. today women make up roughly 7 percent of prison inmates, 12 percent of jail inmates, 13 percent of parolees, and 23 percent of probationers.

a conference devoted to women in the system, the 11th national workshop on adult & juvenile female offenders, takes place today through wednesday at the marriott hotel in bloomington, mn. an informative ap story on the conference emphasizes some of the minnesota programs for mothers in prison and their children.

when i interviewed minnesota prisoners about their political life a few years ago, i started by doing ten interviews in a women’s prison, then moved on to a men’s facility. my impression was that the first interviews were much “easier” — more women than men seemed to have developed a vocabulary for talking about things such as civic participation and their past and future roles in the community. so, i got a little spoiled as an interviewer. the men were immediately on top of issues such as individual rights, liberties, and voting but seemed to have given less thought to communitarian issues.

i didn’t draw any big generalizations from a handful of interviews and this didn’t become a theme in the books or articles from the project. still, it made me think about something i heard from a warden at a women’s prison long ago but didn’t believe at the time. she said, “female prisoners aren’t anything like male prisoners — they are a lot more like women in the community.” consistent with the conference and the mission of the apfo, the warden was deeply skeptical of a “just add women and mix” approach to correctional programming.

from the sentencing project: the european court of human rights ruled today that denying voting rights to prisoners in the UK violates the european convention on human rights. the court held that “any limitations on the right to vote had to be imposed in pursuit of a legitimate aim and be proportionate” and that “any departure from the principle of universal suffrage risked undermining the democratic validity of the legislature.”

i don’t know enough about the court’s powers or jurisdiction to understand the full implications of this decision (i’m hoping that a great legal mind will step up to set me straight), but here is how the guardian describes the decision:

Laws setting out who can and cannot take part in elections are to be rewritten after the European court of human rights today ruled in favour of giving British prisoners the right to vote … Britain is among 13 signatories to the human rights convention who prevent prisoners from voting, according to a government survey … The court – on a majority ruling of 12-5 – said an article in the convention guaranteeing the “free expression of the opinion of the people in choosing a legislature” was not absolute but in a 21st century democracy the presumption should be in favour of inclusion … The court was set up in 1950 to hear citizens’ complaints under the human rights convention and is independent of the European Union.

debates over the voting status of prisoners — in the UK, australia, and south africa, among other nations — really draw the restrictiveness of u.s. laws into sharp relief. prisoners are now disenfranchised in 48 of the 50 states (maine and vermont are the only exceptions) and policy debates generally focus on whether non-incarcerated felons (probationers and parolees) and former felons (who have completed their sentences) should be permitted to vote.

from the sentencing project: the european court of human rights ruled today that denying voting rights to prisoners in the UK violates the european convention on human rights. the court held that “any limitations on the right to vote had to be imposed in pursuit of a legitimate aim and be proportionate” and that “any departure from the principle of universal suffrage risked undermining the democratic validity of the legislature.”

i don’t know enough about the court’s powers or jurisdiction to understand the full implications of this decision (i’m hoping that a great legal mind will step up to set me straight), but here is how the guardian describes the decision:

Laws setting out who can and cannot take part in elections are to be rewritten after the European court of human rights today ruled in favour of giving British prisoners the right to vote … Britain is among 13 signatories to the human rights convention who prevent prisoners from voting, according to a government survey … The court – on a majority ruling of 12-5 – said an article in the convention guaranteeing the “free expression of the opinion of the people in choosing a legislature” was not absolute but in a 21st century democracy the presumption should be in favour of inclusion … The court was set up in 1950 to hear citizens’ complaints under the human rights convention and is independent of the European Union.

debates over the voting status of prisoners — in the UK, australia, and south africa, among other nations — really draw the restrictiveness of u.s. laws into sharp relief. prisoners are now disenfranchised in 48 of the 50 states (maine and vermont are the only exceptions) and policy debates generally focus on whether non-incarcerated felons (probationers and parolees) and former felons (who have completed their sentences) should be permitted to vote.

pspunk alerted me to a short article describing how some states are addressing the “problem” of prisoners being exonerated by dna evidence. as clayton neuman wrote this week in time magazine:

Justice, it seems, has an expiration date. Luis Diaz last month became one of a handful of Florida prisoners–and one of 99 nationwide–exonerated by DNA testing since 2000. But the 2001 statute that helped set him free after he spent 26 years in jail for rapes he did not commit is set to expire next week. After Oct. 1, when prisoners can no longer petition Florida courts for post-conviction DNA testing, their only hope will be to ask prosecutors (the people who put them in jail in the first place) to reopen their case. Prisoners in Ohio face a similar deadline at the end of the month. “It is quintessentially un-American for the very people who may have caused this kind of miscarriage of Justice to be the people who decide whether DNA testing occurs,” says Jenny Greenberg of the Florida Innocence Initiative.

Worse still, the four-year window in Florida that required the preservation of evidence for older cases–which may have predated reliable DNA testing–is also closing. And unlike California, which last year passed a law ensuring the preservation of evidence throughout an inmate’s incarceration, Florida Governor Jeb Bush last month mandated that law-enforcement agencies need give only a 90-day notice before destroying evidence, which isn’t much time given the low literacy rates among inmates and how hard prison protocol makes it for them to reach a lawyer. Six states have yet to address the issue of requiring the preservation of DNA evidence. And new hurdles could arise at the congressional level, where a bill threatens to restrict many prisoners from filing one last-ditch petition in federal court. All these moves are designed to keep courts from getting deluged with DNA-related requests by thwarting new technology with red tape.

if i read this correctly, it means that states are starting to destroy the dna evidence used to convict prisoners at one end, and then not allowing them to petition to have themselves tested at the other. i’m all for keeping our busy courts from “getting deluged with dna-related requests,” but i find the asymmetry in power a bit troubling here. dna evidence is an invaluable tool for police and prosecutors, but shouldn’t it also be available for the wrongly convicted? i’m sure that there are many “frivolous” requests for testing, since guilty as well as innocent prisoners have an interest in something (anything!) to “rule themselves out” as suspects. still, it seems only a slight exaggeration to see this trend as inverting Justice blackstone’s adage: better to imprison 10 innocent people than to let one guilty person go free.

pspunk alerted me to a short article describing how some states are addressing the “problem” of prisoners being exonerated by dna evidence. as clayton neuman wrote this week in time magazine:

Justice, it seems, has an expiration date. Luis Diaz last month became one of a handful of Florida prisoners–and one of 99 nationwide–exonerated by DNA testing since 2000. But the 2001 statute that helped set him free after he spent 26 years in jail for rapes he did not commit is set to expire next week. After Oct. 1, when prisoners can no longer petition Florida courts for post-conviction DNA testing, their only hope will be to ask prosecutors (the people who put them in jail in the first place) to reopen their case. Prisoners in Ohio face a similar deadline at the end of the month. “It is quintessentially un-American for the very people who may have caused this kind of miscarriage of Justice to be the people who decide whether DNA testing occurs,” says Jenny Greenberg of the Florida Innocence Initiative.

Worse still, the four-year window in Florida that required the preservation of evidence for older cases–which may have predated reliable DNA testing–is also closing. And unlike California, which last year passed a law ensuring the preservation of evidence throughout an inmate’s incarceration, Florida Governor Jeb Bush last month mandated that law-enforcement agencies need give only a 90-day notice before destroying evidence, which isn’t much time given the low literacy rates among inmates and how hard prison protocol makes it for them to reach a lawyer. Six states have yet to address the issue of requiring the preservation of DNA evidence. And new hurdles could arise at the congressional level, where a bill threatens to restrict many prisoners from filing one last-ditch petition in federal court. All these moves are designed to keep courts from getting deluged with DNA-related requests by thwarting new technology with red tape.

if i read this correctly, it means that states are starting to destroy the dna evidence used to convict prisoners at one end, and then not allowing them to petition to have themselves tested at the other. i’m all for keeping our busy courts from “getting deluged with dna-related requests,” but i find the asymmetry in power a bit troubling here. dna evidence is an invaluable tool for police and prosecutors, but shouldn’t it also be available for the wrongly convicted? i’m sure that there are many “frivolous” requests for testing, since guilty as well as innocent prisoners have an interest in something (anything!) to “rule themselves out” as suspects. still, it seems only a slight exaggeration to see this trend as inverting Justice blackstone’s adage: better to imprison 10 innocent people than to let one guilty person go free.