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Today In Criminal Justice
Crime, Justice, the Media (and Donald Trump)
AL Takes a Step Toward Ending Contentious ‘Judicial Override’ Chicago Police Boss: ‘Enough Is Enough’ After 3 Kids Killed Drawn-Out Police Scandal Bedevils Irish Prime Minister Citing Trump, Advocacy Group Reports Uptick in Hate Groups
Report Cites Poor Healthcare for Detained Immigrants San Diego PD Skirts Law That Limits Juvenile DNA Testing Trump Reps Missing from Huge CA Cyber Security Conference Another Fact-Check of Crime Rates Finds Trump Is Wrong
What Will Trump’s Dated View of Crime Mean to Reforms?
Top Story
Crime, Justice, the Media (and Donald Trump)Urban violence, police shootings, the opioid epidemic, and a tense political campaign dominated criminal justice coverage during 2016. How did the coverage measure up? And what was overlooked? As journalists gather in NYC today for this year’s John Jay/H.F. Guggenheim Symposium on Crime in America, TCR publishes our annual press review by co-founder and Washington bureau chief Ted Gest. The Crime Report AL Takes a Step Toward Ending Contentious ‘Judicial Override’In a rare show of bipartisanship, the Alabama House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday approved a proposal to end the state’s controversial sanction of the death penalty judicial override, says the Alabama Political Reporter. Alabama is the only state that permits judges to overrule a jury’s recommendation and sentence a defendant to death. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Chris England, D-Tuscaloosa, also mandates jury unanimity in deciding on the death penalty – a change from the current law, which requires at least 10 members of the 12-person jury to vote for death. “If it has to be unanimous to convict, it should be unanimous to sentence a person to die,” England said.
The bill now moves to the full House for consideration. A similar bill in the Senate – which doesn’t contain the unanimity language – was approved by committee last week and awaits a Senate vote. The Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Ala.-based advocacy group led by Bryan Stevenson, has been a sharp critic of Alabama’s judicial override. It found that Alabama judges had overridden jury recommendations in capital cases 112 times since 1976. The group says about 20 percent of all death row inmates in Alabama got there by a judicial override. Alabama Political Reporter Chicago Police Boss: ‘Enough Is Enough’ After 3 Kids KilledIn a city already reeling from a surge in bloodshed, the shooting deaths of three children in four days has left many in Chicago stunned, angry and again searching for answers, reports the Chicago Tribune. Speaking to the media Wednesday, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson raised familiar themes of wanting tougher gun laws to keep repeat offenders off the streets. But it was clear that Johnson spoke with more emotion because of the spate of innocent young victims, saying, “Enough is enough.” The latest young victims were Takiya Holmes, 11, hit by a stray bullet Saturday; Kanari Gentry Bowers, 12, shot in the head while playing, and Lavontay White, 2, shot while sitting in a car with adults that included a known gang member.
Johnson thumped the lectern with his fist at one point in apparent frustration over the criminal justice system’s failure to hold shooters accountable. The latest shootings happened as the city sought additional federal help. On Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel met in Washington with U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and discussed aid for “proactive community policing.” And the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says it will send more agents to the city, which counted more than 35,000 shootings last year. Chicago Tribune Drawn-Out Police Scandal Bedevils Irish Prime MinisterEnda Kenny, Ireland’s prime minister since 2011, is facing one of the worst political crises of his career over a convoluted police scandal that has dragged on for more than a decade, reports the New York Times. The scandal has been compared to the case of Detective Frank Serpico, whose testimony in the 1970s brought to light corruption in the New York Police Department. The matter dates to 2006, when Sgt. Maurice McCabe began raising concerns about low-level misconduct within the National Police Service. McCabe quickly found himself shunned by his fellow officers. But he persisted, and a government inquiry found in his favor.
But the case won’t go away. Last week, The Irish Examiner and the public broadcaster RTE’s “Prime Time” program reported that Ireland’s child protection agency had created a file on McCabe containing a false accusation of child sexual abuse. That a whistle-blower could face such accusations in apparent retaliation has raised unsettling questions about Ireland’s culture of policing and the possible collusion of other agencies, including the child protection agency. The case has affected the highest levels of the Irish government, bedeviling Kenny. He has been attacked by critics who charge that he missed opportunities to resolve the mess in 2014, and supported the police chief at the time and his justice minister for too long. Denny, who survived a no-confidence motion last week, promises an inquiry into the latest developments. New York Times Citing Trump, Advocacy Group Reports Uptick in Hate GroupsThe number of hate groups in the United States rose for a second year in a row in 2016 as the radical right was energized by the candidacy of Donald Trump, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual census of hate groups and other extremist organizations. The most dramatic growth was the near-tripling of anti-Muslim hate groups – from 34 in 2015 to 101 last year. The growth has been accompanied by a rash of crimes targeting Muslims. The latest FBI statistics show that hate crimes against Muslims grew by 67 percent in 2015, when Trump launched his campaign.
The report, contained in the Spring 2017 issue of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report, includes the Hate Map showing the names, types and locations of hate groups across the country. The SPLC found that the number of hate groups operating in 2016 rose to 917 – up from 892 in 2015. “2016 was an unprecedented year for hate,” said Mark Potok, an SPLC senior fellow. “The country saw a resurgence of white nationalism that imperils the racial progress we’ve made, along with the rise of a president whose policies reflect the values of white nationalists.” Southern Poverty Law Center Report Cites Poor Healthcare for Detained ImmigrantsA new report by New York Lawyers for the Public Interest documents serious, often life-threatening deficiencies in the medical care provided to people detained in New York City-area immigration detention facilities. The legal advocacy group says its research shows that federal immigration officials and county jails are delaying and denying necessary and essential care – leading to devastating health consequences such as emergency surgery, delayed cancer diagnoses and worsening conditions of treatable diseases and pain.
The report, Detained and Denied: Healthcare Access in Immigration Detention, comes amid a renewed push to find and arrest undocumented immigrants, a “crackdown” hailed by President Donald Trump on Twitter, reports Politico. The detentions chronicled by the advocacy group are not meant to be punitive. The immigrants sit in jail awaiting a hearing, which usually ends with the person being released, deported or in some cases moved to another facility. But requests for medicine — even urgent care such as a biopsy or ultrasound — can get bogged down by the bureaucracy. The report is based on interviews with 47 detainees who were being held between May 2015 and November 2016 at correctional facilities in the New York area. Politico San Diego PD Skirts Law That Limits Juvenile DNA TestingThe San Diego Police Department has found a way around a state law designed to protect juveniles from being forced to submit DNA, reports Voice of San Diego. Under a 2004 law, DNA samples can be collected only from youths convicted of a felony or registered as a sex offender. But San Diego police are skirting the law by maintaining a separate database — one that’s not linked to state or federal DNA databases. According to department policy, as long as a DNA profile remains in the local database, officers can collect DNA from anyone for “investigative purposes.” The policy requires only that officers get a signed consent from the minor. It doesn’t require them to notify the minor’s parent or guardian until after the sample’s been taken.
A lawsuit filed Tuesday by the ACLU challenges that policy, arguing that a juvenile is incapable of providing informed consent, especially if he or she is being coerced by law enforcement. The lawsuit also raises questions about which juveniles are being targeted by the policy and why. Experts interviewed were unaware of any other law enforcement agency in California that collects DNA from juveniles in the field. They acknowledged a local database is a way to get around state rules, but said it also undermines the intent of the law’s strict limits. Voice of San Diego Trump Reps Missing from Huge CA Cyber Security ConferenceThis week an estimated 40,000 attendees are in San Francisco for RSA, one of the nation’s largest computer security conferences. But one group has stayed away — officials from the Trump administration, reports USA Today. “There’s been a noticeable absence of government security officials at RSA this year,” said J.J. Thompson, CEO of Rook Security in Indianapolis. In past years, the Obama administration was very engaged at RSA, with staff members speaking on panels, delivering keynote speeches and inviting partnerships with private firms.
The Trump administration had been widely expected to release an executive order on cybersecurity during the conference, but that hasn’t happened. While there were 41 government speakers at RSA this year, there are no senior level speakers from the Trump administration. RSA said that at the time its program was finalized, many of the new administration’s appointments were not selected. Invitations were extended to several of the new appointments, but they were unable to speak at this year’s conference, RSA said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. USA Today Another Fact-Check of Crime Rates Finds Trump Is WrongWith a series of charts and data, the Minneapolis Star Tribune attempts to fact-check the relentless assertions by President Trump that violent crime in America has increased. Like many others, the paper finds the opposite is true–that crime has been on a steep decline since the 1990s and is at its lowest points in decades, with some localized exceptions. That fact is important because Trump has the power to drive the national conversation and influence criminal justice policy. Those policies can come at a steep cost to the taxpayers; the War on Drugs is estimated to have cost more than $1 trillion. “If you start with bad facts, you’re going to get bad policies that might make the country less safe, that might strain relationships further between police and communities of color, that send more people to prison for little reason,” said Ames Grawert of the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.
Grawert says Trump’s crime assertions are plainly false. He said he believes the Trump administration is purposely overstating the problem of violent crime to generate support for policies like the border wall and the travel ban. “They only make sense as an overreaction to a clear-and-present danger,” he said. “So I think he needs to make the country feel less safe than it is to sell some of these policies.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ media office declined to comment or to provide an alternative data source to support Trump’s statements. Minneapolis Star Tribune What Will Trump’s Dated View of Crime Mean to Reforms?President Trump’s obvious lack of understanding of the abuse of civil asset forfeiture by some police agencies, displayed last week in a White House meeting with county sheriffs, prompts the New Yorker to wonder just how much damage he could do to nascent law enforcement reforms. Guided by one of the sheriffs, Trump improvised a position that opposition to forfeitures must be “political.” Yet a small but growing bipartisan group of state and federal lawmakers have come together to insist on forfeiture reforms that aid due process. A study by the Cato Institute suggests that 84 percent of U.S. residents oppose civil forfeiture.
Some 20 states have enacted forfeiture reforms since 2014, including Florida and California. His meeting with the sheriffs raises the question of whether Trump can thwart not just forfeiture fixes but broader justice system overhauls. So far, Trump has offered a criminal justice platform ripped from the 1980s. But presidents have never controlled all the critical levers of American justice. The current push to end mass incarceration and to uphold due process emerged largely from local initiatives. The New Yorker | |
| | On every business day, The Crime Report (TCR) and Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) provide a summary of the nation's top crime and justice news stories with Internet links commentary, and New & Notable research in the field. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the Langeloth Foundation and the Urban Institute. Today's report was prepared by David Krajicek and Isidoro Rodriguez. Please send comments or questions to izzy@thecrimereport.org. | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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