FW: Crime & Justice News: Biden Plan Due on Background Checks, Assault Weapons; NRA Dissents
Dianne Tramutola-Lawson
From: Ted Gest [mailto:rob...@mn-8.ccsend.com] On Behalf Of Ted Gest
Sent: Friday, January 11, 2013 9:02 AM
Subject: Crime & Justice News: Biden Plan Due on Background Checks, Assault Weapons; NRA Dissents
January 11, 2013 Today's Stories -- Biden Plan Due on Background Checks, Assault Weapons; NRA Dissents -- How Much Responsibility do Violent TV Programmers Have for Gun Crimes? -- Researchers Call For End to Restrictions on Federally-Sponsored Gun Violence Studies -- Gun Background Check Denials Have Totalled Nearly 1 Million, FBI Says -- Bill Clinton Exaggerated Number of Mass Killings Since Assault Weapon Ban -- As Feds Ponder Gun Control, States Try to Keep Federal Regulators Out -- U.S. Backing for Death Penalty Stable at 63%, Says Gallup; Down Since 1994 -- Could Lead in Gasoline Be a Big Factor In the Rise and Fall of Crime? -- NYC Reviews 800 Rape Cases On Possible DNA Evidence Mishandling -- Group Warns TX Prisons and Jails Could Grow Without Drug Treatment Funds -- How Prisoner Re-Entry Project Helps Ex-Inmates Overcome Crime Histories -- IL To Resume Early Prison Release Program; Inmates Must Serve 60 Days+ On every business day, Criminal Justice Journalists (CJJ) provides a summary of the nation's top crime and justice news stories with Internet links, if any. Crime & Justice News is being provided by CJJ with the support of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, its Center on Media, Crime and Justice, the Ford Foundation, and the National Criminal Justice Association. The news digest is edited by Ted Gest and David Krajicek. You may go to TheCrimeReport.org to search all archived CJN stories. Please e-mail Ted Gest at CJJ with concerns about the editorial content of our news items, to suggest news stories, or with general comments. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Vice President Joe Biden will call next week for a White House push for broad measures to stem gun violence, citing growing support for tighter background checks on gun purchasers, restrictions on high-capacity clips, and other moves, probably including a renewal of the federal ban on assault-style weapons, says the Wall Street Journal. The National Rifle Association delivered a swift rebuke after a meeting yesterday with Biden, saying the administration was gearing up for an attack on gun ownership. "We disagreed, obviously, on important issues,'' said NRA lobbyist James Baker. The NRA said it was "disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment.'' The White House is working quietly with outside advocates and religious groups to lay the groundwork for a campaign to build political support for gun-control efforts. The challenge of moving anything through Congress remains high. Biden said he had heard a "surprising recurrence'' of suggestions from groups he consulted that the nation require a background check for every gun purchase. Currently, checks are only needed for purchases from federally licensed dealers. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ John Landgraf runs the FX network, home of some of basic cable's most popular, and most violent, programming. Landgraf is also a father to three sons. When first-graders were massacred in Newtown, Ct, he was "upset and so horrified and sad and angry," and he pondered whether violent content in television, movies and video games should take any blame for mass murders like those in Newtown; Aurora, Co.; and elsewhere, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I think anything and everything that bears any responsibility for these kinds of tragedies, up to and including what we do in the media, should be fair game and should be looked at," Landgraf told TV critics meeting in Los Angeles with broadcast and cable networks. Neither he nor other programmers would draw a direct line of cause and effect. After the Newtown murders, some advocacy groups (including the National Rifle Association) laid blame on media. In a poll by the Hollywood Reporter and Penn Schoen Berland, 44 percent of parents said the shootings made them more aware of how much violence their children are consuming in media, and 35 percent said Congress or the president should pressure Hollywood to cut back on violent content. "We're in the culture business," said Kevin Reilly, chief programmer for Fox, which will launch the graphically bloody serial killer drama "The Following" later this month. "It comes with responsibility." | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Research restrictions advocated by the National Rifle Association have hampered finding solutions to firearms violence, more than a hundred scientists from virtually every major U.S. university told Vice President Joe Biden's task force on gun violence yesterday, Reuters reports. The group of economists, health researchers, educators, doctors, and criminologists said funding should be restored to a range of study areas, from gun safety to tracking illegal guns. "While mortality rates from almost every major cause of death declined dramatically over the past half century, the homicide rate in America today is almost exactly the same as it was in 1950," the academics wrote in a letter organized by scholars at the University of Chicago Crime Lab research center. "Politically-motivated constraints" left the nation "muddling through" a problem that costs American society on the order of $100 billion per year, it said. The federal Centers for Disease Control has cut firearms safety research by 96 percent since the mid-1990s, according to one estimate. Congress, pushed by the gun lobby, in 1996 put restrictions on CDC funding of gun research into the budget. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the four years since Barack Obama was first elected president, an estimated 67 million firearms have been purchased in the United States. That's more than were sold in almost seven years before his first election, reports the Kansas City Star. December saw a record-shattering number of requests for criminal background checks on prospective gun buyers. "Since Obama was re-elected," said Gary Jessup of UT Arms in Kansas City, Ks., "it's been off the chart." While the FBI said checks do not represent the actual number of firearms sold, experts say the background check requests do provide the best measure of firearms sales in the United States. Based on those numbers, 2012 was a record-setting year for gun sales in the country with more than 19 million background checks conducted. The checks are required whenever someone seeks to make a firearm purchase from a licensed firearms dealer. Because some transactions can involve multiple weapons and because some people are denied as a result of the check, the FBI said a "one-to-one correlation" between checks and sales cannot be made. Since the checks were implemented there have been 987,578 denials. Most of those rejections were triggered by prior felony convictions or misdemeanor domestic violence. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Washington Post fact checker gives former President Bill Clinton three "Pinocchios" for saying this week that "half of all mass killings in the U.S. have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of this country." The newspaper quotes Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections, who has assembled a database on the issue. He has identified 156 mass public shootings in the past 100 years. Since 2005, when the assault ban expired, there have been 32 such mass public shootings, including seven in 2012. That's just over 20 percent of all mass public shootings, which is much less than Clinton's 50 percent. Duwe says that 2012 was certainly a horrific year, but it is too early to tell if it signals an ominous trend. Given some fuzziness in the definition of a mass killing, the Post "cut Clinton a bit of slack in the final ruling" and spared him 4 Pinocchios. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A growing number of states are aiming to keep federal hands off their weapons if Congress decides to stiffen gun-control laws in response to last month's shooting in Newtown, Ct., says USA Today. Eight states - Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming - have adopted laws in recent years that would exempt guns made in the state from federal regulation as long as they remain in the state, says Jon Griffin of the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty-one other states have introduced similar legislation. States have based their laws on the Montana Firearms Freedom Act of 2009, which is being challenged in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The federal government argues that, "it's unrealistic to think that these guns won't leave the state of Montana." Allowing such laws to stand "would leave a gaping hole in federal firearms regulation," a federal attorney argued. Jonathan Lowy of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said courts have been clear that states can't exempt themselves from federal regulation of guns because it would have ramifications across state lines. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Americans' support for the death penalty as punishment for murder has plateaued in the low 60s in recent years, after several years in which support was diminishing, reports the Gallup Organization. Sixty-three percent now favor the death penalty as the punishment for murder, similar to 61 percent in 2011 and 64 percent in 2010. Gallup first asked Americans for their views on the death penalty in 1936, and has asked it at least annually since 1999. The latest results come from a Dec. 19-22, 2012, USA Today/Gallup survey, conducted in the first few days after the Newtown, Ct., school shooting massacre. Although views on the death penalty have been fairly static since 2010, support has been gradually diminishing since the high point in 1994, when 80 percent were in favor. By 2001, roughly two-thirds were in favor, and since then it has edged closer to 60%. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mother Jones magazine cites "an astonishing body of evidence" of studies showing that higher childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher adult arrest rates for violent crimes, and that "gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise and fall of violent crime over the past half century." Murder rates have always been higher in big cities than in towns and small cities. One researcher said it might have a surprising explanation: because big cities have lots of cars in a small area, they also had high densities of atmospheric lead during the postwar era. As lead levels in gasoline decreased, the differences between big and small cities largely went away. The difference in murder rates went away too. Today, homicide rates are similar in cities of all sizes. The gasoline lead story may be the only hypothesis that persuasively explains both the rise of crime in the '60s and '70s and its fall beginning in the '90s. Two other theories-the baby boom demographic bulge and the drug explosion of the '60s-at least have the potential to explain both, but neither one fully fits the known data. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The New York City medical examiner's office is conducting an unusual review of more than 800 rape cases in which critical DNA evidence may have been mishandled or overlooked by a lab technician, resulting in incorrect reports being given to criminal investigators, the New York Times reports. Supervisors have found 26 cases in which the technician failed to detect biological evidence when some actually existed. In seven of those cases, full DNA profiles were developed - in some instances, evidence that sex-crime investigators did not see for years, hampering their ability to develop cases against rape suspects. In one of those instances, the newly discovered DNA profile matched a convicted offender's sample, leading to an indictment a decade after the evidence was collected, said Dr. Mechthild Prinz, the director of forensic biology at the medical examiner's office. In two other instances, the new DNA profiles were linked to people either already convicted or under suspicion. The continuing review of the technician's cases underscores how DNA evidence, widely perceived as being nearly irrefutable proof of guilt or innocence, can still be subject to human error. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Instead of throwing drug addicts in jail, Texas should invest more money in substance abuse treatment, says the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, which adds that the move could provide millions of dollars in savings and improve public safety, according to the Texas Tribune. "You cannot cure addiction by locking it up," said the coalition's Ana Yáñez Correa. "It doesn't cure it; it makes it worse." In Texas, arrests for drug possession have increased 32 percent in the last decade, and about 90 percent of all drug-related arrests are for possession - not dealing, the report says. In 2011, the nearly 15,000 inmates in jails and prisons on drug possession offenses statewide cost taxpayers more than $725,000 daily. The coalition argues that providing more state resources for treatment would be less costly and would prevent crimes associated with drug use. Since 2007, lawmakers have directed money that would have been invested in building new prisons to diversion, probation, and treatment programs. Facing a $27 billion budget shortfall in 2011, the legislature curtailed the growth of some diversion and treatment programs that had helped slow the incarceration rate in Texas. Without more investment in those kinds of programs, Texas prisons and jails could again exceed their capacity by 2014, the report says. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Project ReNu, launched this year by the Brooklyn, NY-based Center for NuLeadership On Urban Solutions, help the formerly incarcerated figure out whether their recorded criminal histories were undercutting their employment prospects and, where possible, boosting the ex-offenders' image among potential employers, says The Crime Report. With several studies linking gainful employment to lesser rates of criminal recidivism, jobs and housing top the list of the most critical material needs of the formerly incarcerated, said Shelli Rossman of the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. Ex-offenders not only require the tools essential for what can be the monumental task of landing a job-especially during a lingering recession when employers have their pick of prospects who've never been to prison-but they also need help hanging on to the jobs a fraction of them do manage to get. Rossman says. The key assumption of Project ReNu is that paid wages will reduce the likelihood that a previously convicted person will return to crime and to prison, says director Divine Pryor. Another principle is that if potential employers can see that formerly incarcerated job applicants are confronting their past, and can articulate their achievements during a job interview, then that forthrightness might work in the applicant's favor, says Prior. | |
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Illinois prisons will introduce a more restrictive early-release program to replace one that was halted three years ago amid public outcry over inmates serving small fractions of their sentences, the Associated Press reports. Gov. Pat Quinn shut down the former program after AP reported that 1,745 inmates, some convicted of violent crimes, had been released within weeks or even days of their arrival at the penitentiary. One of those men was convicted for brutally attacking a woman in 2008. After getting six months shaved off his sentence under the program and spending a year in jail, he spent just 14 days in prison, and was arrested the next day on suspicion of assault. The end of the program caused the prison population to swell by more than 4,000 inmates, and there are now more than 49,000 people in prisons designed to hold 33,000. The new program is aimed at easing the problem, the way early-out programs were previously used for decades to manage the population. Unlike in the old program, inmates must serve at least 60 days of their sentence before being released. The new law also allows the prison director to decide early release eligibility on a range of factors, including a past record of violence, something the department had said court rulings previously prohibited. | |
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