Posts Tagged ‘crime and punishment’

When pizza incentives (allegedly) backfire

A class-action suit charges that the sheriff and public defender’s office in Cook County, Ill. have failed to protect female public defenders and law clerks from detainees who expose themselves and harass the women in other ways. According to the suit’s allegations, the authorities tried bribing serial offenders with free pizza if they refrained from misbehaving but the policy “backfired, allegedly, because some detainees who learned of it would then start acting out just so they could get pizza when they stopped.” [Kevin Underhill, Lowering the Bar] “A spokeswoman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office said the pizza rewards program described in the lawsuit never took place.” [ABC News]

“Why the trial by ordeal was actually an effective test of guilt”

Regarding the old “Trial by…” methods: our ancestors were not fools and seemingly bizarre or destructive methods of trial would not have lasted through long periods unless they served some function or other. One possibility is that where accused wrongdoers rightly or wrongly believed in the efficacy of a truth-finding ordeal, they would signal their belief in their guilt (by confessing) or not and that was the real information yielded by the process, making it unnecessary to follow through with the menaced injury.

According to this article, for example, there is reason to believe the supposedly boiling water in the boiling-water ordeal had been allowed to cool substantially, turning it into more of a psychological than a physical challenge. [Peter Leeson, Aeon]

There is also a literature worth checking out on the similarities to the old trials by ordeal (or outright torture) of our own current plea bargain system.

November 8 roundup

“If the Law Is This Complicated, Why Shouldn’t Ignorance Be an Excuse?”

Sharing a Netflix password might be a violation of federal law; so might picking a feather up off the ground, or freeing a whale that has become caught in one’s fishing gear. “America’s judges still cling to the proposition that it’s perfectly fine to lock people up for doing something they had no idea was illegal. But it’s not fine, and the justifications for that palpably unfair rule have only grown more threadbare with time.” [Clark Neily, TownHall] More: Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View.

Disrupt the pipeline? We had to do it, Your Honor

Environmental protesters charged with trespassing and turning off valves at a Minnesota pipeline, as part of a coordinated “Shut It Down” direct action campaign, have proffered a “necessity defense.” But the necessity defense is a narrow one that has seldom prevailed in past civil disobedience prosecutions, and it shouldn’t prevail here. [Stephen Bainbridge]

Crime and punishment roundup

  • Coming Oct. 18: Cato all-day conference on Criminal Justice at the Crossroads, speakers include Hon. Jed Rakoff, Clark Neily, Jeffrey Miron, Suja Thomas, Scott Greenfield, register here or watch online;
  • A bail bond agent’s letter to the editor responding to my Wall Street Journal piece on Maryland bail reform;
  • Domestic violence: Ontario Court of Appeal rules cultural differences cannot justify lighter sentence in criminal cases [Toronto Star, 2015]
  • “Police Union Complains That Public Got to See Them Roughing Up Utah Nurse” [Scott Shackford] “Bad Cops Will Keep Getting Rehired As Long As You Have Powerful Police Unions” [Ed Krayewski]
  • “Federal Judge In Colorado Rules Sex Offender Registry Is Unconstitutional” [Lenore Skenazy, Jacob Sullum, CBS Denver, Scott Greenfield] If a young man is mentally disabled and exposes himself, should he be barred for good from a busboy job or participation in Special Olympics? [Skenazy] More: David Feige, New York Times via Greenfield on the Supreme Court’s acceptance of a fateful factoid;
  • Trump to lift curbs on disposal of military surplus gear to police [Adam Bates, Jonathan Blanks, earlier]

Dark side of alternatives to incarceration: return of convict leasing

Rehab program sent men from drug courts in Oklahoma and elsewhere to chicken plant as unpaid labor [Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter, Center for Investigative Reporting] More: Digital History/University of Houston on history of convict leasing (“In 1883, about 10 percent of Alabama’s total revenue was derived from convict leasing.”); Ida B. Wells, “The Convict Lease System” (“The Convict Lease System and Lynch Law are twin infamies which flourish hand in hand in many of the United States”); Frederick Douglass speech on convict lease system; U.S. Department of Justice peonage files 1901-1945.

Bail reform? Careful how that goes

A campaign to get rid of the bail bond industry is currently in full swing across the country, with support from many liberals and libertarians. I’ve got an op-ed in the weekend Wall Street Journal’s “Cross Country” feature warning that Maryland’s experience over the past year should be a cautionary lesson:

Last fall the state’s attorney general, Brian Frosh, issued guidance that suddenly declared past bail methods unlawful, prodding the court system into an unplanned experiment. Judges may not set financial requirements if there is a reason to believe the defendant cannot pay, and unless they hold a suspect without bail, they must impose the “least onerous” conditions.

Now the results are coming in, and they can’t be what Mr. Frosh had in mind. An early report in March by Kelsi Loos in the Frederick News-Post found that since October the share of Maryland defendants held without bail had increased from 10% to 14%. The Washington Post later reported that from September 2016 to May the figure had jumped from 7% to 15%.

Meanwhile, fewer released defendants are showing up for trial. The Post, confirming anecdotal reports, writes that the “failure to appear” rate in January was 14.5%, up five points from October. Failing to show up for court sets up a defendant for more-severe consequences down the road, which can include being held without bail.

While bail reform is supposed to reduce the number of inmates held in jail, the number has instead increased in some places, though the results appear inconsistent.

If bail is taken away, judges need other tools to do the same job. Decades ago, when Congress steered the federal criminal-justice system away from bail bonds, lawmakers provided practical replacements, including systematic help in assessing a defendant’s risk of flight or re-offense, options for pretrial supervision, and methods of home and electronic detention. Several states have done the same. New Jersey now uses a mathematical algorithm to assess a person’s risk of fleeing or committing another crime. But the Maryland legislature, deeply split over Mr. Frosh’s destabilizing changes, has failed to set up such alternatives.

Maryland’s example doesn’t refute the idea of bail reform. But it does suggest state leaders should work to build consensus for comprehensive changes, instead of charging ahead with moralizing experiments.

On the current campaign to end bail bonds, see American Bar Association, Sens. Kamala Harris and Rand Paul and newspapers praising, Marc Levin (conservative), ACLU (villainizing insurers), Gary Raney.

Other perspectives: Scott Greenfield (“pre-trial incarceration was a huge factor in obtaining guilty pleas from innocent defendants,” but algorithms, used as replacement in places like New Jersey, have problems too), Joshua Page (some families value bond company’s service), Dan Mitchell. On the uncertain stance of constitutional law, see Pugh v. Rainwater (Fifth Circuit 1977) and more (LaFave et al.), Walker v. City of Calhoun, 2016 (Cato amicus: bail must be individualized) and more (James McGehee).

Update: jury acquits in Nevada Bundy standoff

“For the second time this year, the federal government tried and failed to convict four men who joined the high-profile Bundy family in its 2014 [Nevada] standoff with federal agents in a dispute over grazing fees for cattle.” Two defendants were acquitted of all charges, and two others were acquitted of most with the jury hanging on the remainder. [Melissa Etehad and David Montero, L.A. Times] Both the armed Nevada standoff, and the later Bundy family takeover of the unoccupied Malheur wildlife refuge in Oregon, played at the time as big crisis stories. Despite the weakness of many of the underlying legal claims about land advanced by the protesters, federal prosecutors have struggled to obtain convictions; the Oregon takeover resulted in acquittals in October [our earlier coverage] [revised and corrected; an earlier version of this post had been based on confused chronology]