When Jabbar Collins was arrested in 1994 for the murder of Rabbi Abraham Pollack, no one believed him when he said he was innocent. Now, after 16 years in a maximum security prison and three years following his exoneration, Collins is slated to receive $3 million from the state of New York in one of the largest wrongful conviction settlements ever awarded by the state.

Collins is one of the lucky ones. Only 30 states and the District of the Columbia provide compensation to exonerated criminals. A total of 1,405 innocent people have been wrongfully imprisoned since 1989. In 46 percent of these cases, the government and its officials were at fault. Official misconduct (police, prosecutors, or other government officials abusing their power) is responsible for putting 647 innocent people behind bars over the past 25 years. Despite these numbers, the road to compensation is far from easy.

Even in the states that have compensation laws on the books, the process for receiving money is fairly difficult, requiring years of waiting and expensive legal battles. On average there is a minimum of a three year wait (as in Collins’ case). Additionally, a successful lawsuit depends on the person’s ability to prove that their wrongful conviction was caused by intentional misconduct. This requires naming a responsible party such as a prosecutor, police officer, or witness. It also excludes compensation for legal technicalities and unintentional errors made during the original investigation and trial.

If that isn’t bad enough, compensation laws vary widely state-by-state, and most of the money that exonerees receive is taxed. Some states deny compensation to any exoneree that falsely confessed or pleaded guilty, while others deny money to those who were exonerated without the use of DNA testing. Florida refuses to compensate anyone that has an unrelated prior offense under its “clean hands” provision, and Montana offers no money at all, instead offering educational aid for state or community college. New Hampshire offers a flat maximum of $20,000 no matter how many years an exoneree spent wrongfully imprisoned.

According to federal standards, exonerees should receive up to $50,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment and $100,000 per year spent on death row, but these standards are currently met by only 5 states. More often than not, exonerees receive small amounts–if anything at all–which do not even begin to cover the damages they suffered as a direct result of their wrongful confinement.

One thing that all exonerees almost uniformly receive is the horrific experience of being falsely imprisoned. Most suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, institutionalization, and depression as a result of years they spent behind bars. They have to endure the censure for a crime they never committed and the psychological damage of being branded a criminal by the public.

Even after an exoneree is released from confinement, the consequences of their imprisonment has the potential to taint every aspect of their lives. For some exonerees, half a lifetime has passed them by; family members have died, children have grown up, and spouses have moved on with their lives while they spent years behind bars. Others suffer physically from years spent with sub-par prison health care, while others suffer professionally as they lack the job experience, vocational training, and educational skills that are needed to secure a job.

Perhaps worst of all is the fact that their wrong conviction is not even immediately expunged from their records upon exoneration and release, often appearing on background checks and inhibiting their ability to fully reintegrate into society years later. Despite all this, most states do not provide transitional services for exonerees, leaving a large portion without a means of transportation, a source of income, or even a place to call home upon release.

It seems rather counter-intuitive to not provide these people with immediate and automatic compensation. They have clearly suffered unjustly at the hands of a flawed criminal justice system and it seems only natural that the government should take on the responsibility to help them rebuild their lives, regardless of liability.

The fact that these people are left with no other option but to sue for the compensation they rightfully deserve is adding insult to injury. They have already proved their innocence-they would be in jail otherwise–and while you cannot put a price on freedom, exonerees should not have to suffer through an expensive, protracted legal battle in order to be compensated for the years they spent unjustly serving time for a crime they did not commit.

[Innocence Project] [National Registry of Exonerations]

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Luigi Caterino via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Compensation for Exonerees: A Fundamental Right? appeared first on Law Street.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has reached an agreement with the mayor of Albuquerque for an independent monitor to oversee the city’s troubled police department. The Albuquerque Police Department (APD) has been under investigation by the DOJ since November 2012 due to mounting concerns that their habitual use of excessive force violates citizens’ constitutional rights.

The investigation was launched following a series of high profile police shootings under questionable circumstances. Iraq war veteran Kenneth Ellis III was shot while holding a gun to his own head, and Alan Gomez was shot at his home while “armed” with a plastic spoon. A graphic video released by the APD showed homeless camper James Boyd being shot four times after he appeared to be surrendering to officers.

Changing the “shoot-first-ask-later” mentality of the department will not be easy, to say the least. According to the Associated Press, the APD has shot 41 people over the past four years, 27 of them fatally. With a population greater than 550,000 people, the city of Albuquerque is ahead of both Chicago and New York in terms of police-related deaths per capita.

The high number of incidents involving alleged police misconduct has eroded community trust in both city officials and the police, spurring a series of protests that have even included an attempted “citizen’s arrest” of Police Chief Gorden Eden. “It has reached a boiling point,” one protester told the Associated Press, “people just can’t take it anymore.”

The agreement comes just three months after the DOJ released a report stating that:

APD officers too frequently use deadly force against people who pose a minimal threat and in situations where the conduct of the officers heightens the danger and contributes to the need to use force.

The report also found systematic deficiencies in the department that contribute to its troubling pattern of excessive force. Failed accountability systems, deficient policies, and a lack of sufficient civilian oversight were all listed as contributing causes.

According to a joint statement, the DOJ and the city will focus on reforming eight areas of concern: use of force policies, interactions with individuals with mental illness and other disabilities, tactical units, training, internal investigations and civilian complaints, management and supervision, recruitment and selection of officers, and community engagement and oversight.

This process will be overseen by an independent monitor appointed by the federal government, and will rely heavily on cooperation from the APD as well as input from community leaders. The agreement, formally known as a consent decree, is legally binding and puts the city of Albuquerque under the oversight of a federal court until the APD is in full compliance with the mandated reforms.

About 20 cities have entered into similar agreements with the DOJ since the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was passed in 1994. Simply put, the act allows the DOJ to effectively sue police agencies that exhibit a “pattern and practice” of using excessive force and violating constitutional rights. The DOJ can then force those departments to implement a series of reforms that are meant to prevent any future abuses.

The success of the agreements depends largely on how resistant the police department in question is to change. There is no set time limit for a consent decree–the Oakland Police Department has been under one for nearly a decade–but some departments push back against the court-mandated reforms, which can prolong the process.

David Correia, a professor at the University of New Mexico and local organizer, doubts that the APD will be able to successfully implement reforms. “If history is any guide then [this process] won’t work,” Correia told Truthout. In 1997, a different report found some of the same exact systematic deficiencies that were listed in the DOJ’s report. As it turns out, reforms were implemented by some of the same people who are still in charge today, and they clearly did lead to the necessary changes in the department. “As a result, six years after those reforms, [the APD] killed more people at a higher rate” Correia explained. “So there can be no day-to-day control of the police department by [Police Chief] Eden, Huntsman, any of the deputy chiefs, or [Mayor Berry], but the DOJ won’t go that far”

Only time will tell if the consent decree will be embraced by police and city leadership in Albuquerque. The community remains weary and distrustful after years of abuse, but feels that the agreement is definitely a step in the right direction. Attorney General Eric Holder is also optimistic that the APD can correct troubling practices and restore public trust. Holder stated:

This agreement marks an important step forward in addressing the unreasonable use of deadly force uncovered in our investigation into the Albuquerque Police Department. The residents of Albuquerque depend on their police department to serve their community with honor and integrity.

Consent decrees and federal monitoring have been able to successfully reform a number of police departments, but departments generally get out what they put in. The APD is being presented with a chance to turn over a new leaf, but whether they will grasp this opportunity or cling to their old ways has yet to be seen. Either way, change is coming to the department, and all that the residents of Albuquerque can hope for is that these changes extend past the moment that federal oversight ends.

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Joseph Morris via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Albuquerque Police Department Brought Under Federal Oversight appeared first on Law Street.

Though homelessness is not recognized as a protected class under the Hate Crime Prevention Act (HCPA), the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) has been tracking what it considers to be hate crimes for 15 years now. The coalition has documented more than 1,437 crimes against homeless people committed by housed individuals since 1999.

The FBI defines a hate crime as any “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” The NCH adamantly believes that targeting individuals solely because they lack a place to call home is just as serious as targeting them because of their ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.

“There is a very high prevalence of violence against homeless people. They are sought out and targeted because of who they are, and folks are being injured and attacked in large numbers,” Jerry Jones, executive director of the NCH, explained in a phone interview.

In fact, while there have only been 132 homicides in the last 15 years that qualify as hate crimes, the number of homeless related homicides is almost three times as many, totaling 375 deaths since 1999.

These attacks are believed to be motivated by the housed perpetrators’ bias against homeless people. Jones explained that the perpetrators of these crimes “view homeless people as an easy target since they’re living out on the streets,” adding, “they seem to be guided by a twisted rationale that no one will care if they get  hurt.”

With 610,042 people found homeless on any given night across the United States, and with attacks occurring in 47 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, this is quickly becoming a problem that can no longer be ignored.

Who’s Keeping Track?

One of the most disturbing elements of these crimes is the fact that they are not being recorded. No one aside from the NCH tracks the victims of this particular crime, which is primarily the reason why the Coalition is trying to amend the HCPA to include homelessness as a protected class.

“It’s part of our mission to highlight these [violent] acts,” Jones said of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “It’s an issue that we’ve dedicated a lot of time and effort to, but the government has more resources.”

If homelessness were to become a federally recognized protected class, it would require the FBI to track crimes against the homeless the same way that it tracks crimes against other protected classes. It would also show that the government acknowledges not only that there is a problem, but also the fact that these people are worth protecting.

While the NCH publishes annual reports that provide a vivid account of the crimes committed against the homeless, it does not have the resources that the federal government has at its disposal. A complete and accurate count of these crimes will not be possible until the federal government takes over the data collection process.

This is a problem because until we know the extent of the issue, fixing it is relatively impossible. From the data compiled by the NCH it is clear that homeless people frequently suffer from beatings, rape, murders, and even being lit on fire at the hands of housed perpetrators. But the question remains: is this enough to constitute the creation of a new protected class under the HCPA?

The Violence Against the Homeless Accountability Act

Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson seems to think so, introducing the Violence Against the Homeless Accountability Act (VAHA) last year. In a press release she states that “before we can solve the problem, we must understand the problem,” arguing that such legislation is needed to send the message that crimes against the homeless will not be forgotten or ignored.

Johnson is not alone in this belief either. Several states have taken it upon themselves to individually include homeless people as a protected class under their hate crime statutes. At least 11 states have passed some form of protection for the homeless as of 2012, but until homeless people are protected under federal legislation, the fight is far from over.

The Homeless Accountability Act only has a six percent chance of getting past committee in the House and only a one percent chance of being enacted. This is slightly lower than the average bill, which stems primarily from the fact that it has failed to garner support from Republicans who are opposed to any further expansion of the HCPA.

The Debate

There is a lot of trepidation about expanding the scope of existing hate crime laws as people are fearful that such an expansion will infringe on citizens’ freedom of speech and expression, criminalizing hateful “thoughts” rather than hateful acts (though the HCPA explicitly states it does not limit hateful thoughts or even hateful speech).

Another argument is that since homelessness is not an immutable characteristic like race, it does not warrant the same protection under the HCPA. Others believe that inclusion as a protected class is not necessary because existing laws are strong enough to deal with any discrimination directed toward the homeless.

Though it may be true that homelessness is not an immutable characteristic, the homeless are one of the most vulnerable groups in society, quite literally without a place to call home. They are veterans who served our country, struggling families who have had their homes foreclosed, and fellow citizens who no longer have the means or the mental capacity to support themselves.

They, of all people, deserve extra protection from senseless violence, yet current legislation has proven to be inadequate in protecting them from the violent actions of housed perpetrators. Until the homeless are protected under the federal hate crime statutes, the discriminatory violence they face will only increase and, sadly, continue to be largely ignored.

[The National Coalition for the Homeless’ Annual Report 2013]

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Sebastian via Flicker]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Crimes Against the Homeless: Who’s Keeping Track? appeared first on Law Street.

More police officers than ever before are being held accountable for misconduct as a result of increased public awareness, media pressure, and new technologies capable of documenting altercations in horrifyingly graphic detail. While the frequency of punishments has increased, however, victims and their families are starting to realize that the word “accountability” may not actually mean very much.

For many officers accountability can be considered little more than a slap on the wrist. Verbal or written reprimands, the loss of a few vacation days, or suspension are all standard fare punishments for police misconduct. In extreme cases involving excessive force, an officer may be put on paid leave, forced to retire (with full benefits), or fired.

For people like Mike Gomez, whose 22-year-old son was shot and killed by an Albuquerque police officer in 2012, these punishments are a far cry from justice. The officer who shot his unarmed, mentally ill son in the chest was put on paid leave and given $500 by the Albuquerque police union to cope with the stress of the shooting. Naturally this was very upsetting to the victim’s family; as Mike Gomez puts it, while officers get a bonus and a paid vacation for the killing, all the family gets is a funeral bill.

A report by the Cato Institute of Justice reveals that if excessive force complaints involving fatalities were prosecuted as murders, then “the murder rate for law enforcement officers would exceed the general population murder rate by 472%.” This statistic speaks for itself, but a part of the problem is that the consequences for unnecessarily ending someone’s life seem to fall on cities in the form of settlements rather than on the officers themselves.

For example, while the officer who shot Mike Gomez’s son was cleared of all charges, the city still decided to settle the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the Gomez family for $900,000 rather than go to trial, citing the move as the “best economic, legal and policy decision”.

To the Gomez family this is simply blood money and the only legal recognition that they will receive that the death of their son was unwarranted. The fact still remains that the man who shot him will never spend a day behind bars or face any legal consequences for the act.

Even having video documentation is no guarantee that officers will ever be brought to justice. A perfect example of this is an incident at UC Davis where Lieutenant John Pike was recorded using military-grade pepper spray at point-blank range on a line of seated protesters.

The iconic incident sparked international outrage and a cry for Lt. Pike and other members of UC Davis leadership to be removed immediately from the campus payroll. Two independent inquiries into the incident (summarized in a conjoined report) condemned Lt. Pike for needlessly assaulting the group of students, finding him culpable for other professional transgressions as well.

This report was the result of months of thorough investigation, based on intense review of video footage of the incident, interviews with multiple witnesses, and conducted by independent consultants and a panel of well-respected statesmen. Nonetheless, their findings did not bear any weight on whether or not Lt. Pike would keep his job or even if he would face any disciplinary measures. That was left solely to the determination of an internal affairs investigation conducted by the police department because in states like California, police officers’ rights are so extensive that they severely limit independent public review of police conduct.

What’s worse is the fact that their methods, findings, and any actions that resulted from the investigation are all secret. To this day we still don’t know if Lt. Pike was fired or able to retire with full benefits – all the university was allowed to disclose is that he is no longer employed at the school.

While it is no secret that being a police officer is a dangerous job, it is undoubtedly true that officers sometimes step outside the bounds of their authority, often at the expense of those in their care. While the majority of police officers conduct themselves in a way that befits their position of power, it is distressing that those who flagrantly disregard rules receive little more than a slap on the wrist for conduct that has ended lives, torn apart communities, and violated constitutional rights.

In most cases, even when the officer in question is found culpable, the only punishment he or she receives is the loss of employment. While some may argue that losing one’s livelihood is a sufficiently severe punishment for excessive force – and perhaps in certain instances it is – it is not an adequate response to the functional equivalent of murder.

From start to finish, the way that officers are investigated, prosecuted, and eventually punished needs to be reformed. If someone can go to jail for the rest of his life for stealing tools from a tool shed then it is absurd that most cases of police brutality do not even result in criminal charges. Police officers are meant to protect the law, not stand above it.

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Steve Rhodes via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Families of Victims of Police Brutality Question Officer Accountability appeared first on Law Street.

When New Orleans Superintendent of Police Ronal Serpas took office four years ago, he was faced with high crime rates, a depressingly low department approval rate, and a long history of police corruption and brutality. While lowering crime rates and rebuilding trust take time, his solution to corruption allegations and brutality has been relatively simple — require patrol officers to wear body cameras.

The New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has been through several scandals, but none as severe as the Danziger Bridge incident, in which police officers shot, killed, and maimed innocent, unarmed citizens then tried to cover it up. The incident took place just six days after Hurricane Katrina and took the lives of a mentally impaired man as well as a 19 year old. It also spurred a Department of Justice investigation that resulted in a long-awaited consent decree, which imposed sweeping reforms on the NOPD.

One product of the consent decree is the requirement of patrol officers to wear body cameras in an effort to regain trust and ensure transparency and accountability in the future. Hailing this as the next step in American policing, Serpas has high hopes that the cameras will be well worth the $1.45 million investment. He believes that they are the best way to eliminate the “he-said-she-said” problem once and for all.

The 420 cameras purchased by the NOPD are required to be used by patrol officers whenever they are attending a “business-related event,” including traffic stops and responding to calls. The officers are encouraged to consult their videos before preparing a report and must attend a three-hour training session to learn how to use the devices.

The New Orleans Police Department is not alone in its use of body cameras; more and more police departments across the nation are beginning to require officers to wear cameras on duty. Police Foundation Executive Fellow Chief Tony Farrar recently completed a year-long study evaluating the effect that body cameras have on police use-of-force. He found the cameras to be associated with “dramatic reductions in use-of-force and complaints against officers.”

These cameras are especially appealing to troubled police departments such as the NOPD, currently facing federal scrutiny. Although Superintendent Serpas claims the cameras are a “win-win” for all parties involved due to the creation of an irrefutable record of what happened, there is the fear that the videos may just be for the benefit for the police.

Samuel Walker, emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, cautions against the practice of letting officers watch their own videos before writing reports. He argues that if an officer is planning to lie, the videos serve as a “good guide” to what he can get away with.

Another issue is the matter of who gets to view the videos and whether or not they are a matter of public record. While Serpas told NPR that he will hire whatever additional staff is necessary to handle public requests for the videos, he concedes that public record laws have “exceptions to releasing information, and there are directions about which information to release.”

A police department monopoly of the videos does little to curb the problem of false or misleading reports. If the public does not have access to the videos then, short of legal action, they still have little more than blind faith to ensure that officers are being truthful when they state that something was or was not recorded on the tapes.

Conspiracy theories aside, the NOPD seems to genuinely want the public to be aware of the cameras, going as far as having officers demonstrate the technology to random citizens. The point behind installing the cameras is to foster public trust, something that the department can only do by proving to the community that they have turned a new leaf.

The cameras fit over the officers’ ears and therefore allow the viewer to see everything that the police officer sees. This is naturally meant to inspire trust by deterring officers from filing false reports – what is the point of lying if you know that what you have done is caught on film? – but ironically enough it seems that the cameras may be doing more to curb the behavior of the people being filmed rather than the officers themselves.

For example, Lt. Travis St. Pierre told NPR that “they always have this one individual that they would go on calls and service for that likes to be disruptive, curse at the police, fight with the police, and when they got out and turned the camera on and informed her she was being recorded, she immediately said, ‘Ah. OK,’ and was not a problem at all. We’re seeing a lot of that kind of stuff.”

More polite citizens aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but stifling complaints or disagreements is not necessarily good either. As the NOPD’s bleak track record has shown, the police are not always right and they do not always act with citizens’ best interests in mind. Being able to freely voice your opinions and complaints — no matter how disruptive they may be — is just as important as officers not falsifying reports. As the use of cameras continues to expand in New Orleans and several other jurisdictions, it will be interesting to see how effective it is, and who actually benefits from the tactic.

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Thomas Hawk via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post New Orleans Police Attempt to Regain Public Trust by Wearing Patrol Cameras appeared first on Law Street.

On Tuesday, June 10, President Obama took to Tumblr to answer questions on everything and anything from education, college affordability, and student loan debts in an open forum moderated by Tumblr founder and CEO, David Karp, live from the White House. In light of the tragic string of school shootings that have been plaguing the nation as of late, it was only a matter of time until the subject was brought up.

The President expressed his extreme frustration at the fact that “society has not been willing to take some basic steps to keep guns out of the hands of people who can do just unbelievable damage.”

His frustration is well justified – Sandy Hook, the Naval Yard, Santa Barbara, and most recently Oregon – have all proved that mass shootings are a very real problem in America. While most Americans readily agreed with President Obama when he continued by saying “Our levels of gun violence are off the charts,” the truth of the matter is that gun related homicides have actually been decreasing over the past 20 years.

President Obama is not the only one who mistakenly thinks that gun violence has been increasing;  in fact 56 percent of Americans believe that the number of crimes involving a gun is higher than it was 20 years ago. However, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan think tank, national rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are “strikingly lower” than they were 20 years ago, mirroring a general decrease in crime.

The gun homicide rate was 49 percent lower in 2010 than in 1993, with fewer deaths despite population growth. Another important fact to note is that while there were 31,672 gun-related deaths in 2010, most of those deaths (19,392) were actually suicides. Surprisingly, the rate of gun suicides has consistently been higher than the gun homicide rate since at least 1981, and that gap is wider now than it has ever been.

However, when President Obama said, “we’re the only developed country on Earth where this happens,” he was not wrong. America leads the world in gun homicides and has more guns per citizen than any other country in the world, but while the president laments the fact that these mass shootings seem to be a once-a-week occurrence, mass shootings make up less than 1 percent of all homicides according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) review.

Less than 1 percent?

That is a shockingly low percentage for nearly 30 years’ worth of statistical data. Even the Congressional Research Service states that “while tragic and shocking, public mass shootings account for few of the murders or non-negligent homicides related to firearms that occur annually in the United States.”

If the numbers show that both crime and gun violence are declining, why do most Americans feel that things are getting worse rather than better?

One explanation may lie with the media, as 17 percent of all news on local television broadcasts is centered on crime stories. Only traffic and weather top crime as the most common type of story played on newscasts, and it is no secret that violent crimes are frequently the bread and butter of breaking news.

It may come as no surprise that in 2012, the Pew Research Center found that news stories about fatal shootings were more closely followed by the public than any other type of story. The tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut ranked second in public attention, with only the presidential election garnering more publicity that year.

Though the number of deaths resulting from mass shootings has not significantly increased over the past two decades, the frequency that Americans hear about those incidents certainly has. It may seem unfathomable now, but just a few decades ago a shooting could happen in California and people in New York would not find out until days after the fact.

With technology evolving and more information available than ever before, it may seems that the world has not only become smaller, but also more dangerous. It is no wonder that the majority of Americans believe that crime and gun violence have gotten worse rather than better over the past twenty years – it is all they ever hear about and see on the news.

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Auraelius via Flickr]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Gun Violence Isn’t Off the Charts – It’s Actually Going Down appeared first on Law Street.

In 2011 there were 8,763 allegations of sexual victimization in American prisons, jails and other adult correctional facilities, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) annual report on the sexual victimization of inmates.

The data used to compile this report was drawn from a random sample “of not less than 10 percent of all federal, state, and county prisons and a representative sample of municipal prisons […] includ[ing] at least one prison from each state.” With 2.2 million people currently incarcerated in the United States, the sample number of allegations represented in the BJS report does not do justice to the true number of inmates who experience sexual victimization, as 90 percent of all federal, state, and county prisons (and subsequently their inmates) were excluded from the data used to compile the report.

These findings do, however, follow an upward trend in recent years, with 7,855 complaints filed in 2009 and 8,404 complaints filed in 2010. Of these allegations, 51 percent involved nonconsensual acts or abusive sexual contact between inmates, while the other 49 percent were sexual misconduct or sexual harassment involving prison staff. It was conservatively estimated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) that approximately 1 in 10 inmates were assaulted in 2012, and as prison populations continue to grow, it can be assumed that this number has only increased in the past two years.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act:

This report comes out a little more than a decade after the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) was passed in 2003 with unanimous support from both parties in Congress. The PREA is meant to address the problem of sexual abuse of any person who finds him/herself imprisoned or detained by a United States correctional agency. The act works to “develop and implement national standards for the detection, prevention, reduction, and punishment of prison rape” in both public and private facilities.

Although the PREA was signed in 2003, these national standards will be going into effect for the first time in August, 2014. Just last month, the governors from each state had to submit a certification that they were either in full compliance with the national standards developed by the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) or that they were actively working towards full compliance.

Despite the fact that the act was passed through Congress unanimously, there are some states that are refusing to comply with the PREA national standards, citing that they impose too great of a financial burden, undermine state rights, or that their states already have effective standards in place for the prevention of rape.

The governors of Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, Texas, and Utah have all formally informed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder that they will not try to meet PREA standards, however the vast majority of American states and territories have promised that they will work towards full compliance, devoting at least 5 percent of their grant funding to accomplish this goal.

At the moment, only two states (New Hampshire and New Jersey) have correctional facilities that are fully compliant with PREA standards. Considering the fact that Brenda Smith, a former commissioner of the NPREC, stated that the standards are a far cry from unreachable, it is rather surprising that only two states can boast that they are up to code.

If protecting prisoners from sexual abuse is the bare minimum that states can do, then the disturbing statistics in the recent BJS report show that we still have a long way to go before the issue of prison rape can begin to be resolved.

What the Statistics Show:

Though attitudes are certainly changing – the very existence of the PREA is proof of that – the opinions of people like Governor Rick Perry, who claims that existing procedures are more than adequate, reflect an awful truth: most institutions are not as “hard on prison rape” as they pretend they are.

Despite the fact that any sexual contact between staff and inmates is illegal (even if it “appeared-to-be” willing) only 78 percent of staff perpetrators were fired or resigned according the BJS report. This means that 22 percent of these staff members still hold their jobs and continue to work in plain view of their victims.

As if the fact that 49 percent of all of these allegations involve prison staff is not bad enough, only 45 percent of the staff offenders were arrested, referred for prosecution or convicted following the incident.

This means that more than half (55 percent) of staff perpetrators faced no legal consequences for substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct towards prisoners. Even the perpetrators of inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization only faced legal consequences 48 percent of the time.

What all of these numbers mean is that more than half of all substantiated allegations of sexual victimization in prisons do not result in justice for their victims, even if the incidents are reported, investigated, and found to be true.

These statistics do not even take into account the number of unreported instances of sexual misconduct, nor the number of victims that suffer in silence out of unwarranted shame or legitimate fear of retaliation, but they do paint a rather chilling picture for those of us that are fortunate enough to not be behind bars.

Why it Matters:

It is important to remember that while these crimes are happening in prisons, they have long reaching effects that expand well beyond prison walls.

Prison rape endangers public safety by making brutalized inmates more likely to commit other crimes when they are released. Victims of prison rape also suffer from severe physical and psychological effects that they carry with them after they served their time. This makes it difficult for inmates to reintegrate back into society and hold down a steady job, making them far more likely to become either homeless or require government aid.

With at least 650,000 inmates released each year, this is a problem society will continually have to confront. Although the PREA is a step in the right direction, we as a society have to be prepared to do more than just the “bare minimum” to protect prisoners from sexual victimization at the hands of both staff and their fellow inmates.

No matter the crime, rape is never part of the sentence.

[BJS Press Release]

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Nicole Roberts (@NicoleR5901) a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [sammireachers via Pixabay]

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Is Rape Part of the Sentence? appeared first on Law Street.

The recent attack on the New York Times by a group of Chinese Hackers has once again brought the issue of cybercrimes to the forefront of the nation’s consciousness, serving as a forceful reminder to the United States Government that computer-based crime is something that they can no longer afford to ignore.

Just last year, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received 262,813 complaints from consumers who collectively lost more than $781 million in losses. This number represents a 48.8 percent increase in losses from 2012, and while the data is not yet available for 2014, it seems apparent that cybercrime is a very real problem for thousands of Americans, and it is not going anywhere anytime soon.

In fact, the United States leads the world in the number of complaints related to internet crime, monopolizing a whopping 90.63 percent of all complaints worldwide. Despite this not-so-prestigious position, legislation has not been able to keep pace alongside the rapid advance of technology, and there is a great deal of ambiguity on just how the perpetrators of cybercrimes should be punished.

Some people argue that the sentences for cybercrimes are far too lenient, often allowing for criminals to profit from their crimes and failing to deter other criminals from committing similar offenses. For example, Albert Gonzalez, the perpetrator of the infamous hacking of TJX Companies, was only sentenced to serve two concurrent 20 year sentences in prison. This means that despite the fact that he had stolen credit and debit card numbers from approximately 45.6 million people, he could be out of prison by 2025 if he is on his best behavior.

Had Gonzalez committed the equivalent of this crime in the real world (for example, robbing a bank for the money he stole, or physically stealing 45.6 million credit/debit cards from their rightful owners) he would most likely be in prison for the rest of his life. Yet despite the fact that the damage done inestimably larger than if he had committed his crime in the real world, the punishment is somehow less severe even though his actions quite literally affected the lives of millions.

Perhaps these discrepancies are what led the push for harsher maximum sentences for cybercrimes, or maybe it was a direct response to a flawed report released from  MacAfee stating that cybercrime costs the United States economy about $1 trillion a year (though that number was later amended to somewhere around $140 billion). Whatever the reason, there is now the fear that the government has gone too far in light of recent reforms meant to intimidate cybercriminals.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a San-Francisco based group that believes that legislation such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) is too broad and vague to be fair, imposing harsh maximums on relatively harmless crimes. They advocate for changes in the legislation, stating that more precise language is needed in order to protect relatively harmless offenders from harsh and lengthy prison sentences and fines.

For example, the recently deceased Aaron Swartz faced 13 felony counts of hacking and wire fraud at the age of 26 simply because he used MIT’S computer network to download millions of articles from JSTOR without permission. Despite the fact that the crime was non-violent and relatively harmless, Swartz faced both the possibility of decades of jail time and backbreaking fines for those illegal downloads, a sharp contrast to violent crimes that carry much lighter sentences.

It seems inherently illogical that in today’s society that illegal downloads should carry a higher maximum sentence than violent crimes such as rape. Yet it also seems impractical that someone who steals millions of dollars from credit and debit cards should be in jail for less time than if they had gone through the trouble to physically rob a bank.

To say the least, cybercrime sentencing is an issue that needs a lot more exploration than it has currently been given. Current laws may even require new sentencing guidelines made specifically to accommodate internet crime. Cybercrimes fail to be contained within traditional modes of sentencing and punishment, and often the sentences given seem to be too harsh or too lenient to fit the crime.

Donald R. Mason, a professor at the University Of Mississippi School Of Law, suggests that more attention needs to be focused on post-conviction matters such as sentencing and victim impact, as well as alternative resolutions that are tailored to meet the complex issues raised by the complex nature of these crimes.

For example, if the motivations for cybercriminals are radically different from the motivations of traditional criminals, the existing models may no longer serve as effective deterrents to crime. Along those same lines, if the scope of internet victimization is hard to measure or not detectable until long after the incident occurs, traditional models of measuring harm may no longer be applicable or effective either.

Though much attention has been given up to this point on the subject of detecting, apprehending, and prosecuting cybercriminals, more attention needs to be paid to what happens next. Doing so is the only way to ensure that the punishment truly does fit the cybercrime, and that the victims of these offenses receive the justice they deserve.

Nicole Roberts

Nicole Roberts a student at American University majoring in Justice, Law, and Society with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. She has a strong interest in law and policymaking, and is active in homeless rights advocacy as well as several other social justice movements. Contact Nicole at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Cybercrimes: Does the Punishment Actually Fit the Crime? appeared first on Law Street.