mrclay.org

You know what could help teens deal with the new pressures that technology brings to adolescence? Felony records and “sex offender” labels! The latest case brings felony charges against kids of 12 and 13 (via Radley Balko). I’ve been meaning to write about this issue, but just read these instead:

Radley Balko: “Ruining Kids in Order [...]

Sent to my House Representative Corrine Brown (links added here):
Ms. Brown,
I encourage you to support H.R. 4055, Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) Initiative Act of 2009. Hawaiian Judge Alm’s probation and parole reform program has shown we can significantly reduce both crime and imprisonment.
The program is a clear winner all around: States save prison [...]

Greenwald makes a pretty convincing case that Bush/Obama’s “justice system” for accused terrorists is merely for display purposes only.
If you’re accused of being a Terrorist, there’s not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based [...]

(Written in August)

Forensic science is already shaky and, if DNA can be fabricated, it’s about to get even shakier.
The public defender system is poorly funded and in shambles.
Poor, mentally ill youths generally end up dumped in jail
Florida sends a lot of teens to prison for life
Our prisons are no longer rehabilitative, often torturous, and we [...]

(From January 7)
Over the break Kathleen and I watched a bunch of movies, but season 1 of The Wire delivered beyond the hype it got from friends. It gives a crash course on the frustration and futility of local cops fighting drug gangs on the street level in West Baltimore. The police jump through major [...]

Nike’s latest glossy skate video “Debacle” is stitched around several highly-realistic, faked acts of vandalism and assault, but none shocking if you’ve watched a lot of skate videos; I just assumed they were real until the disclaimer appeared at the end. I’ve seen pros show off how they cut chains to break into schools; accidentally [...]

Remind your fiscally conservative politician that all these have severe public costs:

Crime
Prison cells
Disease spread in overcrowded prisons
Reduced number of working citizens
Broken families and lack of role models
Public fear of victimization

Evidence shows we can have a criminal justice system that actually convinces most criminals to give up crime while handing out far shorter and fewer jail [...]

From a comment on a Radley Balko post about Troy Davis:
…the state can’t be trusted to sort the innocent from the guilty with the 100% accuracy necessary for executions to be morally defensible, even if death is a theoretically just punishment…
From what I read everyday it’s abundantly clear that this is true. The criminal justice [...]