To follow is an excerpt from the CQ Researcher issue "Downsizing Prisons" by Peter Katel on March 11, 2011.
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Much of the argument over incarcerating nonviolent offenders centers on drug offenses, which often don't involve direct physical harm to another person. Neither, generally, do theft, burglary and “white collar” crimes.
Amid the states' budget crises, the debate has taken on new urgency. In New Hampshire, a 2010 “justice reinvestment” law limits sentences for nonviolent crimes to no more than 20 percent above the minimum requirement. [Footnote 17]
And even before the budget crisis, the Kansas legislature passed a law in 2007 designed to cut recidivism, with provisions that reduce prison sentences for good behavior and expand parole and probation programs. As a result, the prison population remained virtually flat instead of increasing by a projected 700 inmates. (Budget cuts to programs designed to help ex-prisoners reintegrate into society have pushed recidivism back up, writes Joan Petersilia, co-director of the Stanford University Criminal Justice Center.) [Footnote 18]
But not everyone agrees that violence should be the sole criterion to determine whether an offender is sent to prison or gets probation.
Moreover, the proliferation of drug courts — 2,038 as of July 2009, the most recent figure available — and similar programs for the mentally ill (about 175 courts nationwide) and veterans (about 50) has expanded the options to jail or prison. [Footnote 19]
These alternative programs have tended to make state prison inmates precisely the sorts of dangerous offenders for whom prison was designed, some prosecution-oriented advocates argue.
Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation argues that statistics on the offenses for which state inmates were imprisoned may be misleading. An offender may have physically harmed someone in committing a drug crime, for instance, but be sentenced on the drug offense alone after a deal with prosecutors, he says.
“Ninety percent of prisoners go in under plea bargains,” says Scheidegger. “Those who did not have a violent offense as the offense of commitment are not necessarily nonviolent. Dropping the strongest charge is usually part of a plea bargain.” And nonviolent offenders may be incarcerated because they have a record of violence, he says.
But Indiana public defender Landis says that in his experience, plea bargains haven't followed the pattern Scheidegger laid out. “We don't break down too many crimes that are violent to a nonviolent offense,” says Landis. A plea bargain might, for instance, lower a charge of rape with serious bodily injury to rape plain and simple, he says. But rape by definition is a violent act. “You would never,” he says, “call that pleading out to a nonviolent crime.”
An offender's record of past offenses inevitably influences the sentencing process, Landis acknowledges. But “you ought to do the time for the crime,” he says, referring to a defendant's current case, “not for the crime you already did the time for.”
While the philosophical argument about who belongs behind bars is complex, an even more complicated question is whether defendants whose crimes indisputably didn't involve violence should be sent to prison.
In Missouri, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Ray Price Jr. has declared that his state imprisons too many nonviolent offenders. But Stanley Cox, Missouri House Judiciary Committee chairman, disagrees. “There is a class of lawbreakers who by their own intention and design have become such a threat — not a violent threat, but a threat — to society that it is better to incarcerate them,” says Cox.
Cox, a Sedalia Republican and former state prosecutor, adds, “It is false to believe that prisons, certainly in this state, are filled with people who end up there because they committed one nonviolent offense. That is absolutely not true. The people who fill our prisons, including these nonviolent offenders, are people who just never took the breaks they were offered. They offended, were placed on probation, and reoffended multiple times.”
But Philadelphia District Attorney R. Seth Williams told the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Subcommittee on Feb. 11 that “people who commit the most crimes over and over are people who commit low-level property crimes. We don't need to send so many people who are nonviolent — through mandatory sentences — to prison.”
Williams also argued that high levels of recidivism by nonviolent offenders show evidence of system failure as much as individual shortcomings. “Where did society fail that person?” he asked. “What can we do to teach that person to be a barber or a cobbler or an auto mechanic or some real job?” Once they're trained, he said, “We won't see them again.”
The Issues
* Can states afford to maintain their current prison populations?
* Are too many nonviolent offenders sent to prison?
* Can diversion programs substitute for imprisonment?
For more information on the CQ Researcher report on "Downsizing Prisons" [subscription required] or purchase the PDF.
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Footnotes
[17] Clement, et al., op. cit., pp. 65-66.
[18] Ibid., pp. 60-61. See also Joan Petersilia, “Beyond the Prison Bubble,” Wilson Quarterly, winter 2011, www.wilsonquarterly.com/article.cfm?AID=1774.
[19] “Drug Courts — Facts and Figures,” National Criminal Justice Reference Guide, updated Sept. 1, 2010, www.ncjrs.gov/spotlight/drug_courts/facts.html; Emma Schwartz, “Mental Health Courts,” U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 7, 2008, www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/02/07/mental-health-courts; “Justice for Vets,” National Association of Drug Court Professionals, updated Feb. 14, 2011, www.nadcp.org/JusticeForVets. For background, see Marcia Clemmitt, “Combating Addiction,” CQ Researcher, Feb. 9, 2007, pp. 121-144.
Are too many nonviolent offenders sent to prison?
Should campus women's centers be required to report statistics on sexual violence?
To follow is an excerpt from the CQ Researcher issue "Crime on Campus" by Peter Katel on February 4, 2011
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In 2002 — 12 years after the Clery Act was enacted and eight years after regulations for carrying it out were issued — the most comprehensive survey to date of colleges' responses to sexual assault found that only 36.5 percent of institutions were reporting statistics in a manner fully consistent with the law's requirements. [Footnote 17]
Of all the issues involved in compiling data 
from a variety of campus sources — from college police departments to dormitory advisers and rape-crisis centers — one of the most complex is confidentiality. Under 1998 amendments to the Clery Act, professional mental health counselors and religious counselors are encouraged but not required to disclose the number of reports of alleged sexual offenses they've received. [Footnote 18]
Yet, by all accounts, counselors receive far more reports from victims than do police or college officials. And many college counselors work at women's centers, whose services typically include counseling and support for victims of sexual violence.
The Clery Act counseling exemption reflected the position of the American Psychological Association (APA). “Students should feel confident that what they say to a counselor is in confidence,” an association spokeswoman, Nina Levitt, said in 1999. Even reporting raw data could jeopardize that confidentiality, she said. [Footnote 19] Psychologists have been concerned that campus authorities could demand that victims disclose specific information on a potential offender, for instance, in order to protect other students' safety.
The University of Colorado's Friedrichs says the confidentiality provision serves a valuable purpose. “We are a confidential office; we are not required to tell anybody anything unless we have a written release of information,” she says. A change in that policy would “impact on the student and our ability to communicate.”
A further complication, says S. Daniel Carter, public policy director of Security on Campus, is that some states extend a confidentiality exemption not only to professional counselors but also to victims' advocates who may not have professional credentials. Even so, he says, the number of schools that exclude crime data because of the exemption isn't known. “No one has done large-scale research” on that issue, he says.
The exemption has led to some confusion at one of the country's biggest university systems. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Education ruled that the University of California (UC) had misinterpreted the counselor exemption to exclude crime data that came from all campus officials who may have done some counseling — as opposed to full-time counselors. “Institutions are expected to determine which officials … do not have significant counseling responsibilities,” the department ruled. UC had changed its policies by the time the department ruled, and the school wasn't penalized. [Footnote 20]
Moreover, even supporters of the counseling exemption say that statistics on sexual assaults can be misleading because the events that students recount may have occurred in hometowns or in childhood. It's a point Friedrichs makes. Her victim-assistance center's database, for instance, doesn't contain a separate classification for alleged sexual assaults that took place on campus, she says. If the center decided to report statistics, “we would have to start counting our numbers differently,” she adds. There has been no discussion of doing so, however, she says.
Even if a center did decide to report sexual-assault figures, how a counselor asks about a student's experience can make a big difference in how an event is classified. Fisher, the University of Cincinnati political scientist, and her colleagues found that when college women were asked detailed questions about uninvited sexual encounters without use of the word “rape,” responses made clear that more sexual attacks occurred than women were reporting. The researchers found a victimization rate of 27.7 assaults per 1,000 female students. And because some women were victimized more than once, the rate of incidents was 35.3 per 1,000 students. [Footnote 21]
“In a given academic year … for a campus with 10,000 women, this would mean the number of rapes could exceed 350,” they wrote. [Footnote 22]
Ada Meloy, general counsel of the American Council on Education (ACE), which advocates on policy issues for colleges and universities, argues, however, that while “there are said to be many instances” of unreported sexual assaults, “if they're not reported, you do have to wonder how serious they were or whether they occurred, frankly.”
Meloy also says that “most institutions have disciplinary procedures that are adequate to handle sexual-assault allegations,” though she adds that “sexual assault is also a criminal matter and college procedures are not a substitute for that avenue of addressing situations that may occur.”
Kassa of Security on Campus suggests one mechanism to get around the confidentiality problem: Have counselors voluntarily report aggregate numbers of alleged crimes to a third party, who then would transmit them to the people who do the statistical crime compilations required by the Clery Act. That would separate the counseling function from the data-gathering function altogether, he maintains. “You don't have to have your counselors make the statistical report.”
The key point of the Clery Act's counselor confidentiality privilege is that it's not mandatory, Kassa says. “This is the beauty of the Clery Act — it gives [colleges] all the discretion in the world.”
Georgetown's Cantalupo says she has no problem with reporting aggregate data on reported sexual assaults. She acknowledges that some counselors fear that women would refrain from speaking of their experiences if they thought that what they said would automatically be disclosed to campus authorities. But, she says, that reaction could be dissipated if counselors made clear that they would report nothing but numbers.
A problem could arise if college administrators treated a statistical disclosure as an overall waiver of the counselor exemption, Cantalupo says. But “any institution that is really interested in solving this problem will not do something like that,” she says, “because they would realize that their victim-advocate office is their best possibility for fixing the problem” of sexual violence on campus.
Sokolow, the campus-safety consultant, argues that changing the Clery Act to require statistical disclosure from counseling centers would be a bad idea. But he says institutions should urge counseling centers to report numbers of alleged assaults voluntarily. “Schools ought to be saying, ‘Share your statistics,’” he says.
The Issues
* Has the Clery Act increased campus safety?
* Should campus women's centers be required to report statistics on sexual violence?
* Are laws and lawsuits forcing schools to become more protective of students?
For more information on the CQ Researcher report on "Crime on Campus" [subscription required] or purchase the PDF.
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Footnotes
[17] Heather M. Karjane, et al., “Campus Sexual Assault: How America's Institutions of Higher Education Respond,” Education Development Center, 2002, p. vii, www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/196676.pdf.
[18] “Code of Federal Regulations, Title 34 — Education, Part 668, Subpart D, Sec. 668.46,” www.securityoncampus.org/pages/34cfr668.46.html.
[19] Quoted in Christina DeNardo, “Law closes loopholes in campus crime reporting,” Daily Orange (Syracuse University), April 30, 1999.
[20] “Final Program Review Determination Letter,” U.S. Education Department, March 31, 2003, pp. 10–12, http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/datacenter/cleryact/ucla/UCLAFPRDL0332003.pdf; Rebecca Trounson, “Study Faults Crime Reports at UC,” Los Angeles Times, April 9, 2003, p. B7.
[21] Fisher, et al., op cit.
[22] Ibid., p. 11.
Prisoner Reentry
Are state governments doing enough to help prisoners reenter society?
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Below is an excerpt from the CQ Researcher issue on "Prisoner Reentry" By Peter Katel, December 4, 2009
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The basic argument for expanding reentry 
programs is simple: Virtually all prisoners will be released except those serving life sentences without the possibility of parole or facing execution. But if at least half of them will be returning to prison or jail, reducing that number by helping ex-prisoners gain a foothold in the outside world would be good for them — and for society.
Supporters of expanded reentry programs point out that even as state governments face budgetary strains ranging from serious to catastrophic, they can cut long-term prison costs by spending on reentry instead of on prison space, which is more expensive. States spend an average of $22,650 yearly to maintain one prisoner. [Footnote 11]
However, to make that case to state legislatures, advocates must show hard data on which kinds of reentry programs lower recidivism most effectively. But solid numbers only now are being assembled and reported. Recidivism among New York's CEO program participants, for instance, was 5.7 percent lower over a three-year period than in a control group of ex-prisoners not in the program.
But even without precise statistics on which kinds of programs are most effective, plenty of evidence shows approaches that don't work, say reentry program advocates.
For example, California imposes parole supervision on virtually all released prisoners — but doesn't have money for intensive supervision. The result: 66 percent of ex-prisoners returned to prison in 2003–2004 — compared with a national rate of 40 percent at that time. Two-thirds of those sent back to prison had violated parole conditions, according to a recent Justice Department study, which showed a dearth of reentry services.
“It is estimated that two-thirds or more of all California parolees have substance-abuse problems, and nearly all of them are required to be drug tested,” the study's authors reported. “Yet few of them will participate in appropriate treatment while in prison or on parole.” [Footnote 12]
Former prison inmate and California Republican state legislator Pat Nolan, now vice president of Prison Fellowship, a Christian rehabilitation group, calls the combination of newly released prisoners with drug problems and a near-absence of treatment programs “one of the great scandals of our current California prison system.” [Footnote 13]
Nolan argues that the rigid enforcement of parole conditions such as no drug use means that ex-prisoners get sent back for relatively minor offenses. “Drug possession — bam, you take them [back] to prison,” he says. “This guy can have a job, be supporting his family; he shouldn't use drugs, but do you want to disrupt his life, send him back to prison, for a first [parole] offense?”
But some prison system veterans say more reentry programs won't necessarily produce ex-prisoners better prepared to reenter society. “You can't make someone rehabilitate himself,” says Gary B. King, a 19-year veteran of the Florida Corrections Department, one of the country's biggest prison agencies. “Over the years, what I have seen as the most rehabilitative thing we do is when we hold people accountable for their actions; when an inmate commits an infraction we apply administrative sanctions. The more we make them follow the rules while they're in prison, and do that across the board, the more we prepare them for going back into society.”
King is now a classification officer who supervises individual prisoners' disciplinary records, progress reports and participation in educational or other programs at Columbia Correctional Institute, a medium-security institution near Lake City, Fla. He doubts a stronger emphasis on rehabilitation and reentry would make a big dent in Florida's recidivism rate. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that work-release programs do make sense for some prisoners nearing the end of their sentences, so they can experience the very different world outside prison. “Some inmates inside an institutional setting can do very well because their daily schedule is regimented, and they are quarantined from bad behavior and substance abuse,” he says. “Once at liberty to do as they please and associate with whomever they please, they do not do well. Some inmates do not seem to handle well the responsibility that comes with freedom.”
Yet even Crist, the conservative Republican Florida state senator, argues that the slim chances some prisoners have of staying out of trouble after release shouldn't block the state from expanding reentry programs for inmates who could benefit. “About one-third of the inmate population are hardened; you're going to have very little impact on them,” he says. “Another two-thirds [deserve] a running chance.”
Moreover, some prisoners with violent pasts may do well on the outside. “Somebody can go to prison with a first-degree felony and serve time and have an excellent track record and go through psychological testing and work release and have an excellent chance in the community,” he says.
But some conservative experts who support reentry expansion on principle question how well helping hardcore prisoners reenter can be carried out in practice. “We don't know a lot about what works,” says David B. Mulhausen, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis. “Usually, the impact is rather small, and other communities haven't always been successful in replicating it.”
Moreover, Mulhausen is skeptical about what he views as the political leanings of reentry advocates. “A lot of people [favoring] reentry programs really don't like prison,” he says. “They don't give credit to the fact that the drop in crime we've had in the past several years is partly due to incarceration.”
But the Sentencing Project, the leading alternatives-to-incarceration organization, says that while imprisonment plays a role in the drop in crime, that role may be smaller than Mulhausen and others assert. Crime dropped by about 12 percent in 1998–2003 in states with high imprisonment — and declined by the same rate in states in which incarceration diminished or stayed the same.
“There was no discernible pattern of states with higher rates of incarceration experiencing more significant declines in crime,” project staffers wrote. [Footnote 14]
The Issues:
* Are state governments doing enough to help prisoners reenter society?
* Should government or private organizations provide subsidized jobs for ex-prisoners?
* Do reentry programs significantly reduce recidivism?
Footnotes:
[11] James J. Stephan, “State Prison Expenditures, 2001,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Justice Department, June 2004.
[12] Ryken Grattet, et al., “Parole Violations and Revocations in California: Analysis and Suggestions for Action,” Federal Probation, June 2009, pp. 2–4.
[13] Jennifer Warren, “He found a calling in prison,” Los Angeles Times, July 5, 2007, p. A1.
[14] Ryan S. King, et al., “Incarceration and Crime: A Complex Relationship,” Sentencing Project, 2005, pp. 3–4.
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For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Prisoner Reentry" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF
Executing an Innocent Man
By Steve Weinberg, freelance writer
Those who read the CQ Researcher of April 17, 2009 ("Wrongful Convictions"), already understand the wrongful conviction conundrum across the United States. Far too many innocent men and women are incarcerated for crimes they never committed. In many instances, the actual murderers, rapists and burglars remain at liberty to murder, rape and burgle again.
The discussion about wrongful convictions becomes extra emotional when the death penalty is involved. Various prosecutors, judges, law professors, governors and legislators state vehemently that no innocent defendant has ever been put to death by any state government or the federal government during the entire history of the United States. That statement is both statistically unlikely, and is especially naive given the number of documented wrongful convictions since the advent of DNA testing three decades ago, as well as a better understanding of why wrongful convictions occur in cases without testable DNA evidence.
Perhaps the most irresponsible spokesperson for the rose-colored-glasses view of "no innocents ever executed" is U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. A summary of his so-called reasoning can be found in the April 17, 2009, issue of CQ Researcher. I'm not the only critic of Scalia on this matter--among others, four of his eight Supreme Court colleagues fault his thinking.
In the past two months, a debate from earlier in the decade has resurfaced about the 2004 Texas execution of Cameron Todd Willingham. To any dispassionate examiner, the arson murder conviction of Willingham has been discredited. He never should have been imprisoned, much less executed. Yet those too heavily invested in the rightness of the criminal justice system continue to deny the holes in the Willingham case. Those deniers need to awake, before they become complicit in future miscarriages of justice.
If you want to join my open discussion wrongful convictions, please visit www.trueslant.com/steveweinberg
An excerpt of the report on "Wrongful Convictions" can be found here on the CQ Researcher blog.
For more information see the CQ Researcher report on "Wrongful Convictions" [subscription required] or purchase the CQ Researcher PDF
Wrongful Convictions
Is overhaul of the criminal justice system needed?
By Steve Weinberg, April 17, 2009
Until March 2009, few Americans had heard of Ronald Cotton, who was convicted in North Carolina of raping a college student and served 11 years in prison before being exonerated by DNA testing. Now Cotton is a household name because of a book about his case and appearances on “60 Minutes” and NBC’s “Today” show. As recently as 10 years ago, the proposition that innocent men and women regularly end up in prison failed to find traction. 
Today, thanks to the power of DNA evidence, media coverage and the establishment of innocence projects, there is general acceptance that wrongful convictions indeed occur. Dozens of states have passed laws to prevent wrongful convictions and compensate those wrongly imprisoned. Defense attorneys and many academics say wrongful convictions are a recurrent problem requiring substantial changes in the criminal justice system, but prosecutors, police and other academics say mistaken convictions are such a small percentage of all cases that the system should mostly be left alone.
The Issues:
* Are wrongful convictions a serious problem?
* Do errors by forensic laboratories contribute to wrongful convictions?
* Would systemic reform reduce the number of wrongful convictions?
Wrongful Convictions: Overview from the April 17, 2009 CQ Researcher report
By Steve Weinberg, April 17, 2009
Darryl Burton walked out of a Missouri prison in 2008 after serving 24 years for a murder he did not commit. He had proclaimed his innocence from the day of his arrest in St. Louis. Sixteen years into his prison sentence, Burton’s hope for release took an upward tick when Centurion Ministries agreed to look into his case.
The nonprofit organization in Princeton, N.J., was founded by James McCloskey, an ordained minister and former business executive who has spent the last 29 years investigating alleged wrongful convictions. Working with a paid staff of five and a dozen volunteers, McCloskey reviews thousands of inmates’ requests for assistance every year and selects the few his organization can afford to investigate. Entirely dependent on donations from private individuals, Centurion has played a major role in more than 40 exonerations.
Nobody knows how many innocent men and women are serving prison terms for crimes they
did not commit. There is no doubt, however, that since DNA testing became accepted as accurate some 15 years ago, 235 inmates have been freed because of the forensic technique, according to the Innocence Project, a national organization based in New York City.
But testable DNA material shows up in only about 10 percent of crimes — mainly murder and rape — that lead to arrests. Moreover, in most jurisdictions, fewer than 10 percent of all crimes charged proceed all the way to trial. In cases with trial records, it is sometimes possible to determine later the innocence of a convicted defendant. But most inmates end up in prison by pleading guilty before trial, leaving a scant public record.
In the 2006 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Kansas v. Marsh, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing a concurring opinion to the majority ruling, said the wrongful-conviction rate across the nation is minuscule. Scalia quoted approvingly from a New York Times op-ed by Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County (Astoria), Ore., and a director of the National District Attorneys Association. Marquis, citing what he considered a misguided study by a law professor, wrote, “Let’s give the professor the benefit of the doubt — let’s assume that he understated the number of innocents by roughly a factor of ten, that instead of 340 there were 4,000 people in prison who weren’t involved in the crime in any way. During that same 15 years, there were more than 15 million felony convictions across the country. That would make the error rate .027 percent, or, to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent.”
In fact, Scalia asserted, numerous cases labeled “exonerations” are nothing of the sort. Instead, they are primarily violations of defendants’ due-process rights. “Most are based on legal errors that have little or nothing to do with guilt. The studies cited by the dissent demonstrate nothing more.”
One of the scholars mentioned critically by Scalia is Samuel R. Gross, a University of Michigan law professor. After studying Scalia’s opinion, Gross called the .027 percent error rate Scalia cited “absurd.” Gross noted that “almost everything we know about false convictions is based on exonerations in rape and murder cases, which account for only 2 percent of felony convictions. Within that important but limited sphere, we have learned a lot in the past 30 years; outside it, our ignorance is nearly complete.”
Gross argues that cases involving a plea agreement — and thus no trial — frequently lead to undocumented wrongful convictions. Innocent individuals plead guilty, Gross says, because they worry an adverse jury verdict will result in a longer prison sentence than the deal offered by the prosecutor — or even the death penalty.
A great deal more is at stake with wrongful convictions beyond simply the welfare of innocent individuals in prison. There is also the sobering reality that every time an innocent defendant is incarcerated, the actual murderer or rapist or armed robber might be at large, committing more crimes. Also at stake is public trust in the criminal justice system. Mistrust due to repeated wrongful convictions leads to decreased citizen cooperation with police and jurors who disbelieve prosecutors.
Generalizations about the criminal justice system are difficult to make, because it is not really a unified system. Instead, arrests, pretrial negotiations and trials are decentralized. The United States is divided into more than 2,300 local criminal jurisdictions, each served by an elected or appointed prosecutor (most commonly known as a district attorney), judges and police agencies. Superimposed onto the local jurisdictions is the federal system, with at least one federal prosecutor (called a U.S. attorney) and federal judges in each state. Some jurisdictions have no documented wrongful convictions. Others have spawned multiple wrongful convictions.
The National District Attorneys Association argues that wrongful convictions are episodic, not epidemic, and almost always arise from well-intentioned law enforcement work, not from incompetence or dishonesty. If pressed to place a number on wrongful convictions, district attorneys tend to say it’s less than 1 percent of all cases charged. Conversely, members of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers say wrongful convictions are epidemic in multiple jurisdictions and frequently arise from incompetent or dishonest law enforcement personnel. If pressed, defense lawyers say the percentage of wrongful convictions is between 5 and 10 percent.
For its part, the American Bar Association (ABA) acknowledges the reality of wrongful convictions. A report by the ABA’s Ad Hoc Innocence Committee to Ensure the Integrity of the Criminal Process offers numerous recommendations aimed at reducing wrongful convictions. The frequency of wrongful convictions “undermines the assumption that the criminal justice system sufficiently protects the innocent,” according to the report.
Increased public awareness of wrongful convictions, like that of so many other social problems, has been generated by the news and entertainment media. The public has been bombarded by exoneree stories in recent years, including best-selling author Scott Turow’s novel Reversible Errors; the stage play “The Exonerated”; the celebrated documentary movie “The Thin Blue Line”; the Hollywood drama “Just Cause,” starring Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne, plus, of course, “CSI” and numerous other television police procedurals.
Indeed, some prosecutors and judges refer to the “CSI effect,” in which real-life juries acquit defendants because the forensic evidence police present fails to match the quality of the fictional evidence that TV police evidence technicians working in sophisticated labs uncover — all within an hour.
The new awareness of wrongful convictions has led to numerous in-depth studies of the problem and a wide range of enacted and pending legislation in many states, from new funding for crime labs to compensation for wrongly convicted men and women.
Since his release from prison in Missouri last year, Burton, like many exonerees, has attended occasional gatherings of other exonerees. Invariably, they exhibit forgiveness remarkable to behold. When they speak in anger, it is almost always because they say they have never received apologies from the police officers and prosecutors who wrongly sent them to prison, or they have trouble finding decent jobs, often because they lack job skills or potential employers wonder if they are truly innocent.
Ronald Cotton was found innocent and released after nearly a dozen years in prison in North Carolina for a rape he didn’t commit. He forgives Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, the woman whose mistaken testimony convicted him, but still feels angry about the aftermath. In a book about his conviction and redemption, co-authored with her, Cotton explains: “All those years with bars and razor wire around me — you’re no better than a dog in a cage. After being locked up for so long, they just toss you out and expect you to deal with it. I had no money, and how could I explain on job applications where I had been for the last 11 years?”
To view the entire report, login to CQ Researcher Online [subscription required], or purchase a CQ Researcher PDF
CQ Researcher Report on Fighting Crime
CQ Press has released new City Crime Rankings. Check out this great report by Peter Katel on fighting crime.
Introduction to the Feb. 8, 2008 CQ Researcher report on Fighting Crime
Efforts to reduce violent crime are succeeding in some, but not all, areas of the country. The number of violent crimes fell by about 2 percent during the first half of 2007. But crime still grips parts of cities large and small, where guns remain plentiful and many young men are caught up in a cycle of attack and revenge. In Washington, D.C., for example, there were 181 killings last year, up from 169 in 2006. But in the capital and elsewhere, homicide rates are significantly lower than during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and early '90s. Experts attribute some of the improvement to better policing techniques, such as closely tracking neighborhood crime and quickly responding to upticks. But a countertrend of persistent violent crime is plaguing impoverished inner cities, where city officials and grassroots activists are struggling to keep young men from joining the ranks of victims and perpetrators.
* Can violent crime be significantly reduced in inner cities?
* Are "stop-and-frisk" programs the best way to cut gun violence?
* Does joblessness cause crime?
To read the entire CQ Researcher Online report, click here. [subscription required]
To buy a PDF of this report, click here.
Other related CQ Researcher reports on crime issues
Click to read the overview of the CQ Researcher report on Juvenile Justice.
Click to read the overview of the CQ Researcher report on Gun Rights Debate.
Click to read the overview of the CQ Researcher report on Public Defenders.
In the News: Two Students Shot and Killed at Arkansas School
Two students were shot and killed at Central Arkansas University outside a residence hall on Oct. 26. Police charged four men with capital murder for what they say may have been a random shooting; another student was injured. The men apparently drove up to a group of students near the Arkansas Hall dormitory and fired at least eight rounds from at least one semiautomatic pistol. The university cancelled classes the next day but resumed on Oct. 28, when more than 300 students, faculty members and local residents attended a memorial for the slain students.
To view the entire CQ Researcher Online report, "Discipline in Schools," click here. [subscription required]
To buy a PDF of the entire report, click here.
, 20080215 (Feb. 15, 2008)
