Good News - crime is going down

The preliminary UCR for 2009 shows a decrease in all types of violent crime. This raises some interesting questions. Unemployment is high and new graduates are facing a dearth of job openings. So one wonders about the relationship of employment and crime.

Community policing is now widespread in the US; could this be a factor in the decrease? Does more unemployment mean more eyes are on the look-out, ready to intervene if they see situations that could escalate into violence?

There is no lessening of gang membership so how does gang membership relate to violent crime? The data raises more questions than it answers.

Here are some more top line numbers from the report:

• All four categories of violent crime declined overall compared to 2008: robbery, 8.1 percent; murder, 7.2 percent; aggravated assault, 4.2 percent; and forcible rape, 3.1 percent. Violent crime declined 4.0 percent in metropolitan counties and 3.0 percent in nonmetropolitan counties.

• The largest decrease in murders—7.5 percent—was in cities with populations ranging from 500,000 to 999,999. The only increases in murders were found in cities of 25,000 to 49,999 (up 5.3 percent) and nonmetropolitan counties (up 1.8 percent).

• All overall categories of property crime also decreased when compared to 2008. Motor vehicle theft was down 17.2 percent; larceny-theft, 4.2 percent; and burglaries, 1.7 percent. Motor vehicle theft, which experienced the largest decrease in a single property crime category by far, fell significantly in all four regions of the country—down 18.5 percent in the Midwest, down 17.5 percent in both the Northeast and the West, and down 16.3 percent in the South.
  
• Arson declined across the board, with reported decreases across all population groups and all four regions of the country—11.6 percent in the West, 10.6 percent in the South, 9.2 percent in the Midwest, and 8.6 percent in the Northeast.

The 2009 crime statistics are preliminary; the final report will be issued this fall. Past full-year reports: 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | More - More About the Uniform Crime Reports (Statistics) - Frequently Asked Questions

The report also contains individual 2008 and 2009 figures for all eight crimes—murder, forcible rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, and arson—by cities with populations of 100,000 or more.

Court rules on juveniles and life without parole

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that giving a juvenile a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for any non-homicide violates the 8th Amendment.

While it is possible that Graham the youngster in the case will probably be sentenced to 40 years, knowing that he has the possibility of gaining parole makes a tremendous difference to an inmate.

Young people tend to act on impulse and most of their crimes (non gang related) lack premeditation. Thus the Court recognizes that there is a difference in the sentence that a youth should receive from that given to one who is past the age of majority.

It is interesting to note that Florida is the state that most often used life without parole as a sentence for youth who commit heinous crimes. Hopefully juries and
sentencing judges will begin to consider the immaturity of the offender in determining the punishment. Substantial punishment is reasonable but consideration about a person's redemption must also be a factor.

Trusting Police is hard in some areas

March 19, 2010

Linked to Police Misconduct, 185 Drug Cases Are Dropped

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — Charges have been dropped or convictions vacated in 185 drug cases in one of the nation’s most crime-ridden cities, because information gathered in a criminal investigation of five police officers suggested that evidence could have been tainted, a prosecutor announced Friday.

One of the officers, who resigned, pleaded guilty in federal court Friday to conspiring with other officers to deprive other people of their civil rights.

The former officer, Kevin Parry, admitted that he planted drugs on suspects, conducted illegal searches, threatened to bring additional charges against suspects who refused to cooperate, stole drugs and money from suspects, and paid informants — many of them prostitutes — with drugs in exchange for information.

Friday’s announcement and Mr. Parry’s plea were the first information about the situation to emerge since the investigation began in November.

At least four of the police officers were suspended then. The Camden County prosecutor, Warren Faulk, would not say whether the fifth had been removed from duty.

The prosecutor’s office reviewed more than 400 cases over the last five years in which one of those five was the arresting or investigating officer, Mr. Faulk said. They seemed to not have behaved inappropriately in some cases, like domestic violence calls, Mr. Faulk said.

But in 185 cases involving more than 180 suspects, Mr. Faulk said, there was reason to drop charges or vacate convictions. It was not clear how many people were released because of the investigation, but 81 of them had received prison or jail sentences.

Yvonne Smith Segars, who heads the state’s public defender’s office, called the developments “unprecedented.”

Horrific Doesn'Even Begin to Discribe this

Horrifying acts' common thread: troubled kids

• Photos

Related Content

• Taunting texts triggered brutal attack on Deerfield Beach girl

By JAMES H. BURNETT III

jburnett@MiamiHerald.com

`Kids will be kids'' used to mean a child got caught with his hand in the cookie jar, or in some other acceptably immature, playful, or maybe thick-headed, but relatively harmless, behavior.

Thursday afternoon, 15-year-old Wayne Treacy stood before a Broward County judge to answer for allegedly beating and stomping with steel-toed boots a female classmate at Deerfield Beach Middle School.

The Broward Sheriff's Office says Treacy, who was arrested on an attempted-murder charge following the Wednesday afternoon attack, continued to stomp and kick Josie Lou Ratley in the head after she had fallen to the ground.

Ratley, a 15-year-old eighth-grader, remained hospitalized late Thursday in extremely critical condition.

According to BSO, Ratley and Treacy exchanged heated text messages prior to the assault, including a taunt she allegedly sent him about his older brother's suicide in October.

Circuit Judge Elijah Williams ordered Treacy held in juvenile detention for 21 days while the Broward state attorney's office decides whether to charge him as a juvenile or an adult.

BROTHER'S SUICIDE

Treacy clearly has problems. That's not a dig at him. Not to excuse his actions Wednesday, but his mother Donna Powers and stepfather Carey Smith say Treacy's brother committed suicide in October, the day before Treacy's birthday. And Treacy, then 14, found the body.

Perhaps more troubling, though, is how common kid-on-kid assaults are becoming -- not simple, old-fashioned fist fights, but assaults.

Michael Brewer, 15, was a student at Deerfield Beach Middle School five months ago, when several classmates surrounded him near his home, doused him with rubbing alcohol, and set him on fire because he allegedly reported them to police for attempting to steal his father's bicycle, and because he supposedly owed one of them $40 for a video-game purchase.

In December, Avion Lawson, 17, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for participating in a brutal West Palm Beach gang rape when he was just 14, and beating up the victim's young son, who was present during the attack.

Another of Lawson's three codefendants was legally a minor -- 17-year-old Jakaris Taylor, who received a life sentence in October for his part in the rape and beating.

`TROUBLED'

What's the common denominator with all these kids? There are probably several. One that jumps out at me is that in at least 30 newspaper reports during the past two years, in which either South Florida journalists or law-enforcement officials, or both, referred to them all as ``troubled.''

I've used ``troubling'' in this column. Hard to describe these teenagers or these scenarios any other way, without explanations from the assailants and shining a giant, glaring spotlight on parental culpability.

But lest we dismiss this behavior as a fluke -- especially in light of January reports that overall aggravated assaults in Miami-Dade and Broward counties were down by as much as 15 percent in 2009 from 2008 and 2007 rates -- consider a 2006 study in Britain about the prevalence of serious crimes committed by children:

That country's Youth Justice Board concluded in 2006 that there was cause to celebrate, because crimes committed by children ages 13 to 17 had fallen in the prior year. However, crimes committed by 10 to 12-year-olds rose 6 percent.

It's 2010. Like more than 70 percent of the juveniles arrested and/or charged with committing violent crimes in South Florida over the past two years, those 10-12-year-olds leading the rise in child crime in the UK are 14 to 16 now.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/18/1536780/horrifying-acts-common-thread.html#ixzz0if7BKIaq

Update related to New Postings

I will be having open heart surgery in the relatively near future. I am not sure
how long it will be until I am once again feeling up to searching for new
articles to post on this blog.

But with the help of my doctors and the Lord, I expect to be back at it in a month or so.

I will be home until Tuesday, March 23, so I may post one or two until then.

C.L. Segal

Sexting

Appeals Court Rejects Prosecution Threat In "Sexting" Case

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the the first case to challenge the constitutionality of prosecuting teens for "sexting," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia upheld an injunction that barred a Pennsylvania prosecutor from bringing child pornography charges against girls who refused to attend a class he had designed to educate youths about the dangers of sexting, the Legal Intelligencer reports.

A unanimous three-judge panel concluded there was no probable cause to bring any charges against the girls who had appeared in various states of undress in photos shared among a group of teens. Missing from the prosecutor's case, the court said, was critical evidence about who exactly had transmitted the images. As a result, the court said, any decision to prosecute the teens after they refused to take the class would therefore be retaliation against them for asserting their First Amendment rights. The panel found that former Wyoming County District Attorney George Skumanick Jr. had violated the rights of parents by usurping their roles. "An individual district attorney may not coerce parents into permitting him to impose on their children his ideas of morality and gender roles," wrote Judge Thomas Ambro.

Legal Intelligencer

Prison Populations Getting Smaller

March 16, 2010

Report Finds States Holding Fewer Prisoners

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

State prison populations, which have grown for nearly four decades, have begun to dip, according to a new report, largely because of recent efforts to keep parolees out of prison and reduce prison time for nonviolent offenders.

State prisons held 1,403,091 people as of Jan. 1, nearly 6 percent fewer than a year before, the report said. Prison populations have fallen in 27 states in that period, while they have risen in 23.

“It’s too early to tell whether this is a tap of the brakes or a shift into reverse,” said Adam Gelb, the director of the public safety performance project of the Pew Center on the States in Washington, which produced the report. Still, Mr. Gelb said, seeing the state prison numbers dip for the first time since 1972 “took us a little bit by surprise,” he said.

In the same period, the population in federal prisons increased by nearly 7 percent.

The results broaden the conclusions in a report issued this month by the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group in Washington that looked at efforts to reduce the prison populations in Kansas, Michigan, New Jersey and New York. That report found that all four states had achieved reductions, with New York reaching a 20 percent reduction and New Jersey 19 percent over a decade.

Marc Mauer, the executive director of that group, said the reduction was actually overdue, since crime rates have declined for some 15 years. “That’s the puzzling piece — why did this take so long?” he asked. The lag, he said, was partly the result of longer sentences and partly because of tough standards in many states for revoking parole.

The Pew report noted that while the squeeze on state and local budgets had contributed to efforts to reduce prison populations, “financial pressures alone do not explain the decline.” At least part of the fall-off resulted from changes like California’s decision to reduce the number of low-risk people on parole returning to prison because of technical violations, and Texas’ decision to step up its residential and community-based treatment programs.

“If you had to single out the most common reform that we’re seeing,” Mr. Gelb said, “it’s various strategies to hold parole violators accountable, short of jamming them back into a $25,000-a-year, taxpayer-funded prison cell.”

Releases of prisoners, however, have been controversial. Crime Victims United of California, a nonprofit group, sued the state last month over its efforts to reduce the number of inmates in its prisons, claiming that releases driven by overcrowding would violate a 2008 voter initiative.

The new report does not deal with the prisoner levels in local jails. A 2009 report by the Pew center that did count local jail inmates concluded that 1 in 100 adults in the United States lives behind bars.

The new report concluded that whatever the long-term trends, with 1.6 million people in state and federal prisons and an estimated 700,000 in local jails, “the United States will continue to lead the world in incarceration for the foreseeable future.”