#Criminal Justice System

[politijohn]

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Reminder that 53% of Alabama’s prison population is black people who are incarcerated at 3x the rate as white people (source).

[audhdnight]

Spanking is to parenting what prisons are to criminal justice. Allow me to elaborate:

What does spanking do? “It teaches kids to behave!” Actually, no. It teaches kids to fear their caregiver(s). But say we go with that line. How does spanking teach kids to behave? “It shows them the consequences of bad actions!” Actually, no. It shows kids that when the caregiver is displeased, the kid gets hurt. In the mind of the child, the sequence of events is not [misbehave:consequence]. It is [caregiver unhappy:pain]. And maybe you’ll say “But my kid stopped mouthing off after I started spanking them for it”. Okay, sure. Maybe they stopped responding when you argue, but only because the learned to fear what their response would bring. They’re not holding their tongue because they realized it’s disrespectful or rude or whatever else you believe it is. They’re holding their tongue because they know it won’t do any good and will only make the situation worse for them. I can guarantee they are still thinking all those rebellious naughty talk-backy thoughts. They just aren’t saying them out loud. Spanking did not teach your child to behave, it taught them to walk on eggshells.

Similarly, prisons do absolutely nothing to enforce laws. Prisons do nothing to fix the real crimes that do get committed. A shooter or rapist or embezzler being incarcerated does not bring their victim back to life, un-traumatize them, or make reparations for any damages. Additionally, it makes life a living hell for the innocent people who end up in jail (OF WHICH THERE ARE A HELL OF A LOT). And maybe you might say that the point of prison is to encourage good behavior, because no one wants to go to jail. I would ask, then, why there are so many prisons, of which so many are full or overcrowded. Clearly, the threat of incarceration is not keeping people out of jail. Additionally, much like a child who was spanked being afraid to do normal things in their own home for fear of displeasing their caregiver, regular non-criminal people are afraid of prison, even though they have done nothing wrong. They know they could be incarcerated because of falsified evidence, biased testimonies, unfair trial, or simply bigotry. Especially people of color. Even though they haven’t done anything wrong, they are scared of what could happen to them if the person in power (police) was unhappy with them.

Negative consequences unrelated to the actual incident do not discourage “bad behavior”. Just like a child who is spanked will simply learn to be sneakier, a thief who goes to jail will simply cover their tracks better next time.

Stop spanking your kids, and abolish prisons. Have a nice day.

[reasonsforhope]

"The New York City Council voted to ban most uses of solitary confinement in city jails Wednesday [December 20, 2023], passing the measure with enough votes to override a veto from Mayor Eric Adams.

The measure would ban the use of solitary confinement beyond four hours and during certain emergencies. That four hour period would be for "de-escalation" in situations where a detainee has caused someone else physical harm or risks doing so. The resolution would also require the city's jails to allow every person detained to spend at least 14 hours outside of their cells each day.

The bill, which had 38 co-sponsors, was passed 39 to 7. It will now go to the mayor, who can sign the bill or veto it within 30 days. If Mayor Adams vetoes the bill, it will get sent back to the council, which can override the veto with a vote from two-thirds of the members. The 39 votes for the bill today make up 76% of the 51-member council. At a press conference ahead of the vote today [December 20, 2023], Council speaker Adrienne Adams indicated the council would seek [a veto] override if necessary.

For his part, Mayor Adams has signaled he is indeed considering vetoing the bill...

The United Nations has said solitary confinement can amount to torture, and multiple studies suggest its use can have serious consequences on a person's physical and mental health, including an increased risk of PTSD, dying by suicide, and having high blood pressure.

One 2019 study found people who had spent time in solitary confinement in prison were more likely to die in the first year after their release than people who had not spent time in solitary confinement. They were especially likely to die from suicide, homicide and opioid overdose.

Black and Hispanic men have been found to be overrepresented among those placed in solitary confinement – as have gay, lesbian and bisexual people.

The resolution in New York comes amid scrutiny over deaths in the jail complex on Rikers Island. Last month, the federal government joined efforts to wrest control of the facility from the mayor, and give it to an outside authority.

In August 2021, 25-year-old Brandon Rodriguez died while in solitary confinement at Rikers. He had been in pre-trial detention at the jail for less than a week. His mother, Tamara Carter, says his death was ruled a suicide and that he was in a mental health crisis at the time of his confinement.

"I know for Brandon, he should have been put in the infirmary. He should have been seeing a psychiatrist. He should have been being watched," she said.

She says the passage of the bill feels like a form of justice for her.

"Brandon wasn't nothing. He was my son. He was an uncle. A brother. A grandson. And he's very, very missed," she told NPR. "I couldn't save my son. But if I joined this fight, maybe I could save somebody else's son." ...

New York City is not the first U.S. city to limit the use of solitary confinement in its jails, though it is the largest. In 2021, voters in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, passed a measure to restrict solitary confinement except in cases of lockdowns and emergencies. The sheriff in Illinois' Cook County, which includes Chicago, has said the Cook County jail – one of the country's largest – has also stopped using solitary confinement...

Naila Awan, the interim co-director of policy at the New York Civil Liberties Union, says that New York making this change could have larger influence across the country.

"As folks look at what New York has done, other larger jails that are not quite the size of Rikers will be able to say, 'If New York City is able to do this, then we too can implement similar programs here, that it's within our capacity and capabilities," Awan says. "And to the extent that we are able to get this implemented and folks see the success, I think we could see a real shift in the way that individuals are treated behind bars.""

-via NPR, December 20, 2023

[alwaysbewoke]

[typhlonectes]

[isaacsapphire]

Saw a post about the sex offender list that kept repeating, "police love to get minorities for X crime" and I realized, both people who supposedly oppose the system and the system itself very intentionally frame police and police discretion as a more powerful and unilateral part of the system that it actually is, while ignoring or obscuring the rest of the system.

The DA's office decides what cases to drop and what to move forward with, and what punishments to request. The judges decide to throw out cases or let them continue, and then use judicial discretion in handing down sentences. And so on, I am not a legal expert yet, but there's a whole chain of people more powerful than some beat cop who chose to pursue or drop cases.

This all seems very convenient for the DA, as nobody is rioting to abolish or defund their office.

[ex-foster]

[odinsblog]

In most communities in America, Black people and people of color are significantly underrepresented in the jury pools from which jurors are selected. The law requires that the proportion of Black people in a jury pool must match Black representation in the overall population, but courts routinely fail to enforce these requirements. Legal standards created by the courts make it difficult to prove discrimination and have led to a failure to address racially discriminatory practices.

When Black people and people of color do get called for jury service, they are still removed unfairly. There is widespread racial bias in the selection of key leadership roles such as the grand jury foreperson—who has significant power to shape the conduct and outcome of legal proceedings, at least in some jurisdictions.5 In criminal trials, prosecutors and judges often remove Black people after unfairly claiming they are unfit to serve on juries.

Even if people of color successfully navigate all of these barriers to jury service, they can be excluded by lawyers who have the right to use “peremptory strikes” to remove otherwise qualified jurors for virtually any reason—or no reason at all.

Courts allowed prosecutors to use peremptory strikes to prevent Black people from serving on juries throughout most of the 20th century. In a landmark case in 1986, the Supreme Court finally changed the legal requirements for proving a peremptory strike is racially biased.6 But the Court’s decision in Batson v. Kentucky did not eliminate racial discrimination.

Representative juries selected without racial bias or discrimination are essential in our democracy. They are especially important because Black people are underrepresented in prosecutors’ offices and in the judiciary. More than 40% of Americans are people of color, but 95% of elected prosecutors are white. Similar disparities exist within the judiciary.

(continue reading)

[bitchesgetriches]

Sup bitches! I’m in love with a very sweet, smart, hardworking man - who also finished a 20-year prison sentence three years ago. He has a great, well-paying job in a small business, his credit is blossoming, and he is beloved my all; by all accounts a success story. But of course, there are barriers, namely finding a place to rent. I have no such barriers, but I know most places do background checks on all potential occupants. What are our options?

Legal discrimination against ex-convicts is one of the blackest stains on our country. You and your partner have our sympathy and support! He has done his time and by rights should be entitled to the full privileges of any other citizen. And yet.

Remember that we are NOT legal professionals, and so we can't offer legal advice. What I CAN tell you is that if you are the only person on the lease, you will be the only one subject to a background check. Additionally, if you submit his criminal record up-front, in a personal letter to a private landlord (rather than a giant rental corporation), they're more likely to be reasonable about your case.

For more practical advice and to understand your partner's rights, risks, and options as an ex-convict, we recommend reading "The New Jim Crow." It talks about the racial component of the criminal justice system, but the discriminatory aspects of post-prison life are broadly applicable.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander: A Bitchtastic Book Review

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[politijohn]

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[audhdnight]

So I was having a discussion about abortion rights and mentioned that making them illegal will not stop abortions from happening, and the person I was talking to sort of scoffed and said “Right so why have laws at all? Murder still happens. And I could apply that to your gun control laws too”

I need yall to understand that the point of laws is not and has never been to stop something from happening. The point of laws is to make those actions legally punishable.

Murder isn’t illegal because the law stops murder, murder is illegal so that if you beat someone to death in anger there are consequences.

I don’t want gun control laws because I think they will automatically make all wrongful deaths by firearms end forever. I want gun control laws so that it’s harder to get away with slaughtering people. So that guns are harder to access for those people who would misuse them.

Republicans know this. That’s the entire reason they want abortion to be illegal: so you can go to jail if you get one. Their aim is not and has never been to “protect life”. It has always been to control women and queer people. This isn’t about saving babies, it’s about making the exercising of bodily autonomy punishable by law.

[jtem]

Warning! Warning! Warning! Warning!

Unpopular opinion time

Yes. Call it an "Opinion." It's a truth and a dire warning but we'll call it an opinion:

The current "Squatters" problem is about to make a very ugly turn.

Imagine you come home from work one day and your key doesn't work. Your locks have been changed and people are your home! They tell you to leave, get off your property.

You persist. After all, it is your home. You've had a long day. All you want to do is get inside your own home, pour yourself a bowl of cereal and plop down in front of the TV. And here these strangers are inside your home, they changed your locks and they're telling you to get off your own property! So you break in. You break into your own home and confront these strangers.

Then they call the police.

On you.

These strangers in your home, call the police on you. They do.

The police show up.

The home invaders show the damage from where you broke in, show the police some rental agreement they made up, one or more receipts for rent they never paid..probably some bills in their name.

The police arrest you. The police arrest YOU for breaking into your home, trying to wrongfully evict these "Renters" you are victimizing.

Again, this is your home. You live there. You got up that morning, left for work, locked the door behind you and when you came home at the end of the day you found these squatters inside your home.

This is going to happen.

It's going to happen a lot.

Why wouldn't it?

When it comes to squatters, there's literally no difference between them being there for a week or them being their for hours. The police don't see a difference. The courts don't. In both cases it comes down to pieces of paper, and these squatters inside your home made sure to print out lots of authentic and properly dated pieces of paper.

Oh, you'll probably get them out. Eventually. Maybe in only six months! In the mean time you can't get inside your home and God knows what kind of damages they're doing...

It's going to happen.

They just have to pick an address, cherry pick the legal jurisdiction to give them the greatest advantages, print everything out & wait for you to leave for work in the morning.

People are going to start coming home and finding strangers inside their homes. Squatters. It will happen, if it's not happening already.

[loverboywambles]

Taking criminology this semester and had the introduction discussion today. My teacher was talking about criminology etiquette and basically said three things:

1. Respect the victims of cases and their families

2. Use professional and respectful language when discussing and describing cases

3. Be respectful of people in the class as they may be victims of crimes, know people who are victims of crimes, or are just generally less comfortable discussing more heavy topics

Which is like yeah duh. But I found it interesting how she said nothing about respecting the criminals too?

I was going to comment on it but someone else briefly added "and respect the criminals too" and the teacher was basically like yeah that too

But basically it was treated like an afterthought, like it wasn't an important, crucial part of what we had earlier established that criminology was about: preventing people from becoming criminals in the first place, solving crimes, and rehabilitating both victims and criminals after said crimes take place in order to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Why is being a criminal synonymous with "evil irredeemable monster" in so many people's minds?

[isaacsapphire]

The poisoned Skittle problem, from the perspective of a non poison Skittle

The metaphor of the bowl of Skittles, some percentage of which are poison, and how many of those Skittles you want to eat, has been used by feminists about men, and republicans about immigrants. I'm increasingly devoid of shits to give about what kind of vile things I'm going to be called, so what the heck, I'll use it too for this.

With class and housing in the US, there is a poisoned Skittle problem; the lower income you go, the higher the percentage of assaults George type people are in the mix. (Please note now that I am Not claiming that the elite are not prone to being assaults Georg, or that there's no assaults Georg in higher income brackets) For added fun, the poorer you are, the more you have to be in physical proximity to others who live in your area, while walking to the store or taking public transportation, increasing your vulnerability to being assaulted, etc. In the suburbs, a lot of the time, the guy who lives three houses down from yours and you have literally never seen each other, so it doesn't matter if he would immediately grab your crotch if he was in crotch-grabbing range, because the two of you have never been that close together. If you live in a more dense environment and travel by foot, your chances of being in crotch-grabbing range are much higher, so a crotch-grabber, etc. in your area is a more concerning problem for you.

Most people very reasonably prefer to live somewhere further away from assaults Georg. The thing is, other people also prefer to live further for assaults Georg, and if you were just living next to assaults Georg, you are a Skittle of indeterminate poison. So when a nice redlined Blue suburb with a great school district is considering if they're going to permit some affordable housing, they are going to look at the income bracket that will be living there and say, "There's too high a percentage of poison Skittles in that income bracket. We don't want to live in a community with assaults Georg, or invite assaults Georg Jr into our nice school, so we don't want affordable housing here."

So now you, as an innocent non poison Skittle are left trying to figure out how you are going to communicate your non poison status so you can get the heck away from the poison Skittles. The current way this information is conveyed is by convincing a higher paid job to hire you, making more money, and buying your way into a better neighborhood. This is a rather lossy way to sort, and shit like constantly disrupted sleep at the weekly hotel from all the shitty people who live there with you doesn't help with better job thing. There's plenty of non poisoned Skittles in that bowl, but how to extract them safely?

The obvious next question is why we as a society don't seem to have any solution to the problem of getting assaulted by assaults Georg other than to individually just try to scramble away from where such folks are statistically and to price the entire category of people who are statistically more likely to be assaults Georg out of certain areas. And now it's a criminal justice system problem and I'll leave that for another day, but overall, the criminal justice system seems a lot more interested in hassling people based on statistical similarities to assaults Georg than doing fuck all about stopping assaults Georg.