Reentry is the fancy word for getting out of jail or prison and back into the real world. It’s a big problem.
Would you hire a felon?
Here’s a good story in the Times.
Month: March 2009
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Strip Searches
No longer allowed in Nassau County, Long Island, NY.
Judge Leonard D. Wexler found that the Fourth Amendment prohibits jail officials from performing such searches on every person sent to the jail, particularly those arrested on a misdemeanor or minor charge like a traffic violation, and those who cannot be reasonably suspected of carrying a concealed weapon or drugs.
I still say they’re OK for Baltimore City. The courts may disagree.
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Drug Bust Oscars
Peter Hermann has a nice article giving Academy Awards for drug busts.
So, if we’re handing out Academy Awards for cocaine seizures, Bealefeld’s Oscar might read “Best director for a drug bust,” while Clark’s might read “Best supporting director for a drug bust.”
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It is a sad reminder that the drugs keep pouring in despite year after year of “record seizures.” Wouldn’t be nice to see Bealefeld standing in front of an empty pallet declaring victory in the drug war? -
1 in 27
One in twenty-seven Maryland adults are current in the correction system. Twenty-seven percent of those are behind bars. This is, sad to say, about par for the national average.
In Maryland, it costs $86 per day to lock a person up.
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Cameras and Crime
Here’s an article in the New York Timesabout the (weak) link between security cameras and crime prevention.
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Mexico and the “Failed State”
Spin this all want, drug warriors, it’s not good. From Ciudad Juárez. The whole story in the New York Times is here.
It was drug traffickers who decided that Chief Roberto Orduña Cruz, a retired army major who had been on the job since May, should go. To make clear their insistence, they vowed to kill a police officer every 48 hours until he resigned.
They first killed Mr. Orduña’s deputy … together with three of his men. Then another police officer and a prison guard turned up dead. As the body count grew, Mr. Orduña eventually did as the traffickers had demanded, resigning his post on Feb. 20 and fleeing the city.
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“I’m not going to give in,” [the mayor] vowed in an interview, welcoming the arrival of soldiers so that the traffickers will feel the heat even more.Mexico doesn’t need more heat.
How many days left till we win the war on drugs?
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Strip Searches in Central Booking
These stories happen every now and then. “Respectable” person gets arrested and is shocked (shocked!) that they’re strip searched in jail.
Did you not know that people get strip searched after being arrested? Well they do. Now you know.
If the idea that other people get strip searched doesn’t bother you today, right now, while you’re reading this, please don’t be all bothered should it happen to you when you’re arrested.
But really, it’s not an outrage. Not in Baltimore’s Central Booking. It really is for everybody’s safety. No, it’s no fun to be stripped searched. But if you’re arrested, do you really want to be jail with otherpeople who haven’t been strip searched? Trust me, you don’t. You may not know this, but there are lots of bad criminals in jail.
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Reporting the Police and Naming Names
David Simon, of The Wire, Homicide, and The Corner fame, has written a very powerful article in the Washington Post.
The Baltimore Police stopped releasing the names of officers involved in police-involved shootings. Personally, I like reading the names in the paper to see if it’s anybody I know. Sure I could call up a friend and find out. But usually I don’t. Odd are I won’t know the officer.
I also know that if I had been involved in a police-involved shooting, I wouldn’t want my name released. I’d have plenty to worry about without my name in the papers. Reporters love presenting “both” sides of the story. But for most police-involved shootings, there is no “other” side. Often, as hard as it is for some to believe, the police are simply telling the truth.
I wouldn’t want to read about the bastard’s mother saying what an angel her son was, at least since the last time he got out of jail for shooting somebody. I wouldn’t want to read about “witnesses” (who weren’t there) say how that white officer shot him in the back for no reason at all. No, I shot him because the S.O.B. was trying to kill me.
Yet names should be released. If nothing else, this policy isn’t fair to officers who names are released. It leads one to think they’re guilty. The department is being sued by one of them.
But what it comes down to for me is that deep down I strongly believe in the press (mistakes and all). My uncle was a newspaper editor before I was a cop. Before I ever held a gun I was raising hell writing for the Evanstonian, my high-school newspaper. You might believe in the Second Amendment; I believe in the First.
Freedom of the Press is listed in the First Amendment for a reason. As a free country, we need a free press. In a free society, police should be held accountable to the public. What’s the alternative?
Read Simon’s piece. He’s a good writer. It’ll make you think. And that good.
In an American city, a police officer with the authority to take human life can now do so in the shadows, while his higher-ups can claim that this is necessary not to avoid public accountability, but to mitigate against a nonexistent wave of threats. And the last remaining daily newspaper in town no longer has the manpower, the expertise or the institutional memory to challenge any of it.
Part of the reason this country is in such a mess right now is because not enough people know what’s going on. They don’t read newspapers. They don’t know the facts. They’re ignorant.
Talk radio and the morning zoo is not a recipe for a well-reasoned worldview. Even the best TV news is horrible (except for the NewsHour). Between the right blaming “The Media” for almost everything (the answer to media bias is more media) and the economic realities killing the newspaper business, I worry. A less powerful press is not good for our country or our freedom.