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The American Justice System

How America Criminalized Adolescence

Recommended reading. One of the best takeaways is that Texas has realized how dumb this is, fixed its law, and seen excellent results (61% drop in arrests, AND continued decrease in violent crime in schools).

Until recently, Texas had one of the worst records in the country on juvenile justice. Police were charging 275,000 kids a year with “disrupting class” and other low-level offenses. Nearly three in five students were suspended or expelled at least once between seventh and 12th grade, according to an in-depth analysis of nearly 1 million Texas students that came out in 2011. Over time, the Texas school system had become a quasi-authoritarian state, one that punished some kids far more than others.

When it came to clear-cut offenses, like using a weapon, African American students were no more likely than other students to get in trouble in Texas. But they were far more likely to be disciplined for subjective violations like disrupting class. Even after controlling for more than 80 variables, including family income, students’ academic performance, and past disciplinary incidents, the report found that race was a reliable predictor of which kids got disciplined.

It took a lot of “talk, talk, talk,” as Whitmire put it, but lawmakers on the left and the right answered Jefferson’s call. Among other changes, they reined in the state’s law against disrupting class. Texas students could no longer be charged with this offense at their own schools. Nor could students younger than 12 be charged with any low-level misdemeanor at school. Before charging older kids, officers had to write up formal complaints with sworn statements from witnesses—and some schools were required to try common-sense interventions (like writing a letter to parents or referring the student to counseling) before resorting to a legal charge.
 
At least 22 states and dozens of cities and towns currently outlaw school disturbances in one way or another. South Dakota prohibits “boisterous” behavior at school, while Arkansas bans “annoying conduct.” Florida makes it a crime to “interfere with the lawful administration or functions of any educational institution”—or to “advise” another student to do so. In Maine, merely interrupting a teacher by speaking loudly is a civil offense, punishable by up to a $500 fine.

Just this summer in New Mexico, a federal appeals court upheld a school police officer’s decision to arrest and handcuff a 13-year-old who had repeatedly burped in gym class, ruling that “burping, laughing, and leaning into the classroom stopped the flow of student educational activities, thereby injecting disorder into the learning environment.” The decision reads like an Onion article, albeit one that goes on for 94 pages.

I went to school with so many criminals.
 
I've watched most of it 2 times through. Lots to digest.

The realization that there will be some other iteration of this oppression after prison/sentencing reform is really depressing to me. The last 30 minutes hit me hard with the audio of Trump overlaid with images of violence, the Emmett Till image, and the montage of modern police brutality.

I tried to write down a lot of the names of speakers in the film and hope to read more about their background and follow their research or public policy initiatives.
 
Still haven't seen 13th, aiming for this weekend.

San Francisco Calls on State to Abolish Cash Bail for Poor

San Francisco on Tuesday joined a growing nationwide call to abolish cash bail for poor defendants when it announced the city was dropping its opposition to a federal lawsuit.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera said a cash bail requirement is unconstitutional because it "creates a two-tiered system: one for those with money and another for those without."
 
Since Anthony Ray Hinton was exonerated and released from death row over two years ago, Alabama lawmakers have not only refused to compensate him for the three decades he spent on death row for a crime he did not commit, but also passed legislation changing the appeals process in death penalty cases so that innocent people like Mr. Hinton now face an even greater risk of being executed.

https://eji.org/news/alabama-refuse...ton-innocent-man-who-spent-30-years-death-row
 
"One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for whoever some Alabama Republican deems worthy, probably cops and each other but screw everyone else."
 

There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. Watson, who was 23 and didn't have a high school diploma when he entered ICE custody, didn't have a lawyer of his own. So he hand-wrote a letter to immigration officers, attaching his father's naturalization certificate, and kept repeating his status to anyone who would listen.

Still, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation. Deportation proceedings continued for another year.

Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing "regrettable failures of the government."

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is "disturbing," the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.

The "whole legal disaster" could have been avoided if Watson had an attorney at the outset, wrote the district judge who ordered his damages. With a lawyer, "plaintiff probably promptly would have been declared a citizen and released almost immediately after he was arrested, if he were arrested at all," he said.

...
 
Half a century after the civil rights movement, trial judges throughout Florida sentence blacks to harsher punishment than whites, a Herald-Tribune investigation found.

They offer blacks fewer chances to avoid jail or scrub away felonies.

They give blacks more time behind bars — sometimes double the sentences of whites accused of the same crimes under identical circumstances.

http://projects.heraldtribune.com/bias/sentencing/
 
Sounds about right to me
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A Nashville Man Spent Two Decades Behind Bars. Now The Government Wants Him To Go Back.

Last year, a Nashville man got an unlikely chance at redemption.

Matthew Charles walked out of a federal prison a decade before the end of his term, after the Obama administration reduced the minimum sentence guidelines for dealing crack. He has spent the past year and a half rebuilding his life.

But now in a rare case, a higher court says he needs to go back behind bars.

During that year and a half, he's spent almost every Saturday morning volunteering at a food pantry in North Nashville — unloading donations, chopping vegetables and organizing shelves.

Many of the volunteers at the “Little Pantry That Could” are young men on probation or parole. Once their community service hours are done, they almost never come back, says Stacy Downey, the nonprofit’s founder.

But Matthew Charles has. Every Saturday, rain or shine. Downey says she’s come to depend on him.

“He is the best at connecting with these young men,” says Downey. “He targets who needs a little bit of work and who needs a little encouragement.”

Charles is soft-spoken and reserved but has an undeniable presence at the pantry. He’s 51, bald with a graying beard and fit from daily workouts.

But lately Downey has been worried she’ll lose him too, because Charles might be going back to prison.

“It makes me feel sick just to think that he might not be here,” says Downey. Slumping into a worn chair in a cramped room out back, she begins to cry.
 
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/04/cartersville-georgia-ounce-marijuana-arrests-weed/

After claiming to find less than an ounce of weed in total — which has a street value of around $150 to $200 and would mean only a ticket in the nearby city of Atlanta — police in Cartersville charged all 70 people gathered for a birthday party — including men, women, boys, and girls, ranging from the ages of 15 to 31 — with drug possession and hauled them off to Bartow County Jail.
 
Depressing story. That's big government at work. The Cartersville government is going to make a lot of money off those folks.

First time noticing the tags here. Not a surprise the one black guy who comes over here to discuss politics gets treated like that.
 
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