Debate rages over severity of child-porn sentences

Their crimes are so loathsome that some hardened courtroom veterans recoil at viewing the evidence. Yet child-pornography offenders are now the focus of an intense debate within the legal community as to whether the federal sentences they face have become, in many cases, too severe.
By the end of this year, after a review dating to 2009, the U.S. Sentencing Commission plans to release a report that's likely to propose changes to the sentencing guidelines that it oversees. It's a daunting task, given the polarized viewpoints that the commission is weighing. The issue "is highly charged, both emotionally and politically," said one of the six commissioners, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell.
On one side of the debate, many federal judges and public defenders say repeated moves by Congress to toughen the penalties over the past 25 years have badly skewed the guidelines, to the point where offenders who possess and distribute child pornography can go to prison for longer than those who actually rape or sexually abuse a child. In a 2010 survey of federal judges by the Sentencing Commission, about 70 percent said the proposed ranges of sentences for possession and receipt of child pornography were too high. Demonstrating their displeasure, federal judges issued child porn sentences below the guidelines 45 percent of the time in 2010, more than double the rate for all other crimes.
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How a forensic artist 'aged' Madeleine McCann

A forensic artist who "age enhanced" an image of Madeleine McCann, the young girl who disappeared while on a family vacation in Portugal, needed to combine her knowledge of anatomy and forensics with a little bit of artistry.


"It’s not quite as straightforward as putting a whole bunch of photos in [a computer], pressing a few buttons and out it pops," Teri Blythe told CBC News in a phone interview from her U.K. home. "It's using the training I have, the experience I have and knowledge I have of how faces change. But it's also using the artistic side of it to actually manipulate photos into a new face."
Blythe was asked by the Metropolitan Police Service to create the image, which was made public ahead of Madeleine’s ninth birthday on May 12. Madeleine has been missing since she disappeared a few days before her fourth birthday from a holiday apartment at the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz on May 3, 2007.

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New gov't guidance on employee background checks

Is an arrest in a barroom brawl 20 years ago a job disqualifier? Not necessarily, the government said Wednesday in new guidelines on how employers can avoid running afoul of laws prohibiting job discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's updated policy on criminal background checks is part of an effort to rein in practices that can limit job opportunities for minorities that have higher arrest and conviction rates than whites. "The ability of African-Americans and Hispanics to gain employment after prison is one of the paramount civil justice issues of our time," said Stuart Ishimaru, one of three Democrats on the five-member commission.

But some employers say the new policy — approved in a 4-1 vote — could make it more cumbersome and expensive to conduct background checks. Companies see the checks as a way to keep workers and customers safe, weed out unsavory workers and prevent negligent hiring claims. The new standard urges employers to give applicants a chance to explain a report of past criminal misconduct before they are rejected outright. An applicant might say the report is inaccurate or point out that the conviction was expunged. It may be completely unrelated to the job, or an ex-con may show he's been fully rehabilitated.

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Battle lines drawn on California death penalty ban

Battle lines are already being drawn over a ballot measure in November to repeal the death penalty in California...Backing the new measure are Ron Briggs, who ran the 1978 campaign for a successful ballot initiative that expanded the reach of California's death penalty; Donald J. Heller, an ex-prosecutor who wrote the 1978 initiative; Jeanne Woodford, a former warden of San Quentin State Prison who oversaw four executions; and former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti, who said his experience as D.A. helped change his mind about the fairness of the system.
Critics contend that California voters have historically favored capital punishment, passing several measures over the last few decades to toughen criminal penalties and expand the number of crimes punishable by death. "The people of California have regularly voted for the death penalty by wide margins, but of course it has to be a matter of concern," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which advocates for tough criminal penalties. He said fundraising to defeat the November measure would be difficult.

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Crime ‘one of the world’s top 20 economies’, says UN official

Crime generates an estimated $2.1 trillion in global annual proceeds – or 3.6pc of the world’s gross domestic product – and the problem may be growing, a senior United Nations official has said. “It makes the criminal business one of the largest economies in the world, one of the top 20 economies,” said Yury Fedotov, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), describing it as a threat to security and economic development.
The figure was calculated recently for the first time by the UNODC and World Bank, based on data for 2009, and no comparisons are yet available, Mr Fedotov told a news conference. Speaking on the opening day of a week-long meeting of the international Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice (CCPCJ), he suggested the situation may be worsening “but to corroborate this feeling I need more data”.


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How we can be smarter about fighting crime

An interesting new movement is growing in the US. Faced with unsustainable costs, rightwing politicians are questioning the decades-old mantra that an ever higher rate of incarceration is the best way to fight crime. Former governor of Florida Jeb Bush is the latest high-profile Republican to back the call for new thinking.


Both in the UK and the US, old thinking focused solely on tough enforcement, backed up by an ever-expanding prison population. Indeed, the UK prison population has nearly doubled since 1993 and is at a record level. Yet while crime has fallen – a global trend – it remains too high, with too many victims. Antisocial behaviour is a public concern and blights lives.
Half of all crime is committed by those who have already been through the criminal justice system. So the government has been driving a radical programme of reforms to reduce reoffending. Our "rehabilitation revolution", under which we are rolling out the principle of paying public, private and voluntary agencies by results to break the cycle of reoffending, is a truly radical scheme – indeed a world first.



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No forensic background? No problem

This is how I — a jour­nalism graduate student with no back­ground in forensics — became certified as a “Forensic Consultant” by one of the field’s largest profes­sional groups. One afternoon early last year, I punched in my credit card infor­mation, paid $495 to the American College of Forensic Exam­iners Inter­na­tional Inc. and regis­tered for an online course. After about 90 minutes of video instruction, I took an exam on the institute’s web site, answering 100multiple choice ques­tions, aided by several ACFEI study packets. As soon as I finished the test, a screen popped up saying that I had passed, earning me an impressive-sounding credential that could help establish my qual­i­fi­ca­tions to be an expert witness in criminal and civil trials. For another $50, ACFEI mailed me a white lab coat after sending my certificate.
For the last two years, ProP­ublica and PBS “Frontline,” in concert with other news orga­ni­za­tions, have looked in-depth at death inves­ti­gation in America, finding a pervasive lack of national stan­dards that begins in the autopsy room and ends in court. Expert witnesses routinely sway trial verdicts with testimony about finger­prints, ballistics, hair and fiber analysis and more, but there are no national stan­dards to measure their compe­tency or ensure that what they say is valid. A landmark 2009 report by the National Academy of Sciences called this lack of stan­dards one of the most pressing problems facing the criminal justice system.



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N.J. investigators track digital 'fingerprints' on shared images to nab child pornographers

To beat the highly technological image-sharing network favored by child pornographers, investigators followed digital “fingerprints” on those shared pictures and videos, New Jersey law enforcement officials said Tuesday in detailing a three-month investigation that ended with charges against 27 people. In North Jersey, police arrested and charged Joshua Kane, 31, of Wayne, on April 9, and Andrew Rodriguez, 27, of Park Ridge, on April 11. Jose A. Velasquez, 20, of Clifton was arrested on April 12, followed by Joseph Marella, 42, of Passaic. Two men from Morris County were arrested. One is Charles E. Jones, 50, who officials said was employed as a superintendent of public works in Morristown.

In all, 26 men and one woman face charges of possessing pornographic images of children, following arrests across 14 counties on six days in March and April. The first arrested was Cesar Salgado-Maya, 23, of Camden County, who was picked up ahead of the others on March 1, when detectives learned that he lived above a child day-care center in Audubon. Bernard Cahill, 53, of Folsom was charged also with sexual assault and manufacturing pornography. Police allege that Cahill took photos while he sexually assaulted a girl.

What the defendants have in common, investigators say, is how they shared their images — through “peer-to-peer” networks more typically used for sharing music and movies electronically. But more than 100 state troopers, agents and officers led by the state police’s digital technology investigations unit were scouring those networks, posing undercover as users, and eventually they seized folders of images and videos in the three-month sweep. “People think that because they view their images in the privacy of their homes that we’re not watching them,” Attorney General Jeffrey Chiesa said on Tuesday. “We are.”



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The Myth of Suburban Gangs: A Changing Demographic

When most people think of gangs and the criminal activity often associated with them problems of the inner-city may come to mind -– issues that are far from their manicured suburban lawns, something that could never touch their lives directly. But the demographic makeup and geographic location of gangs are changing, according to Rebecca Petersen, author of Understanding Contemporary Gangs in America and a Criminal Justice Professor at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta.

“We have seen this trend of gangs moving out of the city and into the suburbs for 20 years now,” Petersen said. “We don’t associate the suburbs with people being poor or homeless, but it’s one of the fastest growing populations [in the suburbs].” While gangs are not exclusively comprised of low-income members, the correlation between harsh economic conditions and the proliferation of gang activity has been documented in communities around the country since at least the late 1980s.

In the decade leading up to 2010, the suburban poor in major-metropolitan suburbs grew by 53 percent, compared to an increase of 23 percent within the cities, according to the Census Bureau. As a result, the majority of the traditionally urban poor population now resides in suburban communities throughout the United States. In 2010, suburbs housed about a third of the nation’s poor, outranking major urban centers that accounted for about 28 percent of the impoverished population. Part of the problem, Petersen noted, is that many suburbs and outlying towns don’t have well developed social support systems or infrastructure to deal with the influx.


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Young and in big trouble

The boy had been charged with four felonies in less than 13 weeks, his latest arrest coming Monday morning after police say he fled a stolen car about an hour before sunrise. After the youth was released to his mother following each arrest, a judge and attorneys on both sides of the case had seen enough. It was time for the boy, 12, to be taken away from his home.

With his parents trailing him, the knit cap he wore into the courtroom now swinging in his right hand, the red-eyed child was escorted by sheriff's deputies to a juvenile detention facility after a hearing Thursday in Albany County Family Court. Where the child was taken, how long he'll be there and details of the hearing were unclear. "All I can say is that he is not going home tonight," said Sandra McCarthy, the boy's court-appointed attorney. "He's going somewhere safe."
The boy's case offers a glimpse into how law enforcement, attorneys and family court judges handle repeat offenders of serious crimes at such a young age. It's a careful balancing act that seeks to rehabilitate, not punish, a child while simultaneously keeping the public safe. Taking a child — even one accused of multiple felonies in a short period of time — away from his home is almost always a last resort.


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SRJC rape case highlights all-too-common scenario

Marco Antonio DeAnda-Vargas and a 23-year-old woman met at a dance class at Santa Rosa Junior College, police said. On the evening of March 15, they walked together after class to the closed Quinn Swim Center building. He somehow had a key, and they went inside to get out of the cold. What’s alleged to have happened next is an all too common scenario, according to police and advocates for victims of sexual assault.

DeAnda-Vargas, 31, is accused of raping his classmate. He denies the charges, according to the Sonoma County Public Defender’s Office, and told police the encounter was consensual. The allegations, which will get their first public airing at an April 25 court hearing, underscore one of the fundamental realities about rape in Sonoma County.

It’s rarely a stranger who jumps out of the bushes.



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Crime victims fund heads toward insolvency

The multimillion-dollar state fund that compensates crime victims is on track to run out of money next year, officials said Wednesday. During a public hearing of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, officials who oversee the Crime Victim Compensation Fund said it faces a "serious shortfall" in September 2013 because of declining revenue and will be unable to pay for services to victims.
Created in 1979, the account reimburses violent crime victims for expenses not covered by insurance or restitution. It has been funded mainly through fines and court fees paid by lawbreakers across Texas — and reached its high point in 2005, when crime victims were paid $85 million, state reports show. "Short-term stability and long-term viability are at risk now," First Assistant Attorney General Daniel Hodge told the panel. "We are facing a situation where we will at some point have victim reimbursements that we won't be able to fund."



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New State Office to Review Questionable Convictions

Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York State attorney general, is creating a bureau to investigate criminal cases across the state in which convictions have been called into question. The Conviction Review Bureau represents the first statewide initiative by a law enforcement agency to address potential wrongful convictions, at a time when many in the state’s criminal justice system, including the chief judge, have been calling for changes like the videotaping of police interrogations and the use of new practices for eyewitnesses’ identifications.
“There is only one person who wins when the wrong person is convicted of a crime: the real perpetrator, who remains free to commit more crimes,” Mr. Schneiderman said in a statement. “For victims, their families and any of us who could suffer the nightmare of being wrongly accused, it is imperative that we do everything possible to maximize accuracy, justice and reliability in our justice system.”



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Speaker condemns juvenile life sentences

Lawyer, professor and human rights activist Bryan Stevenson brought some audience members on Monday afternoon to tears as used personal stories to advocate that the American criminal justice system reevaluate how it tries juveniles. The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), an Alabama-based organization that promotes human rights and social justice on behalf of groups such as children and the mentally ill, Stevenson spoke to a crowd of roughly 200 students and faculty about stories of adolescents in the South who are sentenced to life prison, which he said is an “inhumane” punishment for children. He said juvenile criminals often come from broken households or abusive families, so they need protection rather than severe punishment.

“We live in an era when our political leadership has engaged in a politics of fear and anger,” Stevenson said, “and this has led to policies such as mass incarceration; policies that have forever altered the mindset of American society.” In the 1980s, Stevenson said, people began thinking of underprivileged children from broken households as “super predators” — products of “social decay” who are likely to harm others. He said the spread of this fear led states to enact changes between 1989 until 1994 that allowed children to be tried as adults. He added that 90 percent of children sentenced to life in prison for non-homicide offenses come from African-American and Latino families.



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A 'voice' for stalking victims

When she took the witness stand in February, she appeared exactly as she is – a bright, professional and attractive woman with blond hair and an easy smile. But as she told the jury about her experiences as the ex-girlfriend of now-convicted felon Michael McClellan, the years of fear and anxiety Dawn Hillyer endured became painfully evident. Before the Allen Superior Court jury convicted McClellan of two counts of stalking, they heard a similar story from McClellan’s ex-wife, Torrie Stiverson, and saw again the fear. With the click of the handcuffs around McClellan’s wrists moments after his conviction, both women say they felt safe for the first time in years.

Now, as McClellan begins a six-year prison sentence, Stiverson and Hillyer are looking for ways to make their experiences count, to use this struggle to help others in similar situations. Statistics say there will be others, and experts find the technology present in our daily lives makes it easier for stalkers like McClellan to insert themselves into nearly every area of a victim’s existence. “These things are unfortunately way too common,” said Rebecca Dreke, senior program associate for the National Center for Victims of Crime. About one in six women will be on the receiving end of stalking behavior, making its likelihood alarmingly great, Dreke said.

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Mass incarceration: We're No. 1: There are far better ways to fight crime

For more than 30 years, the primary mechanism for crime fighting in the United States has focused on building and expanding the capacity of our prison systems - a phenomenon visible at federal, state and local government levels (with more cells and larger budgets). As scientists, we can spout endless grim statistics - the U.S. incarcerates more people per capita than any other country, including Russia and China; one in 23 American adults 18 to 65 years old is on probation or parole; one in 28 children has a parent behind bars; and a male born today is likely to be involved in the justice system at alarming rates, including one in three African-Americans, one in six Hispanics, and one in 13 Caucasians.


This translates into a runaway incarceration system that does not deter criminal behavior. Scientists have confirmed the themes of James Cagney movies that incarceration creates "schools for learning criminal behavior."

Single bullet, "get tough" policies have propelled the number of crimes that are eligible for incarceration, as well as increased sentence lengths. Crimes like driving on a suspended license, shoplifting goods worth $50, not paying speeding tickets or parking violations, or bouncing a check qualify for incarceration. While we think that incarceration with longer sentences is the simple solution, the overuse and reliance on prison and jail has reduced the effectiveness of it. Incarceration consumes resources that could be spent on schools, health care, parks, and roads. A more effective crime prevention policy would include:

-More drug and alcohol treatment, including rarely used medications to reduce crime and its costs. Those involved in the justice systems have four times the problems with drug and alcohol abuse than most adults. Few get access to treatment. Both driving while intoxicated and various forms of possession or possession with intent to distribute illicit drugs remain the highest arrest categories - the system is full of people with drug and alcohol problems. The criminal justice system pays little attention to substance abusers.

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Night of horror sparked movement

Roberta Roper had just gotten word in the spring of 1982 that the body of her missing daughter had been found in St. Mary’s County, when a church youth group moderator showed up at her door in Prince George’s County with a clipboard and plans for a Stephanie Roper Family Resource Committee. That community support helped sustain the Roper family through the police investigation and trials that followed. Their experience with the criminal justice system sparked a victims’ rights movement that changed Maryland law and the way business is conducted in courtrooms throughout the state.

Stephanie Roper, 22, disappeared 30 years ago April 3. A tip to police in St. Mary’s about a week later led them to a swamp in Oakville and to the arrest of two suspects, including a teenage boy. Both were charged as adults and wound up receiving life sentences in prison for murder. But because the possibility of parole remained, a life sentence didn’t guarantee the murderers would never leave prison. This pained the slain woman’s parents, who suffered the further indignity of not being allowed in the courtroom during the suspects’ trials.

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Ravi Finds Unlikely Defendants: Gay Activists

On March 16 former Rutgers University student Dharun Ravi, 20, was found guilty of invading the privacy of Tyler Clementi, hindering apprehension, witness tampering and four accounts of bias intimidation. Because the jury convicted Ravi of acting with an anti-gay bias, the Indian citizen could face up to 10 years in prison. But not everyone agrees with the verdict and some say that the court is looking to make an example of Ravi, who has been portrayed as an "arrogant, mouthy, and insensitive, but not a malicious, homophobe," Bill Keller wrote in an op-ed piece for the New York Times.

In September 2010, Clementi, 18, jumped to his death after learning that Ravi, his roommate, along with Molly Wei, his hallmate, used a webcam to watch Clementi have relations with another man. Although Clementi’s case sparked numerous gay activists to come together to prevent suicide among LGBT youth (namely Dan Savage’s "It Gets Better" campaign), there are surprisingly several gay activists who are skeptic about the case and believe that Ravi is being used as a scapegoat and should receive a lesser sentience.

"Rutgers University ought to stand against prejudging this case or scapegoating anyone. That’s the least it can teach its students, community, and the public. Others who know the dangers of vengeance should also speak out," gay activist William Dobbs said in a letter to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rediff News points out. Dobbs also told Rediff News about the small group of gay activists at Rutgers called Queering the Air. The organization feels that "giving too much attention to Ravi and Wei hid the larger picture." In a press statement the group said, "Recognizing that homophobia is a concern that goes well beyond these two people and that our criminal justice system is historically biased against people of color, the group is using this occasion to draw attention to these larger issues."

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U.S. teaches Mexico about criminal justice system

U.S. teaches Mexico about criminal justice system


Trial by jury. Innocent until proven guilty.

These concepts are part of the American lexicon. The Mexican justice system is vastly different. Officials from both countries are currently working towards a dramatic reform of the Mexican system and now Brownsville has its own connection to the program called Proyecto Diamante. As part of the U.S. Department of Justice effort, local magistrate and Cameron County District Attorney’s office prosecutor Luis V. Saenz recently traveled to Mexico City. There, he was one of several instructors teaching Mexican officials about the American justice system so they might use it as a model for their own reform.

"That’s something that they’re thirsting for, the integrity of their system," he said. "I said, ‘That’s going to come when you people start taking the witness stand and you tell the public what you did and how you did it.’" Saenz said the country aims to model its system on America, citing examples of changing to a trial by jury format and offering more transparency through building courthouses open to the public. Experts say the reformed Mexican justice system could affect the brutal cartel drug war that rages on in the country and seeps into U.S. borderlands.
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Work programs for Texas inmates go high-tech

Work programs for Texas inmates go high-tech


With stacks of broken computers towering toward the ceiling and intense white-clad technicians frowning over workbenches filled with the machines' electronic guts, this could be any high-tech repair shop in America. Or so you may think until rolls of concertina wire bristling from the walls remind you of where you are.
Welcome to Huntsville's Wynne Unit, home of one of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's two computer repair labs, where each month inmate workers fix or discard up to 250,000 pounds of malfunctioning equipment. In Texas, a state whose prison work programs are best known for agriculture and license plates, the computer shops represent the cutting edge of a factory system that produces everything from street signs to mattresses for state college dorms and soap for scrubbing jailhouse floors.

In the process, Texas Correctional Industries factories in 37 prisons provide job training for up to 5,200 inmates and help cut costs for cities, counties, schools and other tax-supported entities across the state. "This fits our overall mission to help offenders re-integrate," said C.F. Hazelwood, the TDCJ's director of manufacturing and logistics. "One of the best ways is to teach them how to work," he said, "to train and provide them with some sort of skill."

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