High tech crime calls for high-tech crimefighting

Craig Schmidt was talking about botnets, almost matter-of-factly. A botnet is a collection of compromised computers connected to the Internet. Schmidt is the senior manager of investigation of Microsoft's digital crimes unit. And, besides the fact that Schmidt grew up in Spring Lake Park, what do botnets have to do with Anoka County?
Quite a bit, actually.

Members of the Anoka County attorney and sheriff's offices -- considered local pioneers in the investigation of cyber crime and the use of computer forensics -- met recently with investigative and crime specialists from Microsoft. The two-day closed conference at Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids offered strategies in fighting modern crimes with modern technology.

Topics included e-mail header analysis, social networking, instant messaging, steganography (writing hidden messages), basic encryption, anonymization techniques, Internet service providers and domain name systems. These are topics that many law enforcement officials might never have approached 10 years ago. But for a video-game-playing, text-messaging generation that has grown up wearing ear buds and considers a cellphone to be the modern-day pocket watch, using all this technology is as natural as breathing.

[more...]

Social Media Changing the Face of Criminal Justice

Virginia Beach police thought they were done with the case of Lakeira Calahan. The baby girl's uncle pleaded guilty to neglect in Lakeira's May 2009 death and served a yearlong jail sentence. The girl's mother, stepfather and older brother moved to Arkansas. More than two years passed.
A Facebook conversation changed everything.

In messages between a friend and a Facebook user appearing to be Lakeira's mother, Julie Calahan, the 23-year-old mother talks about hurting Lakeira the morning before her death, causing the baby girl's fatal injuries, a detective testified in court. The friend turned over the messages to Child Protective Services, which sent them to a Virginia Beach police detective, who reopened the investigation, questioned Calahan and charged her in Lakeira's death. Calahan now awaits trial on charges of second-degree murder and felony child neglect. If convicted, she faces up to 60 years in prison.

Cases like Calahan's are becoming increasingly common as people communicate more and more via social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, leaving behind a record that can end up in the hands of police, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Local attorneys said evidence from social media factors into almost every case they handle now, although it's less common for that evidence to form the backbone of a case, as it did with Julie Calahan. More often, photos, status updates and exchanges on social media sites help guide police investigations and contribute to a larger pool of more traditional evidence sources.

The result can be damning.

[more...]

Why the judge got it right on Dharun Ravi's sentencing

The polarized reaction to the Dharun Ravi cyberbullying case — he’s typically characterized as either a prankster or a murderer — is symptomatic of a general public confusion about how to respond to youthful offenders.

On the one hand, the capacity of youthful offenders to do grievous harm has grown with their ready access to the internet, to weapons and to toxic substances. The sometimes horrific consequences of youthful offenses provoke understandable public outrage.
On the other hand, a growing body of scientific understanding suggests that treating youthful offenders as indistinguishable from adults results in manifest injustice. As the Ravi sentencing made painfully clear, youthful offending compels us to grapple with questions of culpability, morality and proportionality that are quite different from those at work when the perpetrator is a much older adult.
At the heart of the Ravi sentencing was this question: At what age, and under what circumstances, do we deem young people sufficiently adult-like to impose adult-like sentences upon them when they offend? Our culture provides no clear answer.

[more...]

Bills boost job hopes of former offenders

Ohioans with criminal records will find it easier to get jobs, become licensed in construction trades and get a driver’s license under legislation passed yesterday by both houses of the General Assembly. Gov. John Kasich will sign the “collateral sanctions” bill when it reaches his desk, spokesman Rob Nichols said. “Relief and redemption are on the way,” one ex-offender support group proclaimed after the votes. The new law will affect 1.9 million Ohioans with criminal records.
It was a rare thing — liberal black female Democrats from Columbus and Cleveland working with conservative white male Republicans from Springfield and Cincinnati on a bill that one sponsor said “changes lives.” “The work that we are doing today opens opportunities,” Sen. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, said before the 27-4 vote on Senate Bill 337. The Ohio House later voted 96-1 for House Bill 524, legislation mirroring the Senate bill. One of the bills will go to Kasich when lawmakers return the week of June 11.


[more...]

Baltimore rolling out domestic violence test city wide

They are the questions that can save your life and through the course of two plus years, the city of Baltimore believes they've done just that. "We really did embark on it as an experiment. It was a pilot project, we didn't know it was gonna work. We didn't know what the impact would be and by doing the pilot and doing the data, what we found is that it worked." Sheryl Goldstein is now the outgoing director of the mayor's office on criminal justice.

What's worked is the lethality assessment. It is a simple piece of paper with 13 questions, but now becoming as valuable of a law enforcement tool as the gun on an officer's hip. When responding to a domestic violence call, police have the victim take this test and based on the score offer immediate help through the House of Ruth. “Close to a thousand victims as a result of this project have gotten services that they wouldn’t have gotten including shelter, counseling, legal assistance and other types of support," said Goldstein.
[more...]

Group seeks to raise juvenile age from 16 to 18

At a press conference Tuesday morning, leaders from Right on Crime, a conservative criminal justice reform initiative, made their case for a bill that would raise the juvenile age from 16 to 18. According to Rep. Marilyn Avila, the “Raise the Age” bill would keep 16- and 17-year-olds in juvenile court for misdemeanors only, while all felonies would continue to be handled in adult court. The Raise the Age system is currently in place in 48 states, Avila said. “North Carolina and New York are the only states that treat their juveniles this way,” she said.
Rep. Jerry Madden of Texas, where a similar law has been implemented, said the juvenile probation numbers dropped from 105,000 last year to 79,000 -- a 25 percent reduction. The current bill calls for $9 million in the first year, and would increase in later years. Avila said the process would take about four years to implement. Chief Frank Palombo, former president of the NC Association of Chiefs of Police, spoke at the press conference, detailing the implications of the current system. He said that in North Carolina, if a 16- or 17-year-old steals a bag of chips, and at 25 decides he wants to be a police officer, he cannot be hired because of his criminal record. He said that if a juvenile in Florida were under the same circumstances, that person could be hired.

[more...]

In Rutgers Spying Case, Voices for Gay Rights Urge Leniency

In the two months since he was found guilty of using a webcam to spy on his roommate, Dharun Ravi has gone from being a symbol of antigay bias to being something of a folk hero, with rallies of his supporters urging the court to “free Dharun.” What may be most surprising is how many of those arguing in his defense are prominent gay rights advocates.

With Mr. Ravi scheduled to be sentenced on Monday, many of them have argued against the prison term prosecutors have recommended. They say that Mr. Ravi is being punished for the suicide of his roommate, Tyler Clementi, although he was not charged in it, and that pinning blame on him ignores the complicated social pressures that drive gay teenagers to kill themselves.

As repugnant as his behavior was, they say, it was not the blatantly bigoted or threatening actions that typically define hate crimes. Some fear that a sentence that overreaches might provide tinder to antigay sentiment — a New Jersey talk-radio host complained soon after the verdict of the “gay lobby” railroading Mr. Ravi.
[more...]

Build Bigger Jails or Invest in Community-Based Alternatives?

In 2010, 71 percent of California’s jail population were those offenders who were unsentenced and awaiting resolution of their cases. This figure not only exceeds the pretrial detainee national average, but also represents a major shift away from the traditional use of jails where inmates are detained as a form of punishment. However, many of these pretrial detainees are not being held because they have been determined to be a danger to society or represent a flight risk. Rather, they remain in jail because they cannot afford to post bail.

When an individual is detained in jail they have few options for pretrial release: to bond out through a commercial bail bondsman, release on own recognizance, or be released under the supervision of a publicly funded pretrial service program. Unfortunately, not every county has a pretrial service program, and if that is the case, bonding out might be the individual’s only option for pretrial release if they are not eligible for release on own recognizance. However, with high unemployment rates and the current economic hardships many Californians are facing, it is becoming more difficult and less common for the poor and middle-class to be able to raise enough funds to post bail.

[more...]

Bill bans death row inmates profiting from crimes

BATON ROUGE – Death row inmates should not profit from the notability they’ve gained from their crimes, said Rep. Barbara Norton as she received unanimous Criminal Justice Committee support Wednesday for legislation authored by Sen. Yvonne Dorsey-Colomb.

Dorsey-Colomb, D-Baton Rouge, filed Senate Bill 565 in response to serial killer Derrick Todd Lee selling artwork on a website, Dark Vomit’s True Crime Macabre and Outsider Art Gallery.

The site, specializing in “serial killer and true crime collectibles,” had two of Lee’s works – a watercolor print of a panda chewing on bamboo and a watercolor of two swans on a lake – but currently is offering only the 9x12 swans drawing, complete with the mailing envelope stamped “Death Row” and with his two hand-written messages “Please don’t bend. Pictures inside.”

[more...]

Mothers and Mandatory Minimums

This Mother's Day was another bittersweet one for Janet Earle. At 78, she has outlived two of her three sons. A dozen years ago, she lost her third son, Scott, through the cracks of Florida's criminal justice system. That Scott remains in a Florida prison is as useless for public safety as it is heartbreaking to Janet Earle.

Janet Earle's story is unique because her son's sentence is so unwarranted. Scott's drug conviction was not the result of evil intent, but rather of a sadly common combination of addiction and bad judgment. Scott began using painkillers after he suffered a sports injury as a teenager. He did not become an addict, however, until after he was involved in several car accidents. His dependence on the medication grew until he was taking over a dozen pills each day. Janet Earle didn't notice her son's addiction because during this time he worked full-time at an auto dealership and moonlighted as a musician.

In September 1995, Scott was admitted to the emergency room for a painful diverticulitis attack. The doctor prescribed him Vicodin. Several days later, Scott's roommate introduced him to a beautiful woman at a neighborhood bar. After getting drinks with Scott and learning of his recent hospital visit, the woman asked him if she could have some of his pills for her back pain. Scott obliged. Unbeknownst to him, however, the woman was an undercover police officer.

[more...]