Dara Lind at Vox gives up one of those delightful “good news, bad news” posts on what the numbers show about federal sentencing post Booker.

There’s good news and bad news about sentences in federal prison. The good news: Prison sentences are getting shorter. The bad news: Black defendants are still getting longer sentences than white ones for the same crimes — and the racial gap is actually growing.

That’s the conclusion of a new study conducted for the Bureau of Justice Statistics, based on data from 2005 — after a Supreme Court decision gave judges more flexibility in sentencing — through 2012. But it’s certainly not the first study to find that even when the criminal-justice system as a whole is getting more lenient, that leniency varies depending on the race of the defendant. And it’s a big challenge for criminal justice reformers — who end up caught in a terrible double bind.

To get the simplistic answer out of the way up front, these numbers present an inherent conflict that defies simple solutions.  Yes, we all hate that, but it happens. The problem is that what’s gained on one side is lost on another. Continue reading →

Connor Deleire, a Manchester, New Hampshire, 18-year-old, kept asking the police “why?” It was a damn good question, though he wouldn’t appear to be the best person to ask it.  The problem was that he had a gun, another loaded magazine, so it might appear that it was a good call on the part of police, even though the gun was lawful.

So why?  Data, according to the police. Deleire was parked in a predictive hot spot.

On October 20, Connor Deleire was sitting by himself in his parked 2000 Honda Accord on the north side of Merrimack Street near Union Street, part of an area deemed a “hot spot” by computer programs that predict where crime is likely to happen for the Manchester Police Department.

The computer said so, and as everyone knows, computers don’t lie. So the police did what the computer told them to do. Continue reading →

Your feelz. Aren’t they important, valued? Shouldn’t the world be all about them? Not according to Michael Bennett.

Toronto-born, Upper Canada College- and Harvard-educated psychiatrist Dr. Michael Bennett often found himself growing increasingly weary of the nattering — the self-obsessing by his patients, their over-belief in a cure for their problems/feelings/anxieties/behaviour if they only worked harder.

“At some point, I would say, ‘to hell with your feelings,’ ” Bennett says over the phone from his office outside Boston, Mass.

Bennett likes to curse, “in good humour,” because it shocks people out of their complacency.  After all, isn’t mindless positivity its own virtue? Continue reading →

It came as a shock when Harvard lawprof Jeanie Suk took to the New Yorker to explain that law professors were now afraid to teach rape law for fear of breaking the fragile teacups.

But asking students to challenge each other in discussions of rape law has become so difficult that teachers are starting to give up on the subject. About a dozen new teachers of criminal law at multiple institutions have told me that they are not including rape law in their courses, arguing that it’s not worth the risk of complaints of discomfort by students.

So when, a few years hence, you ponder why your lawyer doesn’t seem to have a clue what the law is, you know why. But rape law is rather specific, even if it should be part of the curriculum.  What about an issue that’s far more pervasive, far more fundamental, to criminal law: eyewitness identification?  Via David Lat at Above the Law*:

Here’s what one source told us about Indiana Law professor Aviva Orenstein’s ill-advised attempt to teach a lesson about eyewitness identification: Continue reading →

The inbox contained one of those emails that makes you shake your head.  From Ohio lawyer Dean Boland with a history of incredibly poor choices.  He added one more to the list.

 Mr. Greenfield:

Your article at this link contains false and defamatory statements that I am demanding be revised or the entire article removed.

By way of summary, you cite to a Wired article and quote as follows:  “Boland was an expert witness for the defense in a half-dozen child porn cases and made the mock-ups to punctuate his argument that child pornography laws are unconstitutionally overbroad because they could apply to faked photos.” Continue reading →

It was huge when Northwestern Law School, now with Pritzker added, announced that it would be offering a two-year accelerated J.D. program.  Not so huge was Northwestern’s shutting the program down because it failed.  This isn’t so much to fault the school for coming up with a new idea, particularly given the atmosphere at the time which strongly suggested that the third year of law school was a waste, and the debt burden was inexcusable.

But good rationales don’t make things work. The idea had a good rationale. And didn’t work.

The other day, an email from Brian Tannebaum contained a link to Steph Kimbro’s post explaining that she’s had enough.

I’ve been suspiciously quiet over the past several months. I stopped posting on social media as much as I used to and am no longer providing talks to legal organizations. Speaking at the ABA Techshow in the spring after the release of the second edition of my Virtual Law Practice book was my last speaking gig for awhile. (Bowing out to a standing-room only talk is not a bad way to go.)

Continue reading →

Was it “historic” that President Barack Obama mentioned a twitter hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter?  So DeRay McKesson says.

President Obama’s unprompted defense of BlackLivesMatter was powerful given the context — he defended the movement to an audience consisting primarily of law enforcement leaders. 

Then again, he didn’t actually “defend the movement” so much as warn it.

What could that mean, “take seriously the job police have”?  FBI Director Jim Comey is there to translate his boss’ words. Continue reading →

Before getting into anything of substance, let’s be clear up front: there was never going to be any reform. Not real reform. It was just a show to pacify the unwary, with a tweak here and there to give it the smell of change. So there wasn’t much to lose, as there was nothing really at risk.

But any decent Broadway play runs for a while. This one closed almost immediately after opening night. When Tyrone Howard allegedly murdered NYPD Officer Randolph Holder, the producers had all they needed to shut it down. When PBG Officer Nouman Raja shot Corey Jones dead on the side of the road, no one cared. Everyone was too busy applauding the reform show to notice.

They won the public. The show worked, and better still, they had a dead cop to put on their victory flag and march around. Continue reading →

As Fault Lines continues its growth, in readership, depth and influence, it’s ready to expand again with a few new writers.  We remain dedicated to a few basic principles:

• All perspectives on the criminal justice system be represented (meaning that no, it won’t be limited to confirming your bias, no matter how much you love that).
• The voices reflect writers who know what they’re talking about. Being “passionate” isn’t enough. You need to be knowledgeable.
• You have the fortitude to express your view and take the heat that comes with it.

If you think you’ve got what it takes, then Fault Lines wants to hear from you. The last time we opened the doors to new writers, the response was nothing short of magnificent, adding some spectacular voices to a roster of some of the best writers in criminal law.  We’re ready for a few more.

So if you really do have the chops to contribute to serious discussion, there may be a place for you at Fault Lines.

There is an app called Yik Yak. How they come up with these names is beyond me, but then, old guys probably aren’t the target audience for such things, and so the name need not strike me as meaningful or appealing. And Yik Yak, apparently, has become a fixture on college campuses.

And that’s problematic.

Seventy-two women’s and civil-rights groups on Wednesday announced a campaign to enlist the federal government in pressuring colleges to protect students from harassment via anonymous social-media applications like Yik Yak.

The groups have sent the U.S. Education Department a letter calling for it to treat colleges’ failure to monitor anonymous social media and to pursue online harassers as a violation of federal civil-rights laws guaranteeing equal educational access.

Continue reading →