My plan tonight is to remain true to my New Years Eve tradition.  I’ll be fast asleep by 10 p.m.  Your plans may differ.  If they do, and if they involve a glass of champagne (or some other libation with the potential to enliven your evening), you should be concerned about driving home.

The nature of such concerns vary. Don’t drive drunk. You don’t want to harm anyone.  You don’t want to be arrested.  You don’t want a couple of police officers drawing your blood on the side of the road.  But not driving drunk may fall short of saving you from any of these potential dangers.

Via Charles Platt at the Legal Satyricon, California DUI lawyer  Lawrence Taylor offers the text of a speech he’s developed and given over the years.  Having specialized in DUI defense since 1979, he’s had the opportunity to live through the development of the law, and it shows. 

The speech, The DUI Exception to the Constitution, is long, detailed and thorough.  My practice has never included DUI/DWI defense, and I defer to those far more familiar than me, but his description comports with my memory of how the law, and policy, developed over the years, and how drunk driving went from a hard offense, one based on actual conduct of drivers, to an absolutist offense, divorced from any particular danger, proven despite known scientific failure and devoid of the constitutional protections otherwise afforded.

Here’s a bit to whet your whistle.

I would like you to imagine for a moment that you’ve gone to a friend’s house for dinner. In the course of a very good dinner you’ve had a couple of glasses of a good Merlot [Edit. Note: ?] and it is now time to drive home. I would like you to imagine that you are on your way home — and, I will tell you, by the way, that two glasses of wine will not, in any state, put you under the influence of alcohol or over the legal limit of .08. As you are driving along the highway, you see ahead of you some flashing lights and barricades and police cars cordoned across the highway, with flashing lights directing you into an increasingly small channel. And, as you go in, you are stopped and two police officers approach you and stick a flashlight in your face and say, “Breath on me. Have you been drinking tonight? Please step out of the car.”

Some of you say, “Well, that can’t happen in the United States. We have the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, which says police officers have to have probable cause to stop you.”

Of course, we know better.  Read it all.  It’s excellent.  And get home safe tonight, no matter what your plans.

Happy New Year!

There was  fair debate about the propriety of Julian Assange’s Wikileaks disclosure of classified documents, but one man was clearly supportive:  Daniel Ellsberg.  You remember him, of the Pentagon Papers fame?  Back in the days when Apple was a record** label?

Like Assange, Ellsberg was called an enemy of the state for revealing classified document to the New York Times, revealing to the American public the truth behind the United State’s involvement in Vietnam.  While no tangential and ridiculous claims of unprotected sex emerged from Scandinavia, Ellsberg was nonetheless the target of government unpleasantness, as was the Times for doing the unthinkable: publishing the Pentagon Papers.

On this case, now-heralded First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams made his bones.  But the one-time firebrand, Cahill Gordon partner, says that was then and this is now.  In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal , Abrams says Assange is no Ellsberg.

The Pentagon Papers revelations dealt with a discrete topic, the ever-increasing level of duplicity of our leaders over a score of years in increasing the nation’s involvement in Vietnam while denying it. It revealed official wrongdoing or, at the least, a pervasive lack of candor by the government to its people.

WikiLeaks is different. It revels in the revelation of “secrets” simply because they are secret. It assaults the very notion of diplomacy that is not presented live on C-Span. It has sometimes served the public by its revelations but it also offers, at considerable potential price, a vast amount of material that discloses no abuses of power at all.

Mr. Assange is no boon to American journalists. His activities have already doomed proposed federal shield-law legislation protecting journalists’ use of confidential sources in the just-adjourned Congress. An indictment of him could be followed by the judicial articulation of far more speech-limiting legal principles than currently exist with respect to even the most responsible reporting about both diplomacy and defense. If he is not charged or is acquitted of whatever charges may be made, that may well lead to the adoption of new and dangerously restrictive legislation. In more than one way, Mr. Assange may yet have much to answer for.

Oddly, for all the condemnation that Abrams slings Assange’s way, he doesn’t pinpoint any lasting “damage” to diplomacy done by the leaked cables and the news reports based on them. Struggling to find something bad to say about Assange, he quotes historian Sean Wilentz of Princeton, who described WikiLeaks as being rooted in a “simpleminded idea of secrecy and transparency” and said it is “simply offended by any actions that are cloaked.”

What’s the true source of Abrams’ wrath? It’s not the leaking that bothers him—Lord knows he’s defended leakers aplenty in his career. And it’s not the subject matter of the cables, which even he must concede has yet to start World War III. What starches his shorts is the scale of the WikiLeaks leaks, which violate his sense of tidiness. I also suspect that he worries about Assange and Assange-ites disrupting the control over news that his legal clients have long enjoyed.

The story of the Scott Sisters, Gladys and Jamie, was a shining example of excess. For leading two men into an $11 robbery, the two sisters were sentenced to life in prison.  Sixteen years gone by and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour has put an end to their imprisonment.  But not without a twist.

From the Washington Post :

Barbour said he decided to suspend the sentences in light of the poor health of 38-year-old Jamie Scott, who requires regular dialysis. The governor asserted that 36-year-old Gladys Scott’s release is contingent on her giving a kidney to her inmate sibling.

“The Mississippi Department of Corrections believes the sisters no longer pose a threat to society,” Barbour said in a statement. “Their incarceration is no longer necessary for public safety or rehabilitation, and Jamie Scott’s medical condition creates a substantial cost to the State of Mississippi.”

“Gladys Scott’s release is conditioned on her donating one of her kidneys to her sister, a procedure which should be scheduled with urgency.”

Even though Gladys Scott proposed the idea in her petition for an early release and volunteered to donate the organ, [director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, Arthur] Caplan said, it is against the law to buy and sell organs or to force people to give one up. “When you volunteer to give a kidney, you’re usually free and clear to change your mind right up to the last minute,” he said. “When you put a condition on it that you could go back to prison, that’s a pretty powerful incentive.”

The past year has been a mixed bag for the criminal law blawgosphere.  Aside from the crap and crass marketing, the lunatic fringe and the pseudonymous narcissists begging everyone to look at them, there have been some truly exceptional work by young lawyers that demand recognition.

Eric L. Mayer, whose niche within a niche is the defense of members of the armed forces, has a blawg called Military Underdog.

Matt Brown, who along with partner Adrian Little, divides his time between  riding motorcycles across America and writing his blawg, Chandler Criminal Defense, about the travails of starting a criminal defense practice in Chandler, Arizona, straight out of law school.

Both Eric and Matt offer exceptional, even brilliant, writing that has the depth, thoughtfulness and understanding that commands and deserves the attention of criminal defense lawyers everywhere.  These guys are trying to feel their way through difficult times in the practice of law, but do so with integrity, humor and insight far beyond their years.
 

I don’t miss a post by either of these two men.  They are both on my blawgroll.  They are both on my RSS feed.  They are both writers whose words invariably impress me, make me think and make me laugh.  They are both the sort of lawyers I hope to find bringing up the rear, the future of the profession.  These are the guys who do us proud.

While both Eric and Matt have been mentioned and linked here before, and will certainly be so again, it struck me (especially after reading  Marco Randazza’s post making some hoopla on additions to his blogroll) that the mere linking and occasional mention were insufficient to attract the attention of people who should know about these guys.  Neither is on the Legal Satyricon’s blogroll.  Both should be.  If they aren’t on yours, or your RSS feed, or just your daily stroll through the blawgosphere, then mend your ways. 

So let me state this as clearly as possible:  Read everything written by Eric and Matt.  Read the  Military Underdog and Chandler Criminal Defense.  Just do it.

Rarely do I use epithets in my posts.  It’s not because I don’t know them, or that they make my eyes burn.  It’s that they are unnecessary to make the point.  That is, unless the point is about the use of an epithet.  And so, this post is about a defendant who said to Judge Henry Kennedy, Jr., following his sentence, “Fuck, y’all.”

Some suppose that judges in federal courthouses have tender ears.  Perhaps that’s true, as they live insulated lives where people don’t say such things to them.  But they weren’t always judges, and there stands a decent likelihood that they’ve heard such foul language before.  That a person being sentenced reacts, well, poorly to the decision shouldn’t come as a complete shock.  That a person being sentenced uses foul language to express himself similarly shouldn’t surprise.

Did he fail to show you the respect the robe demands?  Yes.  It’s true that this was disrespectful.  It was also pretty foolish, but then, people being sentenced are often the same people who do foolish things.  Laugh at it. You already sentenced him.  The business of the court was concluded.  Justice, as determined by you, Judge Kennedy, was done.  Be a big judge.  The outburst caused you no harm.

Still, you held the defendant in contempt and summarily sentenced him to an additional year, reduced on appeal to six months, to be served on the back end of his 29 year sentence. Oh, you showed him who has the power.

Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson of the D.C. Circuit must also have tender ears, for she wrote for the majority  affirming the imposition of an additional 6 months for contempt.

A federal court is empowered to punish criminal contempt by fine or imprisonment. 18 U.S.C. § 401. Criminal contempt includes “[m]isbehavior of any person in its presence or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice.” Id. § 401(1); see also Fed. R. Crim. P. 42(b) (“Notwithstanding any other provision of these rules, the court (other than a magistrate judge) may summarily punish a person who commits criminal contempt in its presence if the judge saw or heard the contemptuous conduct and so certifies . . . .”). Criminal contempt requires: “misbehavior of a person, in or near to the presence of the court, which obstructs the administration of justice, and which is committed with the required degree of criminal intent.” United States v. McGainey, 37 F.3d 682, 684 (D.C. Cir. 1994).

All true, from that prissy legalistic perspective that means nothing and justifies anything.  So what? The defendant was sentenced.  Done. He was angry. Is that a shock?  He expressed it poorly. So what? Judges are supposed to be a bit bigger than that.  Big boy judges can hear the word “fuck” without going nuts.  Big girl judges too.  Just as my eyes won’t burn, neither will your ears. 

And yet, there’s a wrinkle.  The story of fuck y’all broke at the Blog of Legal Times in a post by Mike Scarcella.  

The appeals said the outburst—the defendant uttered “F–k, y’all” in open court—is enough to sustain a contempt conviction.

It was picked up by Nathan Koppel at the WSJ Law Blog.

At issue in the case is none other than the F-bomb. At a criminal sentencing hearing last year, a defendant (who was not identified in the opinion) evidently was displeased about the sentence he received, exclaiming in court: “F*** y’all.”

Neither could bring themselves to spell out the word “fuck.”  Not mention it in front of a judge, which would certainly have been inappropriate, but merely spelling out the specific word that was the subject of the decision.  When the blawgosphere is too prissy to spell out the word, can we fault the tender sensibilities of judges for putting a man in prison for an additional six months for uttering the word?

Doug Berman didn’t miss the irony.

Because the blogosphere has a decorum standard much different than the courtroom, I am amused and a bit annoyed that the WSJ Law Blog was unwilling to spell out the work fuck in its report here.  As the prior sentence reveals, however, I am not a big believer in word taboos.  Sticks and stones and all that… 

Personally, I am not nearly as troubled by the use of a naughty word in the courtroom as I am by the fact that my federal tax dollars are now going to be spent housing a guy for another six months simply because he said fuck in a courtroom.  But I may be full of shit and commentors should feel free to tell me to piss off in the comments.

Doug is a far funnier guy than I give him credit for.   Jeff Gamso similarly drives home the point, though with his usual thoughtful legal analysis so that his rampant use of epithets will not be wasted.

Since the anonymous defendant in DC didn’t say “Fuck y’all” to the judge until after he’d been sentenced, the proceedings were over, and no other court business was going on, he could neither have intended to obstruct justice nor actually have obstructed it.  There was, he said, no “actual obstruction of justice” so he couldn’t be held in summary contempt.  

Ah, what a foolish grasshopper.

Henderson explained for the court, issuing her own “Fuck you” to the anonymous defendant.  SCOTUS didn’t mean what it said in McConnell.  A sufficient insult obstructs justice even when justice isn’t obstructed.  And “Fuck y’all” is sufficient.

But the loop wouldn’t be complete until the school marm of propriety drives home the only really important point.

Is the extra six months really punishment?  Defendant might think so 29 years from now, if he is still alive, but it probably doesn’t seem like much now.

Kurt Scheidegger, a little ray of sunshine, who might not spell out the word “fuck,” but would clearly spell out the bright spot that chances are good the defendant will die before serving the six month sentence.

It wasn’t clear who was sitting at the other end of the computer.  That bit of information isn’t available.  But there can be no doubt that it whoever it was, an aide, a secretary, the Big Guy himself, the word got through.

It was the day after Thanksgiving that the  Philly Experiment posted.  To some, it might have seemed like a focus group, if that’s how a person views conversation among a small group of people.  To others, it was a political gold mine. 

Michael Vick is the poster boy for American virtue.  Not his virtue, as he lost that when he participated in the killing of dogs, but that of the fans in Philadelphia.  They weren’t too pleased with his joining the team last year, but they have accepted him, if not quite embraced him, this year.  Playing well didn’t hurt, mind you, but he is the starting quarterback of a team in the NFC East, the only division that really matters.  And he’s a convicted felon.

Redemption is hard to come by these days.  Whether because there are just too many people around to waste our time giving anyone a second chance, or because we achieved a simplicity in our view of others that prevents us from demonstrating that humanity is still an attribute of humans.  It looked as if no one could ever pay his debt to society and be given the opportunity to try again.

The White House says President Barack Obama has commended the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles for giving quarterback Michael Vick a second chance after his release from prison.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton says the president told owner Jeffrey Lurie that while he condemns the crimes Vick was convicted of, he believes people who have paid for their crimes should have the opportunity to contribute to society again.

This is the start of something big, Mr. President.  I’ll keep writing.  You keep reading.  Together, we can clean up some of the mess.  And don’t let some strange little sartorially challenged elf who believes that Vick  should have been executed for murdering dogs concern you.  There’s a reason he can’t get his own show.

This could be the start of something big.  I’ve written lots of posts. I realize it will take you some time to get through them, but there are some ideas in here that could go a long way in helping the country and, not coincidentally, rehabilitating your reputation at the same time.  Most won’t cost any money.  Most won’t take much effort.  A few may be controversial, but pretty much anything you do stirs some controversy.  It comes with the job.

So feel free to cherry pick.  I’m here for you.  And no need to thank me.  I consider it my patriotic duty, and it’s my honor to help my country.  Together, we can get some good stuff done.

If there’s any common denominator in the commission of crimes, it’s that they reflect a terrible error in judgment.  Not all, but most.  Here’s a pretty good example.

Andrew John Bornen, 16, was lying handcuffed and face-down on a busy suburban roadway in the Ipswich suburb of Brassall when he was struck and killed by a car on February 7, 2009.

His heart, aorta and pulmonary trunk were ruptured and he died before an ambulance arrived six minutes later.  Officers had forced the Ipswich teen down after reports a youth was armed with a machete in the area.

However, Andrew was only carrying a baseball bat when he was confronted by police and an inquest found he had not been acting aggressively.

Maybe the car that ran over Bornen would have seen him, lying there handcuffed, face down, in the roadway, but for the headlights of the police care shining into the eyes of oncoming traffic. 

State Coroner Michael Barnes called the police conduct “a terrible error in judgment.”  Ding, ding, ding.  Where have we heard that before?  For once, the government felt compassion.

The director of public prosecutions, Tony Moynihan SC, said he had carefully considered evidence that would be admissible in any trial.

‘‘There is no suggestion that the police officers were acting unlawfully or not in the execution of their duty in arresting Andrew Bornen who was intoxicated and armed in public,’’ Mr Moynihan said in a statement.

‘‘Given the momentary opportunity the police officers had to assess and act in this situation, the efforts made to alert the driver of the vehicle and the contribution of the driver of the vehicle which ran over and killed Mr Bornen, there is no reasonable prospect of a conviction.’’

Oddly, that rationale applies with enormous frequency to terrible errors in judgment.  People are confronted with unusual, even volatile situations with which they are ill-prepared to assess, and are constrained to make snap decisions about their behavior.  Like whether to stand, run or shoot. 

Police are trained to do police-type stuff.  Regular people are trained to do fingerpainting, sometimes physics.  They aren’t trained to handle threats, violence, potentially dangerous conditions that may threaten life and limb.  Hard as it is to imagine, people find themselves in difficult, sometimes confounding situations, demanding immediate reactions.  Sometimes, their choice is a mistake. Often, they can’t quite explain why they made a particular choice, except that something had to be done and they responded. 

Sometimes, when confronted by these crazy scenarios, they make terrible errors in judgment.  This is one of the reasons I urge everyone to have a criminal defense lawyer standing by their side at all times.  Unfortunately, not everyone heeds my advice.

Of course, in most instances, the decision made in the heat of the moment, under the most arduous and unanticipated of circumstances, will be reviewed at enormous leisure and with deep deliberation by people who have the luxury of sitting at a desk or on a bench, and can decide whether the choice made is the best one possible.  The law demands much of us, good judgment included.

For the two of you who haven’t realized it as yet, this terrible error in judgment occurred in Australia, where everything happens upside down.  Don’t think you can adopt this argument for your clients, that their choice was merely a terrible error in judgment and not the product of an evil person.  That only works if you can utter the argument in an Aussie accent.  And if your client happens to be a cop.

H/T Turley

It’s a far more serious problem than people realize, and it’s about time that the American Bar Association recognized it and dealt with it.  Given that lives hang in the balance, the ABA has  established a committee.

The question of whether the role of the criminal defense lawyer has been affected by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Padilla v. Kentucky, 08–651, will be the focus of a task force established last week by the American Bar Association’s criminal justice section.

The goal is to explore the obligations on lawyers to advise clients about the consequences of criminal convictions and help criminal defense lawyers understand and meet those responsibilities.

Ms. Schreibersdorf said that since October 2009, she has hired two immigration attorneys who are available to the office’s lawyers to provide advice about the possible adverse immigration consequences of pleas.

Robin Steinberg, the executive director of the Bronx Defenders, said her office for many years has had four immigration attorneys available to advise its defense attorneys on immigration issues.

In some instances, she said, such as where a prosecutor makes a plea offer at arraignment, the office’s lawyer needs accurate information immediately. The four immigration lawyers are scheduled to be on call for set periods, including night arraignments, she said.

This doesn’t help the private bar, of course, since they can’t keep lawyers on staff just in case.  Then again, that’s why the United States Department of Justice  put out a handy-dandy  92 page pocket reference on immigration consequences.

Of course, nobody has even begun to figure out the interstate implications of sex offender registry warnings in advance of a plea.  There are just way too many bridges under which they may be forced to sleep some day.

Obviously, I am in awe of the importance of the ABA in the daily practice of law for criminal defense lawyers across the nation.  It’s therefore not entirely surprising that for the past two decades, lawyers stood in court drooling rather than advising their clients, whether it was their Padilla duty to do so or not, that the quickie plea would mean they could never see their children again.  After all, if the ABA doesn’t tell them, how can they be expected to know that they should explain everything that affects the decision to their clients, as if they were real lawyers and actually gave a damn.

I speculate that this blue ribbon task forces arrives at the conclusion that it would be really cool if lawyers explained to defendants what they are getting into, and that might mean that those lawyers who spent the past two decades awaiting the word of the ABA before treading into such dangerous waters as competency, will have to change the way they practice.  But once they do that, maybe they can figure out how lawyers are supposed to stay abreast of every change and permutation, federal, state and local, of non-criminal, life-changing consequences dumped on top of whatever criminal sentence a court might impose?

Better still, maybe the ABA, composed of so many powerful and persuasive people, could refocus its task force on the propriety of using collateral consequences dreamed up by every hillbilly legislator and congressman, to create secret punishments to be named after dead children or trotted out for the next campaign?  Yeah, I’m sure that’s the next task force on their list. 

Being a cutting edge blawger, and therefore infallibly knowledgeable about all things social media, it struck me as critical that I keep abreast of trends in the coming year.  After all, did I not move from LPs to 8 tracks almost immediately? 

My journey began at Social Media Today, which bills itself as the “web’s best thinkers on social media.”  I want to hear from the best thinkers, so I turned to Eric Rice.

Propelled by one billion peer users, social media has become the fastest growing marketing medium in the U.S. — nonetheless, the much-anticipated monetization of social media remains an unrealized quest for the Holy Grail. Legions of traditional marketers have predictably descended upon Facebook, Twitter, and countless blogs with transparent greed, but have largely failed to monetize social media, due to clumsy efforts that violate peer-to-peer trust etiquette.

However, for lawyers, professionals who stand to benefit from blogging, I predict that the use of blogs by law firms will increase slightly. Blogs serve the dual purpose of increasing a law firm’s search engine rankings while showcasing the firm’s legal expertise. However, legal blogging will not be as popular as was in year’s past and rate of the deployment of new law blogs will slowly begin to decline in 2011.

Twitter use by attorneys will either remain steady or decline, while their participation on Facebook and LinkedIn will increase drastically. This is because the functionality of Twitter is changing and is used to share information rather than interact. I predict that lawyers will flock toward sites that allow them to interact and network and thus Twitter use will decline.

And now I feel pretty darned foolish for not having sought out Facebook friends to demonstrate my social media prominence.  Then there was the guy named Gabe Acevedo.  I have no clue who he is or why anyone would care what he has to say, but he’s got a column on Above The Law, and David Lat would never give someone a column unless he really knew what he was talking about.

The big secret with social media is that it’s not easy. In fact, it can be hard work. One needs to build an online audience, find or write entertaining content, link to others, and most of all keep at it. There is no magic formula. You can’t just sign on to Twitter or start a Facebook page and expect to turn into Adrian Dayton, although I’m sure many of us would if we could.

It didn’t strike me as being unduly difficult to become a laid-off lawyer of 8 months tenure who reinvented himself as a twitter expert, but then, Gabe must know stuff because he’s on ATL telling lawyers how to be more like him.

That said, you can certainly use social media to enhance your career. To be honest, I started my e-discovery blog mainly so I could tell people I had a blog. I was working as a legal recruiter for a small outfit in 2008, and I thought having a blog might help distinguish my company from the competition. I figured I would give it two weeks or so and see how things went.

Before I knew it, lawyers from across the country began to contact me for my opinion on e-discovery “trends.” This encouraged me to keep at it. In addition, I was learning a lot more about e-discovery because I was constantly researching the topic. As a result, I was able to speak with more authority on the matter, with my clients and potential clients.

Sorry. I thought he was a lawyer, since he’s telling lawyers how to use SM to enhance their career. My mistake.

Here’s my predictions.  Unless you’re in a discrete niche practice (like Dan Harris’ China Law) or a very small market where people can’t otherwise find you, social media will fill the time of your day that would otherwise be spent playing spider solitaire.  Niki is right that twitter is fading, as people realize that it’s boring and you don’t “network” with anyone you would talk to in real life anyway.

People who like to write will continue to write.  People who want to read what other people write will continue to read.  Nobody will get rich off either writing or reading.  As more people become aware of both, the quality of content, both posts and comments, will continue to go down and the deception will increase.  It won’t really matter, however, since it never really mattered.

Lawyers who are both skilled and provide excellent service to their clients will continue to have successful practices, regardless of whether they blawg, twit or maintain a lot of Facebook friends.  Some will have Blackberries. Some will have iPads.  Some will have legal pads. These are just the tools, not the goals, of practicing law.  I predict that all will have pens in the coming year.

In the coming year, law schools will continue to produce tens of thousands of graduates more than can be absorbed in the practice or needed by society.  They will join the ranks of the currently unemployed, and those who are more ambitious, scurrying for $500 felonies, then blowing the cases on quick pleas while oozing angst over their having lost another poor innocent to the vicious system. 

They will all be on twitter proclaiming what great lawyers they are, bolstered by those oldsters who want to curry favor with the baby lawyers to prove they’re hip and pretend their relevant, who struggle to keep abreast of their own practice of $500 felony pleas.  Every new lawyer will have a shiny iPad and flip flops.  They will kvell every time someone notices they exist, then demand their due respect for having 24/7 internet access.

In the coming year, the swarm of legal marketers that has descended upon all things social media will disappear, trying to get back their former position as assistant manager at Dairy Queen (apologies to Mister Softee), as they finally realize that the people who might be tricked into using their services have no money left.

I predict in 2011, people will pay more attention to Dan Hull at  What About Clients?   They will toughen up, start putting their integrity and effort ahead of shiny electronic objects, and realize that neither whining, work/life balance nor political correctness are going to pay their bills nor save their clients.  They will stop embracing meaningless words and ideas that justify their belief that the legal profession is all about making themselves happy. 

Of course, I’ve been wrong before.

USA Today has an article on what it calls the least recognized consequence of prosecutorial misconduct, that it puts criminals back on the streets to commit crime again.