Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Sooey! Criminal justice news and notes

Here are several stories I noticed recently that merit Grits readers attention:

History, like graffiti, in the eye of the beholder
Since the Texas House recently approved legislation making it a state jail felony to perform graffiti on a historic monument, I was interested to see this story out of Indiana about graffiti which has become an historic monument. Go figure.

Police pursuit policies are public records
Police departments don't like revealing their high-speed chase policies, but consistently the AG has ruled the law requires their disclosure. Harlingen PD is the latest example where the AG came down on the side of disclosing chase policies.

Sooey!
Arkansas has passed legislation strengthening probation and reducing low-level drug sentences to cut its corrections budget. See this discussion from the Arkansas News.

On the business acumen of prisoners and the rise of 'entrepre-niggaz'
A Missouri state senator who went to federal prison for corruption published a rather astonishing essay in Inc. magazine on the entrepreneurial culture in prison, both legal and illicit, frequently using postage stamps for currency.

US-side infrastructure of Mexican drug cartels
"Border security" may be soon a dated concept, at least as far as the drug war goes, now that Mexican cartels have established so much US-side infrastructure. The battle no longer begins nor ends at the border, if it ever did.

'How eyewitnesses can send innocents to jail'
This subhed is the title of an article in Slate on eyewitness misidentification.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Outposts in the United States.

A member of Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, he had quietly settled in central South Carolina, put down roots and began managing one of the gang's new outposts in the United States.

As the cartels expand up and out from the Southwest border, they are sending waves of men like Pineda, many of them trained in Mexico, to run their U.S. operations. In the last few years, they have established a prosperous retail industry, with cartels staking out "market territories," lining up smuggling routes, and renting storage bins and drug houses.

Twice deported after less serious convictions, Pineda looked more like a successful businessman than a drug dealer.