From the blogs

Here are a few items from around the blogosphere that may interest Grits readers:

A question for everyone watching the World Series: Where would major league baseball be without Latin American immigration, and would we care to watch it? Via Benders.

Mama said the pistol was the devil's right hand. CrimProf Blog quotes a Harvard law prof announcing that more than 30,000 people die each year from gunshots in murders, suicides, and accidents. I understand more than 40,000 per year die in car accidents. Don't you think we should ban automobiles, too?

Evaluating punishment. Doc Berman brings news of an interesting looking conference on "Punishment: The US Record" at the New School, and free online event on the topic of re-examining drug courts Nov. 13, sponsored by the Harvard Innovators Network and the National Institute of Justice.

Budgeting and corrections politics. Corrections Sentencing explains why criminal justice policy so frequently ignores budget realities.

Police lying to get consent to search amounts to coercion. This time.

What's so special about government's search needs for probationers and parolees? Doc Berman also pointed to this interesting looking article that goes on Grits' reading list; from the abstract: "The general requirement that government searches be supported by warrant and probable cause typically has not been applied in penal contexts such as prison, probation, and parole. To justify this broad search authority, the Supreme Court has created a patchwork of categorical rules and skewed balancing tests based on diminished expectations of privacy. This Note argues that the Court's current approach is unsound."

The Columbia House Problem: More good blogging from The Wretched of the Earth on how defendants get trapped in a vicious cycle after being charged with driving on a suspended license.

Just come back at the end of the day. Skelly describes jail in American Samoa. It sounds a lot like Mayberry.

Happy Birthday, Pete! Let me encourage Grits readers to go to Drug War Rant, tell Pete 'Feliz Cumpleaños', and maybe give him some love for his laptop fund.