Category Archives: Criminal justice

Monday’s Mtg: How should judges be selected?

By DavidG on | Leave a comment

Betty asks, is there a better way to pick judges? America’s independent, multi-tiered judicial system has much in it to admire. Yet more and more people are worried that, like so much else in American governance these days, something has gone wrong.

The whole process for selecting federal judges is broken. You all know the Supreme Court nominee process has become a sick joke. Senate Republicans flat out stole a SCOTUS seat by refusing to allow President Obama to fill a vacancy eight months before his term ended. They also filibustered his appeals court nominees for years and it took a lawsuit and a blunt threat by Democrats to end all filibusters to get them to back down. Then came the cringe-inducing Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, with both sides (and Kavanaugh!) explicitly promising revenge. Judges at all levels are selected more for their ideological purity and youth than by any kind of neutral measure of professional merit.

At the state level, as Betty has pointed out, huge amounts of special interest money has started to pour into judicial races. Pennsylvania had a $15 one in 2015. Often the money comes from out-of-state dark money groups or even in-state litigants with pending cases before the judges they are trying to oust. Other problem include very low turnout in most judicial elections, overcrowded dockets, and all the other problems that plague our justice system.

Some Civilized Conversation members are lawyers with experience standing before criminal and civil judges at the state and federal level. Others have lived or are from other countries. Let’s see what they – and Betty – have to say about the following questions and any others you might want to raise. I will open the meeting with 3-5 minutes on how judges currently are selected in the United States.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS –

  1. Process now: How many types of judges are there in the United States? How are they selected? What role do voters, politicians, and experts play in the process?   How are they held accountable after they are appointed?
  2. Effects: Do the different ways U.S. judges are selected satisfy the requirements of:
    1. Democratic accountability?
    2. Judicial independence?
    3. Judicial expertise?
    4. Public confidence in judiciary?
    5. The dispensing of, you know, justice?
  3. Specific issues:
    1. Partisanship of judges.
    2. Federal advice and consent function.
    3. Electing judges (state level).
    4. Money + special interests in judicial races.
    5. Diversity of judges.
    6. Limited jurisdiction courts: Bankruptcy, juvenile, etc.
    7. Others.
  4. Do other problems that harm justice matter more than judicial selection?
  5. Better ways choose judges?
    1. Alternatives to the present system: Term limits, merit selection, non-partisan races, stop electing them, limit money in judicial races, , including from abroad.
    2. Obstacles to change.
    3. Effects if implemented – including unintended bad effects.

OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –

NEXT: How does U.S. foreign policy help regular people?

Posted in: Constitution/Legal, Criminal justice, Mtg Announcements, Politics | Tagged: ,

Monday’s Mtg: The bad and the good of unauthorized/illegal immigration

By DavidG on | Leave a comment

After that State of the union address it definitely is a good idea to have a realistic discussion of the costs and benefits of illegal immigration in the United States.

In case you missed it President Trump hammered away at his signature issue: Our “national border emergency” and the alleged huge wave of violent crimes committed by “criminal illegal aliens.” Using the usual lurid examples he denounced the “coyotes, cartels, and human traffickers” that “year after year murder, countless [?] Americans.” Fear mongering on this topic is his signature issue.

Polls consistently show that most Americans don’t buy most of this. The public does not see unauthorized immigration as an invasion by violent thugs nor do they view this issue as primarily a violent crime problem.

Yet, people are concerned about the costs to the country of our 11 million unauthorized immigrants and the 5 million children that live with them. Trump alluded to some of their concerns when he said that unauthorized immigrants “reduce jobs, lower wages, overburden schools, [overcrowd] hospitals… and increase crime and deplete…the social safety net.” Public concerns over the economic, fiscal, and social costs of large-scale unauthorized immigration deserve to be considered more seriously.

How on earth could this be done? It is a lot harder than advocates on either side gloss over. Just conceptually, one would have to identify all the different costs AND benefits (governmental, economic, social, etc.) of a diverse, always changing UI population. Then you would have to quantify them including how they are distributed (who bears burden / reaps benefits). Then, the hard part! Devising a way to compare the benefit to the costs over time and across different levels of govt and differently-impacted groups of Americans. Finally, the most ignored step: Those overall/net costs of illegal immigration would have to be compared to the costs and benefits of implementing and maintaining any realistic alternative to the status quo. Waving a magic wand so they all disappear and a wall keeps them out forever at no cost isn’t one of those alternatives.

Easy, right?  My main point is not just that cost-benefit analysis is hard. Judging the net worth to our society of 11m people also requires making some value judgements and guesses about what is best for our country today and in the future.

I will open our meeting with a 15 minute presentation – a bit longer than usual – that tries to get at some of these challenges. I will

  1. Give a brief demographic portrait of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population,
  2. List broad types of costs and benefits associated with their presence, and
  3. Make a few remarks about how to avoid bad comparisons.

OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –

Demographic info –

Overall costs and benefits –

Crime –

Conservative POV –

NEXT: What makes people happy?

Posted in: Criminal justice, Economy/Economics, Immigration, Mtg Announcements | Tagged: ,

Monday’s Mtg: Is there a “Right to Die”

By DavidG on | 1 Comment

Thanks to Ed for leading last week’s discussion on the uncertain future of NATO and other U.S. alliances. Given Ed’s extensive knowledge it must have been a good one.

One of the more fun aspects of our group is that we switch topic areas rather dramatically from week to week. Next up after NATO will be the “right-to-die.” We did this topic in 2014. But, over one-half of CivCon’s regulars are new since then and California has since passed its own assisted suicide law. So, it seems useful to tackle this haunting but important public policy issue again.

According to Wiki, California is one of eight U.S. jurisdictions where some form of assisted suicide is legal. The others are Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Vermont, Hawaii, Montana, and Washington, D.C. Assisted suicide is just what it sounds like: Suicide with help from another person.  If that person is a doctor, it is physician-assisted suicide (PAS). The individual that is to die must administer the instrument of their own death themselves.  If anyone else directly commits the killing it would be euthanasia, which no U.S. state allows. Some countries have legalized assisted suicide, mainly in Europe. Some of them have less restrictive criteria than the U.S. laws, notably Belgium and the Netherlands.

There are lots of issues here, ranging from the moral and ethical to political to the practical (of PAS laws’ proper design). I will begin our meeting by describing U.S. and selected foreign PAS laws, emphasizing California’s. Then I will introduce some of the major issues and questions that crop us when this topic gets discussed in the press. Then we can talk about the right to die as it is, should be, or shouldn’t be. Maybe we can use these questions to guide us.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS –

  1. U.S. laws: What do existing U.S. PAS laws permit and not permit?
    — What moral or philosophical POV do they express?
    — What procedural safeguards do they have to prevent misuse?
  2. Foreign laws: Same Qs.
  3. Impact: How has implementation gone?
    — Who has used the laws and why?
    — Problems, controversies, public satisfaction?
  4. Arguments: Pros and cons and of supporters and opponents? Do they address each other’s’ arguments or just make different ones?
  5. You: Do you support these laws?  Why? How would you rebut what the other side says?
  6. Specific issues:
    — How often is PAS already being done on the sly? Better or worse to bring it into the open?
    — Safeguards/procedures: More/less onerous, better oversight?
    — Expand beyond terminally ill; e.g., mentally ill or infants?
    — Allowing/banning Americans from going overseas to do it?
    — Religious objections by medical providers.
    — Sanctity of life, sending the message suicide is OK.
    — How can law satisfy everybody on such a polarizing social issues? Should govt stay out of this issue altogether?
  7. Is lousy end-of-life medical care a part of the problem?  How could it be improved?

OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –

NEXT: America’s opioid crisis – Who’s to blame + what to do?

Posted in: Criminal justice, Mtg Announcements, Philosophy, Politics, Science | Tagged:

Monday’s Mtg: 150 years of the 14th amendment – How close is the USA to equal protection under the law?

By DavidG on | 3 Comments

Last month was the 150th anniversary of one of the seminal moments in our history, the ratification of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. The 1868 amendment defined all people naturalized or born here to be citizens, guaranteed equal protection and due process under the law, and (for the first time) required state governments to enforce the Bill of Rights. Taken together the Reconstruction amendments (13th, 14th, 15th) are often referred to as America’s second Constitutional revolution, the one that finally operationalized the ideals of the Declaration of Independence. The text of the 14th amendment is here.

A century and a half later how far along towards these goals? Andrea wanted the group to discuss the state of civil rights in America. I added the hook to the 14th amendment. This broadens our topic but poses some challenges for our meeting. Most discussions of 14th amendment violations concern a few areas of the law, like job and housing discrimination and criminal law. Not all societal or economic inequalities can be considered unconstitutional. That doesn’t make the huge gap in black/white income and wealth and educational inequality unimportant. We could discuss those issues, too, along with gender and other forms of discrimination.

There is a third angle that’s near and dear to my heart. This is the determined effort by conservatives to reform, or perhaps just to roll back, the enforcement of and the very meaning of discrimination. Most obviously is the assault on voting rights. But you could throw in efforts to expand the meaning of religious liberty to allow discrimination against LGBT people in private commerce, the Trump DOJ’s refusal to renew agreements with local police departments that prevented officer violence against minorities, and other efforts. Some conservatives even want to go after parts of the 14th amendment that have been uncontroversial for decades, like its birthright citizenship and legislative apportionment clauses.

Whew! I will open our meeting with two things. I’ll give a quick explanation of the 14th amendment’s protections. Then I will briefly give a few facts on racial and gender inequality in our society. I can get into the Trump Administration’s effort to, um, reinvent civil rights if you want me to.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS –

  1. 14th amendment: What does it protect and how? How has its meaning been interpreted over time? What does it not include (equal access to education, health care, economic opportunity)?
  2. How far away are we from equal protection? Evidence by area – employment, criminal justice, housing, etc.
  3. Gender, LGBT, religion, etc.: What are the biggest issues in these areas of discrimination?
  4. Inequality and poverty: Same.
  5. GOP’s big plans: Religious freedom, civil rights enforcement, constitutional law, etc.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING –

Important context –

The 14th Amendment

Discrimination and inequality –

Conservative revolution and POV –

NEXT WEEK: Dating and romance in the social media age.

Posted in: Constitution/Legal, Criminal justice, Immigration | Tagged:

Monday’s Mtg: #MeToo – What does sexual harassment mean now?

By DavidG on | Leave a comment

This is an overdue topic. As everybody knows, in 2017-18 dozens of high-profile American men were accused of sexual harassment and/or sexual assault. We all know the big names: Harvey Weinstein, Al Franken, Kevin Spacey, comedians Aziz Ansari and Louie C.K., journalist Mark Halperin, and even former President George H.W. Bush. A new social movement arose out of it all – the #MeToo phenomenon – as thousands of women were moved to share their personal stories. We’ve seen the Oscar speeches and saw/read endless opinion pieces on #MeToo. And, if surveys are any guide, some of us probably have direct personal experience with sexual harassment or assault.

But, what if anything has really changed? Are we at a cultural inflection point on sexual harassment and misconduct, or have we just cleaned house in some industries that get a lot of media attention (entertainment, politics news media)? A backlash against #MeToo has sprung up. Do these critics have a point, or are they just revanchist? What turns a moment into a movement? What turns a movement into permanent social change?

Public opinion, for one thing. On cultural change, it’s the whole ball game in the long-run. So, I thought Civilized Conversation could talk about what sexual harassment means now in the workplace and in our personal lives. Our group will never win any awards for its diversity. But, the differences we do have on gender, age, and experience will make for an interesting discussion.

Here are some optional background readings. Thanks to Scott for finding the ones on public opinion and to Gale for suggesting we use the Aziz Ansari incident as case study.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING –

What and how much –

Case study: Aziz Ansari incident –

What Americans think about –

Critiques of / future of #MeToo –

NEXT WEEK: Deportation nation: Will Americans really let millions be ejected?

Posted in: Criminal justice, Social Policy/Social Science | Tagged: , ,

Monday’s Mtg on Guns: Part II

By DavidG on | Leave a comment

Please focus any reading you do on the next post below.  However, after rereading that post (written in anger, albeit justified IMO) it is fair to make one more point that does more than blame one small group of people.  It takes more than just passionately anti-gun control citizens and politicians to stop all efforts to prevent future horrific mass shootings. It takes a general public that, in between high-profile massacres – places gun safety measures low down on its list of priorities and completely off the list of reasons why they vote how they do.

For more on this point, see here.

Posted in: Criminal justice, Politics | Tagged:

Monday’s Mtg: Would serious gun control actually reduce crime/violence?

By DavidG on | 1 Comment

The madness continues. Yesterday’s massacre of 17 people at a Florida high school was, depending on how you count, the USA’s 18th school shooting this year – and it’s February! – and its 280th or so since the massacre at Columbine in 1999.  (Some estimates are lower.)  About 150,000 American school children in 170 schools have experienced a school shooting during that time, estimates the Washington Post, and this excludes gun suicides and accidents.

At times like this, one purpose Civilized Conversation can serve is to just to be a place to vent a little. That’s okay. But, if we are to live up to our name, it should be constructive venting and, well, civilized. Maybe we should explore at least these three big questions:

  1. Why does American’s immense level of gun violence never get addressed as a problem that has anything to do with guns?
  2. Which particular types of gun violence are better addressed by the mental health, law enforcement, or education systems?
  3. Which gun restrictions likely would work, based on what is known now?

Answering the first question requires us to take a dark journey into the world of the small but highly influential anti-government gun fetishist subculture. These folks are but a minority of gun owners and all gun owners do not deserve to be lumped in with them in liberals’ minds. But, they rule the realm in gun politics.  They are zealous and highly-organized, and the politicians that share their beliefs or fear them are the reason we never can have a serious debate over gun control.  Read one of the first two recommended links if you don’t know about how these people differ from regular gun collectors and folks trying to protect against home intruders.

Questions #2 and #3 are hard ones, too, and debating them was my original idea behind this topic. These days most liberals stop thinking about gun control once they identify the worst villains in our current story (NRA, militia groups, right-wing GOP politicians, etc.) Since serious gun control is off the table we end up moaning about trigger locks and background checks and never seriously consider which kinds of restrictions on firearms might actually be more than marginally effective at chipping away at our gun crime problem – if the political will ever coalesces.

The answers are not straightforward. They depends on things like –

  • Which gun-related problems (mass shootings, domestic violence-related, or violence associated with street crime) deserve to be our highest priority in general.
  • Extent to which easy gun availability causes or aggravates those problems.
  • What the existing evidence says about which (if any) new gun restrictions would do the most good.
  • At what cost (including to 2nd amendment principles, which exist whether progressives like them or not.). and
  • How on earth can NRA and similar opposition can be overcome.

Here is the usual long list of OPTIONAL background readings with the most useful ones highlighted. New topics for March – July will be available on Monday, too. (h/t Gale and Ken for helping select.)

A reminder:  All points of view will be welcome at Civilized Conversation. Participants must be respected.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING –

Political system obstacles –

What (if any) gun control might help?

NEXT WEEK: -gates and domes: Lessons from past presidential corruption.

Posted in: Conservatism, Constitution/Legal, Criminal justice, Mtg Announcements, Politics | Tagged: ,

Monday’s Mtg: What should every American know about the Constitution?

By DavidG on | Leave a comment

We have talked about the Constitution many, many times and in many detailed and abstract ways. We have never asked what should the average citizen know about the Constitution, both in terms of what’s in the document and why it matters.

What they do know is not much. The level of public ignorance of our founding document is astounding. Forget bills of attainder, living constitution versus original meaning, and substantive due process.  More than one-third of Americans cannot name a single right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, and one in six believe Muslims are not entitled to equal constitutional rights and equal protection!

So, for our purposes assume that the average American is a tabula rasa on this stuff. What are the most critical, basic things about the Constitution that they need to know? Do they need to be familiar with anything other than the bare basics of the Bill of Rights and the basic powers of government?  What about the history of how and why the Constitution was written and/or a teeny little bit on how judges and SCOTUS interpret it? What do people probably need to unlearn that is wrong?  You get the idea.

Below are some optional readings. They include a quiz for YOU to take on basic Constitutional knowledge; discussions of public ignorance and its importance; and links to some old CivCon meetings. You might want to peruse the two meetings that dealt with progressive versus conservative methods of constitutional interpretation if you are not familiar at all with the subject. The one on the liberal POV had the better links.

Also, at Monday’s meeting I will pick which two volunteers will help me pick our next round of topics (March – June). Send me your topic ideas!

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING –

Related CivCon meetings:

Your knowledge of the Constitution –

What they teach kids about the Constitution –

  • In California: What kids learn, by grade.
  • There is a “National Constitution Day” every September 17.  By law  school kids must spend an hour on it.  DavidG and John M.  have been guest speakers in local high school classes.
  • California is trying to promote/recognize constitutional and civic knowledge.
  • The Simpsons version of Schoolhouse Rock explains it all.

What the public actually knows –

NEXT WEEK: US foreign policy – How do we know we are the good guys?

Posted in: Constitution/Legal, Criminal justice, Mtg Announcements | Tagged:

Monday’s Mtg: What is the purpose of our criminal justice system?

By DavidG on | Leave a comment

Criminal justice reform stays perpetually under the Media radar, but not CivCon’s. We have debated juvenile justice, the death penalty, mass incarceration, marijuana legalization, and other topics. This stuff can get complicated and it is not my area, so I usually like to tackle it one issue area at a time.

But, Linda had an interesting idea: Go back to first principles. What should our criminal justice system be trying to do? Is the goal punishment, vengeance, public safety, rehabilitation, or something else? Who sets those goals and how do we know which purposes are the priority?

The Trump Administration sure acts like it knows. And you’ll applaud if your idea of reform is to reverse Obama-era reforms that made the system a little less punitive. As promised, law and order is back. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expanded use of mandatory minimum sentences and local police departments’ asset forfeiture powers. He probably will refuse to enforce the many consent decrees that the Obama DOJ negotiated city-by-city to clean up systematic police mismanagement and abuses. There’s more, and more coming. See the links.

Liberal reforms still have momentum, however, because a fragile but bipartisan consensus has emerged at the state/local levels that the current mass incarceration-producing system needs a big rethink.  It is unsustainable financially, politically, and morally.  It probably has passed the point of net marginal benefit (to society, individuals) and it is no longer necessary as crime rates have dropped.

So, despite events in Washington, D.C., Linda’s question fits the times. Specifically, Linda asks whether the true purpose of America’s criminal justice system is:

  1. Punishment,
  2. Retribution, or
  3. Rehabilitation.

To those goals I might add:

4. Incapacitation (warehousing so they can’t commit more crimes),
5. Deterrence,
6. Restoration (reconciling with their victims and communities).

We also can debate more controversial notions about The System’s real intentions, such as whether it is a deliberate system of racial control and/or increasingly just a big stream of cash to be privatized for a profit motive. I have other theories that I will raise. This is a big topic.  But, how can we judge the need for criminal justice reform without knowing what the current system is trying to do?

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS –

  1. In whose eyes? Who sets the purposes of justice? Legislatures/courts? Bureaucrats? The police? Experts? The public (which public)?
  2. Motives/Incentives: What motivates each of the above actors? Different interests/preferences or different biases?
  3. The System – Purposes: Which ones matter overall the most and how do you know this?
  • Punishment
  • Vengeance
  • Rehabilitation.
  • Incapacitation.
  • Deterrence.
  • The precautionary principle or the inertia of decision accretion. Important concepts!
  • Others: Racism, fear, profit, etc.
  • JUSTICE? What does that mean?

    4.  The System – Evolution: How have purposes evolved since 1980? Why?
5. Future: Which way will reform go? How can your preferred direction be realized?

OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READING – 

Purposes –

Trump’s Reforms –

Stuff you may not know –

NEXT WEEK: Is Africa’s future a bright one?

Posted in: Criminal justice, Mtg Announcements, Politics | Tagged:

Monday’s Mtg: Why is American culture so violent?

By DavidG on | Leave a comment

The United States is one of the most violent countries in the developed world. For example, here is how we compare with other OECD countries in deaths rates from assaults.

assault-deaths-oecd-ts-all-new-20131

[Source: OECD See here for identities of the other countries.]

Wow.  And it it’s not just homicide and it’s not just crime. Just thinking out loud I suppose we could identify four kinds of societal violence:

  1. Domestic violence (home/family);
  2. Public violence (crime, racial/sectarian/communal strife);
  3. State violence (repression, war/pseudo-war, criminal justice system); and
  4. Recreational violence, both simulated (TV/movies/gaming) and real (violent sports, hunting, gun hobbyists).

I haven’t looked up whether we lead in all four of these. But, we certainly do on #2, and maybe on #3 and #4. Of course, many poor/non-democratic nations have much higher levels of violence us, and much of our war fighting is as head of the Western alliance system. Still, the American people and its institutions are really, really violence-prone.

For this meeting I thought we could tackle the very unnerving idea that the main cause is cultural. Is there something, er, exceptional in American culture that makes us this way? The 300 million guns? The high poverty rates? Racism and segregation? Mass incarceration? Hyper-individualism?  A Wild West mentality or Southern culture (the South is by far our most violent region)?  Do conservative explanations hold any water, like declining religiosity/respect for moral authority or self-destructive “culture of poverty” values?  Violent entertainment?   Drugs?  You get the complexity idea.

Also, has a high tolerance for violence always been a part of our society, or has something changed recently? One of the links below is about the growing paranoia of U.S. gun culture.  Also, we just elected a president at the very least despite of – or more likely IMO – because of the way he reveled in violent rhetoric and promises to inflict actual violence. His message of an “American carnage” terrorized by violent crime and foreign exploitation and his unveiled threats of vengeance against foreign and domestic enemies deeply resonated with tens of millions of Americans. What does that alone say about our culture’s normalization of violence, or, perhaps more benignly, about voters’ beliefs that the violence is out of control?

Here are some different points of view on whether and why American culture is distinctively and excessively violent.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING –

NEXT WEEK: Who runs San Diego – and for whose benefit?

Posted in: Criminal justice, Mtg Announcements, Social Policy/Social Science | Tagged: ,