Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The Death Penalty on Life Support

April 12, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
mmw-death-penalty-041212

(Editor's Note: The Connecticut Legislature voted today to abolish the death penalty for all future cases, becoming the fifth state in the last four years to do so. The following is a piece written by Vince Beiser for the upcoming debut issue of Pacific Standard. It explores the reasons why the death penalty is falling out of favor.) You may have noticed something about the debate over the death penalty in the presidential race: there’s hardly been one. That speaks volumes about how this persistent institution is quietly fading away in the U.S. — for the second time in history. Most ... Read More

More like this: May-June 2012, Politics
Tags: , ,

‘Stand Your Ground’ Stats Point to High Costs

March 30, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

“Stand your ground” laws, such as the one prominently cited in Florida’s Trayvon Martin shooting last month, are on the books in 28 states. These laws represent a kind of gamble, that by shifting the justice system in favor of the shooter, society will aid people who have acted in self-defense more than it will enable those who might exploit the concept. By claiming Stand Your Ground status, a shooter (or stabber) never enters a courtroom to defend their actions unless police cite probable cause to believe the homicide or assault with a deadly weapon was, in fact, ... Read More

More like this: Legal Affairs, The Idea Lobby
Tags: , , ,

Study: More Black Juveniles Sentenced to Life Without Parole

February 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Three weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments on the constitutionality of sentencing juveniles convicted of homicide to life without parole, the first-ever study of youngsters serving these punishments has been released. The Lives of Juvenile Lifers, a survey of more than 1,500 prisoners who were sentenced prison terms of life without parole (known as JLWOP) when they were between the ages 13 to 17 was compiled by The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group for sentencing reform that opposes JLWOP. “Although it does not excuse their crimes,” the report sums up, “most people ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Legal Affairs
Tags: , , , , ,

Overcrowded Prisons Giving Old Inmates New Life

February 21, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Anthony Montoya has spent the past 32 years — more than half his life — in prison for burglary and second-degree murder. Based on his crimes and long institutional existence, it’s no surprise that a Colorado parole board has denied Montoya 11 times, and a corrections board has shot down early release three times. Last August, as the morning sun streaked through the windows of an 11th-floor conference room, the Denver Community Corrections Board considered Montoya, who is 57, for supervised discharge into a new county work-release program. “Anthony Montoya,” the chair of the ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Magazine Feature Story, March-April 2012
Tags: , , ,

Private Prisons Can’t Lock In Savings

January 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Back in 1999, private prisons housed 3,828 federal prisoners in America. Now that number is more than 33,000, a more than 800 percent gain. In the state of Arizona, the comparable figure went up 285 percent in a decade, in Idaho — 459 percent. States, and even the federal government, increasingly have looked to private companies to house and manage America’s expanding prison population. Three decades ago private lockups were nearly nonexistent in the U.S. Over this period, while the number of prisoners in the U.S. grew by 17 percent, the population inside the walls of fully privatized ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, The Idea Lobby
Tags: , , ,

Rating LA’s Safety Levels by ZIP Code

December 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Los Angeles Safety Score by ZIP code

Crime in Los Angeles has been falling for years. The numbers have gotten smaller the last nine years in a row, and in 2010 the city’s murder rate fell to the lowest it has been in four decades. In celebrating that macro-level trend, though, it’s easy to lose sight that a wide gap still exists between the city’s safest neighborhoods and its roughest ones, where homicide remains the leading cause of premature death for young men. In these neighborhoods, researchers have found that 90 percent of children report having seen or suffered from felony-level violence, and a third have tested ... Read More

More like this: Culture, The Idea Lobby
Tags: , , , ,

America Edges to Brink of Armed Police Drones

November 16, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

A county north of Houston made news in Europe at the end of October by taking delivery of a new “weaponizable” drone, a squat remote-controlled helicopter called a ShadowHawk that can fire Tasers or beanbags at people on the ground. Police in Montgomery County say the drone would chase drug smugglers or escaping criminals. Alarmed Europeans wondered if some aspect of drone warfare — so far a problem only for terrorists and other strangers in poor and distant countries — had come home to the First World. “In the end the police have the same consideration as the military,” writes ... Read More

More like this: European Dispatch, Legal Affairs
Tags: , , ,

LAPD Cracks Cold Cases With Science, Grit

October 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

His list of victims could read like a yearbook: Debra Jackson, 1985; Henrietta Wright, 1986; Barbara Ware, Bernita Sparks, and Mary Lowe, 1987; Alicia Alexander and Lachrica Jefferson, 1988. Then, after a break of more than a dozen years — the "sleeper" period that inspired his nickname — Valerie McCorvey, 2003. Four years after that — Jenica Peters, 2007. All of the victims were black women. They were as young as 18 and as old as 36 when he ended their lives. Most were sexually assaulted and then shot, their bodies left in alleys or trash bins along a stretch of Western Avenue in ... Read More

More like this: Cover Story, Legal Affairs, November-December 2011
Tags: , , , ,

Psychic Detectives Have a Perfect Record

August 27, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The afternoon of June 7, The New York Times sent out a news alert: “Up to 30 Dismembered Bodies Found Near Houston, Reuters Reports.” CNN also reported that the home near Houston involved “at least 20 bodies, including those of children.” The Liberty County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant for the house in Hardin, Texas, and despite some conflicting information related to blood found on a door and strange odors, Texas Rangers were unable to locate any bodies or graves on the site. While all this makes fine fodder for castigating reputable news organization like the ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Skeptic's Café
Tags: , ,

Can Computers Predict Crimes of the Future?

July 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

It's great when cops catch criminals after they've done their dirty work. But what if police could stop a crime before it was even committed? Though that may sound like a fantasy straight from a Philip K. Dick novel, it's a goal police departments from Los Angeles to Memphis are actively pursuing with help from the Department of Justice and a handful of cutting-edge academics. It's called "predictive policing." The idea: Although no one can foresee individual crimes, it is possible to forecast patterns of where and when homes are likely to be burgled or cars stolen by analyzing truckloads ... Read More

More like this: July-August 2011, Legal Affairs
Tags: , , ,