#Criminal Justice Reform

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Gloria Oladipo at The Guardian:

Donald Trump’s second presidential administration shut down a national database that tracked misconduct by federal police, a resource that policing reform advocates hailed as essential to prevent officers with misconduct records from being able to move undetected between agencies. The National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), which stored police records documenting misconduct, is now unavailable, the Washington Post first reported. The US justice department also confirmed the database’s elimination in a statement issued online. “User agencies can no longer query or add data to the NLEAD,” the statement read. “The US Department of Justice is decommissioning the NLEAD in accordance with federal standards.”

A weblink that hosted the database is no longer active. The police misconduct database, the first of its kind, was not publicly available. Law enforcement agencies could use the NLEAD to check if an officer applying for a law enforcement position had committed misconduct, such as excessive force. Several experts celebrated the NLEAD when Joe Biden first created it by an executive order issued in 2023, the third year of his presidency. [...] But Trump has since rescinded Biden’s executive order as part of an ongoing effort to slash federal agencies down. Trump himself initially proposed the database after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, months before Biden defeated him in the presidential election that November.

Trump Administration shuts down the National Law Enforcement Accountability Database (NLEAD), a vital tool that knowns about police misconduct.

[lysander171-blog]

Every few months I think to myself "people really slept on pyre". I remember in the Hades announcement at the 2018 game awards it said "from the makers of bastion and transistor" even tho pyre came out like a year and a half before the announcement. Shit is literally about criminal justice reform and no one talks about it. Plus it has like thousands of possible endings and no fail state (an idea Hades picked up and RAN WITH).

[aria-i-adagio]

Marcellus Williams is scheduled to be executed on September 24 for a crime DNA proves he did not commit. The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney reviewed these DNA results and filed a motion to vacate Mr. Williams’s conviction because he believed the DNA results proved by clear and convincing evidence that Mr. Williams did not commit this crime. Although the circuit court has not yet scheduled a hearing to address this motion–and no court has ever considered the new exculpatory evidence — the Missouri Supreme Court set an execution date for Mr. Williams.

Marcellus’ legal team, including lawyers from the Innocence Project and Midwest Innocence Project, said they “will continue to fight for Mr. Williams’ exoneration and seek a hearing on the prosecutor’s motion to vacate.

Learn more and add your name to the petition. (Use the link below, the link in the infographic isn't working yet.)

[to-dance-beneath-the-diamond-sky]

idk why people are having such a hard time wrapping their brains around the fact that not referring to people as prisoners and instead referring to them as people in prison or incarcerated people is a really really simple thing you can do to help combat decades of the systemic dehumanization of black, brown, and poor people. in the US and a lot of other countries around the world, the term prisoner has extremely negative connotations and stigma associated with it, and invokes a whole lot of bias and stereotypes about who is in prison and what for. the idea that people who are in prison are there because they are bad awful people is deeply ingrained in almost every aspect of US society and culture. prisons systemically dehumanize people and do everything to strip away people's autonomy, individuality, identity, freedom, and human rights.

the push for person first language when discussing those who are incarcerated literally comes from people who have been systemically dehumanized from these oppressive punitive systems. this is not an ahistorical uwu sjw don't say "autistic" say "person-with-autism" thing. there are decades, fuck even centuries of significant, deeply racialized and oppressive political and historical context you have to take into account.

so please don't feed into this dehumanization by referring to people as objects in this extremely oppressive, racist, classist, harmful punitive system. use person first language y'all, it's not that fucking hard.

here's some articles if people actually care enough to educate themseves

The language of incarceration People First: The Use and Impact of Criminal Justice Labels in Media Coverage The Language Project Forget labels like ex-con and felon, realize that words matter and learn how to humanize language

[meredithwillettkirby]

PRISONERS SHOULD GET AT LEAST THE LEVEL OF TREATMENT THAT PEOPLE GOT AT THE RETIREMENT HOME I WORKED AT! LIKE MEALS FOR THEIR MEDICAL NEEDS AND SHIT! SCHEDULES MADE EVERY WEEK FOR THEIR THERAPIES AND VISITING AND SHIT!

[originalleftist]

There is a fundamental contradiction and injustice in the fact that Donald J Trump, convicted felon, can still run for President, but an estimated 4.6 million Americans as of 2022 can't even vote due to felony convictions.

[personal-blog243]

Also pay attention to the 3 people he didn’t pardon and it does almost make sense.

[trivalentlinks]

So I have a genuine question for prison abolitionists who believe in only preventative measures for crimes and, in the case that they can't be prevented, non-punitive transformative justice and healing as a response to crimes.

In principle I agree with this for garden variety crimes like rape and murder, but there is one kind of crime where I genuinely cannot see how non-punitive transformative justice could work, and I am very curious as to how other people can envision it working:

So in 2004, China had a baby formula scandal where 13 infants died of malnutrition because several baby formula producers heavily diluted the baby formula with stuff that didn't have nutrients, so much so that the baby formula sold had only 1 g of protein per 100g baby formula (this number is supposed to be around 14 g of protein/100g formula!)

There were also more than a hundred babies hospitalized with malnutrition, with one hospital reporting 66 hospitalizations and 8 deaths in their hospital alone.

(Article about the 2004 scandal on The Lancet here, and article on the NYTimes here. If you want to read more search for "big headed baby formula scandal china", because the malnutrition caused the babies to appear to have large, swollen heads.)

As a response, the Chinese government cracked down on baby formula manufacturing and increased testing for protein content in all baby formula and milk products.

(And, of course, since this is China, which famously has an authoritarian government, they also arrested 22 executives in charge of production at various baby formula companies. Most parts of China have also historically had a strong belief in punishment, so I'm sure they also felt like with so many dead or hospitalized babies (and at the height of the one-child policy to boot!) they would have had a riot on their hands if nobody was punished.)

This worked well and Chinese baby formula was safe again, for about four years.

Then, in 2008, some people at Chinese dairy production company Sanlu discovered that you could fool the new protein tests by adding melamine to milk and baby formula products. This is because melamine increases the nitrogen content, so it could fool the nitrogen-based tests into registering a higher protein content than was actually there.

Thus, they added melamine to a lot of baby formula and milk products so that they could again get away with diluting the products.

Melamine, of course, causes kidney damage, and as a result of this, 300,000 children were sickened with kidney damage and 54,000 of them were hospitalized.

(Here's a wikipedia article about the 2008 milk scandal.)

As a result of this, China imprisoned several executives involved and executed a couple of them.

Now I am opposed to capital punishment in all cases, but I'm curious about the opinions of people who oppose all forms of punitive justice.

What do you think the Chinese government should have done about the executives involved in this?

If your children were among the 300,000 sickened with kidney damage or the 54,000 hospitalized or worse, would you genuinely be okay with no punishment whatsoever for those who knowingly did this?

(Or maybe you can convince me that how these parents feel shouldn't matter? I'm open to being convinced.)

Obviously, China should (and I'm sure does) test for melamine in milk and baby formula now, but keep in mind that the new tests for protein content after the 2004 malnutrition scandal were the reason Sanlu was adding melamine to begin with. You cannot test for things you don't know that people will try to get around the old tests.

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇱⚔️🇵🇸 🚀🏥💥 🚨

AL-SHIFA MEDICAL COMPLEX BEFORE AND AFTER ISRAELI OCCUPATION FORCES DESTROYED THE HOSPITAL

📹 Footage published detailing the reception for the opening of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, in the Al-Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City, back-to-back with footage from after the withdrawal of the Israeli occupation army on Monday.

Al-Shifa Medical Complex was once the largest and most well equipped hospital in the entire Gaza Strip, with advanced surgical capabilities and rehabilitation centers.

Today, the entire structure of the main building barely stands, while satellite buildings are completely destroyed, after the withdrawal of the Zionist army, leaving the hospital grounds littered with the rotting corpses of dozens, if not hundreds, of Palestinian civilians killed during the occupation's siege, bombardment and ground operations targeting Al-Shifa Hospital and its grounds.

#source

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[racefortheironthrone]

How have superhero stories grappled with the more grounded depictions of fighting crime? Which is to say, someone with much higher power than those they’re fighting breaking bones and causing harm in real circumstances?

It’s like there’s a disconnect between some of the more “straight” stories of someone who is seemingly nice on every level as a hero but goes out during their nights to beat the hell out of people with their alter ego and power , and ofc how that image links with punitive justice / brutality status quo of justice enforcement

On the worst end, you get Rorschach’s (part of the point of the character I know) who throw suspected criminals down elevator shafts, and on the best end you get spidey or flash harmlessly webbing guys up or tying them up before they can hurt anyone

Ideally you’d get heroes going out to defend others lives and doing so in as non harmful ways as possible and incapacitating without violence, and addressing the root issues of criminals at the same time (inspired by your Batman post) while putting thr buck of energy towards the real masters of evil propagating the system

One of my favorite recent stories was the Zdarsky daredevil where it shows how easily a fatal accident can happen in a normal fight, and how dangerous any kind of violence is, but I’m not sure how much of an outlier / regular that is.

Maybe vague, but what I’m getting at is how, if at all, has this trend changed in superheroes over the years? And how successfully have they grappled with the “Ka pow” solution and what would actually come of it?

I've talked about this a bit in the past with regards to Batman (although I think the Punisher is the better case study) and vigilantism in general.

I think it's genuinely important that superheroes avoid the trap of "Spidercop" et al. (the Playstation Spider-Man games really pissed me off on this topic, as amazing as they are in other aspects) and grapple with what it means to be a vigilante in society, both the good and the bad of it.

That being said, though, I think this is basically a solved issue in superhero comics and has been practically since the beginning.

Building off their initial focus on organized crime coming out of the pulps - because pace to my abolitionist and restorative justice brethren, but that shit does not work on mobsters - superhero comics pivoted by creating the supervillain.

While many supervillains get their start as exaggerations of the organized crime figure, and there are some great punch-clock villains out there, most supervillains exist outside of the framework of criminal justice reform because their motivations are usually sui generis and their criminal activities are so baroque and often have more to do with personal vendettas and dominance displays than anything that actually motivates real-world violent crime.

[meredithwillettkirby]

PEOPLE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO WORK WHILE INCARCERATED OR IN THE HOSPITAL. IT SHOULD NOT BE LEGAL TO PAY THEM LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE! THAT IS SLAVERY. IT SHOULD ALSO NOT BE LEGAL TO PAY DISABLED PEOPLE LESS THAN MINIMUM WAGE ACCORDING TO HOW "USEFUL" THEY ARE (IT IS, CURRENTLY)

[personal-blog243]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/12/biden-pardons-clemency/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10EHfF884vBXHKLeEEm4Ub-Nwyu-NhzQEv0lCZDVWo1b3I_AnxEWFT4aI_aem_8N5whbAEMpowVmHjFjloPg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/12/12/biden-pardons-clemency/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR10EHfF884vBXHKLeEEm4Ub-Nwyu-NhzQEv0lCZDVWo1b3I_AnxEWFT4aI_aem_8N5whbAEMpowVmHjFjloPg

This makes me feel better now that I know it’s not JUST about his son!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Christian Paz at Vox:

Tim Walz was just over a year into his first term as Minnesota governor when a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in May 2020, touching off a generation-defining summer of global protests against police brutality and racial inequality. Four years later, Walz’s handling of the demonstrations — which included mass unrest in Minnesota’s largest cities — is under new scrutiny after Vice President Kamala Harris tapped the governor to be her running mate on Tuesday.

At least two people died during the violence in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, more than 600 arrests were made in the initial days of unrest, and the whole span of rioting and law enforcement response made it one of the most costly and destructive periods of civil unrest in US history. Minneapolis and Saint Paul sustained hundreds of millions of dollars in damage during those riots, and hundreds of buildings were heavily damaged. Conservatives have charged Walz with essentially allowing rioters to “burn Minneapolis to the ground” and waffling on the deployment of National Guard troops to quell the violence. Walz wasn’t the main authority in charge of responding to the unrest — that was the task of local officials, including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. But the task eventually passed to him once it was too much for local officials to handle. Both Walz and Frey’s governments have traded blame and presented their own versions of the events of those days of rage, but the full story of what happened is still not completely known.

What did Walz do during the unrest?

The main line of criticism of Walz’s response to the late-spring riots hinges on the time it took for him to deploy the Minnesota National Guard and coordinate with other state and local officials in restoring order.

Floyd was killed on May 25, and large protests, with some vandalism and police violence, began the next day. By the evening of May 27, largely peaceful protests grew more violent, with looting and arson around the city. Frey, the mayor, reportedly contacted Walz that evening and asked for help from the Minnesota National Guard. The city’s police chief then sent Walz’s office a written request for 600 troops, in addition to some other logistical notes. Walz and his office did not sign an executive order authorizing National Guard deployments until the following afternoon, May 28, at which point much of the city had shut down, businesses were closed and boarded up to prevent looting, and buildings were smoldering after overnight arsons. That night saw some of the worst rioting, violence, and arson, as well as one of the indelible scenes of the protests: the breach and burning of the Minneapolis police’s Third Precinct police station. A few hundred National Guard and Minnesota State Patrol officers had been deployed to Minneapolis by then, but were charged with protecting federal buildings and downtown areas of the city, as well as escorting first responders, instead of immediately going to hot spots.

Walz would later say that the city had not specified where the troops should go — and state and local officials later reflected that there was a breakdown in communication, coordination, and understanding of just how long it would take to get National Guard troops prepped. The next morning, once National Guard troops and the state patrol had taken control of the area around the station, another lasting moment occurred: the arrest of CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and his crew while reporting live near the police station. At a press conference on May 29, Walz would take responsibility for the state patrol’s mishandling of the news crew, saying, “There is absolutely no reason something like this should happen. Calls were made immediately … I failed you last night in that.”

That press conference was also the first time Walz acknowledged that local officials’ response had been an “abject failure” and that he would now be leading the response. He said he had spoken with President Donald Trump and said that his tweets about “shooting” starting after looting were “unhelpful.” He deployed more National Guard troops and instituted a curfew. Still, more violence and vandalism occurred. The following day, Saturday, May 30, Walz would fully mobilize the National Guard, speak with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and acknowledge that the situation had gotten worse because “outside agitators” had entered the region. The protests and riots wouldn’t be fully tamped down in the Twin Cities until June 7.

[...]

Republicans are attacking the governor’s response now that he’s on the VP ticket

Since the Walz announcement, Republicans have assailed him as “weak, failed, and dangerously liberal,” and zeroed in specifically on his response to the Floyd protests and their aftermath. Given that the racial reckoning that the Floyd murder kicked off included the rise to prominence of the “Defund the Police” slogan and movement, some conservatives have also claimed that Walz was being “soft on crime” for supporting police reforms in the state that banned chokeholds, created new mental health resources for police and first responders, and required excessive-force trainings. And others in right-wing media have conflated his response to the Floyd murder specifically, which he connected to “systemic issues” with policing and “institutional racism,” with Walz offering excuses for the violence.

During the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd protests that escalated into riots in 2020, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D)’s response to the protests has been facing scrutiny from Republicans who saw Walz as responding too slowly.

[fresne999]

We lift as we climb,

[ritawilliamsmscj]

Will Luigi Mangione Receive a Fair Trial? Probably Not.