In the early 1990's, Georgia, like many other states, enacted harsh laws providing for juveniles to be charged as adults for a variety of crimes. The Georgia legislature will be reconsidering the law, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in an editorial, urges its repeal.

Since Senate Bill 440 became law nine years ago, the state has sentenced 566 children aged 13 to 17 to mandatory 10-year terms. Two-thirds of those children were sentenced for sex crimes. But the predicted wave of juvenile crime never materialized. The law did not make the streets safer. Instead, it forced teenagers to come of age in adult prisons, where they learned to be more violent and antisocial.

Both prosecutors and public defenders oppose the law, saying it "amounts to giving up on children in their most formative years." These juveniles only remain in a juvenile facility until they are 17. Then they are transferred to the adult state prison, where there is no educational or treatment program designed for them.

A study in Florida showed that the rate of recidivism is higher for juveniles sent to an adult prison rather than a juvenile facility. As one long-time juvenile public defender said, "Putting kids in a system where they have to be vicious to survive is insane."

Aside from the draconian terms of imprisonment, the law does not allow reduced terms for those kids who are first offenders, remorseful, or who agree to cooperate with authorities. How's this for a horror story?

Edward Boyd urged his 16-year-old son, a first-time offender, to tell the truth after he was arrested for armed robbery. Using a BB gun, the teenager and two older youths held up a Milledgeville theater worker carrying a money bag with less than $50 in it.

For admitting the crime, the boy was sentenced to remain in prison until he is 26 years old.

The elder Boyd, a college administrator, says his son, now 17, is in the adult prison at Alto with a 48-year-old and a 28-year-old on either side of him. He sometimes fears for his life.

Two legislators, Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta) and Rep. Alisha Thomas (D-Austell), are trying to change the law. The editorial, in supporting repeal of the law, wisely observes,

At the end of next year, the first group of young adults who were sentenced under Georgia's harsh law will be released. Much of what they know about life they have learned from hardened criminals. Instead of protecting the public from dangerous juveniles, SB 440 may be producing hundreds more adult criminals. Lawmakers should repeal it.

We agree. The expertise of the family court and the juvenile court system serves a vital function in our society. It's time for legislators and politicians to learn that America cannot jail itself out of its juvenile crime problem.

Arrives in bookstores tomorrow....Read the 13 page Introduction now and visit the website.

Acclaimed author and journalist Eric Alterman's scathing and witty investigation into who really controls the media. Armed with data and in brisk, light-hearted prose, Alterman exposes the fallacy of the vast left-wing conspiracy that never was.

What Liberal Media?
by Eric Alterman


Buy the Book Today!

Here's Eric's tentative media schedule:

Television Appearances (tentative):
The O'Reilly Factor on Fox at 7 on 2/4
Crossfire, CNN at 7 on 2/5
John Gibson, Fox at 5 on 2/6
Nachman MSNBC at 5, on 2/7

Personal Appearances:
Seattle, WA: Mon., 2/17, 7pm: University Bookstore
Berkeley, CA: Tues., 2/18, 7:30pm: Cody's Books
San Francisco, CA: Wed., 2/19, 7pm: City Lights
Los Angeles, CA: Fri., 2/21, 7:30pm: skylight Books
New York, NY: Tues., 2/25, 7:30pm: Barnes & Noble (82nd & Bdwy)
Washington, DC: Thurs., 3/6, 7pm: Politics & Prose

A court in Iran has sentenced two pollsters to prison for conducting an opinion poll on U.S.-Iranian relations.

Abbas Abdi, a prominent reformist politician, was sentenced to seven years and his colleague, Hussein-Ali Qazian, received an eight-year prison term, the reports said.... The two men, along with several others from a similar institute, were arrested and tried after the release of the survey in September that indicated three-quarters of Iranians favored resuming ties with the United States.

The Pittsburgh Gazette is backing a bill pending before the legislature that would ban the death penalty for juveniles.

Many Americans will be shocked to learn that Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan and the United States are the only nations in the world that permit the execution of juveniles. This isn't the kind of company a liberal democratic society should desire to be included in. We urge our state representatives and our governor to get behind the movement to put a halt to this barbarism.

In conjunction with its newly launched "No Death Penalty for Juvenile Offenders" campaign, Amnesty International, USA is going to conduct a public opinion poll this month to gauge opinion on the issue of execution of juvenile offenders. The group believes support for it has waned. We certainly hope so.

A big thanks to Reverand Mr. George W. Brooks, Director of Advocacy, Kolbe House, Chicago, Illinois, who has kindly taken to forwarding us the most current new articles concerning the death penalty. You will be seeing more of them in our newsfeed to the left and undoubtedly more discussion here.

LA Police Chief Bill Bratton is ready to put his "broken window" policing strategy into action. Bratton has selected three areas of Los Angeles for starters: the Hollywood Strip, McArthur Park and downtown's Skid Row.

The "broken windows" policing strategy "holds that maintaining public order is at least as important as solving crimes and that attacking low-level offenses can reduce fear and prevent more serious offenses."

In Los Angeles, Bratton has not picked easy proving grounds. Hollywood has two-thirds of all prostitution arrests in the city. Skid row is home to the largest concentration of homeless and is in the LAPD division that logged more drug sales arrests than any other last year. The city already has spent millions trying to clean up MacArthur Park, in the middle of a poor, overcrowded, crime-plagued neighborhood.

"Parks are essential to the quality of life in a city," Bratton said. "If the small things are left undeterred, they turn into big things. So the homeless take over a portion of the park. Drug dealers follow. Drug dealers beget violence. It then begins to affect the whole business area and businesses begin to die."

A broken window signals that no one cares, the theory goes. Graffiti, vandalism and prostitution foster fear, and more serious crime follows. "What people see every day generates so much of their fear. Graffiti, homelessness and drug dealers. That's what drives people out of the cities," Bratton said. "It's all about quality-of-life issues."

Apparently, it has been in use selectively the past few months, and crime is already going down in LA. "The LAPD reports crime has begun to drop, following the pattern in New York, which experienced double-digit declines on Bratton's watch." In New York, Bratton went after squeegee users--the guys that used to come up to your car's windshields while you were at a red light and start washing your windows and then asked you for money. In LA, Bratton says, the equivalent are the beggars. With both he says, the issue is "quality of life."

Graffiti, homelessness and drug dealers. That's what drives people out of the cities....Some of it's benign. But it raises the degree of discomfort for the average person."

Bratton has appointed LAPD Capt. Michael Downing his point man to clean up Hollywood, which is plagued by drug sales and protstitutes.

[Downing is ] the man whose job it is to make sure things don't go wrong. The kind of risk-taker and innovator whom Bratton encourages, Downing, as commander of the Hollywood Division, launched "Operation Restore Hollywood" shortly before Christmas.

Narcotics and gang officers joined with a county interagency anti-drug task force, officers and a neighborhood prosecutor to pursue the pushers, many of whom work for the notorious 18th Street gang.

Downing was acting on the chief's philosophy: Bust a drug dealer or snag a tagger and you also may catch a killer. Officers believe they have affected more than drug sales. "Robberies are down 60%," Downing said.

Also on Bratton's list are the street hookers. LA just passed an ordinance allowing the police to seize and sell the soliciting johns' cars.

We haven't even gotten to McArthur Park and Skid Row yet, so go read the rest of this very interesting article for the problems in those areas and Bratton's intended solutions.

The biggest obstacle seems to us to be the lack of financial resources in LA. It's one thing to rid the streets of the homeless by putting them in shelters or giving them a place to live. It's another thing entirely if they are put in jail. Knowing Bratton as we do, we don't think he intends to put the homeless in jail. He's always expressed concern for civil liberties and we have no reason to doubt him.

Right after he took office, Bratton followed through with two previously authorized "massive" skid row sweeps. "An analysis of the resulting 185 arrests shows that violent, dangerous criminals were taken off the streets. Those arrested included violators and fugitives, as well as convicts with multiple offenses such as rape, incest, armed robbery, burglary and assault."

Since another hundred persons were issued citations for minor infractions during these sweeps, we assume, although the article doesn't say, that the sweeps did not result in non-violators being jailed solely for being homeless.

Some are skeptical of Bratton's chances for success. Our money's on him. We're going to keep our eye on the goings on in the LAPD, we'll report here, and if they raise the red flag of civil liberties violations, you'll hear us complain. But right now, as we expected, the Chief is beginning to work his magic for the betterment of LA.

"Beginning February 1, drug dealers and officials involved in narcotics face possible execution in an effort to make Thailand drug-free within three months, the government has declared."

"Tell them [dealers] to stop selling drugs and leave the communities for good or they will be put behind bars or even vanish without a trace," Interior Minister Wan Nor Matha told citizens."

Apparently speed is the number one demon drug in Thailand, even more so than heroin. We'd recommend the U.S. not send our fighter pilots over there.

The AP is reporting that Ex-Gov. Ryan Issued Hundreds of Pardons while in office.

Once again, we salute former Governor Ryan. The majority of the pardons he issued were for "ordinary people pleading to purge their records of minor offenses. Many blamed their crimes on immaturity, drug addiction, an abusive childhood or falling in with the wrong crowd. Their offenses included credit card and insurance fraud, shoplifting, sexual abuse, battery and drug possession."

Many states allow exungement for these offenses. Others don't. The pardons allow these people who have already served their time or other consequences of their convictions, to be free of the stigma when applying for jobs and/or professional licenses. We can't think of a better way of ensuring that these former offenders become productive members of the workforce, with a chance to move up the ladder, than to pardon them.

During a closed-door hearing this past Thursday, the Judge in the Zacarias Moussouai case granted Moussaoui's motion for access to al Qaeda suspect Ramzi Bin-al-Shibh, who has been in military custody for some months now.

This is important because it may prompt the U.S. to dismiss the federal criminal case against Moussaoui in favor of trying him in a secret miltary tribunal proceeding. See here. For some background, see here .

From the evidence disclosed to date, we lean towards believing, as do the French, that Moussaoui was a member of al Qaeda but he was not part of the September 11 plans, rather, he was going to be used in some later or related attack. The evidence appears scant that he was intended to be the "20th hijacker" as charged by the Government. If this is the case, then the Government may not be able to prove its conspiracy charge against Moussaoui --and may not be able to obtain the death penalty for him. Bin-al-Shibh could corroborate this, thus Moussaoui has the right to approach him to determine if indeed this is what he would say if called as a witness in his trial--or to obtain information from him that might lead him to other evidence to support this.

We think the best resolution, as we said here,

...is for a compromise to be worked out where the Government drops the death penalty request against Moussaoui if Moussaoui pleads and agrees to a life sentence thereby avoiding the need to call Binalshibh at all. Whatever happens, it should occur publicly. The Government should not be allowed to hide behind a veil of secrecy in this case as it has with Padilla and Hamdi and the other detainees."

You can access all of our Moussaoui posts since last June here and prior to that, our almost daily CrimeLynx coverage here (scroll down to Moussaoui) and here.

Massive protests are planned for New York City and elsewhere February 15. United for Peace has all the details.

Join United for Peace & Justice for massive anti-war protests in New York City on Feb. 15 and San Francisco on Feb. 16. These demonstrations are part of a world-wide day of opposition to war against Iraq. From Bangkok to San Juan, from Johannesburg to Rome, the people of the world will speak out in what the London Daily Mirror says may be "the largest ever mobilization against war."

In the most serious suicide attempt yet among the Guantanamo detainees, a prisoner in his 20's was found hanging in his cell. Officials would not say whether the man was on life support or would survive, however, the situation was serious enough that his home country (not revealed to the public) was notified.

The latest attempt comes at a time when commanders, grappling with despair among long-held detainees facing neither trial nor charge, are building barracklike compounds for some prisoners as part of a reward system for cooperation with their captors. More than 600 prisoners from 43 countries are now held in seven-by-eight-foot cagelike cells. An undisclosed number of them are under suicide watch.

Vienna Colucci, an international justice specialist at Amnesty International, confirmed the possibility of a link between the prisoners' detention and the suicide attempts.

'Prisoners' limited contact with the outside world and the uncertainty of their futures, combined with other conditions of treatment, may cause severe physical and psychological damage, particularly when imposed long-term or indefinitely,'' she said.

``That prisoners are repeatedly attempting to take their own lives indicates the human cost of the indefinite legal limbo into which they have been thrown.''

Medical personnel at one point last year reported that dozens of prisoners had tried to kill themselves. McWilliams later said fewer than a dozen episodes fit the strict definition of a suicide attempt and that others qualified as ``self-harm incidents.''

None of the earlier suicide attempts resulted in a prisoner's being declared in ''serious condition,'' a military spokesman said, adding that the hanging victim was the only detainee in custody at Guantánamo now in serious condition.

Why are we still holding these men in the absence of criminal charges and so long past the time when they would have divulged any helpful information to their captors if they had it? Given the increasing likelihood that U.S. troops are headed to war in Iraq, aren't we just providing that country's leaders with an excuse to cruelly treat any of our military personnel who are captured? We certainly think so.

Cancer patient Steve Kubby, a transplanted Calfornian and medpot practitioner is begging Canada for asylum, claiming U.S. drug warriors are out of control.

Kubby and three fellow Californian medical marijuana activists with "arrest warrants outstanding, prosecutions pending, jail terms unfulfilled" in the U.S., and threatened with deportation or extradition, have filed suit in Canada seeking asylum as political refugees. A hearing will be held in March to determine whether they can stay in Canada or must be returned to the U.S.

Kubby, a one-time California Libertarian gubernatorial candidate, was diagnosed with malignant adrenal gland cancer in the early 1970's. "In the span of a few years, he underwent four surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation. Nothing seemed to stop his steady decline. Unchecked, doctors say adrenal cancer usually spreads through the vital organs. Kubby says he was told he shouldn't expect to live beyond five years, and likely would die of a heart attack or stroke."

"Marijuana became his life preserver quite by accident, he says, with the help of a soon-famous friend, a pre-law student named Cheech who became half of "Cheech and Chong. "

This is a great story article that reads like a novel, go read the whole thing.

Then, check out the Kubby family's home in Home is Where the Hash Is, and learn about Pot-TV, an Internet streaming video site run out of Vancouver’s B.C. Marijuana Party headquarters. The Kubbys tape a few programs a week for the site from their home--usually containing news updates about various busts and legal cases. This work pays the Kubbys about $25k a year and allows them to have Canadian work visas.

Kubby has a medical marijuana exemption from Health Canada that allows him to travel anywhere in Canada with 360 grams of pot--that's enough to fill a one lb. coffee can. He is also allowed to possess six pounds in his home and grow 59 plants.

"It is truly a North American paradox: This man U.S. law officers called a drug trafficker is considered by Canadian health officials simply to be a very sick fellow."

One by one, former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley lists the failings of Bush's SOTUS in The State of the Unilateralist Case , in today's Washington Post. He begins,

The State of the Union address was President Bush's opportunity to make the case for a unilateral invasion of Iraq. He failed to do so in a convincing manner. How we get rid of Saddam Hussein is as important in the long run as just getting rid of him. If we do it the wrong way, our action could seriously damage larger national interests.

This failing resonated with us the most.

4. Bush's strong remarks ignored the fact that military actions often have unpredictable consequences. For example, the 1991 Persian Gulf War led to a continuing U.S. presence in the Islamic holy land -- something the British and French always avoided -- and radicalized a generation of Muslims, helping to create the atmosphere for the emergence of Osama bin Laden. This time, what will happen when the shooting stops is far from clear. If we are to be seen as more than transparent hypocrites, we will have to not only win a war and maintain a military presence in Iraq, but also to preside over the development of democracy in a country that makes the former Yugoslavia seem homogeneous. This is a multi-year commitment that could take thousands of U.S. lives and billions of dollars, yet there appears to be no plan for carrying it out. The president has not leveled with the American people about the cost of democratization, nor has he built popular support for occupation. By telling the American public only half the story now, he risks great national division later.

Unfortunately, a new poll by ABC and the Washington Post shows that 66% now approve of Bush's plan for military action in Iraq. 51% say they approve even without U.N. approval.

Update: History Professor Tom Spencer of Thinking Things Through explains the flaws in the new poll. (Thanks, Skippy, for the link)