Barry Krisberg Discusses California Prison Reform

-American Public Media, Marketplace, June 6, 2011 by Jeff Tyler
http://bit.ly/kWGdZj

Barry Krisberg with UC Berkeley’s Law School says housing an inmate in prison costs about $50,000 a year. “Putting that same person on probation—even intensive probation—would be $12,000. So you’re saving an extraordinary amount of money by managing the non-dangerous people in probation.”

-San Jose Mercury News, June 8, 2011
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_18233972

California’s juvenile prison system offers evidence that locking up more people does not directly reduce crime, according to research by Barry Krisberg at the UC Berkeley School of Law. In 1996, California had 10,000 juveniles behind bars, Krisberg says. By 2010, the number had shrunk to 1,000. But instead of the spike in crime that many expected, the number of incidents has dropped.

-San Francisco Chronicle, June 13, 2011 by Marisa Lagos
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/13/MN1P1JSCBV.DTL&tsp=1

Barry Krisberg … said the California District Attorneys Association has enormous sway over lawmakers and opposes most sentencing changes…. “The question is, what’s wrong with us? Are we more conservative than Virginia? Are we more irrational than North Carolina?” he said. “It’s the politics, and it’s the dilemma of this state…. It’s not the prison guards—they are not standing in the way. It’s not victims’ rights groups. It’s really the District Attorneys Association.”

Stanley Lubman Notes Setbacks to China’s Legal Reforms

The Wall Street Journal, China Real Time Report, May 31, 2011 by Stanley Lubman
http://on.wsj.com/kRr32G

China’s leadership has put a priority on quieting social tensions and reducing public protests. To help accomplish these goals they have reversed policies of court reform that have been promoted for over two decades. This setback threatens the future of the criminal process, manifested in recent prosecutions, detentions and house arrests of individuals asserting fundamental rights that have been well-publicized outside China.

Aarti Kohli Explains Flaws in Federal Immigration Policy

KQED-FM, May 31, 2011 by Erika Kelly
http://www.kqed.org/a/kqednews/RN201105311730/a

“The way Secure Communities normally works is that someone’s brought into the jail, their fingerprints are taken and then checked against immigration databases. If there’s anything that raises ICE’s suspicions within those databases, they ask the local sheriffs or police departments to detain this person…. One of the main objections is that the vast majority of people who are actually being detained and sent to ICE are low-level offenders, and not murderers, rapists, criminals, terrorists, which is what the federal government had said the program was in place for.”

Franklin Zimring Opines on Toddler’s Death

The New York Times, May 29, 2011 by Manny Fernandez
http://nyti.ms/j2rHya

“It is not simply that it is a toddler’s death,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a criminologist and law professor…. “It is that it’s a toddler’s unreported death. Whether it is accidental, intentional or something in between, when the death of somebody that young goes unreported to the authorities, the lack of reporting suggests that this is intimately linked to events involving the custodial parent. Sometimes it’s abuse. Sometimes it’s neglect. Sometimes it’s an accident.”

Pamela Samuelson Proposes Alternative to Google Books

The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 29, 2011 by Marc Parry
http://chronicle.com/article/Out-of-Fear-Institutions-Lock/127701/

The system hinges on a collecting society that would negotiate licenses for works owned by both members and nonmembers. Unclaimed money from out-of-print books could be set aside for “a period of years,” Ms. Samuelson suggests. If efforts to find owners during that time were unsuccessful, she writes, “the works should be designated orphans and made available on an open-access basis.”

Franklin Zimring Grades New York’s Crime-Fighting Tactics

Crain’s New York Business, May 29, 2011 by Jeremy Smerd and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/ (registration required; go to H:\Law School in the News\In the News 2011\News Clips for article)

He cheered the NYPD’s focus on high-crime areas and corners where drugs were openly sold. Drug use has not decreased, but sales have moved into people’s apartments; gone are turf wars between dealers. “That’s when the guns come out,” he said.

Jason Schultz Questions PayPal Suit Against Google

GigaOM, May 28, 2011 by Cortney Fielding
http://gigaom.com/2011/05/28/in-legal-battle-with-google-paypal-faces-uphill-battle-in-california/

“California is very pro-competition, especially here in the Silicon Valley. Think of startup culture. We like to entice employees to jump ship and compete with former employers,” Schultz said. “This state has a very free-trade approach to labor markets. You can’t lock in your employees forever. You have to compete to keep them.”

John Yoo Questions the Killing of Osama bin Laden

National Review, May 27, 2011 by John Yoo
http://bit.ly/la34D0

Our most critical need in that war is intelligence. But policies put into place by the Obama administration during the last two years have retarded and even reversed the progress made since 9/11. Obama’s policies on detention, interrogation, and the trial of terrorists are driving us to kill rather than capture high-value al-Qaeda leaders. While bin Laden’s death was a victory, we lost an even greater intelligence opportunity.