Barry Krisberg Comments on Crime Trends

-Daily News, May 26, 2011 by C.J. Lin
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_18151577?source=most_viewed

Researchers studying the effects of California’s three-strikes law have found a puzzling trend: older adults are being arrested for felonies in droves, while felony arrests of juveniles are dropping…. “In criminology, we assume that people slow down and commit fewer crimes,” said Barry Krisberg. “We may need to revisit that and look at that again.”

-KQED-FM, May 26, 2011 Host Dave Iverson
http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201105260900

California’s murder rates, released this week, are at the lowest level in more than 40 years…. “Twenty years ago, there were some predicting a huge crime increase, and I think a few of us felt that those predictions were overblown, but I don’t think anybody—well, very few in criminology—were ready to predict a steady decline of the magnitude that we’ve seen.”

-San Francisco Chronicle, May 27, 2011 by Demian Bulwa
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/27/MN6H1JLDAQ.DTL&type=printable

“We haven’t seen crime this low since Dwight Eisenhower was president. So it is remarkable,” said Barry Krisberg, a criminal justice expert at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “You would have bet that, given the economic downturn, you would have seen more crime. But that’s kind of a myth. We’re challenging a lot of myths.”

Jeanne Woodford, Barry Krisberg Approve SCOTUS Ruling on Prison Overcrowding

-Los Angeles Times, May 25, 2011 by Steve Lopez
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0525-lopez-getoutofjail-20110523,0,1002589.column

“Prison is for seriously violent individuals,” said Jeanne Woodford, the former corrections chief who’s now with the Earl Warren Institute…. In her opinion, we incarcerate “many more prisoners than is necessary for the safety of the public.” But Woodford and others said the Supreme Court decision is cause for hope, because it forces the state to address the situation.

-Los Angeles Times, May 29, 2011 by Jeanne Woodford and Barry Krisberg
http://lat.ms/kvUXhy

Jammed prisons offer no chance for education, mental health or rehabilitation programs. And they can be breeding grounds for more violent crime and victimization…. The court’s ruling, far from being a threat to public safety, is an opportunity to reform the broken California penal system, which could mean better outcomes for all of us.

Goodwin Liu Drops Judicial Bid

-The Wall Street Journal, May 25, 2011 by Peter Landers
http://on.wsj.com/mm6vxI

Democrats said Mr. Liu, a Rhodes Scholar whose nomination had languished since February 2010, was a sharp legal mind who would invigorate the bench…. “The nomination has been a source of tremendous pride for my family and community,” Mr. Liu said in his letter.

-San Francisco Chronicle, May 26, 2011 by Bob Egelko
http://bit.ly/lXnjIs

“My family and I have decided that it is time for us to regain the ability to make plans for the future,” Liu said. He added that the Judicial Council of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has declared a “desperate need for judges” to fill vacancies, “and it is now clear that continuing my nomination will not address that need any time soon.”

Jeanne Woodford, Franklin Zimring Fault Schwarzenegger’s Prison Policies

The Associated Press, May 24, 2011 by Don Thompson
http://www.vcstar.com/news/2011/may/24/schwarzenegger-had-mixed-record-on-prison/?print=1

“My frustration was that the governor just didn’t want to address sentencing reform or implement the kind of policies that made sense,” said Jeanne Woodford, who briefly served as Schwarzenegger’s corrections secretary in 2006 before abruptly resigning. “(By the end), he came to see that criminal justice reform was absolutely crucial.”

“In the first two years you have reform appointments made, you have moderation in rhetoric and you have some notion of trying to reintroduce reform,” said Frank Zimring, a University of California, Berkeley law professor who has studied California prisons for nearly 30 years. “Everyone was waiting for the reform agenda to get specific, and it didn’t…. The governor’s political capital never got invested in that reform.”

Franklin Zimring Says Drop in Crime Puzzling

The New York Times, May 23, 2011 by Richard A. Oppel Jr.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24crime.html?scp=2&sq=Berkeley&st=nyt

For those who believed that higher incarceration rates inevitably led to less crime, “this would also be the last time to expect a crime decline,” he said. “The last three years have been a contrarian’s delight—just when you expect the bananas to hit the fan,” said Mr. Zimring…. But he said there was no way to know why—at least not yet.

John Yoo Says War Powers Act Applies to Libya

The Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2011 by John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703509104576327220508314168.html

Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department is arguing that the War Powers Resolution doesn’t apply because the Libyan intervention is too “small” to constitute a “war” under the Constitution. This will come as a surprise to Moammar Gadhafi, who has escaped several attempts on his life, not to mention the Libyans killed by U.S. strikes.

David Onek Opposes Death Penalty

-San Francisco Examiner, May 19, 2011 by Ari Burack
http://bit.ly/kBFmDw

“The death penalty does not work — I will not seek the death penalty in any circumstances,” Onek said.

-San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 24, 2011 by Sarah Phelan
http://www.bestofthebay.com/2011/05/24/fatal-stance

Onek says his stance is informed by his belief that the death penalty solves nothing. “It doesn’t make us safer; it’s not fair and equitable; and it wastes enormous resources,” he said. “We are much better off spending our precious resources on things that actually make us safer, like more cops on the streets, more programs in our communities, and better services for victims.”