Sex panic going hi-tech

When someone emailed me yesterday about Offendar, I thought it was a joke. Or maybe a typo. But, no. Some greedy techno-entrepreneurs have found another way (they hope) to capitalize on the current sex panic in the United States.

What is Offendar? It's a portable "personal threat detection system" that sounds an alarm whenever someone nearby is wearing an electronic ankle bracelet.

It's not in use yet. But a rabidly tough-on-crime lawmaker in Ohio invited the maker to demonstrate it yesterday before state lawmakers. Offendar LLC is hoping that the Ohio state senator Tim Grendell will help pass legislation requiring that the technology for the device be inserted into existing ankle bracelets.

I'm guessing that would be necessary because so many people other than sex offenders are required to wear ankle bracelets these days. It's a common method for courts to keep track of people out on bail for misdemeanor offenses such as drunk driving. Here in Contra Costa County, California, just about every teenager released from juvenile hall pending further court action has a bracelet secured to his or her ankle.

David Singleton, executive director of the Ohio Justice & Policy Center, said the idea plays on public fears while penalizing people who have already served time in prison for their crimes. "What are we trying to do, make it impossible for people to get on their feet again and be productive citizens?" Singleton said.

A spokeswoman for the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center concurred, pointing out that 9 in 10 sex crimes involve family members or other intimates of the victim. "This just plays on the great … stranger danger myth that’s not true," said Lindsay Fello-Sharpe.

If the hand-held alarm takes off, Offendar LLC hopes to expand the concept to "permanent and mobile perimeter alerts" around schools, zoos, shopping malls, carnivals, fairs, and sports events.

Offendar principal Jerry Pignolet said the device is meant to enable people to leave the presence of a sex offender. "It gives you an opportunity to gather your family, get in the car and lock the doors."

The current wave of vigilante attacks against convicted sex offenders makes me doubt that everyone would just duck and run.

Picture this: Some guy who's just had a fight with his girlfriend fuels up on alcohol and decides to take out his rage and hostility on the nearest bogeyman sex offender. When police find him standing over the dead body with a bloody bat, they tell him the bad news. The dead kid had a conviction for statutory rape because when he was 18 he had dated a girl who was 16. Oops!

Ohio newspapers, including the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Columbus Dispatch, are covering the story. In the blogosphere, Sentencing Law & Policy has more.

Detection of feigned mental retardation

The Clinical Neuropsychologist has a new article on the problems in detecting feigned mental retardation. That issue is getting more attention these days in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, outlawing the execution of mentally retarded defendants. The British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog has more on the study, which is entitled "Identification of feigned mental retardation using the new generation of malingering detection instruments: Preliminary findings."

Top criminal justice stories today

Felony murder, juvenile recidivism,
racist sentencing, and prison evangelism

Wow! There is just so much to blog about today, and so little time!

Liptak on the felony murder rule

My favorite today is Adam Liptak's editorial on felony murder. As Liptak points out, only the United States still invokes this archaic construct in which someone can be punished equally for loaning their car or for committing the actual murder in which the car was used. Realizing the injustice of punishing someone for something that someone else did, a few brave states, including Hawaii, Kentucky and Michigan, have abolished the rule. Others continue to routinely use it, despite its unjust effects and its slim-to-nonexistent deterrent value.

Perhaps the New York Times editorial resonated for me today in particular because I was just involved in a case in which the prosecution is using the felony murder rule to seek a life sentence against a 15-year-old boy. The boy, who had no arrest history and was unarmed, was at the scene when two older youths committed a robbery in which a clerk was killed.

Liptak's editorial, "American Exception: Serving Life for Providing Car to Killers," is online here. Hat tip to the ever-helpful Jane for alerting me to it first.

Juveniles: Go to prison, become violent

Runner-up today is the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on juvenile recidivism. Transferring juveniles to the adult system and sending them to adult prisons makes them more criminal and more violent, the expert panel concluded.

No, duh! Another government report concluding the obvious. But I'm hoping that the CDC imprimatur leads to change. The report goes hand in hand with a recent report by the Campaign for Youth Justice finding that youths detained in adult jails are more likely to be sexually victimized and to commit suicide. The two reports come as the U.S. Senate prepares to consider reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.

The Washington Post has full coverage here. The Washington State Institute for Public Policy has additional research findings on juvenile recidivism. No surprise – for juveniles, TREATMENT WORKS. And incarceration doesn't. Listen up, legislators!

Loss for prison evangelism

Also in today's news, a federal appeals court has struck down an evangelical prison program that had milked the government of Iowa for $1.5 million. The InnerChange program, run by Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship Ministries, afforded better housing and expedited access to parole resources to participating prisoners. Prisoners of other faiths were demeaned as "unsaved," "lost," "pagan" and "sinful.” The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that government support for the program violated the Constitutionally required separation of church and state.

Coverage is in the San Francisco Chronicle and at the Real Cost of Prisons blog. See also Slate magazine's 2000 story on the program's leader, Charles Colson: "How a Watergate crook became America's greatest Christian conservative."

Racial disparities in sentencing

And yet another study, this one on racial disparities in sentencing, by the Justice Policy Institute. Once again, the San Francisco Chronicle has a fine report, focusing on the enormous racial discrepancies in that fair city. And, once again, the reports are in. So, now let's get on to the public policy changes.

New police manual on sting operations

The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) publishes a series of empirically based manuals for police. The latest, Sting Operations, describes the pros and cons of such undercover operations, and explains the various deceptive techniques and how they can be adapted to different types of crimes.

The manual's conclusion:

"Sting operations can be expensive, are demanding on personnel, and generally offer limited relief from recurring crime and disorder problems. This is not to say that they should never be used. They may be beneficial when used in concert with other police responses known to provide long-term solutions to the problem, such as a tool to collect information that will help in mounting other preventative operations. Clearly, they do provide some attractive benefits to police departments, particularly by facilitating investigation, increasing arrests, and fostering a cooperative spirit between prosecutors and police, all of which result in favorable publicity. However, you need to assess these benefits against the negative ethical and legal problems associated with sting operations, especially the finding that in some cases they increase crime, and in the long term, with some exceptions, generally do not reduce it."

The 72-page manual is available online.

Hot off the press: New child custody text

The Art and Science of Child Custody Evaluations

by Jonathan W. Gould and David A. Martindale

Back in the dark ages, a psychologist hired by one parent or the other in a child custody case could waltz into court and give a subjective clinical opinion about which parent was more fit and what would be in the children's best interests. Thankfully, that is no longer the case. Such a psychologist might be legally barred due to inadequate training or experience, or might face legal action by the other parent. Back in 1998 (with a revised edition published last year), Jonathan Gould wrote a really helpful manual called Conducting Scientifically Crafted Child Custody Evaluations. The guide was aimed at helping custody evaluators avoid the many pitfalls and landmines in this litigious subfield of forensic psychology. Now, he has teamed up with fellow expert David A. Martindale to bring us even more of the latest information and advice in this rapidly evolving area.

The authors focus both on the law and on the clinical practicalities. Clear and well-written chapters explore ethics and bias, child interviewing, child development research, assessing parents, child sexual abuse allegations, domestic violence, and child alienation. The authors carefully explain the primary legal standard in child custody work, "The Best Interests of the Child" standard. Of special use to the practitioner, the appendix contains sample letters and statements of understanding, all with permission to freely photocopy.

The overall messages here are ones worth repeating: Know the law, know the science, remain unbiased, and be humble. This updated reference book will be useful not only to child custody evaluators but also to attorneys and to students of forensic psychology.

Study: Sentencing Children to Die in Prison

Test your knowledge:

1. How many nations sentence children to life in prison?

2. What states have the most people serving life for crimes committed before they reached adulthood?

3. What is the minimum age at which a child can be sentenced to life without parole?

4. Which children are most likely to receive life sentences?

ANSWERS ARE BELOW.

ANSWERS:

1. Just two - the United States and Israel. But Israel is in far distant second place, with only seven juveniles serving life as compared with 2,387 in the United States.

2. Pennsylvania is in first place, with 433; California is in second place, with 227.

3. Of the 44 states that permit life without parole for juveniles, 13 have no minimum age, and one sets the minimum at age 8.

4. More than half are first-time offenders. African Americans are 10 times more likely than white juveniles to be sentenced to life without parole. In California, the disparity is twice that – a 20:1 ratio.

These are some of the data from a new study, "Sentencing Children to Die in Prison," by the University of San Francisco's Center for Law and Global Justice. The study was highlighted in the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 19.

The racial disparity is very apparent to me in the cases that I've been involved in. Even when arrest rates are controlled, African American boys are far more likely than anyone else to be sentenced as adults. This is illustrated in the following graph, from California's Center on Crime and Juvenile Justice:


Yesterday's Ledger Dispatch (Amador County, California) has a long article on efforts in many states to undo the knee-jerk tough-on-juveniles statutes of the past decade. The article, "Prosecuting kids as adults: Some say laws too harsh, states taking second look," is available online. California, which you'll recall from the above quiz is #2 in the nation in locking up kids for life, is one of the states with reform legislation pending. The California Juvenile Life Without Parole Reform Act (SB 999) would allow people sentenced for juvenile crimes to apply for parole after serving 25 years. The measure is opposed by police and prosecutor associations.

California also has a pending challenge to the law as cruel and unusual punishment, barred by the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Antonio Nunez was 14 years old when he accepted a ride home from a 27-year-old man he had met at a party. On the way, the adult kidnapped another man. Although no one was injured in the 2003 incident, Nunez was convicted of kidnapping and attempted murder and is serving life without parole.

Juvies is a recent film chronicling the lives of a group of 12 California youngsters prosecuted as adults and sent to adult prisons.