Bump and Update (TL): White Collar Crime blog weighs in with good suggestions. I'm with TChris, let's reduce the number of agents assigned to drug investigations.

Original Post by TChris 10/18/08

The Bush administration's top law enforcement priorities have been terrorism and (especially of late, it seems) voter registration fraud. The investigation of financial crime has suffered.

Since 2004, F.B.I. officials have warned that mortgage fraud posed a looming threat, and the bureau has repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more money to replenish the ranks of agents handling nonterrorism investigations, according to records and interviews. But each year, the requests have been denied, with no new agents approved for financial crimes, as policy makers focused on counterterrorism.

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The New York Times reports that drug courts have been a successful experiment. They reduce prison populations and recidivism by substituting treatment and supervision for incarceration in prosecutions of drug offenders.

Experts say drug courts have been the country’s fastest-spreading innovation in criminal justice, giving arrested addicts a chance to avoid prison by agreeing to stringent oversight and addiction treatment. Recent studies show drug courts are one of the few initiatives that reduce recidivism — on average by 8 percent to 10 percent nationally and as high as 26 percent in New York State — and save taxpayer money.

Although there are about 2,100 drug court programs providing treatment at any given time to about 70,000 offenders, that number represents a small percentage of the addicts who are charged with drug crimes. Drug courts have high up-front costs, but they save money in the long term by keeping offenders out of prison and by reducing crime. We need more of them. [more ...]

Welcome news today in the Washington Post: The U.S. Sentencing Commission is considering alternatives to prison for non-violent, low level drug offenders as well as for some supervised release (parole) violators.

The commission's consideration of alternatives to incarceration reflects its determination to persuade Congress to ease federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws that contributed to explosive growth in the prison population. The laws were enacted in the mid-1980s, principally to address a crime epidemic related to crack cocaine. But in recent years, federal judges, public defenders and probation officials have argued that mandatory sentences imprison first-time offenders unnecessarily and disproportionately affect minorities.

Drug courts and adult developmental programs for parolees have worked in the state system. They are far more cost effective than prison: [More...]

DEA Agent Lee Lucas recently torpedoed a drug conspiracy case in Mansfield, Ohio. Turns out, it wasn't the first time for Lucas.

Federal drug agent Lee Lucas, whose rogue informant botched a major drug conspiracy case in Mansfield, had the same problem in Florida. And it could cost taxpayers $356,000.

That's how much a Miami businessman spent defending himself in a case with a bad informant Lucas handled 15 years ago. This month, a federal judge is expected to decide how much the businessman's family should be reimbursed for legal bills related to the case, though prosecutors are likely to appeal.

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University of Colorado campus police seized two ounces of marijuana from student Edward Nicholson's dorm room. As a result, he was charged with possession of marijuana and suspended by C.U.

It turns out, Nicholson had a caregiver's medical marijuana card, allowing him to distribute to medical marijuana patients, even though he himself wasn't a medical marijuana patient.

His criminal charges for possession of marijuana were dismissed and his suspension by C.U. has been reversed. Now, Nicholson wants his pot back and his lawyer says he believes that will happen. [Update: the local news tonight showed Nicholson leaving the police department with his pot. They gave it back.][ More...]

The FBI crime report released today (referenced here with respect to marijuana) also shows a drop in violent crime. And, contrary to the notion often expressed by crime warriors that there is less crime because more offenders are locked up, this Justice Policy Institute factsheet (pdf) shows the opposite: Areas with lower incarceration rates experienced greater crime reductions.

The number of violent offenses reported to law enforcement fell 1.4 percent in 2007. Both violent and property crimes fell in three of the four regions of the country. Only the southern region experienced an increase in these two categories.

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The Bush Adminstration's Drug Czar John Walters said on C-Span last week (video here) that it's a lie that 800,000 Americans were arrested for pot last year. He said folks would have better luck finding a “unicorn” in jail for pot.

NORML has the statistics:

Police arrested a record 872,721 persons for marijuana violations in 2007, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report released today. This is the largest total number of annual arrests for cannabis ever recorded by the FBI. Cannabis arrests now comprise nearly 47.5 percent of all drug arrests in the United States.

"These numbers belie the myth that police do not target and arrest minor cannabis offenders," said NORML Executive Director Allen St. Pierre, who noted that at current rates, a cannabis consumer is arrested every 37 seconds in America. "This effort is a tremendous waste of criminal justice resources that diverts law enforcement personnel away from focusing on serious and violent crime, including the war on terrorism."

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A TalkLeft endorsement: Matthew Abel for District Attorney in Detroit. He's running on the Green Party ticket against current DA Kym Worthy. Abel, whose website is CannibisCounsel, tells the Michigan Concerned Citizen:

Worthy has not prosecuted any Detroit police officer for the killing of a citizen since, as an assistant prosecutor, she prosecuted Larry Budzyn and Walter Nevers for the killing of Malice Green in 1992. During her term, Detroit police officers have committed numerous questionable killings and even public rapes in the guise of cavity searches which have gone unchallenged. The prosecutor is required by law to investigate these killings.

“The prosecutor also needs to be the one to tell the police that we are not condoning illegal searches and traffic stops or issuing bad warrants, that we’re not going to cover up police misconduct,” Abel said.

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Proposition K, on the San Francisco ballot in November, would decriminalize prostitution. The L.A. Times reports it is dividing the city's liberal community.

Sex workers, the county Democratic committee and a health official support Proposition K as a boon to prostitutes' and the public's safety. The mayor, the D.A. and the business community oppose it.

....Proposition K would ban San Francisco police from using any public resources to investigate or prosecute sex workers on prostitution charges. Critics say the law would attract pimps, human smugglers and others who profit from the sex trade.

I'm in favor of decriminalization.

New operating procedures at the FBI will encourage rogue agents to spy on anyone they want, for whatever reason they want, without obtaining a supervisor's approval.

The changes would give the FBI's more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. Such techniques are currently available only after FBI agents have opened an investigation and developed a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or that a threat to national security is developing.

Post-Nixon-era reforms will be undone. Infiltrating groups that lawfully assemble to urge policies of peace and social justice will no longer be seen as off-limits. [more ...]

With all the fear-mongering that politicians engage in during election years, backed by many in law enforcement, particularly those of the broken windows school who think the key lies in busting and getting petty offenders off the street, it's refreshing to report on a place where a different mindset prevails , resulting in both a low crime rate and a near empty jail.

The place: Aspen, Colorado. The Sheriff: Bob Braudis. Others going along with the program of not making it a policy to lock up low-level offenders: the judges, the prosecutors and the Jail Administrator.

On Thursday there were just three full-time inmates and five people on work release in a facility that can hold as many as 30....Jail administrator Don Bird, however, chalks up the low numbers to what he called an “enlightened system of justice” in the upper valley. From law enforcement on the street, to the district attorney, courts and the jail, there is communication and a common goal of rehabilitation, not just human warehousing and punishment, he said.

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Robert Chambers, convicted of the infamous New York "Preppy Murder" of Jennifer Levin, was released from prison in 2003 after serving his full 15 year sentence.

In 1986, Robert Chambers, a young and handsome guy who had dropped out of college, met Jennifer Levin, a student at an elite private high school in Manhattan, at a trendy bar on the Upper East Side. They then went to Central Park, had sex, and she ended up strangled to death. Chambers said it was an accident, they had been having consensual rough sex.

In 2005, Chambers made the news again when he was busted for cocaine residue on a straw and an empty tin foil packet found during a traffic stop.

Now, they are sending Chambers to jail for 19 years for a small time drug deal. As Anthony Papas argues, this is not a sentence for drugs, it's a second sentence for the Jennifer Levin murder. [More...]