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| NEWS of the Day - June 20, 2011 |
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on some issues of interest to the community policing and neighborhood activist across the country
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following group of articles from local newspapers and other sources constitutes but a small percentage of the information available to the community policing and neighborhood activist public. It is by no means meant to cover every possible issue of interest, nor is it meant to convey any particular point of view ...
We present this simply as a convenience to our readership ... |
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From Los Angeles Times
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Editorial Help for young immigrants
By some estimates, nearly a million young people in this country are living in a kind of immigration limbo. The United States is the only home many of them have known, but because they were brought here illegally as children by their parents, they live in fear of deportation.
June 20, 2011
By some estimates, nearly a million young people in this country are living in a kind of immigration limbo. The United States is the only home many of them have known, but because they were brought here illegally as children by their parents, they live in fear of deportation.
Last week, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) introduced a bill that would provide a temporary respite for some of these young immigrants. In addition to creating more visas for newcomers who open businesses and hire at least 10 American workers and allowing foreign students who earn postgraduate degrees in math or science from a research institution to apply for green cards, the bill would provide temporary visas for undocumented immigrants while they attend college. Any student who was brought to the U.S. before the age of 15 and who has lived here since then could apply for one. Lofgren's bill does not offer a green card, or any kind of path to legal status — something anti-immigrant groups denounce as amnesty.
It's true that these students would find themselves back in limbo once they leave school. That's why we would rather Congress find the courage to take on comprehensive immigration reform, including the long-deferred DREAM Act, which would offer a conditional path to citizenship to young illegal immigrants who attend college or serve in the military. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has reintroduced the legislation, and a hearing is expected this month. But given the current political climate, Lofgren's proposal may have a better chance of passing. Even staunch opponents of reform such as Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, concede that students who arrived here at a young age shouldn't be deported.
The reality is that some of them are. Although the Obama administration has said that students who would benefit from the DREAM Act aren't a priority for deportation, it has refused to formally issue a policy to defer such removals. Consider the case of Steve Li, a 20-year-old college student who spent two months in an Arizona detention center facing deportation to Peru. Li came to the U.S. as a child and did not know he was in the country illegally until he and his parents were detained by immigration agents last year in San Francisco. His deportation was halted after Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) stepped in.
Lofgren's bill would offer these young, hardworking students who consider themselves Americans at least a few more years in the country they would like to call home.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-visa-20110620,0,5208549,print.story
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Editorial Miranda rights for minors
The Supreme Court decided correctly in extending the warning to children questioned by police in school.
June 20, 2011
It's obvious — except to a minority of the Supreme Court — that a juvenile being questioned by the police will feel less able to get up and leave than an adult in the same situation. Adapting that reality to the requirements of the Miranda rule, a five-member majority held this week that courts must consider a suspect's age in deciding whether he should have been read his rights. Any other decision would have been unconscionable.
The 5-4 ruling arises from the interrogation of a 13-year-old North Carolina boy suspected of committing two home break-ins. A police investigator questioned the boy in a school conference room, but he wasn't read his rights. By adult standards, the boy wasn't in custody, the trigger for a Miranda warning. He wasn't under arrest, the door was unlocked and at one point the police investigator told him he could leave. But common sense suggests that a 13-year-old taken to an office and faced with not only the police but also school officials won't feel free to leave or to refuse to answer their questions. In the end, the boy confessed to the burglaries.
Writing for the court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited previous rulings that support the proposition that minors are not "miniature adults." Therefore, a child's age is relevant to determining custody so long as it "was known to the officer at the time of the interview, or would have been objectively apparent to any reasonable officer." As for courts, Sotomayor wrote, they must recognize that "a reasonable child subjected to police questioning will sometimes feel pressured to submit when a reasonable adult would feel free to go."
The minority, led by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., argued that the decision undermined the principle of Miranda, which is designed to eliminate subjectivity from a determination of whether a confession is voluntary. He added that many juvenile suspects who are older teenagers would be adequately covered by a "one size fits all" standard for determining whether they were in custody. But even many juveniles in that age group lack the self-confidence of adults.
Miranda is strengthened by a recognition of the special vulnerability of minors to police questioning. And there is one specific consequence of this decision that will affect the day-to-day lives of many young people: Police are an increasing presence in schools, and disciplinary inquiries often put students at risk not only of punishment by the school but also of arrest. When the school functions as a police station, it's important that children be told their rights.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-miranda-20110620,0,2748102,print.story
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Editorial
Promoting rehabilitation for criminals
The notion that rehabilitation should play no role in sentencing or the length of incarceration needs to be revisited.
June 20, 2011
You don't have to be soft on crime to believe in the rehabilitation of criminals. But a federal judge who tried to ensure that a convicted defendant would participate in a drug rehabilitation program had his wrist slapped last week by the Supreme Court. The ruling was a faithful application of federal law, but it should motivate Congress to rethink its approach to incarceration.
After a federal jury convicted Alejandra Tapia of smuggling illegal immigrants across the U.S-Mexico border, U.S. District Judge Barry T. Moskowitz sentenced her to more years in prison than called for under federal sentencing guidelines. The rationale, Moskowitz said, was to enable Tapia to enter an inmate drug rehabilitation program with a long waiting list. The judge's heart was in the right place, but the Supreme Court found that lengthening Tapia's sentence for that purpose was illegal.
Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Elena Kagan held that "a court may not impose or lengthen a prison sentence to enable an offender to complete a treatment program or otherwise to promote rehabilitation." The reason was simple: Federal law says that "imprisonment is not an appropriate means of promoting correction and rehabilitation."
The decision makes sense. But the larger principle behind it is troubling: the notion that rehabilitation should play no role in sentencing or the length of incarceration.
That principle emerged in response to complaints about the previous system of indeterminate sentences, in which judges often gave different defendants unequal sentences for the same crimes. The length of a prisoner's incarceration also depended on whether he or she was thought to be sufficiently rehabilitated to be released. As a result, critics say, minorities ended up serving more time in prison than whites.
The controversy over sentencing highlights a perennial debate about the nature of a just punishment system: Is fairness furthered by treating every similarly situated defendant the same or by paying attention to individual differences? Taking rehabilitation into account is an example of the latter philosophy — and wise public policy in our view.
A generation after it removed rehabilitation as a factor in incarceration, Congress needs to take another look at the issue. One possibility is to make more generous a current provision allowing prisoners to earn limited time off for good behavior. Another is to allow judges to impose lesser sentences on defendants who agree to rehabilitation. (Kagan's opinion noted that this policy was not before the court.) Finally, sentencing guidelines could be revised to take account of a defendant's agreement to enter an in-prison rehabilitation program.
It was wrong for a judge to extend a defendant's sentence to allow her to enter a rehabilitation program. But the courts should be free to provide prisoners with incentives for rehabilitation. Action by Congress, not the courts, is necessary to bring that about.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-rehab-20110620,0,2393946,print.story
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