Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Filter by Category : Tag : Date

Browsing Category

Criminal Justice system

May Day

Yesterday was May 1st, International Labor Day, the traditional day for honoring workers and workers’ movements internationally. It originated, interestingly enough, out of the labor union movement in the U.S. in the late 1800s, calling for an 8 hour work day. Would’t you know it, the day is not officially recognized in this country today, since any sort of emboldening international solidarity is resisted.

(In honor of May 1st, today’s images are of posters around the world, found in postings by @Jacobin.)

In any case, it is a day that sees protest marches around the world, not all related to labor issues but more generally questioning capitalist rules or political developments (in France, for example both the left and the extreme right were protesting yesterday against Macron’s victory, in Germany large blocs of people protested against housing prices and policies and in favor of feminist politics.) These protests often see large police contingents posted to intervene if violence breaks out, to arrest those perceived to break laws and to protect interests of the state. In Berlin alone, 6000 police officers were posted across the weekend.

When those arrested are brought to trial, the police are called on to testify as eyewitnesses. This brings me to the actual focus of today’s blog, the many myths surrounding the evidence provided by police in general criminal proceedings, as described in a paper by psychologists Kathy Pezdek & Dan Reisberg, Psychological Myths about Evidence in the Legal System: How Should Researchers Respond?, to be published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory & Cognition in June.

The article describes some of the myths that pervade the legal system. I will alert you to the myths that are listed and why it is important that we become aware that they, as it turns out, have no basis in fact. I will not reiterate the scientific literature that shows how these myths are debunked, which is the core of the scientific paper, but would go beyond the scope of a blog. (Preprints for the whole article can be requested here: Kathy.Pezdek@cgu.edu, or here: reisberg@reed.edu.)

Myth #1: Officers are More Accurate Eyewitnesses than Civilians

Judges, jurors, and many others believe that law enforcement personnel are more credible than other witnesses when they testify in court and, moreover, that officers are more accurate eyewitnesses than civilians. A related claim is that identification evidence provided by police officers is more reliable than identification evidence provided by civilians, and thus the safeguards generally required when civilians are asked to make an identification – safeguards that include proper instructions before the identification, a properly constructed lineup, and so on, are not needed for police officers.

The reality: Police officers have no advantage as eyewitnesses in identifying the perpetrator. Some studies even suggest they are at a disadvantage.

Myth #2: High Stress Improves the Accuracy of Memory

Many people buy into the belief that stressful events are better remembered – and, in fact, are remembered accurately, completely, and with little or no forgetting as time goes by. Ain’t so, and that goes for police officers as well. If anything, high stress impairs memory, rather than enhances it. In addition, memory for stressful events, just like memory overall, can be influenced (and distorted) by post-event misinformation, so holds no special status.

In other words, then: officers suffer perceptual and memory distortions when under stress, just as civilians do.

Myth #3: A Sleep Cycle after a Use-of-force Incident Improves Memory

There are many policy proposals supported by state legislatures and police unions that there should be a “cooling off period” after the use of force before questioning the involved officer, periods trending in length from 72 hours to 10 days. Often this proposal is part of a policy termed the “police officers’ bill of rights.” The claim is that this delay will improve memory, in addition to helping the officer regain composure and get some rest. This stands in conflict with what the evidence shows: delayed reporting is inferior to reporting immediately after an event. Memory fades, folks.

In addition, delay in reporting creates a risk that the officer (or any other witness) will encounter information that can merge with their original memory, undermining memory accuracy. Confusing the source from which you gained knowledge is also enhanced with he passage of time. Even if one did not eye these proposals suspiciously as a tool for the involved officers to get their act together and prepare and coordinate testimony, the suggested delay will hurt not help the finders of fact and the legal proceedings in general.

Myth #4: Double-Blind Lineups are Unnecessary

For photographic lineups, a double-blind procedure is one in which the lineup is administered by someone not involved in the investigation, so that neither the administrator nor the witness is told which photo shows the police suspect. With this procedure in place, the witness makes a selection guided only (one hopes) by the witness’s recollection of the actual culprit’s appearance, and not due to some (involuntary or voluntary) cues or hints by the administrator, and this does diminish bias in identification procedures. Despite their protestations, police officers are not immune to the effects of non-blind lineups. In other words, they, too, should be asked to identify culprits using the double-blind procedure.

Myth #5: Viewing BWC Footage Does Not Contaminate Officers’ Memory

After using force, law enforcement officers are asked to write a report, describing the episode. In many jurisdictions, police insist that they should write the report only after reviewing their body worn camera videos. Any suggestion to the contrary has been strongly rejected by police organizations. This refusal ignores the data that show how memory accuracy is contaminated by seeing the video. It provides the officers with actually-not-remembered information, and this information is simply absorbed into their eventual “memory” report – exactly the pattern expected based on decades of research on post-event suggestion.

Myth #6: Police Officers Can Accurately Detect Deception

There is a widespread notion that police officers are trained to detect liars and are better than your average civilian at doing so. Just for the record: we are all pretty lousy at detecting deception: on average not much better than tossing a coin. Law enforcement officers are not much better in their performance – but do assume that they are. Their confidence levels in their ability to detect lies stand in little correlation to their actual abilities. Training or experience do little to improve these skills, but they seem to feed into false assurance about skill levels.

Why does all this matter?

For one, if legal decisions are made based on false assumptions (evidence given by police witnesses is superior, thus can be trusted over diverging evidence, for example,) we are in trouble. Educating judges, attorneys, jurors and the police themselves seems important to avoid false conclusions that decide people’s fate. These myths are also often reflected in policy documents that govern both law enforcement and legal procedures. It seems important to debunk the mistaken beliefs of policy makers as well, given how consequential these myths are.

And here is some traditional May day music.

Here is Toscanini!

A song from 1931 by Florence Reece…

Working in a coal mine….

Here’s 16 tons….

There’s Power in a Union…

And the working man’s blues…

3 Comments

Of Books and Jailers

When I came across Isobelle Ouzman’s project of cutting and drawing in old books my immediate association was one of contraband. Prison administrations have always claimed that drugs, cell phones, cigarettes and the like were smuggled into prison by friends and relatives, some via books, even though the evidence suggests that it is mainly prison staff who brings these things in and sells for a mighty profit (Here are the newest data.) So let’s look at prisons and books.

In case you missed it: Reading and other educational opportunities in prison reduce the likelihood of recidivism and increase the likelihood of gainful employment once you’re no longer incarcerated. Good news.

Likely you missed it: Not just prisoners, literature is locked up as well. There is an increasing trend across states to ban books in prison, often on arbitrary grounds, or make them available only at considerable cost. I am summarizing today what I learned from a PEN America report and an overview article about the state of censorship in U.S. state and federal prison. Another good source is the Marshall Project‘s collection of links to topics around book banning. Bad news.

Isobelle Ouzman Morning Raven (2020) Discarded hardback novel, 260 pages. Watercolour pencils, colour pencils, Micron ink, glue.

Here is the long and the short of it. Prisons claim security concerns as the reason to ban books, and not just those with explicit sexual or violent content. Evidence that books are used to smuggle contraband is, as I said, sketchy at best. Nonetheless, over the last 5 years, many state and federal prison administrations have banned family members, charities and other outside parties from donating books, any books at all. Used books are completely prohibited. Only approved vendors can sell, and their offerings are arbitrarily restricted by decree from administrators.

“With free books banned, prisoners are forced to rely on the small list of “approved vendors” chosen for them by the prison administration. These retailers directly benefit when states introduce restrictions. In Iowa, the approved sources include Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million, some of America’s largest retail chains—and, notably, ones which charge the full MSRP value for each book, quickly draining prisoners’ accounts. An incarcerated person with, say, $20 to spend can now only get one book, as opposed to three or four used ones; in states where prisoners make as little as 25 cents an hour for their labor, many can’t afford even that. 

With e-books, the situation is even worse, as companies like Global Tel Link supply supposedly “free” tablets which actually charge their users by the minute to read. Even public-domain classics, available on Project Gutenberg, are only available at a price under these systems—and prisons, in turn, receive a 5% commission on every charge. All of this amounts to rampant price-gouging and profiteering on an industrial scale.”

If that wasn’t bad enough, prison library budgets have also been cut increasingly, making it ever more difficult for prisoners to access literature.

Isobelle Ouzman Ghosts (2018) Donated hardback novel, 290 pages. Watercolour pencils, colour pencils, Micron ink, glue.

In states where there are no general, content-neutral bans on book donations there are still arbitrary restrictions of what type of materials are allowed in. Or perhaps not so arbitrary after all. There are blanket restrictions on books that concern Black culture, urban novels that concern African-American crime and intrigue, comics and cartoons like MANGA, and literature on the Civil Rights movement. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, which won a Pulitzer Prize are banned in several states, Hitler’s Mein Kampf is not. Censored also are multiple books about learning Arabic, Japanese and American Sign Language, instruction manuals about learning to be an electrician or computer programmer. (Here is a typical list of all the technical materials Oregon prisons prohibit, Windows 10 for Dummies included.)

Many states do not give access to their ban lists, unless you fight for them under the Freedom of Information Act. But we do know that Texas, for example, has a list of 15.000 titles by now, Florida banned over 20.000 books, a stunning number. Racially motivated restrictions are widespread. The New Jim Crow by civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander, for example, examines the phenomenon of mass incarceration and argues that our incarceration practices represent a continuation of our country’s racist policies of the past. After its release, the book was banned in prisons in North Carolina, Florida, Michigan, and New Jersey. Two years ago, Arizona banned Chokehold: Policing Black Men, a book on racial injustice in the criminal justice system, written by Georgetown Law School professor Paul Butler. Prison Nation, a book examining the prison-industrial complex, was banned for “security threat group/white supremacy.” The Factory: A Journey Through the Prison Industrial Complex, about a formerly incarcerated person’s time behind bars and the school-to-prison pipeline, was banned for “encouraging activities that may lead to group disruption.” Blood in the Water, a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Attica uprising, was banned for “security concerns-encouraging group disruption. I’m certain, the 1619 project will be next on the list.

Isabelle Ouzman Sleep (2021) Reused, altered journal. Watercolour, colour pencils, Micron ink, glue, art knife.

Here is something we can do: the American Library Association keeps a list of donation programs that send books into prison libraries where still allowed.

https://libguides.ala.org/book-donations/bookstoprisons

Contributing to one, any one, is a form of mutual aid and solidarity we can all practice.

Unless we agree with ever curmudgeon-y Philip Larkin, who had nothing better to do with his Oxford degree in English Language and Literature than to write this…

A Study Of Reading Habits

When getting my nose in a book
Cured most things short of school,
It was worth ruining my eyes
To know I could still keep cool,
And deal out the old right hook
To dirty dogs twice my size.

Later, with inch-thick specs,
Evil was just my lark:
Me and my cloak and fangs
Had ripping times in the dark.
The women I clubbed with sex!
I broke them up like meringues.

Don’t read much now: the dude
Who lets the girl down before
The hero arrives, the chap
Who’s yellow and keeps the store
Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
Books are a load of crap.

By Philip Larkin

Music today from the Prison Music Project. Individual tracks I particularly liked: here and here.

5 Comments

Against the ODDS and at the WHIM of others

Odd and whim – I sort of had those synonyms for quirks to get into the stories I wanted to relate today. The stories are both about professional activities that could not be further from my repertoire of skills and capabilities.

One is related to art restoration, but as the film clip will show you, requiring such an amount of patience and sleuthing that I would go insane before the first week was over on the project.  The short version: some years back someone found an old rag stuffed into a chimney flue to prevent drafts. Turns out it was a priceless treasure of a medieval map that guided seafaring Dutchmen. It is now in the hands of a museum restaurateur and the painstaking work of reconstruction inspires awe.

http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2017/05/a_scottish_chimney_rag_turns_out_to_be_a_17th_century_map_of_the_world.html

Not as much awe, though, as the situation depicted in the second link below. Here we learn about the assignment of women prisoners, upon arrival at prison, to fight California wildfires. No training, not much safety instruction, put onto the bus, hiked for hour and miles up steep hillsides to the inferno and then thrown to the flames, or at them, or whatever.  I would faint at the first bend in the hike. The hidden slave labor in our prison system(s) is worth a whole other blog, but suffice it for today to hear this brave report.

I figured ships needing maps and wood that burns would be appropriate imagery.

1 Comments

Malheur National Wildlife Refuge

· the birds still outnumber the people ·

10658942_1043240262357479_6468725130420626828_o copyWeb statistics on Frenchglen (where this photo was taken) inform you that, as of 2015,  111 people lived in this little Eastern Oregon Hamlet, 0 per square mile. Riddle me that. Located close to the Malheur Wildlife National Refuge – or what counts as close in these vast stretches of landscape around the Steen Mountains – it has recently seen a lot of traffic in the context of the armed occupation of the Malheur Field Station.

I will not write about the occupation today, much has been said, and said well,  in recent months.  But I do want to link to an article that is informative about issues that are now emerging in the aftermath. The article argues for the right of defense in any criminal proceedings, no matter how much you might loathe the motives, actions, or political beliefs of the defendant.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-nobility-of-good-lawyers-with-bad-clients/459645/

I could not agree more with this statement. This is particularly true for cases that have national visibility, are linked to political causes (of the left as much as of the right) and can be used for career advancement for some of the parties involved. There is more to it, though. As part of the adversarial nature of our legal system each side will use all available means to further its goal of a successful defense, or successful prosecution. In the Bundy case there is now a storm brewing as to whether one side is doing what is legitimate and/or ethical in pursuit of its goals.

We do have an ethics code for the profession that tries to insure that the means used to win a case are ethical as well as legal – and close inspection of the actions of all sides should provide answers about alleged ethics violations. I have no means (or inclination) to judge who has strayed from an ethical path without access to all the facts, but am in favor of strict requirements that ethical rules not be broken. Let us not forget, though, that these skirmishes are often part of the pre-trial strategy to influence public opinion and set the bar for things to come.

The photograph was taken during a blissful spring week last year, the yellow-headed blackbirds being my first introduction to the area. Can’t wait to get back there. And with this we conclude a week of bird images. Stay tuned for what’s next!

 

 

0 Comments
© 2024