■■ topic paper – police practices
Download 1 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- _General – AT DA pltx
_General – AT CP courtsSolvency deficit – police officers find court mandates confusing, don’t follow them in practiceETERNO associate dean and director of gradiate studies @ Molloy College 2010 (John, PhD in criminal justice from SUNY Albany, is also retired captain of NYPD, managing editor of Police Practice and Research: An International Journal, author of Policing Within the Law: A Case Study of the New York City Police Department (2003), has published in various journals including The International Journal of Police Science and Management, Women and Criminal Justice, Justice Research and Policy, etc, “Policing in the United States: Balancing Crime Fighting and Legal Rights”, in Eterno & Das (eds) Police Practices in Global Perspective, p9., note://// indicates par. breaks)[AR SPRING16] All officers are responsible for learning and properly applying procedural laws that place limitations on their authority. This can, however, get very complicated. In order for officers to understand what is expected of them legally, they must learn a confusing array of court cases that interpret federal and state constitutions, laws, and statutes at each level of government. The courts have been particularly ambiguous in that area of the law that affects police, such as "search and seizure" and "stop and frisk" laws. Judge Harold Rothwax (1996: 40-^tl) writes, "The problem is, the law is so muddy that the police can't find out what they are allowed to do even if they wanted to." Many other scholars and commentators have elaborated on this issue for police in the U.S. (e.g., Amsterdam, 1974; Goldstein, 1992; Grano, 1982; LaFave, 1972; Reinharz, 1996).5 _General – AT DA pltx(if running an aff that decreases/scales back the police) No link – bipartisan shift away from ‘tough on crime’ political mandatesTIMM 2015 (Trevor, reports for the guardian, “Is the political imperative to be ‘tough on crime’ finally over?”, the guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/18/political-imperative-tough-on-crime)[AR SPRING16] Spurred on by the historic #BlackLivesMatter movement and the increasing realization our enormous prison population is both inhumane and costing us a fortune, presidential candidates – who once competed with one another over who was “tougher on crime” – are falling all over themselves to praise reform efforts meant to reduce the number of prisoners in the US. Even more shocking: it’s coming from both parties. But will the much-needed attention lead to actual change? //// President Barack Obama this week became the first sitting president to visit a federal prison, where he sounded more like a prison rights activist than a law-and-order president in his fantastic speech on the injustices faced by incarcerated Americans. He even ticked off statistics lamenting how the US to become by far the biggest jailer in the world: the US has only 5% of the world’s population but 25% of its prisoners; we have four times as many prisoners as China; and African-Americans and Latinos are 30% of the US population yet make up 60% of prison inmates. //// Before that, Hillary Clinton’s first major policy speech of her presidential campaign was not on the economy or foreign policy, but on criminal justice reform. “It’s time to end the era of mass incarceration” she said. While she was rightly criticized for being short on specifics, it’s still a testament to how the issue now requires the attention of any standard bearer of the Democratic party – especially given her husband’s role in perpetuating the problem in the 1990s. //// And Bill Clinton, for his part, apologized this week for passing his administration’s “tough on crime” bill in the 1990s, which for many years he openly bragged about. “I signed a bill that made the problem worse,” he told the NAACP this week. “And I want to admit it.” //// Republicans, egged on by their billionaire benefactors, are following suit. House speaker John Boehner signaled that he was ready for criminal justice reform bills to come down the pike in Congress, where several garnered support from both parties but have still languished. Even Jeb Bush and Rick Perry are seemingly flipping their stances – but given their long histories in support of the current carceral system, it’s hard to see their most recent statements as anything other than a cynical ploy to take advantage of the changing political winds. //// (Though it should be noted that President Obama quoted Senator Rand Paulapprovingly in his prison speech this week; Paul has been pushing for prison reform for years.)//// But the ultimate proof that America’s tough-on-crime-and-the-cost-be-damned policies of the past are on the way out might be Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. His entire career has been based bragging about locking people in jail; Buzzfeed took an in-depth look at Walker’s record, which criminal justice reform advocate David Menchsel called“stunning”. He noted: “Even among loathsome pro-carceral politicians, Walker’s record is terrible.”//// But all of a sudden, Walker has gone silent on the issue on the campaign trail – he doesn’t even bring it up in passing. His sudden reticence may have something to do with the fact that his billionaire benefactors, the arch-conservative Koch brothers, are backing criminal justice reform to the tune of millions of dollars (and even partnering with their usual political enemies, the Center for American Progress). Or maybe even he has realized that Americans are finally seeing the damage that throwing millions of people in jail can do to the country’s economy and well-being. Download 1 Mb. Share with your friends:
|