Crime and Punishment

[I started to comment on this over at Simple Justice, but there's so much going on here that I decided to do my own post. As usual these days, it's a bit late.] I may be a libertarian, but I'm not a cop hater. Sometimes, however, cops make it very hard not to hate them. Go read Scott Greenfield's story about a cop who hit a surrendering suspect and put him in a coma. … [Read more...] about It’s Not Supposed To Be About Street Justice

Give me a moment; I'll get to it. Trust me. And, since I'm a fiction writer, I'll even make it all turn out well in the end, with lessons learned, a bond between police and citizens strengthened, and all that cool stuff. Hell, I'll even tease a friend who will find this sooner or later, maybe embarrass the badgelickers who don't see the difference between service-oriented … [Read more...] about Well, Yes, Shane Becker is a Douchebag

So this guy named Richard Wolf is on the job at the Shelby City Wastewater Treatment Plant, where he's using his work computer to surf porn sites. At one point even visits Adult Friend Finder and uploads a nude photo of himself. He gets fired. No surprise. This, however, is a bit more surprising: Wolf was convicted on state charges for three counts: unauthorized access to a … [Read more...] about Goofing Off At Work = Felony ?

A few days ago, Scott Greenfield pointed out this paragraph in a New York Times article about Obama's thinking about law and justice: [W]hen it came to sentencing laws, Mr. Obama led [student Adam] Bonin in a more conservative direction than the student had expected. The primary victims of black criminals were fellow blacks -- and so minority neighborhoods had an interest in … [Read more...] about Getting Tough on Minority Crime

. . . which this reminded me of. It was about seven in the evening, the end of a nice spring day, and my older kid, then a junior at Washburn High in Minneapolis (a school so badly run that they had to fire all the staff, including some of the best teachers, and start over, but I digress...)  hadn't returned home.  Not a big deal; she often went over to a friend's … [Read more...] about A Teaching Moment, at a Public High School