ATTORNEY PAUL A. KSICINSKI 414-530-5214
ATTORNEY PAUL A. KSICINSKI
TOP 100 WISCONSIN CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYER
​414-530-5214
  • Home
  • References
  • PEER ENDORSEMENTS
  • PAST CASES
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
  • How to deal with police
  • Practice Areas
  • About
  • Criminal Law Links
  • News

Discussion of current legal issues

Henry Nellum case selected by USA Network as a compelling homicide trial to keep an eye on in 2018

Button Text

BASKETBALL, THE CRIMINAL SYSTEM AND THE IMPORTANCE OF FAIRNESS

1/28/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture

I do not watch enough professional basketball to figure out the status of Lebron James.  I do know ESPN rated him as one of the most successful and influential basketball players of all time.  He not only knows how to shoot hoops, but he knows how to use his head.  For instance, his house was spray-painted with racist graffiti.  At the news conference about the incident, James said that when he learned of the slur, he thought about the mother of Emmett Till. After her 14-year-old son was lynched in 1955, she insisted there be an open coffin so people could see for themselves the brutality of the murder.  He said, “No matter how much money you have, no matter how famous you are, no matter how many people admire you, being black in America is — it’s tough,” says James. “And we got a long way to go for us as a society and for us as African-Americans until we feel equal in America.”  He also once wore a shirt saying, “I Can’t Breathe” instead of his Cleveland Cavaliers jersey in the team’s Dec. 8, 2014 game against the Brooklyn Nets. The protest T-shirt invoked the last words of Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York who died as a police officer put him in a chokehold.

So what is the big deal here anyway?  Who cares if the system is fair as long as the “bad guys” are punished?
The “big deal” is that there is a “growing consensus to make reforms to the juvenile and criminal justice systems to ensure that criminal laws are enforced more fairly and efficiently.  Unwarranted disparities and unduly harsh sentences undermine trust in the rule of law and offend the basic principles of fairness and justice.  In an era of limited resources and diverse threats, there is a public safety imperative to devote the resources of the criminal justice system to the practices that are most successful at deterring crime and protecting the public.”  President Obama fact sheet.

Before you just blow off this statement as political rhetoric, take a look at the Chicago Gun Project (CGP).  See Andrew V. Papachristos, Tracey L. Meares & Jeffrey Fagan, Attention Felons: Evaluating Project Safe Neighborhoods in Chicago, 4 J. EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUD. 223, 224 (2007).  The CGP examined how offenders’ perceptions of the law and social networks influence their understanding of legal authority and subsequent law-violating behavior.  The findings suggest that while criminals as a whole have negative opinions of the law and legal authority, these offenders are more likely to obey the law when they believe in (a) the substance of the law, and (b) the legitimacy of legal actors, especially the police. 

This means that deterrence-based law enforcement policies like creating fear based on police presence does not work.  Many policies of the criminal system are based on increasing the threat and actual use of formal sanctions, such as police saturation patrols, judges being tough on crime, three-strikes laws, mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, and increased penalties for certain types of crimes. In other words, fear based forced compliance with the law does not create compliance with the law.  See, Tom R. Tyler, Why People Obey the Law (Princeton University Press 2006) (people obey the law if they believe it's legitimate, not because they fear punishment).  Tyler suggests that lawmakers and law enforcers would do much better to make legal systems worthy of respect than to try to instill fear of punishment. He finds that people obey law primarily because they believe in respecting legitimate authority.

It is a sad comment on society that it takes a basketball player to teach proper law enforcement policies

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    These are reflections I have had about our criminal justice system.  Some of it may make sense, some of it might not.

    Archives

    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.