When the media first reported that a White House functionary — later identified as Craig Livingstone -had obtained files containing personal information on Bush Administration employees, a lot of us felt queasy. The image of some partisan operative gloating over private information he might use to benefit his patrons and…
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Category Archives: Criminal Justice
How do we do?
My mother used to tell me that there is a right way and a wrong way to do things. (Lawyers say the same thing, only we call the right way "due process of law.") I thought of my mother?s admonition when I saw a recent article about the drug testing..
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Our Insane War on Drugs
On March 15th, the Indianapolis Star ran a headline: "U.S. Poised to Become Top Jailer Worldwide." The article dutifully reported the results of a study by the Sentencing Project, documenting what criminal justice professionals all know?that thanks to prosecutions for drug offenses…
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Creating Crime
It looks as if Indianapolis’ murder rate will hit a record high again this year. The standard explanation for the epidemic is the prevalence of drugs in our community, and the recent "drug interdiction" traffic checkpoint netted chilling evidence of that prevalence….
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A Culture of Contempt
It was an event for lawyers — a social occasion for those of us who have chosen careers devoted to interpreting and upholding the rules that civilized people use as a substitute for settling our differences by force. A dinner companion turned to me, almost angrily, to ask "Why isn’t the ICLU doing something about these thugs on…
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