iftttwall

Criminal convictions can come with significant fines and fees—and not just the kind where you’re “paying for your crime.” Criminal defendants get overloaded with administrative court fees, thanks to the government’s desire to fund a massive criminal justice system without forcing all the costs onto taxpayers. In California counties, this can add up to thousands of dollars. And when you throw those costs at low-income people, they often find themselves unable to pay that money.

This creates two big problems. First, it makes it harder for poor people to get back in the clear, to clean up their act (assuming they’ve been convicted of an actual crime that harms other people, as opposed to some vice nonsense), and to live stable lives. Second, because they’re poor, they cannot actually pay these fees, and so the expected revenue doesn’t actually show up in budgets. So they don’t even end up sparing the taxpayers these costs.

State Sen. Holly Mitchell (D–Los Angeles) wants to change that. You may recall Mitchell from her legislation scaling back civil asset forfeiture abuse. Now she’s introduced SB-144, which aims to roll back the court-fee burden. The bill would delete most court administrative fees and forgive a lot of the existing debts.

Mitchell explained the problems of California’s administrative fees in a recent op-ed:

Despite its progressive reputation, California imposes financial burdens and barriers—including administrative fees, surcharges, and penalty assessments—on people who have gone through the legal system and are striving to move forward with their lives. These additional impositions are extraordinarily burdensome and undermine the economic security of low-income families and families of color who simply cannot afford to pay them.

In Los Angeles County, for example, someone with a three-year term of probation accumulates over $5,500 in probation administrative fees alone—fees that drive people into debt and push families deeper into poverty.

These fees are often collected through wage garnishments or interceptions of tax refunds, and this naturally drives many people into work paid under the table.

Many of these counties do not, in fact, cover the costs of their justice systems through these administrative fees. A report from the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector for the City and County of San Francisco found that the collection rate on these fees is absolutely abysmal. In the San Francisco area, they collected a mere 17 percent of the administrative fees imposed on offenders. San Francisco has failed to collect more than $12 million out of $15.8 million in probation fees imposed over six years.

San Francisco’s “Clean Slate” program is supposed to help people expunge their criminal records, but it requires that they pay off most of these fees. The aforementioned report from the Office of the Treasurer and Tax Collector reprints a bill received by somebody who wanted to participate in the Clean Slate program, showing more than $5,000 due from 24 separate fines and fees. Those fees aren’t intended to be an additional form of punishment, any more than bail is, but it certainly works out that way for people who don’t have much disposable income.

These extensive, burdensome costs also animate some of the new activism to try to scale back the duration that people spend on probation on the first place. It’s costly, and long probations aren’t really making communities safer.

Mitchell’s bill deletes dozens of administrative fees, including those costly probation supervision demands, as well as any demands that defendants pay for pretrial supervision costs. That’s a big worry with the bail reform movement: that courts might replace money bail demands with orders that defendants pay for their own pretrial monitoring. You can read through the list of all the deleted fees in the Senate analysis documents (a $15 charge for a written promise to appear at court…really?).

The bill has the backing of dozens of civil rights and criminal justice reform organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Unions. It’s opposed by county government organizations and state sheriff’s and probation officer groups.

Interestingly, the opposition hasn’t framed its concerns by attempting to argue that these reforms will lead to more crime. They don’t think eliminating these fees inherently creates a danger, and they acknowledges that these fees and fines cause serious problems for offenders’ re-entry. Their concern is that ending these fees will cause all sorts of downstream funding problems and could lead to the elimination of various services and programs.

Much like civil asset forfeiture revenue, these types of fees have been used to help make up funding gaps. Some were specifically put in place to fund reform programs.

This doesn’t make Mitchell’s bill misguided. But there’s going to have to be a significant realignment of how various criminal justice programs are going to be funded if SB-144 becomes law. Then again, given how many cities collect such a small percentage of what they’re legally owed, they’ve arguably had to adjust expectations anyway.

The bill is currently in the State Senate’s Appropriations Committee, where it looks like it’s about to pass. Read it for yourself here.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2wfB5PA
via IFTTT

Yesterday the New York State Assembly approved a bill that carves out an exception to the state’s ban on dual prosecutions for people associated with the president who benefit from an act of clemency after being prosecuted for a federal crime. Senate Bill 4572, which the state Senate already has passed and Gov. Mario Cuomo supports, does not mention Donald Trump by name, but it is aimed at making sure that his cronies can still be prosecuted under state law if he pardons them or commutes their sentences.

The high-minded rationale for S.B. 4572 is that a president should not be able to suppress damaging information that might emerge from state prosecution of former underlings by pardoning them for federal offenses that are also criminal under New York law. “Either in the past or in a continuing manner, the president has talked about using the pardon power in a corrupt way to undermine the rule of law,” said the bill’s Senate sponsor, Todd Kaminsky, a Democrat who represents part of Long Island. “I think New York doesn’t have to sit by and let the capricious use of the pardon power tie its hands.”

The low-minded rationale for Kaminsky’s bill is that Democrats who detest Trump want to take advantage of any weapon they can find to hurt him and people associated with him, especially since impeachment seems to be off the table. But in their eagerness to attack their political opponents, the Democrats who control New York’s legislature are compromising an important principle of justice.

The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that people can be prosecuted for the same conduct under both federal and state law, notwithstanding the constitutional ban on double jeopardy, because an act criminalized by “separate sovereigns” constitutes two distinct offenses. In a case the Court is considering right now, a man convicted of illegal gun possession under both state and federal law is asking the justices to revisit that dubious doctrine, which allows double punishment for the same crime and new prosecutions of defendants who have been acquitted. But 20 states, including New York, already have laws aimed at preventing such outcomes.

New York’s law says “a person may not be separately prosecuted for two offenses based upon the same act or criminal transaction.” There are exceptions to that rule, but none of them covers self-protecting pardons by Donald Trump. Hence the perceived need for S.B. 4572, which applies to former executive branch officials who served in positions requiring Senate confirmation, former members of the president’s executive staff, and former employees of his campaign, transition team, businesses, or nonprofit organizations who benefit from his clemency after they are prosecuted for federal offenses.

In case those broad categories don’t do the trick, the new exception also encompasses anyone who “bears accessory liability” for crimes committed by people associated with the president. There are also catchall categories for acts of clemency that help the president avoid “potential prosecution or conviction,” that are related to crimes that benefited him, or that provide relief for a person who has information “material to the determination of any criminal or civil investigation, enforcement action or prosecution” involving the president.

If the goal of the law were limited to the one described by Kaminsky, you might think those last three categories would suffice. Why throw everyone connected to Trump under the bus if state prosecutions are allowed in cases where it can be shown that a pardon or commutation helped him avoid civil or criminal liability? The breadth of the new exception makes sense if it is a cudgel to beat Trump allies, less so if it is all about preventing him from “using the pardon power in a corrupt way to undermine the rule of law.”

Consider former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was sentenced to nearly eight years in federal prison for crimes unrelated to his work on the campaign. Manafort might or might not know things that would support civil or criminal action against the president. But under this bill, New York could prosecute him again for the same conduct (bank fraud, say) even without making that showing (since he is a former campaign official) if Trump decides to pardon him or commute his sentence. It would not matter if Trump’s sole motivation was sympathy for someone he sincerely thought got a raw deal. New York prosecutors could still try to send Manafort back to prison.

The same would be true of many other people in Trump’s orbit—including former secretaries, second cousins, and low-level campaign employees—who are convicted of federal offenses, even if the crime seems minor and the punishment disproportionate. Trump could still use his clemency power to help such a person, but that would not stop New York prosecutors from trying him again for the same conduct, assuming they can find a state law that applies.

If, say, Trump commuted the mandatory minimum sentence of a drug offender who once worked for one of his businesses, she would still be subject to state prosecution for the same crime. Meanwhile, a similarly situated defendant who committed the same offense but never made the mistake of working for Trump would not have to worry about a second prosecution. Call that distinction whatever you like, but it surely does not seem like upholding the rule of law.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2X3yyUo
via IFTTT

Calling climate change an existential threat to humanity, congressional Democrats have proposed a policy package called the Green New Deal. It would mandate that 100 percent of U.S. energy production come from “clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources” like wind and solar by the year 2050.

But some environmentalists say Green New Dealers are neglecting one obvious source of abundant clean energy already available: nuclear power, which the Green New Deal FAQ wants to phase out along with such fossil fuels as oil, gas, and coal.

“It’s when the conservationists became environmentalists that everything went bad,” says Michael Shellenberger, founder and president of Environmental Progress, a pro-nuclear research and advocacy nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. “It stopped being about the environment. It became about controlling society.”

Shellenberger started his career in energy advocating for more government subsidies to wind and solar. He pushed for a new Apollo Project of $300 billion in federal research and development funding to make renewable energy sources cheaper than coal within a decade.

From 2009 to 2015, the Obama administration took up that call and put billions of dollars into renewable energy subsidies. That, Shellenberger says, opened his eyes to the fact that no amount of government funding can overcome the inherent drawbacks of renewables.

When California invested heavily in wind and solar, Shellenberger says it led to energy price increases at a rate about six times faster than the national average, despite the falling cost of solar panels.

Shellenberger says that the allure of nuclear power is its “energy density”—he estimates that the energy consumption of the average human being from birth to death can be provided by a single 12-ounce soda can’s worth of uranium. He believes a nuclear renaissance could unlock a world of clean energy abundance, an idea he explores further in a document he co-authored, titled “An Ecomodernist Manifesto.”

He contrasts his pro-growth, urbanist “ecomodernism” with the Malthusian, neo-primitivist “dark green” environmentalism that he thinks motivates many proponents of the Green New Deal.

“If you want to save the natural environment, you just use nuclear. You grow more food on less land, and people live in cities. It’s not rocket science,” says Shellenberger. “The idea that people need to stay poor…that’s just a reactionary social philosophy that they then dress up as a kind of environmentalism.”

Watch the above video to learn more about the history of nuclear energy and to hear more from Shellenberger about his case for nuclear power, as well as his response to concerns about radiation, nuclear weapons, and nuclear’s economic viability. The video also features solar energy advocate Ed Smeloff, who served on the Sacramento Municipal Utilities District board during the shutdown of California’s Rancho Seco nuclear plant. Smeloff argues that nuclear power simply can’t compete in the marketplace.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Alexis Garcia and Weissmueller.

This video falls under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

“Granular Orchestra” by VP Productions is licensed under a Standard License through Artisound.io.

“Intro” by Herr Doktor is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

“Revenge” by Herr Doktor is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License.

“Neon Riding” by Herr Doktor is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

“The Night Heat” by Herr Doktor is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

“Inner City Lights” by Herr Doktor is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike International License.

“Ana” by Herr Doktor is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

“Moon” by Herr Doktor is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

German environmentalists photo credit: Stefan Boness/Ipon/SIPA/Newscom

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez photo credit: Alex Edelman/Zuma Press/Newscom

Elon Musk photo credit: Yang Lei Xinhua News Agency/Newscom

Michael Shellenberger photo credit: James Arthur Photography/James Arthur/Newscom ID 113779354 © Vaclav Volrab | Dreamstime.com

Smokestacks photo credit: Shaun Van Steyn Stock Connection Worldwide/Newscom

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2JyeXbE
via IFTTT