Q&As Archive
Radley Balko has laid out his views on the criminal justice system in parts one, two, three and four of our interview.
All that remains is part five.
Q. Having run through a fair number of problems, let's turn our attention to solutions. What are your top 5 ideas for reforming the criminal justice system? What are the most significant obstacles preventing them?
1. Changing the federal government's role in the criminal justice system.
The federal government has a legitimate function in investigating and prosecuting some crimes, such as crimes related to national security. But we've federalized far too many crimes, and federal crimes like racketeering, conspiracy, and money laundering have been interpreted far too broadly. The Constitution lays out three federal crimes. We now have thousands. Federal crime-fighting grants like the Byrne Grant also distort the priorities of local police departments, incentivizing them to expend more resources on consensual drug crimes than violent crime. Since the late 1980s, the feds have also been giving local police departments surplus military equipment, which has reinforced the problem of creeping militarization.
On the other hand, the Department of Justice needs to get more involved in enforcing civil rights and investigating corruption and abuse in the criminal justice system at the state and local level.
2. Ensure that scientific evidence in the courtroom is actually scientific.
The forensic science community needs more peer review. Crime lab technicians and forensic scientists should be independent of the prosecutors who hire them, to prevent unintentional bias--they should report to someone other than a DA or state attorney general. Ideally, forensic analysis would be sent to multiple private labs. Occasionally, evidence would be sent to multiple labs for double-checking. Right now, there's too much pressure--subtle and overt--on state crime labs to produce results favorable to prosecutors. Using several private labs would put the incentive back on accuracy. Technicians would be rewarded for getting things right and for catching other labs' mistakes, not necessarily for confirming or bolstering the state's case.
Farleigh Dickinson University economist Roger Koppl has some other innovative suggestions (PDF) on how we can improve the quality of the science used in the courtroom.
3. Community policing.
Community policing is a broad term generally meaning an approach to law enforcement that's proactive instead of reactive.
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All that remains is part five.
Q. Having run through a fair number of problems, let's turn our attention to solutions. What are your top 5 ideas for reforming the criminal justice system? What are the most significant obstacles preventing them?
1. Changing the federal government's role in the criminal justice system.
The federal government has a legitimate function in investigating and prosecuting some crimes, such as crimes related to national security. But we've federalized far too many crimes, and federal crimes like racketeering, conspiracy, and money laundering have been interpreted far too broadly. The Constitution lays out three federal crimes. We now have thousands. Federal crime-fighting grants like the Byrne Grant also distort the priorities of local police departments, incentivizing them to expend more resources on consensual drug crimes than violent crime. Since the late 1980s, the feds have also been giving local police departments surplus military equipment, which has reinforced the problem of creeping militarization.
On the other hand, the Department of Justice needs to get more involved in enforcing civil rights and investigating corruption and abuse in the criminal justice system at the state and local level.
2. Ensure that scientific evidence in the courtroom is actually scientific.
The forensic science community needs more peer review. Crime lab technicians and forensic scientists should be independent of the prosecutors who hire them, to prevent unintentional bias--they should report to someone other than a DA or state attorney general. Ideally, forensic analysis would be sent to multiple private labs. Occasionally, evidence would be sent to multiple labs for double-checking. Right now, there's too much pressure--subtle and overt--on state crime labs to produce results favorable to prosecutors. Using several private labs would put the incentive back on accuracy. Technicians would be rewarded for getting things right and for catching other labs' mistakes, not necessarily for confirming or bolstering the state's case.
Farleigh Dickinson University economist Roger Koppl has some other innovative suggestions (PDF) on how we can improve the quality of the science used in the courtroom.
3. Community policing.
Community policing is a broad term generally meaning an approach to law enforcement that's proactive instead of reactive.
Read More
Flickr user Sandr 123
My interview with Radley Balko, who is meeting his fans in Denver tonight, began here. Part two is here. And part three is here. The next question:
Q. Perhaps the most significant story you've covered lately involved prosecutors using the services of a bite mark expert, though evidence suggests he is no expert at all. Can you briefly describe that case, reflect more generally on the idea of expert witnesses in our criminal justice system, and explain why you think the status quo is problematic?
In the 1990s, a Mississippi dentist named Michael West became a popular expert witness for prosecutors because he claimed to be a bite mark expert who could find and identify tooth impressions in human skin that no other expert could see. He was eventually exposed as a fraud by 60 Minutes and other media outlets, though he continued to testify in Mississippi, and there are still people in prison who were convicted primarily because of his testimony.
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Q. Perhaps the most significant story you've covered lately involved prosecutors using the services of a bite mark expert, though evidence suggests he is no expert at all. Can you briefly describe that case, reflect more generally on the idea of expert witnesses in our criminal justice system, and explain why you think the status quo is problematic?
In the 1990s, a Mississippi dentist named Michael West became a popular expert witness for prosecutors because he claimed to be a bite mark expert who could find and identify tooth impressions in human skin that no other expert could see. He was eventually exposed as a fraud by 60 Minutes and other media outlets, though he continued to testify in Mississippi, and there are still people in prison who were convicted primarily because of his testimony.
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Flickr user publik 15
(My interview with Radley Balko began here. Part two is here.)
Q. You mentioned no-knock raids -- can you explain what those are, and why you object to them so regularly on your blog?
No-knock raids are when police force entry into a home without knocking or announcing themselves first. The Supreme Court has recognized that requiring the state to knock and announce before entering a home is part of the Fourth Amendment -- part of the "Castle Doctrine" that extends back into English common law. The problem is that in the same opinion (Wilson v. Arkansas), the Court carved out enough exceptions to overwhelm the rule.
Police can now enter your home unannounced if they believe that knocking would endanger their safety, or if they believe it would give you time to destroy evidence, which in most cases means the time you would need to flush your drug stash down the toilet.
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Q. You mentioned no-knock raids -- can you explain what those are, and why you object to them so regularly on your blog?
No-knock raids are when police force entry into a home without knocking or announcing themselves first. The Supreme Court has recognized that requiring the state to knock and announce before entering a home is part of the Fourth Amendment -- part of the "Castle Doctrine" that extends back into English common law. The problem is that in the same opinion (Wilson v. Arkansas), the Court carved out enough exceptions to overwhelm the rule.
Police can now enter your home unannounced if they believe that knocking would endanger their safety, or if they believe it would give you time to destroy evidence, which in most cases means the time you would need to flush your drug stash down the toilet.
Read More
Flickr user Sean Tyler
(Part one of my interview with Radley Balko is here.)
You've criticized the militarization of law enforcement. It's a topic The Atlantic covered in the aftermath of the Columbine shooting, when police departments all over America began encouraging a SWAT team mentality among regular officers. Why is this war mentality a bad thing? Aren't there heavily armed bad guys who are literally causing war-like casualties in urban neighborhoods?
The military is trained to kill people and break things -- to annihilate a foreign enemy. The police are charged with protecting our rights while securing the peace. Those are two very different missions, and it's dangerous to conflate them. But that seems to be what's happening.
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You've criticized the militarization of law enforcement. It's a topic The Atlantic covered in the aftermath of the Columbine shooting, when police departments all over America began encouraging a SWAT team mentality among regular officers. Why is this war mentality a bad thing? Aren't there heavily armed bad guys who are literally causing war-like casualties in urban neighborhoods?
The military is trained to kill people and break things -- to annihilate a foreign enemy. The police are charged with protecting our rights while securing the peace. Those are two very different missions, and it's dangerous to conflate them. But that seems to be what's happening.
Read More
Flickr user Darrin Barry
Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason Magazine whose award-winning investigative work focuses on criminal justice and civil liberties. His blog, The Agitator, is one of the most carefully curated resources for stories on the same subject.
Q. In your work, you've frequently reported on police abuses and the appropriate role of law enforcement in a free society. Though you're often writing in regard to specific controversies, I wonder if you have any general criticisms of the American criminal justice system. What's wrong about where we're at? What are the most urgent improvements you would recommend?
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