Results matching “first”

A few candidates are embracing ideas long seen as on the edge of liberal politics: abolishing the Electoral College and adding up to a half-dozen justices to the Supreme Court.

Ronald Reagan emptied the psychiatric hospitals and Jerry Brown emptied the prisons, or so some people say. Although neither statement is completely true, there are elements of harsh reality in both. And they are connected.

Reagan and Brown, two of the most consequential governors ever in California, led the state during two of the most well intended but poorly executed movements in this state's history.

The first was the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill starting in the 1960's. The movement, started in Europe, was supported by President Kennedy and ultimately complicated by a U.S. Supreme Court opinion and civil liberty concerns over forced treatment.

The second in recent years was fueled by concerns about perceived mass incarceration, and the reality that our jails and prisons had become the de facto mental facilities.

The result: fewer inmates, and significant increases in homelessness and untreated mental illness.

I have witnessed this as a county prosecutor, deputy attorney general and El Dorado County District Attorney. As someone with more than 27 years in the pursuit of justice, I worry for the people on the streets, and for the future victims of crime.

Over the last quarter of a century, the United States has seen historic drops in crime--most famously in New York. These gains, once thought impossible, were achieved largely through dramatic innovations in policing, especially the adoption of an approach that stressed order maintenance in communities, data- and intelligence-gathering, and a problem-solving approach to crime and disorder.

In recent years, however, antipolice sentiment has risen in the U.S., sparked in part by a series of tragic, high-profile police-involved killings in major cities but also by the work of critics, mostly on the left but also on the libertarian right, who argue that targeted policing aimed at public disorder is coercive, hostile to community life, and often racist. These critics see such policing as the antithesis to what they call community policing. The arguments that have gained popular currency among police critics have essentially blinded them from seeing that the sort of aggressive policing that they object to can actually be an element of a community-policing model.

The increasingly widespread view that community policing and order-maintenance efforts are at odds represents a fundamental misunderstanding. In reality, the proactive policing that New York first undertook in its subway system under then-transit police chief William J. Bratton in the early 1990s--informed in significant part by Broken Windows theory--was a core element of community policing. Indeed, the very behaviors that residents wanted more heavily policed called for exactly the sort of approach that many modern community-policing advocates now decry.

John Galton and his girlfriend Lily Forester had finally made it. On a March 2017 evening, the young American couple sat on their balcony above Acapulco, Mexico, counting their blessings. They'd recently moved into a big house on a mountainside and were eyeing an ambitious push into the artisanal bong business.

Galton and Forester were anarcho-capitalists who slipped U.S. drug charges worth 25 years in prison, they said in a YouTube video that night. They'd hopped the border and resettled in what Galton called one of the world's "pockets of freedom," a community billed as a libertarian paradise.

Almost two years later, Galton was murdered.

Cecena was convicted of killing SDPD officer Archie Buggs in 1978, after shooting the 30-year-old officer four times during a traffic stop in Skyline before killing him with a final shot at point-blank range, according to the DA's office.

First, we must continue the progress we have made on violent crime while, at the same time, recognizing the changes that have occurred since I last served as Attorney General. Then, the Nation was suffering from the highest violent crime rate in our history. My priority was to protect the public and attack those soaring crime rates by targeting chronic violent offenders and gangs. The crime rate has substantially fallen since 1992. The recently passed First Step Act, which I intend to diligently implement if confirmed, recognizes the progress we have made over the past three decades. Like Attorney General Sessions, I believe we must keep up the pressure on chronic, violent criminals. We cannot allow the progress we have made to be reversed. As Attorney General, I will continue to give priority to the joint efforts with our state and local partners to combat violent crime.

The Senate confirmed 77 stalled nominees--a collection of ambassadors, U.S. attorneys or other non-controversial picks--by voice vote on Jan. 2. But thanks mostly to Democratic objections, the upper chamber returned to the White House 384 nominees it failed to confirm in the 115th Congress. That includes some 70 judicial nominees.

The White House will now have to renominate these men and women, assuming they haven't given up in frustration. Mark Greenblatt was nominated to be inspector general of the Ex-Im Bank in September 2017, 16 months ago. The Banking Committee approved him three months later; he's still waiting for a floor vote. Burlington Stores exec Janet Dhillon, the nominee to lead the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, has been waiting 18 months.

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The White House was rightly criticized for its slow start with executive-branch nominations, but the main problem long ago became the systematic Democratic effort to prevent President Trump from filling out the government. First, Democrats take as much time as possible tying up nominees in committee. Once even non-controversial nominees get to the floor, Democrats then object to a quick voice-vote confirmation and demand a cloture vote that requires 30 hours of floor debate.

But having passed the First Step Act, lawmakers should be cautious about the next step. Progressives believe that the U.S. overincarcerates and needs to cut back sharply on the number of people in jails and prisons. But the "mass incarceration" claim doesn't withstand much scrutiny.

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What about overpunishment? Are penalties so harsh that American prisons are filled with men and women who are languishing there for decades because of some youthful indiscretion? That is the image the disincarceration movement wants to conjure up. But it is false.

First, 23% of felons convicted of violent crimes are sentenced to no incarceration whatever. Second, nearly 80% of state prison inmates are released before serving their full terms. If we measure punishment by actual time served, the picture is not disturbing. Some might argue that America has an underpunishment problem.

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The risk in the second step of criminal-justice reform is that it goes too far. The justice system, flawed though it is, provides incentives to desist from crime. The weaker it gets, the greater the risk of a significant crime increase. That happened in the late 1960s: When the crime tsunami began, the system caved in. Police arrested fewer offenders, and courts imposed fewer and lighter punishments. That contributed to the 20th century's worst sustained violent-crime wave.

There is a major political push going on to get law enforcement organizations to flip and support the badly drafted and ill-conceived legislation titled the "First Step Act," which I prefer to call the Faux Pas Act.  See this post.

I think one thing we should is we should do is stiffen up our laws in terms of the death penalty. When people do this, they should get the death penalty, and they shouldn't have to wait years and years. Now, the lawyers will get involved, and everybody is going to get involved, and we'll be 10 years down the line. And I think they should stiffen up laws, and I think they should very much bring the death penalty into vogue. Anybody that does a thing like this to innocent people that are in temple or in church -- we had so many incidents with churches -- they should be -- they should really suffer the ultimate price. They should pay the ultimate price. I've felt that way for a long time. Some people disagree with me. I can't imagine why. But this has to stop.

I've felt that way for a long time, too, Mr. President. Now what are you going to do about it? It's been almost two years since your election, and you haven't done anything at all yet, as far as I can tell.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced Thursday afternoon that the Senate would vote on the 15 nominees by the end of the evening. Three nominees are for appellate courts--one each for the Second, Third and Ninth Circuits. That would put the total of appellate judges confirmed at 29 in the last two years--a modern record for the first two years of a Presidency.