New Jersey Parole Board Using Polygraphs on Sex Offenders: Sex Crimes blogger Corey Rayburn Yung posts on New Jersey's success in using polygraph tests to detect and prevent the parole violations of sex offenders. An article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, by Chris Megerian, reports on an internal parole board study suggesting that New Jersey's polygraph policy increases the ability of parole officers to detect parolees' failure to comply with conditions of supervision before they can escalate to behaviors warranting new arrest. So far, the state has conducted only 400 tests, but "[m]ost of the 105 parole officers surveyed said the polygraph was useful,
and 41 said they learned new information through the tests."
Should Prosecutors Scan for "Death Worthiness?" That appears to be the question raised by Jules Epstein in his new SSRN paper, "Death-Worthiness and Prosecutorial Discretion in Capital Case Charging." The abstract is posted at CrimProf Blog. Epstein's paper proposes that any attempt to assess the merits of a prosecutorial 'selection' scheme in capital-eligible homicide cases be examined through a metric of "death worthiness." He believes this screening method is superior to previously used methods that examined racial and intra-state geographic disparities. Epstein notes three barriers to successful implementation of this method. It could create "an over-inclusive charging process" because: (1) counsel sometimes fails to develop mitigation evidence; (2) a defendant's youth may sometimes prevent him from assisting in mitigation; and (3) powerful victims support groups often "bar a well-intentioned prosecutor from declining to seek death even where the individual defendant is not death-worthy."
Kent will have more comment on this article in a separate post.
Can Sunday Football Contribute to Domestic Violence?: Freakonomics Blog Editor posts today on a new study, by Economics Professors David Card and Gordon Dahl, that tests whether violent episodes occur when the perpetrator loses control by examining data on domestic violence occurring on Sundays during the NFL season. The two found that unexpected losses by the home team "lead to an 8 percent increase in police reports of at-home male-on-female intimate-partner violence." They also found that unexpected losses in important or particularly frustrating games have a 50 to 100 percent larger effect on domestic violence.
Greenhouse's Take on Justice Sotomayor and the Death Penalty: At New York Times Opinionator, Linda Greenhouse takes a moment to comment on Justice Sotomayor's decision to join a statement issued by Justice Stevens after the Court declined to grant a stay of execution to John Allen Muhammad. Greenhouse points out that Justice Sotomayor's decision demonstrates that she was troubled by Muhammad's rushed execution date, and alludes to the fact that Justice Sotomayor may not be as pro-prosecution as many had hoped (and others had feared).
Should Prosecutors Scan for "Death Worthiness?" That appears to be the question raised by Jules Epstein in his new SSRN paper, "Death-Worthiness and Prosecutorial Discretion in Capital Case Charging." The abstract is posted at CrimProf Blog. Epstein's paper proposes that any attempt to assess the merits of a prosecutorial 'selection' scheme in capital-eligible homicide cases be examined through a metric of "death worthiness." He believes this screening method is superior to previously used methods that examined racial and intra-state geographic disparities. Epstein notes three barriers to successful implementation of this method. It could create "an over-inclusive charging process" because: (1) counsel sometimes fails to develop mitigation evidence; (2) a defendant's youth may sometimes prevent him from assisting in mitigation; and (3) powerful victims support groups often "bar a well-intentioned prosecutor from declining to seek death even where the individual defendant is not death-worthy."
Kent will have more comment on this article in a separate post.
Can Sunday Football Contribute to Domestic Violence?: Freakonomics Blog Editor posts today on a new study, by Economics Professors David Card and Gordon Dahl, that tests whether violent episodes occur when the perpetrator loses control by examining data on domestic violence occurring on Sundays during the NFL season. The two found that unexpected losses by the home team "lead to an 8 percent increase in police reports of at-home male-on-female intimate-partner violence." They also found that unexpected losses in important or particularly frustrating games have a 50 to 100 percent larger effect on domestic violence.
Greenhouse's Take on Justice Sotomayor and the Death Penalty: At New York Times Opinionator, Linda Greenhouse takes a moment to comment on Justice Sotomayor's decision to join a statement issued by Justice Stevens after the Court declined to grant a stay of execution to John Allen Muhammad. Greenhouse points out that Justice Sotomayor's decision demonstrates that she was troubled by Muhammad's rushed execution date, and alludes to the fact that Justice Sotomayor may not be as pro-prosecution as many had hoped (and others had feared).
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