How to Change the Justice Department

By TChris, Section Crime Policy
Posted on Fri Jan 16, 2009 at 10:33:17 PM EST
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If Barack Obama and Eric Holder really believe in change, they should change the Justice Department's reliance on assembly line justice. To obtain quick guilty pleas from immigrants who have entered the country illegally, federal prosecutors threaten felony convictions if the immigrants fail to enter prompt guilty pleas to misdemeanor charges.

Every day, of the 1,000 migrants apprehended by immigration agents in Arizona, 70 are "randomly" selected and processed like cattle through Tucson's federal court. The objective is to criminalize these migrants and have them spend time in the private Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), thereby serving as a disincentive for other would-be migrants.

Eliminating reliance on private prisons is another change the new administration should implement. CCA "receives $11 million per month from the federal government." That's $11 million that could be spend on something more productive than warehousing poor people who enter our country to find work.

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How to Change the Justice Department | 4 comments (4 topical)

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charge? (none / 0) (#1)
by diogenes on Fri Jan 16, 2009 at 11:16:14 PM EST

Maybe 70 of 1000 committed a crime? If these prosecutions really are random, then maybe some of the resources diverted to death penalty projects designed to save one innocent man out of a thousand would be better used in Arizona.
No need for a snark at private prisons; the Democratic way would be to have public prisons with unionized guards (the way we have in New York State); the prison industry would continue.

Maybe (none / 0) (#2)
by jimakaPPJ on Sat Jan 17, 2009 at 09:03:44 AM EST

it is time for these Cultural Sojourners to stay south of the border.

That is a fix we could live with!

: My dad's gated community (none / 0) (#3)
by weltec2 on Sat Jan 17, 2009 at 09:04:50 PM EST

would go to seed. The coyotes would have their grassland back on the golf course with all the rabbits and bobcats.

I'm sure the new administration has a (none / 0) (#4)
by thereyougo on Sun Jan 18, 2009 at 12:56:21 AM EST

handle on what to do.

Yes, the people are poor and in need. Latinamerica isn't THAT destitute that it can't provide for its poor.

the answer to the question is how do you get these countries to answer the call? America can't provide the solution to their problems.

However, America today is paying the sins of the fathers, the ones who allowed them to come through on the bracero programs to aid big agraculture.

Its time to bring some diplomacy to the salad bowl and stop criminalizing the poor for poverty. Let the new administration put countries on notice that that while we feel their pain, America's pain is growing too.

As a taxpayer, I don't want to keep building prisons to punish people for poverty, because I'm being punished too by having to foot the bill.