dad to day biz as a DOJ intern

I was asked to go to and report on two hearing in the house of representatives.  They were both meetings of the Judiciary committee, in the subcommittee on crime, terrorism, and homeland security.  The first was about "overcriminalization." Witnesses came in and testified about how they were prosecuted for laws that they didn't even know about, unfairly.  One man had been accused of riding a snow-mobile in a wilderness area, which is punishable by six months or a huge fine. The issue was that the wildnerness area was not defined, the park services just enforced it where they thought it might be.  Another issue was that the mans breach of park regulations was charged as a federal crime, because the legislature had given them power to make their rules with the enforcement of the federal government behind them. The next witness had just finished a six year prison term for "illegal lobster smuggling." Lobsters that he was importing from Honduras were not regulation size, thus non-exportable.  He was on the import and distribute end of the business, so he had nothing to do with the lobsters, in fact he never even saw them before they were siezed and used as evidence against him.  The most interesting thing about this case is that the "regulation size" or whatever regulation the witness didn't follow, was not even american law, it was honduran law.  But there is a rule on import/exports that the United States will enforce another countries law regarding their product.  The honduran attorney general had written a letter to our government saying that the honduran law the man was being charged with breaking was unenforcable, and invalid, in hopes of setting the witness free.  But the US government continued prosecution and the man was found guilty and given 97 months in prison for it.  Other examples of overcriminalization include a man who was sentenced to two years for not putting a "ground shipping" sticker on a package. The moral is that there are over 5 thousand ways to commit a federal crime, and the greatest criminal experts in the country don't even know all of them.  If they don't know them, how are citizens expected to know them?  The consensus of the witnesses was that there needs to be specific "mens rea" or intent requirements for federal crimes, and ALSO that the united states should not enforce rules and laws of agencies or other countries.  Federal crimes and the legal code should be decided by congress, because that's what they were elected to do.

 

-national forum against youth violence/isiah thomas/etc..

The office of justice programs convened a national forum on youth violence last week.  Representatives came from Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Memphis, San Jose, and Salinas. Salinas may sound random but they actually have a pretty big gang problem apparently.  So these six cities are working towards larger programs for youth violence prevention, and the department of justice has been working alongside them to help them implement programs and figure out what generally needs to be done to stop this.  Along with the delegation from Chicago, Isiah Thomas (basketball legend) came and participated. They are using him as an influential public figure both to influence kids and families, and to influence the community to get involved with the issue. I think it's a great idea.  Apparently  they are also working on getting several players from the Chicago bulls to participate as well. 

 

So the groups all did presentations on the current conditions in their cities.  Detroit and chicago have major problems with gangs and violence, and I don't think I care to spend a great deal of time in the urban areas in either of those cities.  Boston was not quite as bad, and neither was Memphis, although they do have their problems.  The biggest surprise was San Jose. Apparently it's like the fourth safest city with more than 500,000 people.  It's also supposed to be the tenth largest city in the united states.  I guess I never realized how safe it was because I have driven through a few areas there that didn't seem very safe at all.  But maybe looks are deceiving? So after the groups introduced themselves and the programs they were doing, there were workshops and guest speakers and panels about several different topics, but the main idea was "prevention, intervention, enforcement."

 

The forum was really eye-opening to the issues that are really out there.  The idea of high school age kids killing eachother is a pretty terrible thing.  In fact just a few weeks ago there was a huge drive-by shooting over on U-street and like four teenagers got killed. Its a terrible thing, and something that needs to be fixed somehow.  There shouldn't be places people just "can't go" because they are too dangerous, but i think just about every big city in the world has them. This is America though, and that doesn't really seem right to me.  Maybe there will always be ghettos, and there will always be violent and dangerous people in them... but if anything can be done to keep kids out of it, then maybe eventually there won't be anyone occupying it at all.