California Criminal Defense Lawyer Blog

On a recent afternoon, a Texas grandmother discovered that her two granddaughters, aged 12 and 5, were missing from her home. Her car was missing too. Imaging the worse—that her granddaughters have been kidnapped from her home and forcibly taken in her car by the kidnapper—she called 911 to report the incident

Fortunately for Grandma, she had OnStar installed in her car and the police were able to quickly track the location of her car. The police caught up with the car and a chase ensued. The police dash cam videotape of the chase looks like a police chase out of an action thriller. The driver of Grandma’s car was running red lights, sideswiping vehicles while weaving in and out of traffic, and going at speeds of up to 118 mph. The chase lasted about 40 minutes along Highway 105 in the outlying suburban area of Houston right during rush hour. At one point during the chase Grandma’s car was heading right into oncoming traffic.

Ultimately police were able to have the OnStar center shut off the car remotely. The chase ended— almost miraculously without any injuries. Inside Grandma’s car sat her 12 year old granddaughter at the steering wheel with her 5 year old granddaughter in the passenger seat. The frightened 5 year old jumped straight into an officer’s arms; the 12 year old was arrested.

YOUR PET CAN SEND YOU TO PRISON

You could be charged for a crime your animal “commits.” Okay, animals can’t commit crimes but this is serious stuff. If your dog attacks a person or worse yet, kills someone, you can be facing some very serious criminal charges.

But it needn’t be your dog or even an aggressive act by an animal you own. One Vermont man is being charged with negligent involuntary manslaughter when his roaming bull was hit by a vehicle, killing the driver and the bull. The bull’s owner faces a sentence of up to 15 years in prison if he is convicted. The significant fact is the bull owner’s negligence. It is alleged that he did not properly contain the animal and this wasn’t the first time the bull had been seen wandering off the property; the bull’s owner had been cited five times for allowing his animals to wander off the pasture. In fact, it was reported that minutes before the fatal accident, another driver had warned the bull’s owner that the bull was in the road.

WHY ARE SO MANY PEOPLE LOCKED UP IN THE UNITED STATES?

In last week’s post, I discussed the high prison population in the United States relative to other countries. According to all available statistics, the U.S. leads the world in the incarceration of its population per capita. This statistic paints the picture: Almost 25% of the world’s prisoners are in the United States, yet the United States has only 4.5% of the world’s population.

The high incarceration rates are often blamed on the number of people the U.S. locked up for relatively minor drug possession offenses, the so-called “War on Drugs,” but that doesn’t stack up. As I discussed in last week’s post, the incarceration statistics don’t entirely support that theory. It is quite likely that there is more than one overriding reason the United States locks up so much of its population.

According to the London-based International Centre for Prison Studies (ICPS), which is an arm of the University of London Law School Institute for Criminal Policy Research, the United State ranks 2nd in the world for the number of prisoners locked up per capita. Based on the latest statistics (2014), only the tiny Seychelles outranks the U.S. for the number of people locked up per capita and that is almost certainly a statistical quirk since the Seychelles has a population of less than 100,000, which is the benchmark per capita rate. So for all intents and purposes, the United States has more prisoners per capita (693 per 100,000 in population) than any country in the world. That’s way behind countries like Russia (445/100,000), Saudi Arabia (161/100,000), and China (118/100,000). Some may argue that those countries’ statistics are not transparent, but the ICPS maintains that it gathers the data monthly from reputable sources. Whether the data is entirely accurate or not, the United States clearly locks up more of its population than other country in the world.

So, what gives? Does the United States just produce more criminals? Is this due to the War on Drug? Is Law Enforcement more effective in the United States? Do federal and state laws impose harsher sentences than other countries? Is the criminal justice system broken in the United States?

These questions have been researched in depth and not surprisingly, different researchers come up with different answers. Many blame it on the so-called “War on Drugs” and indeed, the federal government released new guidelines in 2015 aimed at scaling back federal incarceration rates, which is expected to see the early release of 17,000 prisoners who were convicted on nonviolent drug offenses. But that is just a drop in the bucket. Between local jails, state and federal prisons, the United States incarcerates approximately 2.3 million people (according the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2014). While there might be something to the theory that the War on Drugs has contributed to the prison population, a deeper look at the numbers suggest that the War on Drugs is not entirely the answer. The War on Drugs really took off during the Regan years of the early 1980’s. Shortly thereafter, prison populations soared, but demographics might have had more of a role in that increase than the War on Drugs.