...Criminal Records in the Digital Age: A Review of Current Practices and Recommendations for Reform in Texas Helen Gaebler, Senior Research Attorney William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law The University of Texas School of law March 2013 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................4 II. THE PROBLEM: CRIMINAL RECORDS AND COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES .........................................5 Collateral Consequences Overview ......................................................................................................... 5 Who’s Affected? A Look at the Numbers in Texas .................................................................................. 8 Disproportionality and the Criminal Justice System .............................................................................. 10 Reaching Across Generations and Communities ................................................................................... 11 III. AN OUTDATED SYSTEM: OPEN ACCESS TO CRIMINAL RECORDS .................................................... 12 The Background Checking Industry........................................................................................................ 12 Common Practices and Pitfalls............................................................................................................... 13 Past Calls for Reform .....................
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...03-Banks.qxd 1/30/04 4:52 PM Page 57 3 Racial Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System ETHICAL BACKGROUND It is generally agreed that discrimination based on ethnic origin is morally wrong and a violation of the principle of equality. The equality principle requires that those who are equal be treated equally based on similarities, and that race is not a relevant consideration in that assessment (May and Sharratt 1994: 317). In other words, it is only possible to justify treating people differently if there exists some factual difference between them that justifies such difference in treatment (Rachels 1999: 94). Equality is a nonspecific term that means nothing until applied to a particular context. Thus, in a political context, equality means equal access to public office and equal treatment under the law, and equal treatment extends to equality in terms of job hiring, promotion, and pay. Race refers to groups of persons who are relatively alike in their biological inheritance and are distinct from other groups (American Anthropological Association 1997: 2). Ethnicity is a cultural phenomenon referring to a person’s identification with a particular cultural group (Hinman 1998: 403). Race is socially constructed, and the notion that persons “belong” to a particular race was developed in the last century based on the belief that there was a biological basis for categorizing groups of people. Biologically, however, the term race has no meaning, yet society...
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...president and Republican candidate Richard Nixon in the 1960 U.S. presidential election. At age 43, he was the youngest to have been elected to the office,[2][a] the second-youngest president (after Theodore Roosevelt), and the first person born in the 20th century to serve as president.[3] To date, Kennedy has been the only Roman Catholic president and the only president to have won a Pulitzer Prize.[4] Events during his presidency included the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race—by initiating Project Apollo (which would culminate in the moon landing), the building of the Berlin Wall, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and increased U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested that afternoon and charged with the crime that night. Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald two days later, before a trial could take place. The FBI and the Warren Commission officially concluded that Oswald was the lone assassin. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the conclusion that Oswald fired the shots which killed the president, but also concluded that Kennedy was probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy.[5] Since the 1960s,...
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...Part I: The Setup 11. Downing Nixon, Part II: The Execution 12. In from the Cold 13. Poppy’s Proxy and the Saudis 14. Poppy’s Web 15. The Handoff 16. The Quacking Duck 17. Playing Hardball 18. Meet the Help 19. The Conversion 20. The Skeleton in W.’s Closet 21. Shock and . . . Oil? 22. Deflection for Reelection 23. Domestic Disturbance 24. Conclusion Afterword Author’s Note Acknowledgments Notes Foreword When a governor or any state official seeks elective national office, his (or her) reputation and what the country knows about the candidate’s background is initially determined by the work of local and regional media. Generally, those journalists do a competent job of reporting on the prospect’s record. In the case of Governor George W. Bush, Texas reporters had written numerous stories about his failed businesses in the oil patch, the dubious land grab and questionable funding behind a new stadium for Bush’s baseball team, the Texas Rangers, and his various political contradictions and hypocrisies while serving in Austin. I was one of those Texas journalists. I spent about a decade trying to find accurate information on Bush’s record in the Texas National Guard. My curiosity had been prompted by his failure to adequately answer a question I had asked him as a panelist in a televised debate with Ann Richards during the 1994 gubernatorial campaign. Eventually I published three books on Bush and his political consigliere, Karl Rove. During Bush’s...
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...M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 0 2 Volume 20 Number 2 SPANNING THE GLOBE Duke Leads the Way in International Law Teaching and Scholarship inside plus Duke admits smaller, exceptionally well-qualified class Duke’s Global Capital Markets Center to launch new Directors’ Education Institute from the dean Dear Alumni and Friends, It is not possible, these days, for a top law school to be anything other than an international one. At Duke Law, we no longer think of “international” as a separate category. Virtually everything we do has some international dimension, whether it concerns international treaties and protocols, commercial transactions across national borders, international child custody disputes, criminal behavior that violates international human rights law, international sports competitions, global environmental regulation, international terrorism, or any number of other topics. And, of course, there is little that we do at Duke that does not involve scholars and students from other countries, who are entirely integrated with U.S. scholars and students. Students enrolled in our joint JD/LLM program in international and comparative law receive an in-depth education in both the public and private aspects of international and comparative law, enriched by the ubiquitous presence of foreign students; likewise, the foreign lawyers who enroll in our one-year LLM program in American law enroll in the same courses, attend the same conferences...
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...low risk enterprise that has been reported in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, 3 Canada, 4 New Zealand, 5 Australia, 6 and England. 7 In the United States, it is committed by organized international and domestic rings, 8 street gangs, 9 terrorists, 10 drug traffickers, 11 real estate agents, 12 closing attorneys, 13 appraisers, 14 mortgage brokers, 15 The targeted victims distinguish mortgage fraud from predatory lending. In predatory lending cases the borrower is victimized by the illegal practices of the lender or its agents with respect to fees and disclosures relating to the cost of the loan. It is unfortunate that the media, consumer activists, legislators and law enforcement personnel frequently conflate mortgage fraud with predatory lending since it adds unnecessary confusion to an already complex issue and diverts attention and badly needed resources from the fight against true mortgage fraud. 2 The average “take” on a bank robbery is approximately $3,000.00. By contrast, the average straw borrower receives a “cut” of at least $10,000 and the orchestrator’s “take” in a mortgage fraud transaction frequently exceeds $100,000. In a few cases the orchestrator’s take was in excess of $1 million dollars, and in one, the perpetrator, who later fled the country, received $7 million in “profit” from the same-day flip of a mansion. 3 Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, “Mortgage Loan Fraud: An Industry Assessment Based on Suspicious Activity Report Analysis,”...
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...M A G A Z I N E FA L L 2 0 0 2 Volume 20 Number 2 SPANNING THE GLOBE Duke Leads the Way in International Law Teaching and Scholarship inside plus Duke admits smaller, exceptionally well-qualified class Duke’s Global Capital Markets Center to launch new Directors’ Education Institute from the dean Dear Alumni and Friends, It is not possible, these days, for a top law school to be anything other than an international one. At Duke Law, we no longer think of “international” as a separate category. Virtually everything we do has some international dimension, whether it concerns international treaties and protocols, commercial transactions across national borders, international child custody disputes, criminal behavior that violates international human rights law, international sports competitions, global environmental regulation, international terrorism, or any number of other topics. And, of course, there is little that we do at Duke that does not involve scholars and students from other countries, who are entirely integrated with U.S. scholars and students. Students enrolled in our joint JD/LLM program in international and comparative law receive an in-depth education in both the public and private aspects of international and comparative law, enriched by the ubiquitous presence of foreign students; likewise, the foreign lawyers who enroll in our one-year LLM program in American law enroll in the same courses, attend the same conferences...
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...PROSTITUTION IS NOT A CHOICE LEARN A BOUT TH E TRA FFI CKING OF WOMEN AND GIRLS WORLDWIDE, AND FIND OUT WHAT CAN BE DONE TO END THIS WID ESPR EAD PROBLEM … Soroptimist International of the Americas-1709 Spruce Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 - 215 893 9000 - www.soroptimist.org SOROPTIMIST WHITE PAPER Prostitution is Not a Choice I think so much about what has happened to me. Why these men did what they did to me. Old, disgusting men. It was horrible. They knew I did not want to be there, but they paid their money. They used me. I was their property for the night. They destroyed me. (14-year-old girl at Casa Hogar, a shelter in Costa Rica for children rescued from the country’s sex trade1) OVERVIEW Prostitution has been called the world’s oldest “profession.” In reality, it is the world’s oldest “oppression” and continues to be one of the most overlooked human rights abuses of women on the planet today. 2 Prostitution of women is a particularly lethal form of violence against women, and a violation of a woman’s most basic human rights. While society attempts to normalize prostitution on a variety of levels (discussed later in this paper), prostituted women are subjected to violence and abuse at the hands of paying “clients.” For the vast majority of prostituted women, “prostitution is the experience of being hunted, dominated, harassed, assaulted and battered.” 3 It is “sexual terrorism against women at the hands of men and little is being done to stop the carnage...
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...The History of US-Israel Relations Against Our Better Judgment The hidden history of how the United States was used to create Israel Louis Brandeis, flanked by Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, founding secretary of the American Federation of Zionists (right) and Nathan Straus, co-owner of Macy’s (Source: Library of Congress) By Alison Weir April 18, 2013 Alison Weir is Executive Director If Americans Knew and President of the Council for the National Interest. She is available to give presentations on this topic and can be reached at contact@ ifamericansknew.org. How the U.S. “special relationship” with Israel came about W hile many people are led to believe that U.S. support for Israel is driven by the American establishment and U.S. national interests, the facts don't support this theory. The reality is that for decades U.S. foreign policy and defense experts opposed supporting the creation of Israel. They then similarly opposed the massive American funding and diplomatic support that sustained the forcibly established state and that provided a blank check for its aggressive expansion. They were simply outmaneuvered and eventually replaced. Like many American policies, U.S. Middle East policies are driven by a special interest lobby. However, the Israel Lobby, as it is called today in the U.S.[1], consists of vastly more than what most people envision in the word "lobby." As this article will demonstrate, the Israel Lobby is considerably more powerful and...
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...Chapter Study Questions Exam Five 2305 (Chapters 4, 5, and 9) The Enduring Democracy Third Edition, 2013-2014, Dautrich and Yalof, Cengage Publishing. Be sure to skip a line between the question and the answer and skip another line before the next question. Chapter Four: Civil Liberties 1. What are civil liberties and when did individual rights recognized by government first appear in a legal charter? What charter? 73 - Those specific individual rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution and cannot be denied to citizens by government. Most of these rights are in the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights. The original English legal charter, the Magna Carta of 1215. 2. How are civil liberties different from civil rights? 73 - Civil liberties may be distinguished from civil rights (sometimes called equal rights), which refer to rights that members of various groups (racial, ethnic, sexual, and so on) have to equal treatment by government under the law and equal access to society’s opportunities. 3. What were the Alien and Sedition Acts and were editors if newspapers actually jailed? 74 - Alien Act, which authorized the president to deport from the United States all aliens suspected of “treasonable or secret” inclinations; the Alien Enemies Act, which allowed the president during wartime to arrest aliens subject to an enemy power; and the Sedition Act, which criminalized the publication of materials that brought the U.S. government...
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...[pic] FIRST ARMY EQUAL OPPORTUNITY REPRESENTATIVE COURSE STUDENT GUIDE TO CULTURAL AWARENESS INDEX LESSON TITLE PAGE 1 Philosophical Aspects of Culture SG- 3 C1 Native American Experience SG- 4 C2 White American Experience SG- 23 C3 Arab American Experience SG- 43 C4 Hispanic American Experience SG- 53 C5 Black American Experience SG- 76 C6 Asian American Experience SG-109 C7 Jewish American Experience SG-126 C8 Women in the Military SG-150 C9 Extremist Organizations/Gangs SG-167 STUDENTS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR BEING FAMILIARIZED WITH ALL CLASS MATERIAL PRIOR TO CLASS. INFORMATION PAPER ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF CULTURAL DIFFERENCE Developed by Edwin J. Nichols, Ph.D. |Ethnic Groups/ |Axiology |Epistemology |Logic |Process | |World Views | | | | | |European |Member-Object |Cognitive |Dichotomous |Technology | |Euro-American |The highest value lies in the object |One knows through counting |Either/Or...
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...U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation 2012 The Strategic Information and Operations Center at FBI Headquarters is the 24/7 command post that monitors FBI operations and law enforcement activities around the globe. An FBI agent examines a potentially contaminated letter during a white powder training exercise. 2012 The FBI Story I A Message from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III For the FBI and its partners, 2012 was a year that reminded us once again of the seriousness of the security threats facing our nation. During the year, extremists plotted to attack—unsuccessfully, thanks to the work of our Joint Terrorism Task Forces—the U.S. Capitol, the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and other landmarks on U.S. soil. Tragically, on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, a hateful attack in Benghazi took the lives of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. In the cyber realm, a rising tide of hackers took electronic aim at global cyber infrastructure, causing untold damages. High-dollar white-collar crimes of all kinds also continued to siphon significant sums from the pocketbooks of consumers. And in Newtown, Connecticut, 20 young children and six adults lost their lives in one of the worst mass shootings in American history, ending a year of violence that saw similar tragedies around the country. Working with its colleagues around the globe, the FBI is committed to taking a leadership role in protecting the nation. As you can see from...
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...Affirmative Action Race/Gender Anomaly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. The Circuit Split on the Race/Gender Conundrum . . . . . . . . . IV. Analogy to Race-Based Affirmative Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A. Remedial Purpose as a Justification for Affirmative Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B. The Diversity Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C. The Arguments Against Affirmative Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . V. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. INTRODUCTION The blockbuster race discrimination cases in recent years have all involved affirmative action and reverse discrimination. The Supreme Court has made it clear that race classifications, whether benign or invidious, will trigger rigid strict scrutiny analysis, which requires that the government prove its program is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest. In 2003, the Court, in Gratz v. Bollinger,1 ruled that while student diversity in educational institutions may be a compelling interest, an affirmative action program that assigned points to applicants of minority races was unconstitutional.2 In 2007, in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1,3 it held that two public school district plans that used race-based enrollment targets for student...
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...Licensed to: CengageBrain User Licensed to: CengageBrain User This is an electronic version of the print textbook. Due to electronic rights restrictions, some third party content may be suppressed. Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. The publisher reserves the right to remove content from this title at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. For valuable information on pricing, previous editions, changes to current editions, and alternate formats, please visit www.cengage.com/highered to search by ISBN#, author, title, or keyword for materials in your areas of interest. Copyright 2012 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. Licensed to: CengageBrain User Criminal Justice in Action, 7th Edition Larry K. Gaines and Roger LeRoy Miller © 2013 Wadsworth, Cengage Learning ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not...
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...Federal Government Exam 1 Review: The first exam will consist of questions generated from the following review sheet. Make sure you understand each of these topics before proceeding to the test. The exam will be timed so you will not have the ability to peruse your notes or retake the exam. The exam itself will consist of 30 multiple choice questions and you will have 35 minutes to complete the exam. Federalism: The Basic elements of a Federal system of government (i.e. how is it structured/how power is shared) • Layers of gov • Equal power • Distinct powers Powers of the federal government: delegated powers, implied powers (necessary and proper clause), and concurrent powers. • Delegated Powers: (expressed/enumerated powers) powers given to the federal government directly by the constitution. Some most important delegated powers are: the authority to tax, regulated interstate commerce, authority to declare war, and grants the president role of commander and chief of the military • Implied Powers: Powers not expressed in the constitution, but that can be inferred. “Necessary and proper clause” • Concurrent powers: powers shared by both levels of government. Ex: Taxes, roads, elections, commerce, establishing courts and a judicial system • Reserved powers: powers not assigned by the constitution to the national government but left to the states or the people. Guaranteed by the 10th amendment. Include “police power”-health and public...
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