Tagged: legislation

Prison Reform: New York Strikes Deal To Limit Solitary Confinement

New York has taken a substantial step in reforming its use of solitary confinement when disciplining prisoners throughout its correctional facilities. On Wednesday, the state reached an agreement in Federal Court to significantly curtail the use of solitary confinement, and to prohibit the use of such confinement when dealing with juvenile inmates.

According to the settlement, the state’s correction facilities will also use a more comprehensive approach when seeking to utilize solitary confinement as a disciplinary tool for inmates caught violating prison regulations. Specifically, correction officials will now adhere to “sentencing guidelines” that will dictate the length of time that can be imposed on certain infractions, and the maximum period that an inmate can be placed in solitary confinement.  Likewise, the use of solitary confinement will also be limited to a period of 30 days when dealing with inmates who are pregnant, and those inmates who are disabled.

Notably, New York’s decision to limit the use of solitary confinement has come complimentary to a host of other states that have also begun to enact similar reform, including Colorado, Mississippi, and Washington. This recent movement amongst the states to deal with solitary confinement has come greatly appreciated by many humanitarian groups that have steadfastly contested the use of such confinement, noting the extremely negative psychological impact that it has on prisoners.  Some prison officials have also begun advocating against the use of solitary confinement due to the elevated cost and risks associated with its use. Studies have suggested that segregated housing can be two to three more times costly to operate than general housing for inmates, and fail to address the fact that

[i]nmates kept in such conditions, most of whom will eventually be released, may be more dangerous when they emerge.

New York’s reform has also come at a time when the United States leads all other democratic nations in the number of inmates being held in solitary confinement. According to a New York Times report, there are at least 25,000 prisoners in solitary confinement within the United States, where some inmates are left to spend weeks, months, or even decades. Other studies have presented startling statistics relating to segregated housing within U.S. prisons, noting that up to 80,000 prisoners have been annually held in prison segregation units between federal and state facilities.

Related Readings:

New York Casinos May Have an Unexpected Impact on Illegal Gambling Involvement

By: Hanna Shoshany

This past election day, New Yorkers approved the Casino Ballot Referendum.  Being the first state to legalize commercial gambling since 1994, New York is the nineteenth state to say “yes” to full service commercial casinos.  With plans of opening up seven casinos in the course of seven years, four of which will begin bidding in the upstate areas as early as January 1st, the economic projections are promising.  The goal is to keep hundreds of millions of dollars currently spent in neighboring states such as New Jersey and Connecticut right here in our backyard. The generated revenues  will be allocated to public schools and to lower property taxes.  The government is also hopeful that this new law will minimize civilian involvement in illegal underground gambling rings. The government, however, ignores the fact that all of the eighteen states that host commercial casinos also have the highest rates of underground gambling rings.  As a society, we are more likely to get involved in illegal gambling when we live in an atmosphere that supports gambling as a whole.

Most of the underground gambling rings in New York are owned and operated by crime families. These gambling rings offer high stakes poker games and sports betting whose proceeds are wired to Costa Rica. Additionally, these gambling rings create an atmosphere of drugs and prostitution that is not present in Vegas-style casinos. The government’s crackdown  on these underground operations has led to high profile cases, usually involving over twenty defendants per “ring bust.” These cases  generate lucrative business for attorneys in the tri-state area who specialize in defeating RICO charges.  For instance, this past April, the FBI busted an illegal gambling ring that involved 33 co-conspirators and was orchestrated by Russian Underworld Bosses Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov and Helly Nahmad, owner of the most lucrative art gallery in the city.  Prior to accepting a plea bargain, these defendants faced 92 years on racketeering, money laundering, gambling, and fraud charges.  These types of operations are miniscule in comparison to the Genovese Family’s involvement in New Jersey gambling rings, despite the accessibility of casinos in Atlantic City. The Russian gambling ring also feigns in comparison to the online betting schemes such as Pinnacle Sports, in Las Vegas, the gambling capital of the world.

Therefore, although the economic incentives of being the nineteenth state to legalize commercial gambling are highly attractive, the likelihood that it will minimize, as opposed to facilitate, the prevalence of underground illegal gambling rings, is farfetched.

Security and Privacy for Every Attorney

BY: Steven Lapkoff

Data security has become an important issue for the legal world. Whether you are a tech-savvy law student or a veteran attorney without much experience online, now is a good time to think about the safety of your files and your clients’ information. In the free-for-all of the Internet, even privileged attorney-client communications are not always respected as such (as this article from The Guardian on the GCHQ – the UK’s equivalent of the NSA – makes clear).

These dangers shift the burden of responsibility to the individual attorney to ensure that, short of keeping locked stacks of paper files and certified letters, client information remains confidential.

Nearly once a week since the start of the summer, news headlines have been disclosing in increasing detail the efforts of the National Security Administration to access personal communications (email, instant messaging, and cloud-based data) of nearly every Internet user. Most recently, a Washington Post article revealed that not even your contact list is safe.

This has understandably set off a round of security-related concern in the IT world, with even Google scrambling to encrypt data stored on the popular Google Drive service, as companies fear the possible legal ramifications of allowing their users’ data to be accessed. Some of these questions have been discussed in an excellent article in the New York Law Journal, by Richard Raysman and Peter Brown.

Recently, a small change to Comment 8 of the ABA’s Model Rule 1.1 “serve[s] as a reminder to lawyers that they should remain aware of technology, including the benefits and risks associated with it, as part of a lawyer’s general ethical duty to remain competent.” See this recent article from Inside Counsel for a thorough discussion of the full implications of such an emphasis.

This change strengthens the confidentiality requirements of Model Rule 1.6, whose comments also include language regarding “reasonable efforts to prevent the access or disclosure” (see Comment 18 and 19), but do not specifically mention encryption. Perhaps in light of the recent disclosures, it will be an issue specifically addressed in the future.

So, where to start out if talk of bits and bytes is foreign to you? The ABA has a useful information page about many different methods of securing your information and email with encryption. However, there’s no need to spend a lot of money (or sometimes any at all) to get into the basics of staying safe.

First, I recommend losing the memory stick. Many of us have gone through several of the key-sized devices, either dropping them from a backpack or leaving them in a library. Instead, look at one of the many “cloud”-based services, such as DropBox, that allow you to access your files anywhere there is an internet connection. The cloud-based services have recently gotten a bad rap for their security, so I use a nifty free app called SafeMonk as an extra layer of encryption for everything I put into DropBox.

Second, if you have an email to a client that contains particularly sensitive information, think about encrypting your email. If you are a Gmail user, SecureGmail is a free ad-on that brings encryption seamlessly into your email composition. There are (more complicated) options for Outlook as well.

Finally, if you have large files on a hard drive, TrueCrypt is a free, open-source software that can help you get started.

Using encryption is certainly not required to represent client’s effectively, but “smart lawyers will realize that obtaining technological proficiency directly will not only help them satisfy the mandate of Model Rule 1.1, but also will empower them to serve as stronger advocates on behalf of their clients and result in competitive advantages.” (Inside Counsel).

U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Taking of DNA from Arrestees

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Maryland statute that permits the police to take DNA samples from anyone arrested for a serious crime. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the cheek swab was a legitimate identification procedure, like  fingerprinting and photographing. The dissent, written by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan, accused the majority of being disingenuous in pretending the purpose of the DNA testing is identification rather than its real purpose – solving cold cases.

The case, Maryland v. King,  challenged a Maryland statute that permitted DNA testing of arrestees for serious crimes. Alonzo Jay King, Jr., had been arrested on assault charges and his DNA was taken. His profile matched evidence from an unsolved rape.  He was charged with that rape and convicted.

See the following readings:

  • Maryland v. King, 509 U.S. ____ (2013).
  • SCOTUSBlog Coverage of Maryland v. King including links to the Docket, lower court’s opinion, U.S. Supreme Court opinion, transcripts and audio of the arguments, and related news coverage.

 

Pennsylvania and Colorado try to get compensation legislation passed

If you are wrongly convicted and later exonerated in New Jersey, you may be able to obtain $20,000 for each year of your wrongful incarceration. New Jersey has a special statute designed to indemnify wrongly convicted individuals. So does New York, where there is no limit on the damages that can be awarded by the Court of Claims. But if you were wrongly convicted right next door in Pennsylvania, you are not likely to recover a cent. Unless you can fashion a lawsuit from the events leading to your conviction (and that’s often difficult), there is no statute to provide monetary assistance.   All statutes should enact legislation to compensate the innocent and help them integrate into society.

We’ve compiled some links for those of you who are interested in reading more on this subject: