Several news items today remind us that it is important to be realistic about human nature when we design our restorative city. People sometimes do things that are wrong, even those responsible for administering restorative aspects of the justice system.
One of the significant issues facing RJ City will be how its restorative justice programmes are funded. Today's news illustrates a variety of ways that this is done. Are there lessons to be learned?
The three-storey building brings most of the town's community support and voluntary groups under one roof, providing quick and easy access for residents.
While the United States has made dramatic strides in reducing the crime rate in recent years, the gains have come at the price of the world’s highest rate of incarceration and crime rates are still too high and communities continue to suffer. This paper on Building a Restorative Community Justice model offers a vision of an effective alternative to the fragmented criminal and juvenile justice systems of today, as well as a three-phase plan to make this vision a reality.
Every day violent crimes are committed all across the U.S. The criminal justice system is supposed to protect the victims of these crimes and ensure that the criminal is given swift and just punishment, but there is a loophole in our current law that allows convicted felons to profit financially for the crimes they committed.
Only one-third of restitution owed to crime victims is actually collected. House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden (R-Plano) is filing a constitutional amendment to allow Texas judges to order the garnishment of an offender's wages to pay restitution. Currently, the Texas Constitution only permits garnishment for child support, but restitution to crime victims is equally important.
In the libertarian society, there are, as we have said, only two parties to a dispute or action at law: the victim, or plaintiff, and the alleged criminal, or defendant. It is the plaintiff that presses charges in the courts against the wrongdoer. In a libertarian world, there would be no crimes against an ill-defined "society," and therefore no such person as a "district attorney" who decides on a charge and then presses those charges against an alleged criminal.
Ken Lay’s death generated a lot of attention for the procedural quirk of abatement, which means that if a defendant dies while his criminal appeal is pending, the conviction must be vacated and the indictment must be dismissed. But the circuits are split about whether abatement applies to criminal orders of restitution.
In the fall of 2003, the mutual fund scandal started making headlines, as allegations surfaced that some companies engaged in illegal investing strategies. Fund companies have collectively paid fines totaling $2.5 billion as a result of their illegal market-timing (trading in short-term cycles) and late-trading (trading after markets close) activities. A substantial portion of these fines is supposed to be returned to the investors who were harmed by the scandal. Yet no investor has received a penny.
Sentencing in the death of a 7-year old child who had been living far from her estranged family filled the Barron County courtroom Monday, March 12 to overflowing with those who had come to know and love her. The petite girl from Ladysmith suffocated last year while in a face-down control hold at the Rice Lake Day Treatment Center.