The last objective may seem disconnected from the others. Neither law enforcement nor criminal justice, however, can be reformed without broader societal reform. I have already briefly touched on education. Here, I touch on healthcare. Healthcare impacts the full range of human life from birth to death. Healthcare professionals are esteemed and the impact of […]
Today, tens of thousands of uniformed officers are permanently assigned to schools across the United States. The intention behind placing them there may have originally been good. The original analysis, however, did not consider the entirety of the impact on schools. At best, even when uniformed officers achieve the stated goals for being in schools, […]
While watching the eight minute and 46 second video of George Floyd’s death it is hard to explain the conduct of the law enforcement officers as anything but abuse of force and criminal. It would be easy to presume the officers’ guilt and dispense with due process, the steps of justice. Even so, they are […]
Generally, good decisions are based on good information. Good information does not guarantee good decisions. But bad information almost always results in bad decisions. Where citizens play a role in the government decision-making process, such as in a democratic republic, access to accurate and timely information is required for good decision making. The default rule […]
Prison is one of the main ways criminals are punished in the United States. Traditionally, upon being determined guilty in a court of law a criminal may be sentenced to a definite time in prison. Although there may not be agreement about the objective of prison, the use of imprisoning criminals for justice is universally […]
A conflict of interest, sometimes referred to as a competition of interests, is when a person acting in an official capacity has more than one loyalty and serving one loyalty may work a detriment to others. A loyalty may originate from oath, blood relations, financial interest, reciprocity, or a myriad of other interests. A conflict […]
One challenge of collecting data on officers accused of misconduct is how the data might be used. There is a difference, for example, between the quantity of reports and the quality of reports. An officer may have numerous reports on file making the quantity of reports high. However, once the quality of the reports is […]
It is not enough to only know about law enforcement misconduct. Transparency in government is only as powerful as the citizen’s right to give the data voice, meaningful voice. The third law of motion applies to the government as much as any other discipline. For every action, there is an equal and opposite action. When […]
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, died in Minneapolis, Minnesota after a white police officer, knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes while he was handcuffed face down in the street. Two other officers further restrained Floyd and a fourth officer prevented onlookers from intervening. Social media video of Mr. […]
If I was going to launch a website titled fixedlaw.com, it would concentrate on attorneys (the people part of attorneys), technology, and community. During the pandemic of 2020, the global response was some form of quarantine and social distancing. Community took a hit. Like a small plant growing out of a crack in concrete, the […]