Criminals

Boot camps are an entry point to rehabilitationAs a child and adolescent therapist, I was impressed with the thoroughness and even-handedness of The Sun's series on the boot camp at Savage Mountain.The immediate and instinctive reaction of any child advocate will be to denounce the camps and the abuse and intimidation the series documented. I, too, am distressed that neglected and abused youths are further subjected to abuse in the name of rehabilitation.However, critics of the camps miss an important point.

Round up criminals without expanding federal authorityThis letter is regarding the article ("Freed suspect arrested by FBI," Feb. 6), which stated that Federal Bureau of Investigation agents had arrested a suspect in an armed robbery and carjacking on April 20, 1996.The reason for the FBI involvement was that Baltimore prosecutors and judges had botched the case, according to The Sun. The article described how a number of citizens involved in the incident were pleased with this development.

In a society where compromise is a pillar of government, it feels almost un-American to acknowledge that some issues defy any middle ground. It feels even worse when there are only two alternatives, and both offer unpleasant consequences.This is the reality of encryption, the scrambling of data to keep it away from prying eyes. Yet at a time when it's essential to hold an honest debate about a difficult decision, encryption policy drifts in a Twilight Zone, where both sides tend to avoid acknowledging some hard truths.

IN A SERIES of news stories about teen-age criminals sentenced to a crucible boot camp, Sun reporter Todd Richissin found that the boys were not only pummeled and pounded while in custody, but they also returned to drugs and crime almost as soon as they were released.The boys, ages 14 to 17, arrived at the Savage Leadership Challenge camp in Garrett County in handcuffs and shackles and were dragged off the bus, slammed, pounded and thrown to the ground in a smorgasbord of physical abuse that was described by Richissin and documented by Sun photographer Andre Chung.

WASHINGTON -- Congress is close to forcing a major expansion of economic sanctions against international drug traffickers and businesses that work with them.Legislation to impose such sanctions on narcotics criminals throughout the world passed the Senate easily last month.After initially opposing the measures on both practical and foreign policy grounds, administration officials have begun to work with legislators to fashion a bill both the House and President Clinton could support.But while such measures have some support among businesses and government officials in Colombia -- the only country where the United States has used them -- they are being strongly opposed by the government of Mexico and a few of that country's biggest companies.

This week in The Sun150 years agoAugust 22, 1849: For California -- The barque Martin W. Brett. Capt. Whittman, sailed yesterday for San Francisco. She carries out freight, lumber, bricks, tobacco, liquors &c., besides several houses ready framed for being put up immediately upon their arrival. ... The good barque has our best wishes for a speedy passage, and may the passengers reap, in this new world to which they are going, all that their hopes anticipate. Many of them go to remain permanently, and make California their future home.

A long-time Baltimore drug trafficker was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison without the possibility of parole yesterday under a federal program designed to take armed career criminals off the streets.Bernard Anthony Bey, 28, received a 19-year, five-month prison term for being a felon in possession of a firearm.Bey was prosecuted under a program called DISARM, which carries tough penalties for gun-carrying criminals.After the sentencing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, Bey's mother started to sob. She later screamed at prosecutor Martin Clarke in a fifth-floor hallway.

To Baltimore's new police commissioner, Col. Ronald L. Daniel, the 700 block of N. Payson St. serves as a good measuring stick of the challenges ahead.Orange-and-black cardboard signs are taped to the West Baltimore rowhouse windows warning -- almost pleading -- "No loitering." Ribbons of graffiti mar the red-brick walls of corner stores, remnants of the platoons of hopeless, idle youths who begin gathering daily shortly after 9 a.m.Fearful neighbors peek from behind locked steel doors, demanding identification from a morning visitor before opening.

BOSTON -- The whole thing is enough to make John Donohue nostalgic. "Usually what I write languishes in obscurity," the Stanford law professor says drolly. Not this time.Professors Donohue and Steven Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, set out innocently enough to look at one of the great puzzles of the research world: Why has the crime rate dropped so sharply, so widely, so quickly, in the 1990s?The two sleuths found a clue that no one had considered: Roe vs. Wade. These two respected scholars came to the wildly provocative conclusion that the legalization of abortion may explain as much as half of the drop in the crime rate.

Maryland State Police have failed to make expedient background checks as far back as 1995, resulting in recalls of weapons accidentally sold to convicted criminals -- including, recently, an attempted rapist.A 1995 audit of the police agency's criminal background check system commissioned by Del. Cheryl C. Kagan, a Montgomery County Democrat, revealed delays of up to 97 days on some checks for potential gun owners."The state police are frantically trying to recover from an embarrassing mismanagement issue," Kagan said.

In what must be considered a monumental understatement, Attorney General Eric H. Holder told CBS News' "60 Minutes" that more oversight of Medicare funds is needed. I'll say, considering what we have learned about the scope and ease of stealing billions of dollars from the American taxpayer by means of fraudulent claims for care that never happened. To Mr. Holder's credit, his agency has been frantically cracking down on this thievery for some time now, resulting in the indictments of dozens of criminals in Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

Damien West took the stand last week and aired his dirty, bloodstained laundry. He talked about shooting the federal witness at the center of the current case, about dealing cocaine in Baltimore, about robbing random people and about being the chauffeur and protege for James Dinkins, who's on trial accused of drug conspiracy and multiple killings. So far, West is the Department of Justice's best witness. The federal government is relying on some serious criminals - murderers, drug dealers and gang members - to make its case in the double death penalty trial under way in Baltimore's U.S. District Court.

Almost three years ago, the FBI in Baltimore outfitted a young drug dealer named Davon Mayer with a hidden microphone to record evidence against two city police officers suspected of shaking down dealers. A federal judge later convicted both officers, sentencing them to decades in prison based largely on Mayer's help and testimony. In the language of the street, Mayer had become a "snitch," trading testimony against fellow criminals in return for favorable treatment from authorities. That role made him a likely target.

A slap on the wrist for scalding a boy Baltimore Circuit Court Judge John M. Glynn's 10-year sentence - with all but six months suspended - of Shamia Lawson was outrageous ("Woman gets 6 months in boy's scalding," Jan. 15). According to The Sun, Ms. Lawson punished her godson for going outside without permission by placing him in a tub and adding five pots of boiling water. She continued the torture by threatening to beat him with a belt if he attempted to leave the scalding water without her permission.

City Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III told about 50 community leaders at police headquarters that he was committed to getting Baltimore's most violent criminals off the streets through an increased and targeted concentration on gun offenders. Last night's forum was Bealefeld's first meeting with community leaders since becoming commissioner. Focusing much of his hourlong presentation on the homicide count, Bealefeld's strategy centered on arresting criminals who illegally possess handguns, tracking them through the criminal justice system.

Anger over murder rarely lasts long Another Baltimore police officer is shot, fatally this time, and everyone is outraged at the continuing violence in the city ("Suspect in killing has long record," Jan. 10). Gov.-elect Martin O'Malley, Mayor-to-be Sheila Dixon, Police Commissioner Leonard D. Hamm and other civic leaders all lined up for photo ops to express outrage. One can only hope the outrage will take hold this time. When the Dawson family was firebombed, the outrage lasted about three weeks.

Tribunal law poses threat to our liberty The law President Bush signed Tuesday with so much fanfare is a disgrace to this country and to every member of Congress who voted for it ("U.S. enacts new rules for war against terror," Oct. 18). Its measures were not necessary to try terrorist criminals, many of whom have been successfully convicted in the past. The law is not a protection of our liberty but, on the contrary, an assault on our freedoms and our values as Americans. The Constitution can be altered only by amendment, not by a statute.

The general mind-set of the political left is similar from country to country and even from century to century. The softness toward dangerous criminals found in such 18th-century writers as William Godwin and Condorcet has its echo today among those who hold protest vigils at the executions of murderers and who complain that we are not being nice enough to the cutthroats imprisoned at Guantanamo. The specific issues change from place to place and from time to time, but the mind-set remains remarkably similar.

LOS ANGELES -- There is a song in Gilbert and Sullivan's light opera The Mikado in which the title character reveals that one of his goals is "to let the punishment fit the crime." It appears that a number of judges around the country share that objective. In various jurisdictions and for various crimes, judges have ordered individuals to spend a night in the woods, act as a school crossing guard, stand on busy streets with signs around their necks proclaiming their misdeed and watch a film about violent neo-Nazis, American History X. Some of the judges involved said they offered these alternative sentences as a way of making the criminals better understand the harm they caused or could have caused.

This letter was received too late to be included in last week's speakout responses. The question for the previous week was: Do you think it would be appropriate to increase penalties for bank robbers, or is there a better way to increase public safety? Small businesses deserve equal, if not more, justice under the law. The increase in bank robberies over the past 12 months is merely a reflection of Big Business not taking accountability for its actions. The customer-friendly makeover of the banking industry has led certain branches to disassemble their bulletproof glass and lay-off security guards.