April 14, 2022
Vancouver Sun – Susan Lazaruk
B.C. humanitarian worker fights red tape to get four Ukrainian children to Canada – Immigration Canada’s visa application process called difficult to navigate, especially for Ukrainians fleeing war with no English skills
Refugees from the Ukrainian ware zone – mostly women and children – are not finding the welcome they anticipated when Canada announced the loosening of regulations to facilitate their arrival. “They say Ukrainians who speak no English, and have no computer skills and no money for flights are being let down by Canada, which promised to provide a haven from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine… “There’s lots of red tape with the whole immigration system,” said Ihon Lubomyr Huculak, the honorary consul for Ukraine in Vancouver. “It’s ridiculous and it’s been ridiculous since Day 1.” https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/bc-humanitarian-worker-fights-red-tape-get-4-ukrainian-children-to-canada Related report: Canadian Council for Refugees Budget 2022 – summary comments https://ccrweb.ca/en/budget-2022-summary-comments Related article: CIC News: Shelby Thevenot and Kareem El-Assal What will Budget 2022 mean for Canadian immigration? Budget 2022 contains proposals on Express Entry, the TFWP, application processing, and more. https://www.cicnews.com/2022/04/what-will-budget-2022-mean-for-canadian-immigration-0424207.html#gs.xa0ar1
N.Y. Times – Barbara Marcolini, Sanjar Sohail and Alexander Stockton
The Taliban Promised Them Amnesty. Then They Executed Them. – An Opinion Video investigation reveals the Taliban have been on a campaign of revenge killings against former U.S. allies.
Consider a warning that the link will bring you to a graphic 12min video put together by the Times in the aftermath of the on-going cleansing of the democracy supporters in Afghanistan. It may serve appropriately as a reminder of what happens to the defeated patriots of democracy left to their own and it may also serve as a serious question of what may happen should Russia conquer Ukraine. Please view with somber and sober forethought of a genuine and often repeated experience under authoritarian regimes everywhere and the threat they pose to all people. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/12/opinion/taliban-afghanistan-revenge.html?smid=tw-share
Blogger Russell Webster (UK)
How do we tackle the collapse in rape prosecutions?
2021 has seen a precipitous drop in prosecutions for rape in the UK while the number of reported incidents is at and all-time high. In the year to September 2021 there were 63,136 rape offences recorded. The number of completed rape prosecutions dropped from 5,190 in 2016/17 to 1,557 in 2020/21; the trauma of going through investigations and lengthy delays may have contributed to 63% of adult rape investigations being closed between July and September 2021 because the victim no longer wished to continue. As a percentage of completed rape prosecutions to reported incidents the rate is a bare 1.5%. https://www.russellwebster.com/how-do-we-tackle-the-collapse-in-rape-prosecutions/
New York Times – Chelsia Rose Marcius, Troy Closson and Grace Ashford
New York’s Bail Laws Are Changing Again. Here’s How. – Governor Kathy Hochul pushed for a rewrite of the 2019 laws governing the criminal justice system.
The reform of the New York state bail laws has been like a roller coaster, and is now reacting again to changes brought first in a reform in 2019. The dispute involved the debate whether the bail reform would result in a higher crime rate. Now the reform of the reform and a New York city Mayor – Eric Adams, a former police captain – is very critical of the second reform in three years. Some advocates think the latest reform is not about the law but is thoroughly drenched in politics where the data on the bail practices has little role. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/nyregion/new-york-bail-laws.html?smid=tw-share Related article: Washington Post Editorial Board (April 11, 2022) Opinion: Scapegoating bail reform won’t solve the crime problem https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/04/11/new-york-bail-reform-rising-crime-myth/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_opinions&utm_campaign=wp_opinions Related article: The Sentencing Project – Nicole Porter State Advocacy Newsletter: Unlocking the Vote 2020 – The 2020 election season offers an opportunity to increase public awareness about felony disenfranchisement laws to expand voter eligibility. During the era of mass incarceration the overall disenfranchisement rate increased substantially. In recent years, substantial reforms have expanded the vote to millions of individuals. https://www.sentencingproject.org/news/state-advocacy-newsletter-unlocking-vote-2020/
The Guardian (UK _NY desk) – Ramon Antonio Vargas
Job ad for US bureau of prisons highlights patients’ mental illness as recruiting tool – Some readers offended by its reference to high rates of mental illness among incarcerated people to attract psychologists
An ad placed by the Bureau of Prisons in the United States is confirming what mental health experts have been saying for decades. In the search of psychologists and mental health staff the ad is promising an abundant source of patients with every known disorder for treatment. After asking to flip to any page of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the reader is invited to consider Dr. Jamila Thomas’ suggestion: “Whatever disorder you land on, you’ll find it here,” Advocates may be happy with the thought of filling out the prison mental health staff while they wonder why people with mental health issues are in prison in the first place. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/11/us-bureau-prisons-job-ad-mental-illness?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Blogger Russell Webster (UK)
The State of the Criminal Justice Voluntary Sector
While this report has been published annually for some time, it has not appeared since 2019 and this year the focus is to assess the damage from Covid done to the voluntary sector supporting criminal justice. The report is based on an electronic survey of 132 groups and 11 interviews. “Unsurprisingly, the research finds that voluntary organisations faced an extraordinarily challenging year. Long-term problems of increasing levels of need amongst service users, underfunded contracts, and complex procurement, all continued with the added weight of the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused most organisations to radically overhaul their delivery models. While the availability of emergency funding during the year helped organisations continue their vital work, there is a degree of uncertainty and concern for the future.” Webster lists eight “headline” findings. https://www.russellwebster.com/the-state-of-the-criminal-justice-voluntary-sector/ Full report: Clinks (UK) – State of the Sector 2021 https://www.clinks.org/publication/state-sector-2021
The Crime Report / John Jay College (US) – Andrea Cipriano
1,849 Lost Years: Exonerees in 2021
Ever wonder what the real cost of wrongful convictions in the US amount to, beyond the trial and prison costs? Here’s a partial answer but only for 2021 and only for known and established innocence. 161 incarcerated individuals were exonerated. “There is no longer a debate about the prevalence of wrongful convictions,” said the registry’s annual report released Tuesday. “They are not unicorns. They happen, frequently, and the Registry’s research has the data to show precisely the events that lead to exonerations.” 70% of the false convictions involved “official misconduct.” 47 involved mistaken witnesses and 19 “on proven false confessions.” The majority of the wrongful convictions were against Black people. https://thecrimereport.org/2022/04/12/1849-lost-years-exonerees-in-2021/ Full Report: The National Registry of Exonerations 2021 Annual Report A project of the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society, University of Michigan Law School and Michigan State University College of LA https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/NRE%20Annual%20Report%202021.pdf
The Lawyer’s Daily – Luis Millan
Lack of transparency shrouds lawyer compensation in secrecy, says CBA pay equity report
Do women lawyers do as well as the men? The question still haunts the legal establishment in Canada because the salaries and promotions are not transparent nor reported. ““It’s an ongoing issue that has definitely been sparked in the last five years,” said Carly Romanow, chair of the CBA Women Lawyers Forum (WLF), the driving force behind the report titled Pay Equity in the Legal Profession. “It’s an issue that is not really well understood because there’s an information gap on what is happening, both in the public and private spheres of the legal profession. We are hoping to spark conversations, and spark institutions to reflect on what they are doing or not doing to deal with pay inequities with the legal profession.” https://www.thelawyersdaily.ca/criminal/articles/35075/lack-of-transparency-shrouds-lawyer-compensation-in-secrecy-says-cba-pay-equity-report-?nl_pk=40ed8ea4-637a-4d76-870f-04f0eeae7de8&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=criminal Canadian Bar Association Report / Women Lawyers Forum: Pay Equity in the Legal Profession https://s3.amazonaws.com/tld-documents.llnassets.com/0035000/35075/cba-wlfpayequityreport.pdf