the crime report

The Bureau of Justice Statistics’ newest publication reports that the number of people incarcerated in Indian Country jails rose 5.8 percent in 2008. The number of jails has also increased; 23 new facilities were built in 2007 and two in 2008. Fifteen percent of inmates were inside for domestic violence, and fifteen percent for assault.

Click here to read the full report.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Jails and Race and Ethnic Issues.

Those who have worked for passage of a new federal hate crime law do not expect many more people to be charged under the measure to be signed today by President Obama, says National Public Radio. The bill, an update to a statute Congress passed in 1968, has been a decade in the making. For the first time, a law that had protected people from attacks motivated by race, religion, or ethnicity will include gay, lesbian, transgender, and disabled people. (more…)

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Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has interrogated 4,000 prisoners — including pre-trial, and thus presumably innocent, detainees — at New York’s Rikers Island every year since 2004, according to a new report by East Harlem Against Deportation. The group, led by New York State Senator Jose Serrano, who represents Manhattan’s immigrant-heavy East Harlem neighborhood, was created in May of this year in response to what the neighborhood felt was increasing immigration enforcement by local police and corrections officials.

“Immigration Reform Starts Here: City and State Policy Recommendations to Protect New York Immigrants and Their Families,” recommends limiting ICE’s ability to question pre-trial detainees, and outlines a sample framework for how NYPD might more effectively build trust within the immigrant community.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Immigration, Family Detention and ICE.

The Rise (and Fall) of one of China’s Most Notorious Human Smugglers

In the summer of 1993, ten Chinese would-be immigrants drowned when the Golden Venture, the rickety vessel smuggling them and 276 others to America, ran aground on a New York City beach. After more than a decade of police work, authorities tracked down and convicted Sister Ping, the mastermind of the transnational human trafficking ring, who turned out to be an elderly grandmother living in New York’s Chinatown. The Crime Report’s Cara Tabachnick spoke to investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, who documents the case in his recent book , “The Snakehead.”

THE CRIME REPORT: Exactly how did these snakehead organizations work?

KEEFE: The snakehead organizations were (and are) loosely dispersed transnational networks — non-hierarchical international collaborations in which groups of independent contractors might come together to move a load of people and then separate and go their separate ways. They’re built on connections and driven by opportunism, so a snakehead based in New York might have associates working in Fuzhou, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico.

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Young people may join gangs for protection, but kids in gangs are up to 11 times more likely to be victims of (or witness to) crimes than their peers. This according to a new report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency that examines recent data on gang membership. ”Youth Gangs: Who is at Risk,” compares gang involvement nationally and in Oakland and Richmond, California, two cities long plagued by gangs and violence. 

Among the findings: nationally, Native American youth are twice as likely to join a gang as African American youth; young people who join gangs are also twice as likely to have a mother on public assistance and less likely to live with a biological parent than those who do not.

Click here to read the report.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Gangs.

A new book explores how New York City’s affluent suburbs are coping with the rise of youth gangs

Sarah Garland, a New York-based investigative journalist, was researching gangs in East Harlem when a professor suggested she take a look at Garden City, L.I., an affluent suburb 21 miles east of Times Square.  Garland soon discovered that the inner-city doesn’t have a monopoly on violent youth. Her troubling account of the five years she spent following the largely Hispanic gangs in suburban Long Island is now a book:  “Gangs in Garden City: How Immigration, Segregation, and Youth Violence are Changing America’s Suburbs,” released by Nation Books on June 29th.

The Crime Report’s Cara Tabachnick asked Garland about her findings.

The Crime Report: Long Island is usually considered a safe suburban area outside of New York.  Is there a difference between suburban and city gangs?

Sarah Garland:  Both care about the blocks that they control. The …setting is obviously different,  but the concerns are the same. (more…)

A new report by the ACLU and the Rights Working Group analyzed racial profiling by federal, state and local law enforcement in all 50 states, including post-9/11 profiling of Muslim, Arab and South Asian persons, as well as Latinos. The report says racial profiling is “widespread and pervasive,” and that Department of Justice guidelines actually “promote” profiling. 

Click here to read the report.

Use The Crime Report for more information on Racial Profiling, Immigration and Homeland Security Issues.

Tom Diaz, author of a new book, “No Borders: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement,” looks at the potentially ominous future of criminal street gangs in the U.S.

In the 1980s, few law enforcement officials had heard of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) or the 18 th Street gang.  Yet within two decades, these gangs metastasized from local urban-based organizations in Los Angeles and other California cities into transnational criminal enterprises operating throughout the Western Hemisphere, including El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

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Many New Jersey police officers are misusing a 2007 directive by the state attorney general by questioning the immigration status of Latino drivers, passengers, pedestrians and even crime victims, reporting them to federal immigration authorities and jailing some for days without criminal charges, charges a Seton Hall Law School study reported by the New York Times. “The data suggests a disturbing trend towards racial profiling by the New Jersey police,” said Bassina Farbenblum of the school’s Center for Social Justice.

Attorney general Anne Milgram will look into the cases. As the Obama administration pushes for legal status for millions now vulnerable to deportation, the report points to a disconnect between the changed tone on immigration in Washington and what is happening on the ground. In one case, police officers questioned a man at a train station after asking to see his ticket. Unable to show one, he was arrested and held for seven days before being turned over to federal authorities. Another man was transferred to immigration agents after being held for four months, cited only for driving without a license.