What does it take to be sentenced to a medium-security prison (US)? It is a trope that when powerful/rich people are sentenced, they are sent to cushy, low-security prisons (think The Wolf of Wall Street). However, in my book, I'd like a certain character to be sent to a medium-security prison. The only problem is, they're the kind of person that the aforementioned trope applies to. They're a wealthy politician with a lot of influence, and they would certainly do everything in their power to rather wind up in a low-security prison. That gives the context for my question; what circumstances could lead to a powerful person not being able to weasel their way into a low-security prison?
united-states Short Answer They're a wealthy politician with a lot of influence, and they would certainly do everything in their power to rather wind up in a low-security prison. The easiest way to do it would be to have a sentence of more than twenty but less than thirty years imposed because of a very large dollar amount fraud involving a great many victims (e.g. a large Ponzi scheme). Espionage is another plausible charge that could have the same sort of sentence length. This would send them to a medium-security prison despite a lack of &quot;points&quot; from offense severity, a prior criminal record, or a history of violence, lack of gang involvement, or an absence of a prior escape attempt. Long answer Each U.S. state has its own system. In the U.S. federal criminal justice system, a convicted felon's assignment to a particular prison is a decision made by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, after the defendant has been sentenced by a federal judge for a particular sentence length for a particular crime. The FBP states that: The Bureau of Prisons shall designate the place of the prisoner's imprisonment, and shall, subject to bed availability, the prisoner's security designation, the prisoner's programmatic needs, the prisoner's mental and medical health needs, any request made by the prisoner related to faith- based needs, recommendations of the sentencing court, and other security concerns of the Bureau of Prisons, place the prisoner in a facility as close as practicable to the prisoner's primary residence, and to the extent practicable, in a facility within 500 driving miles of that residence. It is quite an involved process and set of rules. And, there is necessarily flexibility in the system to reflect the availability of prison space at the time of assignment. The overall context is as follows, according to a source writing as of November 2017 (the same source has at times had an online calculator helping people to predict an assignment): The Federal Bureau of Prisons confines 184,855 people. About 83% of those people, or 154,844 inmates, serve their time inside Bureau of Prisons facilities. The other people serve their time in privately managed prisons or other types of facilities. Males make up more than 93% of the federal prison population. Those people serve sentences in the following types of security levels: Minimum-security Federal Prison Camps: 32,189 people, or about 17% of the population Low-security Federal Correctional Institutions: 69,437 people, or about 37% of the population Medium-security Federal Correctional Institutions: 55,377 or about 30% of the population High-security United States Penitentiaries: 21,524 people, or about 12% of the population Unclassified: 6,980 people, or about 4% of the population The full federal BOP policy is here which notes that: The review process to assign a custody level based on an inmate’s criminal history, instant offense, and institutional adjustment. A custody level (i.e., COMMUNITY, OUT, IN, and MAXIMUM) dictates the degree of staff supervision required for an individual inmate. The key table in the rules is below. It is somewhat hard to interpret without the larger context, but is the closest thing to an overall assignment key that exists in the rules. Basically, the left column lists a point score, which provides a default assignment, and each box has exceptions to the usual point score rules: Medium security inmates either have 0-15 points with a prior serious escape attempt or a sentence of 20 years or more remaining, or 16-23 points. But they have less than 24 points, less than 30 years of their sentence remaining, are not part of a disruptive group (read hard core gang member) and have not been involved in a prison disturbance. The circumstances that gets someone to 16-23 points are not simple to describe succinctly. Another source explains the factors involved (PSR is the pre-sentencing report presented to the judge before ruling on a sentence in the case): Voluntary surrender to custody. Where a court permits a defendant to voluntarily surrender to BOP custody for service of an initial term of confinement (not supervised release violation), three points are subtracted from the security point total. Severity of current offense. Appendix A to Program Statement 5100.08 contains a scale of various offense behaviors, and the Designation Manual provides a corresponding point assignment for assessed severity. When evaluating offense severity, staff consider the most severe documented behavior, as set forth in the PSR, not necessarily the offense of conviction. This ranges from 0-7. The key for assigning this score starts at page 97 of the pdf linked. Criminal history score. Points are assigned based on an offender’s criminal history points, taken from the judgment’s statement of reasons or, if not found there, from the PSR. Scoring does not factor in whether the court found a defendant’s points over – or underrepresent criminal history. This ranges from 0-10 based upon the criminal history score assigned at sentencing. If it is absent the BOP will (per the rule linked above): (a)Add 3 points for each prior sentence of imprisonment exceeding one year and one month; (b)Add 2 points for each prior sentence of imprisonment of at least sixty days not counted in (a); (c)Add 1 point for each prior conviction not counted in (a) or (b), up to a total of 4 points for this item; and, (d)Add 2 points if the instant offense is a revocation accompanied by a new state or federal conviction, or if the instant offense occurred while under federal supervision including incarceration, probation, parole or supervised release. This together with the severity of the crime are major factors. History of violence. In assessing the violent nature of prior documented findings of guilt (convictions and supervised release violations), policy distinguishes between “serious” and “minor” incidents as well as time relative to when the case is being reviewed. This category does not factor in the instant offense and can change over time based on an offender’s institutional adjustment (i.e., violence in the BOP can result in assignment of points). The rule provides with regard to this factor: History of escape or attempts. Acts for which there are documented findings of guilt, including absconding from community supervision or failing to appear for a criminal case, will be scored. Detainers. Points are scored for detainers, including both those actually lodged and where law enforcement indicates a firm intent to lodge one. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers are not scored. Age. Given the correlation between age (youth) and negative institutional adjustment, points are assigned, with inmates under 24 years old receiving eight points and inmates over 55 receiving none. Education level. Where the PSR verifies a high school degree or GED, no points are assigned. Where neither is verified, two points are assessed. Drug/alcohol abuse. Where the PSR documents a defendant’s drug or alcohol abuse within the past five years, one point is assessed. If there is no known abuse or abuse more than five years old, no points are added. An inmate’s security point total corresponds to a security level from which staff determine facility placement. However, security point total is not dispositive. The application of a public safety factor (PSF) or a management variable can impact the placement decision. The application of a PSF, which is not confined to evidence of convictions, is intended to address information suggesting a need for greater security precautions. Examples include sentence length, removable alien status, sex offender status, and threat to a government official. Management variables are grounded in the “professional judgment of bureau staff” and are used to effectuate an inmate’s placement at a facility inconsistent with the inmate’s scored security level. This most commonly occurs when an inmate poses either a greater or lesser security risk than his or her assigned security level denotes or to facilitate program participation (e.g., permit completion of residential drug treatment despite a drop in security level). It is also worth noting that the federal criminal justice system, generally speaking, deals disproportionately with lower risk felons committing white collar crimes and immigration offenses, while state criminal justice systems generally deals with higher risk felons who have mostly committed &quot;blue collar&quot; crimes, often violent ones.
They still have the power They generally don’t because: Most activities of a criminal nature no matter how novel can be shoehorned as a new instance of an existing crime. Parliament is much more pro-active in its legislative agenda. The judicial system moves much more slowly.
Why do other countries, like America, not allow this? It is the way that U.S. courts have interpreted the constitutional amendment requirement and reflects a policy judgment that letting someone go free now and then is better than frequently forcing someone to be tried more than once. That value judgment flowed from concerns about and fear and skepticism of the British colonial criminal justice system and the Star Chamber in England with which they were familiar. The U.K., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand didn't have an independence revolution in their history to create the same kind of deep distrust of authority, especially in the criminal justice area. The U.S. was founded by terrorists. Few other former British colonies were. Quoting Dale: &quot;As a constitutional protection, legislative change like this is not available in the United States.&quot; Is that really true and can someone expand on this? When the courts determine that the constitution requires something it can't be changed with ordinary legislation. Either the constitution needs to be amended to change it (which is very hard), or the courts can change their interpretation (which is unlikely in an area so settled in the law and which is relatively uncontroversial between liberals and conservatives in the U.S.). If it is, this is a big problem in my opinion. The powers that be in the U.S. don't agree. This kind of case is exceedingly rare. And, there are much bigger problems with the system that obscure that one. Also, the dual sovereignty doctrine allows federal prosecutions in some wrongful acquittals that really matter (e.g. for civil rights violations by law enforcement).
I think you're being confused by two separate definitions of &quot;police power.&quot; The police power under the 10th Amendment has nothing to do with &quot;the police,&quot; i.e. people with guns and badges and uniforms who make arrests. It refers to the authority of a government to make rules for the general welfare. Police power is almost always exercised by the legislature, and when the executive exercises it (e.g. by issuing regulations) it's typically operating under conditions set by the legislature. The United States has police power in a few situations: DC, federal property and territories, US-flagged ships on the high seas, etc. Outside of those situations, the United States instead has enumerated powers. Congress has a power to tax and spend to promote the general welfare, but otherwise it can only legislate to achieve one of the enumerated powers in the Constitution. Now, courts have read Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce very broadly, but there does need to be some relation to enumerated powers. You're asking about the Capitol Police, but they don't have &quot;police power&quot; in the 10th Amendment sense. They have the power to carry guns and to arrest people for crimes committed against the United States. This power is limited based on geography and/or the nature of their task; for instance, they have nationwide arrest powers &quot;[i]n the performance of their protective duties,&quot; but not when they're traveling outside DC on other official duties (e.g. to attend training). While there's no litigation I can dig up that's directly on point, courts have repeatedly ruled that Congress has the power to do some not-entirely-legislative tasks in order to protect its own functions. For instance, in Anderson v. Dunn (1821), the Supreme Court upheld an inherent power of the House to hold private citizens in contempt of Congress for disobeying its subpoenas and for the Sergeant at Arms to arrest them and bring them before the House. It seems likely Congress would also have the authority to protect its own members from physical violence. The GAO did an analysis when it was analyzing whether there was a constitutional problem with making Capitol Police IG personnel into special deputy US marshals, and it concluded that there was no issue with congressional employees exercising arrest powers in order to physically protect the legislative branch.
Yes. This is legal, even though it is highly unlikely. There were very few, if any, instances of the federal pardon power being used this way historically, but it could happen, and President Trump, while he was in office, intimated that he might use the pardon power in this fashion. Realistically, it would be easier for the President to prevent someone from being prosecuted in the first place if the crime took place during his term, but he might pardon someone who committed the crime under a previous administration. The fact pattern in the question: “don’t be surprised if I pardon anyone that puts to death repeat heroin and fentanyl dealers dealing in amounts larger than 50 pounds” doesn't sound very morally palatable. But consider a slight variant of it which is much more plausible. Suppose that while running for office a Presidential candidate says: don't be surprised if I pardon someone who was convicted of homicide in a previous administration for killing someone who had been using them as a sex slave in a human trafficking network, or killing someone who was in the process of raping them shortly before their divorce became final but was not allowed to assert a self-defense argument at trial because marital rape was legal at the time. Now arguably that's different, because it doesn't induce someone to commit a future crime. But the President has broad discretion to make policy to de-emphasize certain kinds of criminal prosecutions in any case while in office even without the pardon power, and generally, this is not a basis for having a special prosecutor appointed at the federal level since there is no individualized conflict of interest. Of course, the U.S. President can only pardon someone from a federal crime and can't pardon state crimes or criminal convictions from other countries. So, even if the President pardoned someone of a federal crime in this situation, the state in which the murders took place could prosecute the individual for murder unimpeded (constitutional double jeopardy considerations would also not bar a state prosecution following the federal prosecution). Indeed, the vast majority of murder prosecutions are made under state law, and there are very few murders that take place which are beyond the jurisdiction of any U.S. state and any foreign country, that are in the jurisdiction of the U.S. government and covered by a federal homicide statute, in any year. As noted by @hszmv in a comment to another answer: Federal Murder charges are a thing and can be prosecuted, but are normally reserved for murders that either involve federal government employees (especially if they are murdered because of the duties the performed in the course of their duty or the status as a federal employee) OR murders that occur on Federally Owned Property OR the Murder involved crossing state lines OR is in U.S. Jurisdiction but not in a territory or state jurisdiction (usually applies to some uninhabited territorial islands or U.S./International Waters). Further, a pardon would not prohibit the victim's family for suing the murderer for wrongful death, and indeed, probably wouldn't prohibit them from using the murder conviction that was pardoned to conclusively establish liability in a civil case under the doctrine of collateral estoppel (I haven't researched that highly specific and technical civil procedure issue, however, but even if that wasn't possible, the murder trial transcript would be admissible in the civil case). A civil judgement for wrongful death was famously obtained against O.J. Simpson by the victim's family after O.J. Simpson was acquitted in a criminal murder trial. This tactic would really only be helpful to a prospective defendant with respect to cases where there is not a parallel criminal offense under state law.
I don’t believe there is an aggravated violation due to his disability, but it is quite likely that a court will find that to be a violation of his rights. Florida’s stop and frisk law 901.151(2) would indicate the original stop and temporary detention was valid, but once the item in his back pocket had been identified, 901.151(3) requires that the detention be immediately terminated. After the identification, he was no longer being legally detained, it was thus either an illegal detention and a violation of his 4th amendment rights or a consensual encounter under Florida law, and if consensual no requirement to Id. But just because it was a violation of his rights doesn’t mean that he will automatically win a lawsuit if he brings one. Jones v. State, 584 So.2d 190 (Fla. 5th DCA 1991) holds that you can’t be charged with resisting arrest without violence (aka 843.01), when the arrest itself is unlawful. I suppose Hodges could be charged with “obstructing” which is covered by the same statue, but more ambiguous than “arrest”.
The Seventh Amendment's jury trial provision does not apply to the states. The Bill of Rights does not inherently restrain the states at all, merely the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment does restrain the states; notably, it forbids a state from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Courts have read into "of law" the added requirement that the law be compatible with the fundamental rights that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty; this means that most stuff that would violate the Bill of Rights if done by the feds violates due process if done by the states. However, not all provisions of the Bill of Rights have been incorporated (i.e. applied to the states); the requirement for a jury in a civil trial is one of the few that hasn't been incorporated, because courts do not consider it a fundamental right (merely one protected in the federal courts). Now, many traffic tickets are actually misdemeanor offenses, and a jury-trial requirement for crimes is incorporated. However, even for federal offenses, the courts have generally found that the Constitution doesn't require jury trial for petty crimes (those with a maximum sentence under 6 months).
I'm no expert, but I had assumed this clause was present in case of the following situation. Joe is arrested for a robbery of a London bank. Joe says nothing under questioning. At trial, Joe's defense is that at the time of the robbery, he was in Sheffield drinking beer with his brother. On the basis of common sense, a jury could think: "Surely if Joe were really innocent, he would have told the police of his alibi at the time he was questioned, and saved himself a lot of trouble. Since he didn't do that, maybe a more likely explanation is that he wasn't actually in Sheffield, but that sometime between arrest and trial, he came up with the idea of faking an alibi in Sheffield, and convinced people to testify falsely to that effect. Yes, that does seem more plausible. So we are not going to give much credence to Joe's supposed alibi." So it really would be the case that not mentioning the alibi during questioning would harm Joe's defense at trial. The warning, then, is intended to keep Joe from doing this inadvertently. If Joe's alibi is genuine, but out of a misguided desire to exercise his right to remain silent, he doesn't mention it during questioning, he may accidentally increase his chances of being wrongly convicted. Everybody has an interest in avoiding this.