Sun Feb 20/05
Minority (Weather) Report

Miami weatherman Bill Kamal is going to jail for five years for arranging to meet and have sex with an undercover police officer (which is not illegal) who was posing as a 14-year-old boy (which is hypothetically illegal). I expected Kamal to mount a vigorous defence, but instead he pled guilty to soliciting sex with a minor (who doesn't exist), "so he could get on with his life." Given the weirdness of the charges against him and what I (who am not a lawyer) thought was a rather obvious entrapment defence, this surprised me somewhat.

Kamal's lawyer told something called Express Gay News that an entrapment defence would have been difficult because "You have to show that someone's not predisposed to that type of offense." Wait, "not predisposed" like having no criminal record and never having shown any inclination towards having relations with an underage boy (who does or doesn't exist)? I guess not. He must mean a different kind of "not predisposed," one where it doesn't matter that on several occasions the undercover policeman posing as the 14-year-old boy initiated contact with Kamal.

None of that is any more disturbing than the system Virginia uses for sentencing criminals based on a likelihood-to-re-offend points system. George Jonas wrote about this on Saturday (subscribers only):

If, after conviction, a prisoner scores 35 points or more, the state recommends that the judge send him/her to jail. If the prisoner comes up with fewer than 35 points — well, yes Virginia, there's a Santa Claus.

Since many judges follow the guidelines, a larcenous young man in Virginia is almost certain to go to jail, whereas a larcenous middle-aged woman is almost certain not to. The problem is, as many will see at a glance, that under such a system people go to jail not for being larcenous but for being young — or being men. 

Indeed. And for obvious reasons, race is not used as a factor, which only casts a more evil light on the policy: not only is it offensive on a visceral level, in that actions have been replaced by the statistical probability of future actions as the primary determinant for punishment, but the statistics have been chosen for their political value and not their scientific value (should any exist, which is doubtful).

But really, you only have to look at a couple of sentencing "worksheets" to know how insanely screwed up it all is. Here's part of the one for rape:

And here's part of the "Nonviolent Risk Assessment" for larceny:

I don't think I have anything else to say about that, except maybe "wow." I feel certain in saying that this is not how a civilized justice system should be treating human beings.