I am a public defender and I have posted about this a lot. Here are some of these posts.
How Does Court Work?: An Explanation of WTF is actually going on in the courtroom and the jails.
Part 1: Police Investigations: How do cases start? Why are police so bad at investigations??
Part 2: Bail and Arrest, or: So You've Stumbled On the Philosophical Problems Inherent in Paying Money to Get Out of Jail
Part 3: What is Trial & How?, including preliminary hearings, what makes a jury "grand," and how trials work
Part 4: Punishment, Rehabilitation, Deterrence & Incapacitation: Why Prison
Part 5: Probation and Parole, which is for some reason considered an "act of judicial grace" by the case law
Juvenile Law: I had no idea when I wrote these that any of these posts would be popular but some have proved to perform like absolute bangers on Tumblr. Mind-boggling.
What is funny about being a juvenile defender is that I never really liked children
How to interview children (people really fuckin vibed with this one for some reason)
Thank you for the public education you are doing on here. A situation went public in Ohio this week where a large family of children were severely neglected and likely abused. This reminds me of the Turpin case from several years ago. It sounds like some of the children have disabilities. In the past, i would probably feel very self-righteous about the “guardians.” You’ve shifted my perspective here.
I thought about your insights, and now I realize that the parents/“caregivers” have their own stories of disability, trauma, and abuse. It doesn’t make the harm against the innocent children right. It does indicate that the US’s systems of supporting, healing, monitoring children’s safety, and providing care, are continuing to fail. it is incredibly sad all around. Thinking of the kids who will be healing and learning life skills such as speaking and spelling their names.
Boy, it's hard! It's hard to look at this kind of suffering and try to step back and think about it with compassion. We are also all apes, and the ape wants to Fix It preferably with Bashing, maybe with Big Club or Rock?
And like, friendly reminder: being disgusted and horrified and shocked and angry are all extremely normal (and I would say even good) reactions, and what those reactions are telling you is that you care about the wellbeing of those who can't defend themselves, like children.
I know I've mentioned this before: One thing that absolutely fucked me up and continues to fuck me up to this day is that home visits by nurses to at-risk expecting mothers measurably reduces later abuse and delinquency by the kids. (Link to Hawaii's ongoing program of nurse visitation, which currently does home visits ongoing during and after pregnancy!)
Even one home visit changed things. Just the tiniest bit of education, attention, and care, and the way those mothers approached and saw their children was different forever.
I think just that alone can tell us that child abuse is not born of evil impulses, and is not inevitable, and that everything we do can make a difference.
People can spiral down into places they don't want to be. I'd wager most people on Tumblr have ended up in a space that's fairly well Fucked with trash, dirty dishes, disorganization, and clutter, and feels impossible to dig their way out of. We know what that feels like. We know how sour things can turn when we're alone in our heads. Imagine if you're alone with kids who won't stop screaming and needing things -- and it's not their fault, for god's sake, they're kids! -- but if you can't dig your way out alone, you can't dig your way out alone. If the system cared about protecting children, it would not let them pay the price for that.
I can think of a handful of systemic ways that kind of problem could be alleviated, but this isn't the place. Below, discussion of the Ohio news story, no links, cw for absolutely heinous shit, child abuse beyond belief, mentions of incest and sexual abuse as well.
Having googled that story: As usual, a first responder described what they saw as "pure evil." It sounds beyond horrifying. But the news story said something else: the first child was born when the mother was fifteen years old, two months after she married an 18 year old boy. The news story also stated the ages of the children as: 18, 16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 10, 8, 6, 5, 4 (twins), 2 (twins) and 1.5 years (twins).
From cases I have heard of -- thank fuck I have never had to personally work with a case like this, though I have had clients who are descendants from similar situations -- I would guess that there was likely long-term multi-generational incest and grooming taking place in that home. I think it's very unlikely that the generation in their 60s were the first generation to engage in it. Prison doesn't stop this kind of thing. Only removing the kids stops it.
This is a systemic failure. Either someone knew those kids were born and never followed up, or every single one of those were born at home, without a doctor, without a hospital, in those beyond horrendous conditions, and no one cared to see or hear.
The narrative is never as simple as the police like to tell it. Thank you for remembering that. These are the kinds of cases where it can be the hardest.
I hope these arrests and removals are what is necessary to stop the hell those people were living in.
My void cat is definitely losing weight. Less Rounde. Seems like she’s moving around easier and quicker.
This is literally only because she spends all her time now running and playing with her little ginger boyfriend. I’ll just hear loud thumps and it turns out they were wrasslin on the carpet (no hisses).
Can’t wait to tell the vet that my weight loss programme for my butterball was “engage a flirty young man for fun and exercise”
I was wandering through a gallery when I turned around and saw a portrait of a woman and audibly went 'oh fuck.'
This is extra funny because I've only ever had this reaction once before, on a painting I saw in a museum in Fort Worth, Texas (extremely far away from where I was yesterday). The painting in Fort Worth was this one:
It's a painting of Alice Vanderbilt Shepard, by John Singer Sargent. I was so affected that I bought a print of this painting in particular when I got home, as the museum did not offer this particular painting in print.
Yesterday, the painting that yanked me out of my art museum stupor was this one:
Important notes:
It was in a gallery of many different painters
My left eye wasn't working great and I couldn't read any of the signs until I got up close
I have never seen this painting in my life
Gang do you want to know who painted that painting? Do you want to take a stabbling? A little baby guess?
Because apparently it was John Singer Sargent.
And this guy nonstop slaps? Every portrait is an absolute banger? Some selections from the first handful of pages on wikiart:
The portrait of the guy there is entitled "My Friend Chadwick" and yes, that's most certainly Chadwick, my friend. There could be no additional Chadwick friendness about this painting than there already is.
Went to the state art museum yesterday. I'd been having some feelings about Van Gogh lately, as human beings are wont to do when they have even partially functioning eyes and brains, and the state's Big Art Museum has a small(?) number of Van Gogh paintings (<5).
I admit I didn't really expect to feel anything really special when I saw them. I mostly don't, in art museums.
Finally found the paintings past a bunch of other stuff.
And... just. Fuck.
You could see the brushstrokes. It was carved into the paint. Frenetic zigzags and bursts. The clouds over the scene were carved in circles and spirals of white paint. You couldn't just see where his brush moved, you could feel it.
Man's art looks great in pictures but it hits Different when you can see those brushstrokes. Hit me like a bus.
Peeling off the broken breastplate of a stoic knight who only fights and never speaks, just to realize there’s nothing in there. Not metaphorically—the armor is literally empty. It doesn’t appear to affect him. If the armor stays mostly in the shape of a knight, he just gets back up to keep fighting. But with the chest plate off he just sits there, equally impervious to curiosity as I reach up into the cavity where his body might’ve gone. Stubbornly, no answers are found anywhere in there.
So I forge him a new breastplate and on the inside, because I know he has plenty of room, I put a little pocket. Not big enough to hold anything functional of course. Just a little extra piece to see what he’ll do with it.
He comes back next time with some grievous injury to his nothing, presumably from the massive shredded gash across his thigh plates. He sits and waits. I fix it for him. He is still nothing in there. I decide to add a drawing on the inside, of the type of beast I imagine could rend metal into scraps with a single blow. He puts it back on. He no longer moves as if he is injured.
Over time the interior of the knight becomes decorated with whatever odds and ends I could think to attach to the inside of a guy who’s got room to carry it. What really gets me is that he never removes any of it. Never requests a change. Not even when I installed a curtain rod for a small tapestry, or a bud vase to carry roses for his beloved, or an accordion folder for letters. He didn’t say a word for any of the many, many drawings of mythical beasts that now fight forever inside of his shell.
There are plenty of other forges. I’m not entirely sure why he keeps coming back here anyway. We’re pretty popular, but he could get his armor fixed a lot quicker (and with fewer ridiculous modifications) literally anywhere else. I asked him if I could get a look at his nothing again. He flipped up his visor and nodded his head so I could take a look. It was the same as it had been, filled with drawings and trinkets and weird little fixtures I’d put in there. I asked if he was annoyed by it, or liked it, or felt anything at all, but he literally only ever says nothing, so I’m not sure why I asked.
There’s not much room left in his nothing now. When he comes back for repairs I’ve had to fix my own foolish additions. Some of these pieces are intricate and irritating to repair, but I fix them anyway. It feels wrong to take any of it away from him now, even though I’ve been rudely encroaching on his nothingness to the point where it’s barely even there. How he squeezes his nothing back into a body so full, I’ll never understand. But it’s a game to me now, finding a spot not yet filled and putting something there. A dark part of me wonders if he ever gets filled up completely, if whatever sorcery holds the nothing-knight together may break, and it will all clatter unceremoniously to the floor.
When he hands me his breastplate yet again, it is so shockingly disfigured that I wonder if being made of nothing has somehow kept him alive. No ordinary knight could sustain such injuries. So I fix it. And he waits, unmoving, in a quiet corner of the forge. It’s like he’s watching, even though I know the reading glasses I put inside his helmet were just for fun. I’m careful to put it all back exactly the way it was when he last left. There’s no room to add more this time.
He examines the breastplate, and pauses before putting it back on, like he’s looking for something. Is he worried about the fit? But it suits him just as it always did. He calmly points to a little space, about an inch, between a miniature shelf and one of many pockets. There’s nothing there. I ask him what’s wrong, and again he points. It’s the most emotion I’ve ever seen from him, and it’s barely anything at all. I take it to mean he wants something there.
I spend some time engraving a little snail in the gap. He watches, as much as nothing can watch. When I’m finished he holds the breastplate, but he doesn’t put it on right away. I ask him if something’s still wrong. He says nothing, and puts it on. I tell him I can’t add anything else. Even if he could ask, there’s no room left.
Next time he comes back, there’s nothing wrong with his armor—he lets me check to make sure. I ask him what he’s doing here. Out from one of many pockets, he retrieves a tiny rusted knife. It’s in miserable condition, barely worth saving. I tell him I could make him a nice new one, but I’ll fix it if he likes. He puts it away and reaches around to find something else, a needle and thread. Better condition, but I’m not a sewist and I tell him as much. He puts them away. He then retrieves a little twisted piece of wax paper. I open it. It’s candy. I ask if I can eat it. He says nothing. I eat it. It’s flavored with cinnamon. I’m surprised he let me take it.
He keeps bringing me candy now. His armor is the most laborious to repair out of every client my forge serves, but it’s my own fault so I can’t complain. Sometimes he keeps me company while I work. I wonder if he is trying to tell me something when he hands me mints. I wonder again at the lemon lozenges. He stares at me when I eat, as much as nothing can stare.
One day he brings me a little jar of honey. I thank him, I tell him I’ll save it for dinner. He watches me work, he puts his repaired armor back on, and he stays. My shift passes slowly, and when I finally pack up to leave it’s dark outside. He follows me out of the forge. I ask him where he’s going. He points to the jar in my hand. I ask him if he wants to watch me eat it. He says nothing, but the nothing-knight clearly wants something, so I open the lid and dunk my finger in the honey. I try not to get any on my chin. He stands there, inches away, watching me try to consume this jar of honey without a utensil. It tastes like clovers. About half the jar is left when I’ve finally had enough of pretending to be a bear, but he doesn’t move to leave.
I ask if he’s going to follow me home. He says nothing. I tell him he can if he wants to. Again, nothing. I start walking, and he follows at my side. I know he’s not going to say anything ever, so I fill the silence. I tell him I’m grateful for the sweets, I tell him about how his various components are made, I tell him I’ve never met anyone made of nothing before. I tell him it’s a rare opportunity for a smith to work so much on the inside of something. He says nothing. I tell him again how much I like the candy.
It occurs to me that maybe filling me with sugar is as close as he can get to filling someone else’s empty armor with trinkets. I’m not sure if that’s really why he does it. I tell him I don’t have room to be filled with anything on the inside, not like him. I’m not a container for much besides food. He offers me another piece of candy. Maybe he likes containing something, the way I like to feel full. Maybe it’s nothing at all.
—
I didn’t edit this even a little bit. Thanks for reading!
An unnecessarily preachy America’s 250th post?? Let’s fucking go
Remember everyone that making the Constitution was infinitely more interesting and relevant to America than Thomas Jefferson’s callout post to King George, and that it marks a real 250th anniversary in terms of continuous governance. Also governance is building, not destroying!
Also remember that the most kickass piece of colonial writing was not the Declaration of Independence but Common Sense by Thomas Paine, the least problematic Founding Father; Thomas Paine who said that rich people had stolen the inheritance of the Earth from mankind, who said that the remedy was universal basic income on reaching adulthood for every PERSON (not every man!!) and who did not own or fuck slaves. Abolitionist. Got blacklisted by the entire government of England. Said that a country can be proud of its justice system when the streets are free of beggars and the jails free of the condemned, or some shit like that.
Also while we're all talking about anti-racism, here's a helpful tip:
Performative self-flagellation over being white is not a substitute for doing serious introspection about the ways you have been complicit in or rewarded by a white-supremacist society, nor doing the work to dismantle white supremacy.
A white person chiming in to a conversation about racism to say "I'm sorry for being white" or "white people suck, I say this as a white person" is just a masturbatory way to try to assuage your own feelings of shame without actually doing anything. It doesn't make you look like "one of the good ones." It makes you look like someone who centers your own feelings about it.
When being a public defender, this is actually very important.
But when it comes to clients, before I make any jokes about white people, I build the scaffolding. The scaffolding is: telling them I am an open book, that my advice for them may be different than my advice for a white client, that I will tell them my whole thought process, that the court system is racist, that I would be an inadequate attorney if I did not understand and learn to compensate for that racism and if it did not inform my tactics, that I am not colorblind, that I am here to advise and guide them in real life, not some racism-free fantasy of real life. None of that is about my feelings. It centers them, their feelings, their priorities.
Apologies are worthless. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. I don't always use the perfect terms or know what's the right way to refer to someone, but I get remarkably little shit about it because I spend my time being a safe person. Not requiring the nearest Black person to be my racism therapist.
Hello! I have a question regarding alternatives to police. Preaching this by saying this isn't a request for urgent advice or anything (I already know I'll just be sitting stalwartly with a hose all night, not a phone), just a moral snag I've encountered in my otherwise typically 100% anti-cop stance and I'd like to hear your take.
Our state is on fire. We are under such a severe fire ban that outdoor smoking is banned, to say nothing of fireworks. The smoke from the wildfires is making my throat burn, and I'm terrified of my community being the next to go up in flames. The state has put out statements that fireworks are SUPER illegal and they are going to do everything in their power to actually arrest anyone that sets them off, to try and keep our state from burning more. Still, at least three of my neighbors have been launching fireworks (the kind that actually fly up and explode in the air above our houses) all week, even when the air is so thick with smoke I can't go outside, even with notices plastered everywhere that it's dangerous and to attend the professional shows instead. Talking to them results in the same "Oh I'm going to do it anyway, the government can't keep me from celebrating, I'll be careful" conversation every time.
I know calling the police would be wrong, I don't plan to do it. On my little neighborhood levels, my roommate and I are just going to be ready with buckets and a hose. But conceptually, on a county or state-wide scale, I know someone somewhere else is going to start another wildfire, and I don't know how this could be mitigated without the threat of arrest.
In a future ideal without police, how do you keep people from flaunting rules that protect entire communities/environments without physically preventing them, when they're so determined?
Hey this is just a thought, I've never done this, but I've heard that calling the fire marshal is a thing? Anyone ever done that?
(Context: one of my cases that was an Unnecessarily Escalated Neighbor Dispute, which I internally call Neighborly Unnecessary Dispute Escalation or NUDE, originated(?) over a firepit dug in a backyard. One neighbor called the fire marshal on another, which is a fascinating move in the game of NUDE chess.)
So I guess the time traveler answer to this is: environmental regulation, regular controlled brush fire to mimic natural conditions and clear dead vegetation, community design with natural firebreaks that preserve natural bodies of water and don't turn wetlands into desert, etc etc. I'm extraordinarily far from an expert on this, but it seems to me to be pretty agreed-on that there are lots of benefits to preserving water ecosystems.
Given that my guy with the time machine fucked off, though, kind of stuck with what to do now.
I do note:
We live in a current society and we cannot all fill in the gaps themselves. If you are up to keeping an eye out with a hose, that's great! I would not say you're Bad or doing an objectively and fully Bad Thing for engaging with the police on this. Many things can take place when the police are called, most of the things being stuff like "nothing" and "unnecessary arrests" but SOMETIMES you find a cop who's just a guy (gender neutral, actually probably this most often happens with black women cops) having a day who's like "man stop SETTING OFF FIREWORKS they have FIRE in the name" and it does work.
The societal lack of availability of alternate solutions also sometimes calls for imperfect engagement with law enforcement. I'm not encouraging it, I'm just saying, you get to make the call on when it might be helpful. You seem like you have a good attitude about it and I'd trust you.
Threat of arrest doesn't necessarily do a lot... I tend to think of big groups of people a little like trying to control large amounts of water. You can't stop Americans from exploding stuff, truly, nor can you stop them from vast and incomprehensible acts of idiocy, especially undertaken in groups. You can't just Stop water from flowing by yelling at it or threatening it. You can if you put in a lot of infrastructure and make it very easy for the water to flow the other way (see: reversal of Chicago river; see also: the hubris of mankind). You can also channel water in ways that are beneficial while it goes the way it wants to go. Or you can build floodwalls, etc. to mitigate the damage it does.
So I'd say... kind of a twofold approach. One, try to get them the thing they want more safely, and two, try to mitigate the consequences of them doing it unsafely.
So things like extra community watches for fires, extra volunteer fire brigades, neighbors armed with hoses. Giveaways of fire extinguishers and other safety items, maybe a Fire Safety Fair where you can take photographs with muscly firefighters and someone wins a house via raffle. Maybe a certain amount of legal laxity for anyone who, say, trespasses or larcenies in the interest of stopping fireworks (like an announcement from the police department that says "Since no one is allowed to own fireworks, they cannot legally be stolen. Have a safe Fourth!")
Then also like maybe an explosives range in a nice big gravel area where everyone can be dumb together behind a shield and there's a fire truck parked not far away and like pre-soaked grass around? idk. Those are just my initial ideas.
Guess what, folks! It's summer! And it's gonna be a hot one, because they all are, recently :(
Did you know you can lose about a liter of water, a gram of sodium, and 300mg potassium in an hour of profuse sweating? If you're working outside in the heat, or even just existing in a very hot and humid environment, you're gonna want to replace the electrolytes you're losing, and you're gonna have to be purposeful about it.
But electrolyte drink mixes, while convenient, are surprisingly expensive for what they are. So I'm going to give you a top secret recipe that you can whip up for literal pennies that will replace what you're losing in sweat.
1 liter of water
1/2 tsp table salt (about 1g of sodium)
1/8 tsp potassium chloride salt substitute (about 350mg potassium. NuSalt is a popular brand, it's sold near the salt at the grocery store. If you don't have this, replace 6oz (180ml) of the water with orange juice or eat something high in potassium, like a banana, each hour you're sweating)
6-8 tsp of granulated sugar (you do actually need this and not a no calorie alternative- sugar helps speed up the absorption of electrolytes in the gut. You can omit if using orange juice for your potassium source, though!)
Lemon or lime juice for flavor, optional
Mix together and drink 1 liter for each hour you're profusely sweating. Adjust your intake so that your pee is light yellow.
If you want to make this mix ahead of time, put 1x the recipe of salt, sugar, and potassium, along with unsweetened Kool Aid powder or crystalized lemon or lime juice, in a small baggie. I do not recommend putting multiple servings worth in a baggie, as the ingredients settle differently and you might not get the right ratio.
NOTE: like any electrolyte drink, it works better if you sip it instead of chugging. If you chug it, you end up pooping out a lot of your electrolytes, even with the sugar.
Yes, definitely put it in a baggie. Even better if the baggie is tied off. Then leave it in plain view on your car dashboard and watch your local cop sweat through a field test for meth & cocaine in total confusion
Took a migraine rescue med to see what would happen today...
What seems to have happened is that both my cats, including the one who pathologically avoids being touched or petted, are intensely concerned about me and feel the need to directly monitor my health in my presence.
This level of scrutiny usually reserved for when breakfast or dinner is imminent. Those both take place at 6ish. It is in the middle of those times and their food and water is available and full.
Took a migraine rescue med to see what would happen today...
What seems to have happened is that both my cats, including the one who pathologically avoids being touched or petted, are intensely concerned about me and feel the need to directly monitor my health in my presence.
Could you elaborate on why you object to the term "ideopathic?"
It’s kind of twofold.
First objection isn’t really to the term, it’s to the fact that they haven’t cracked this one and the going theories are all pretty frustrating.
Second is the fact that there isn’t a known causation to IIH leaves it wide open to being blamed on all sorts of things, like anxiety (hysteria), especially given its prevalence in women.
Idiopathic is a factual term (it means “of unknown cause”! Period!) and shouldn’t have further Connotations, really, but I think it brings with it baggage about the condition being made up, resulting from stress, exaggerated, misdiagnosed, etc.
I honestly don’t have a problem with the term used as defined for its definition. As An Lawyer, terms being used for what they mean satisfies me on a level I cannot fully express.
