Law

Justice in Sequesterland

/ The Old Crank

From a WBUR interview with Miriam Conrad, who heads the federal public defenders office for Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, talking about the impact of sequester cuts at her office, where she may have to cut more than a quarter of their staff in about a month:

The other problem is, even in the cases that we keep, if we don’t have as many investigators and paralegals to help us prepare the case, there are going to be delays. And the longer there are delays the longer people who are held in custody in jail, pending trial, are going to stay in jail at an approximate cost of $2,000 a month. And you’re likely to have cases in which defendants say that their speedy trial rights have been violated, and you’ll see motions to dismiss.

Do these cuts affect prosecutors as well?

No.

Why not?

Well, that’s a great question. You can ask Congress that question. The U.S. attorney’s office this year did not have any furlough days. And, in fact, the Senate Appropriations Committee recently approved an increase of I think it was $79 million for U.S. attorneys offices with the express purpose of bringing more criminal cases in federal court. Of course, the more cases you have, the more lawyers you need on the defense side. And somehow, Congress has not joined the two and has not recognized that actually providing a defense is part of the cost of prosecuting a federal case. (my emphasis)

Pennsylvania Constitutional Amendment Would Let Elected Officials Determine Nonprofit Status

/ The Old Crank

I understand where this is coming from, but I’m not sure I would trust a legislature to fairly determine which organizations deserve a tax exemption more than the courts.

If such an amendment were to ever pass, I imagine lobbyists who represent nonprofits in the state capitol would see a nice little uptick in their business.

New York Times on the School-to-Prison Pipeline

/ The Old Crank

The New York Times published a good editorial earlier this week on the school-to-prison pipeline issue:

[B]y criminalizing routine disciplinary problems, they have damaged the lives of many children by making them more likely to drop out and entangling them, sometimes permanently, in the criminal justice system. The policies are also discriminatory: black and Hispanic children are shipped off to court more frequently than white students who commit similar infractions.

According to the Times, the New York City School-Justice Partnership Task Force  has found that “the overwhelming majority of school-related suspensions, summonses and arrests are for minor misbehavior, behavior that occurs on a daily basis in most schools.”

Helpful Pointer to Charitable Deduction Proposals

/ The Old Crank

In case you missed it, the House Ways and Means Committee released a 558-page (!) report earlier this month detailing a range of options for overhauling the tax code. For those of us who work in the nonprofit sector, the report is of some significance because it  summarizes all of the proposals for limiting or changing the charitable tax deduction that have been bandied about over the last several years. A recent article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy  helpfully pointed out that the section on charitable giving begins on page 491.