Chicago Tribune (October 30)
“The caravan of several thousand people coming north through Mexico has stirred all sorts of fears here at home…. But the actual grounds for fear are sparse.” Some won’t complete the journey. Many will apply for asylum. Only a small percentage will eventually make it into the U.S., either legally or illegally. Furthermore, “a body of evidence indicates that immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans.”
The Economist (December 5)
Many aspects of Japan’s criminal justice system are admirable, “yet time and again innocent people have been shown to confess to crimes in the hope of a more lenient sentence—or simply to make the interrogation stop.” In fact, some estimate more than a tenth of convictions rests on false confessions. Changes need to be made, for example, “all interrogations should be filmed from start to finish.” Reforms like these “would give the innocent a better chance of keeping their liberty.”
Tags: Admirable, Crimes, Criminal justice, False confessions, Film, Innocent, Interrogations, Japan
Washington Post (February 20, 2014)
“North Korea’s camps and methods of political repression rival the worst of the 20th century’s totalitarian crimes: Hitler’s concentration camps and Stalin’s prison system. This is happening not in the 1940s or 1950s but in our own time…. North Korea’s leaders must be held accountable.”
Tags: Accountable, Concentration camps, Crimes, Hitler, Leaders, North Korea, Prison, Repression, Stalin, Totalitarian
