Posted on August 14,2013 in Criminal Law

Police officers have the power to investigate if they have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been, or is about to be, committed. Reasonable suspicion allows police officers to detain a person briefly for questioning. During this stop, the police may quickly frisk someone and search their vehicle for weapons or other dangerous materials. Police officers sometimes abuse these frisks to go on fishing expeditions for evidence. This is an unconstitutional abuse of the reasonable suspicion rule, and courts have started cracking down on the practice.

However, the best way to fight these bullying tactics by the police is for people to exercise their rights.  First, even though police have the power to approach a person, they cannot force the person to answer questions and the person has the right to walk away. If the police decide to frisk someone because they have reasonable suspicion of criminal behavior, this stop must be brief and they can not force the person to answer questions.

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 Posted on August 05,2013 in Criminal Law

According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a new law has been passed that will now allow 17 year old felony offenders to be tried in juvenile court as opposed to being tried as adults. Experts say that this change will allow the juveniles a better chance of rehabilitation.

In a prison system that is seriously overcrowded with a high rate of recidivism, House Bill 2404 should be instrumental to giving juvenile offenders the tools that they require to emerge as law-abiding citizens. Handling the kids in an environment that is less focused on punitive punishment will give them better coping skills to understand what they did wrong, why they did it, and learn what they can do differently in order to stay out of jail in the future.

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