Criminal Law Review

It is no secret that when it comes to the California budget deficit that it appears that this state may actually fall off into the sea, and that when it does it will be human error and have nothing to do with the mighty San Andreas Earthquake Fault rupturing in its 150-year cycle. Now, the California state government is over $24 billion in debt and is desperately trying to find places to cut costs anywhere it can.

One of the major cost for the California State Budget is the prison system. So the state legislators have decided that if they let criminals out early they can save a ton of money and layoff prison guards. This is unfortunate in the middle of a recession because if you let people out of prison and there are no jobs, you are giving them an economic incentive to go out and commit more crimes, at a time when we are also reducing police budgets.

That simply does not make sense. Additionally, if they enroll and go back to community college to learn a new skill, well, there are budget cuts there too and they are cutting classrooms, teachers, and curriculum. There are waiting lists for most classes now. Meaning retraining for parolees is not in the cards either.

Further, the detective departments at the major police departments are also cutting their forensic crime laboratories. So, as these criminals commit crimes, there will be no way to catch them, of course, there will be no cops to come pick them up, and there will be no prison guards to guard them anyway. Does any of this really makes sense?

What about criminal Law deterrents?

One of the reasons we have punishments in criminal law is to prevent crime. But if people can commit a crime and they will not be punished, or the punishment is so small, that is in reality of the criminal mind at least a justify of risk and reward and so, they’ll continue to commit more crimes. Please consider all this.

Well in today’s information age doing a criminal record check isn’t difficult or even particularly time consuming you just need to know where to look.

1. The first thing you can do is to check the family watch dog site, which is a data base of sex offenders who have been released from prison and who may live in your area. Then there is the Federal Bureau of Prison site that has similar information. You can also check the National Sex Offender’s Registry.

2. You can try to use a regular search engine like Google or Yahoo, but that is sort of hit or miss and can bring up a lot of unnecessary data that you need to weed through.

3. The easiest and quickest thing you can do is go to a search engine specifically designed to find out about people. There you can find details such as

Arrest & Court Records
Sex Offenders
Missing Children and Adults
Phone Numbers & Addresses

With just a few mouse clicks you can get basic data, such as the different cities where the person has lived for free. While a full report on a person only costs a few dollars.

Isn’t it worth the safety and security of your family and isn’t it worth your own peace of mind to know a a bit more about the people who you choose to invite into your life? You can also search on yourself just to see what information is available about yourself in case you want to get it blocked to protect your personal privacy.

Many people have heard about methods you can use to beat a breathalyzer. The truth is that there is no effective method to avoid having a properly calibrated breath test machine calculate your blood alcohol content fairly accurately.

One popular myth is to eat something such as breath mints, onions or coffee grounds to fool the machine. Eating strong foods may mask the odor of alcohol, but will not lower your blood alcohol level. Likewise, mouthwash will not lower the reading. If the mouthwash contains alcohol, it could actually increase the reading on the breath test.

People also mistakenly believe that they can consume a lot of caffeine and be fine to drive after a night of drinking. While you may feel more alert with caffeine in your system, it will not reduce your blood alcohol content.

Despite another rumor, drinking Zima will not help you pass a breath test. This urban legend started because Zima does not smell strongly of alcohol; however, a breathalyzer measures actual alcohol content. Just because an alcoholic beverage doesn’t smell much like alcohol does not mean that you can have all you want and then drive.

There is also a widely believed myth that putting a penny under your tongue when you take the test will allow you to pass, even if you’re over the legal limit. This is an urban legend that holds no water. Putting a penny under your tongue will increase your chances of swallowing or choking on a penny, that’s all.

The only relatively reliable way to beat a breath test is to have no alcohol in your system. If you have rinsed with a mouthwash containing alcohol prior to taking the test or if the machine malfunctions, you may still register a false positive.

If you have failed a breath test and been charged with DUI, consult a DUI lawyer right away. There may be several defense strategies that could help you beat your DUI, even though you didn’t beat the breathalyzer.