A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Masson's Blog

SB 78 “Public Order Offense” while wearing a mask

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Sen. Sandlin has introduced SB 78 which identifies three specific crimes as “public order” offenses and then permits a sentencing enhancement if these crimes are committed while wearing a mask or face covering. I can definitely see where there is a policy argument to be made that attempting to conceal one’s identity while wearing a crime should be punished more harshly than committing the crime openly; but it seems arbitrary to single out the crimes of criminal mischief, rioting, or disorderly conduct or the means of concealment being hiding one’s face. Why not add a sentencing enhancement to campaign finance crimes or dodging taxes while hiding behind shell corporations?

My guess is that Sandlin is reacting to the Antifa panic.

SB 222 – Disclosure of Health Information Concerning Communicable Diseases at Food Establishments

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My title here is almost as long as the bill itself, but Sen. Koch has introduced SB 222 which amends the law concerning communicable diseases at a food establishment. Current law says that a person with a communicable or infectious disease can’t work in a food establishment in any capacity in which epidemiological evidence indicates the person may spread the disease. (Pretty sure I’ve seen folks with colds working at fast food joints). The legislation would require a local health department to disclose, upon request, certain information concerning a food establishment with a person who is or was prohibited from working under those circumstances. (I don’t know that the local health department is always going to have this information.)

The health department must disclose the specific disease, the name and location of the food establishment, and the period of time during which the person worked while infectious. The legislation goes on to say, however, that the health department may not disclose the name of the person or any other identifying information of the person. I’m not necessarily against this legislation, but my guess is that, in smaller communities with smaller establishments, the disease, location, name of establishment, and period of time worked are going to be more than enough information for news organizations or citizen sleuths in the comment sections to figure out who has what disease.

SB 177 Loot Box Hero

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Sen. Grooms has introduced SB 177 which urges the study of loot boxes in video games. Specifically, it requires the Indiana Gaming Commission to provide the legislative council with recommendations on how best to regulate loot boxes in online games and applications and options for a regulatory system concerning the sale of such games and appropriate disclosures.

The legislation itself doesn’t make this explicit, but the referral to the Gaming Commission indicates the concern that these loot boxes are a type of gambling. Here is the first explainer that came up on Google regarding the general issue. Players pay additional money to get the “loot box” – bonus items with additional items or features related to the game. I use the term “bonus” somewhat loosely, since the additional items or features can be important to game play. It can be similar to gambling in that there is an element of chance – you don’t know what you’re getting. Depending on how it’s set up, there can be a slot machine effect, where you combine gaming and intermittent reward mechanisms to create an addictive dynamic. Also, it can be somewhat unclear prior to purchase how important the additional pay-to-play elements are to game play.

SB 32: Same Day Voter Registration

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Sen. Lanane introduced SB 32 which provides for same day voter registration. The person has to provide proof of residence and complete a voter registration form. I predict that this won’t go anywhere. Fifteen states currently permit election day registration, so it’s feasible. But, my guess is that the voters most likely to benefit from election day registration are less likely to vote for lawmakers currently in control of the General Assembly. Therefore, no dice.

SB 11: Needle Exchange Registry

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Indiana General Assembly to study cervical cancer

This image is popular because it’s free.

Sen. Bohacek has introduced SB 11 which requires entities administering a needle exchange program to establish a needle exchange registry. The registry would be optional for users and, if the user was on the registry, the user might use that registration as a defense to crimes involving possession of the needles.

Currently, needle exchange administrators are prohibited from collecting personally identifiable information. That prohibition is deleted and the legislation would require them to maintain a registry. The registry is to include the person’s name, date of birth, and last four digits of their social security number. The information in the registry is only to be accessed by a court, a court clerk, or a law enforcement officer. (This would seem to prevent the needle exchange administrator itself from accessing the information — which I presume is not the intent, but maybe a drafting oversight.)

The legislation also says “an individual may opt out and is not required to be included on the registry.” The benefit to the user of registering is that, if they’ve registered within the past year, they can use the registration as a defense to prosecution for possession of a hypodermic needle for use with a controlled substance.

I get where this legislation is coming from. On the one hand, the government says it’s a crime to possess a hypodermic needle to use controlled substances. On the other hand, the government is giving you hypodermic needles that you’re almost certainly going to use for injecting controlled substances. This maybe harmonizes the message a little bit.

I’m ambivalent about the drug war. On the one hand, I think addiction and drug use does a lot of harm to our communities. On the other hand, I think policing, prosecuting, and jailing drug users comes with a lot of expense and does some harm in the process. I don’t have a good sense of where the balance is. Could we decriminalize possession of needles entirely without exacerbating addiction and drug use? I have no idea — I’m not on the front lines of this issue. I do have the sense that the benefits of needle exchanges themselves outweigh the harm. Preventing the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C in our communities outweighs the harm, which I think is probably marginal, from tacit endorsement of the use of needles. Even though the message is mixed somewhat, I don’t think it’s too complicated for the general public to figure out that the government doesn’t want people injecting illegal drugs, but if they are going to do it anyway, the government would prefer they use clean needles and not contract debilitating diseases that are expensive to treat.

I don’t have a good sense of how this legislation would shake out. Would it increase or decrease the use of needle exchanges? If it increases use, does the resulting harm reduction outweigh the increase, if any, in drug use that results from having a defense to the crime of possessing a needle for drug use? (I think they might revoke my blogging card for not pretending certainty and proclaiming every issue a clear and obvious matter of good versus evil.)

Mandatory Trainings for School Employees

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I was browsing the page for the General Assembly’s interim study committee on education (as one does) and came across this memorandum (pdf) from the Indiana Department of Education describing required training for school employees:

CPR (all license holders)
Suicide Prevention (all teachers)
Bloodborne Pathogen Training (all school employees)
Bullying Prevention (school employees and volunteers)
Child Abuse and Neglect training (each employee likely to have direct, ongoing contact with children)
Criminal Organization Activity training (school employees)
Human Trafficking training (employees likely to have direct, ongoing contact with children)
Dyslexia training (reading specialists)
Homeless children & youth training (school corporation homeless education liaison)
School safety training (school safety specialists)
Seclusion and Restraint alternatives training (“appropriate school employees”)
Concussion training (all coaches)
Heat preparedness (specified coaches)
Internal Control standards training (school corporation employees who have duties related to school funds)
Lock out/tag out training (“affected employees” and “employees whose work operations may be in the area”)

Between the testing and the training, it’s a wonder teachers have time to teach.

Niki Kelly on the Chamber of Commerce and Social Issues

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Niki Kelly, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, has an interesting article on the Indiana Chamber of Commerce’s tackling of issues that might seem tangential to business interests. In particular, Micah Clark – a vocal social conservative – seems to take umbrage at the Chamber’s support for the General Assembly adopting a hate crime law.

“A lot of business owners – especially small-business owners – would prefer they stick to business and economic issues. It has given the impression to some they are for big government,” said Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana. “Many people are scratching their heads as to why they are going off course so much.”

But Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Kevin Brinegar bristles at the idea his organization has strayed outside its lane.

“All of these things we get involved in is because it has an economic impact and jobs connection,” he said. “The Indiana Chamber of Commerce has indeed been a driving force in making Indiana one of the best places to grow jobs and raise families and one of the best business climates in the country.”

Mission creep is certainly a thing, and when you focus on everything, you tend to focus on nothing. That said, the Chamber is correct that the social environment is intertwined with the business environment. We do ourselves a disservice when we try to pretend our economic lives are somehow distinct from other parts of our lives. And – if it comes to a conflict between Brinegar’s Chamber and Clark’s “American Family Association,” I’m going to side with Brinegar. I probably watch too much “Survivor,” but the conflict between the two conservative groups puts me in mind of the Survivor end-game when one tribe has mostly voted out the other tribe and members of the dominant tribe have to square off against one another. If unions and social progressives were more powerful forces in Indiana, we’d probably see the Chamber and AFA more inclined to make common cause with one another. But, without unions and social progressives to unite against, you might see erstwhile allies engage in more open conflict.

As an aside, I really don’t like this description of students: “Brinegar said businesses pay more than half of the funds that go to K-12 education, and ultimately are the end users of the product – students – so their interest in a solid education system makes sense.” I suspect this was more of a quick metaphor than anything like a sincerely held belief that students are some kind of widget produced by schools, so I won’t hold it against Mr. Brinegar, but it gets at something unfortunately common enough that it seems worth addressing: employment isn’t the end-all be-all of education. Schools are more than vocational. We need them to produce more than workers – we need them to produce citizens, to help produce fully realized human beings who can make decisions for themselves on how to live happy, worthwhile lives. A productive work life is only a piece of that equation.

Buzzfeed Rape-By-Deception in Indiana

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David Mack, writing for Buzzfeed News has a long article on the Tippecanoe County case in which a Purdue student was sleeping in her boyfriend’s bed when another man snuck into the bed and initiated sex with her, knowing that she thought he was the boyfriend. The Purdue student woke up and went along with it because she thought it was her boyfriend in the bed. The guy was charged with rape but was acquitted because Indiana’s rape law only prohibits sex compelled through force or threats, if the victim is mentally disabled and can’t properly consent, or if he or she is unaware that the sex is occurring. None of those elements was present here in the case of this sneak rapist. The woman wasn’t forced or threatened, she wasn’t mentally disabled, and she was aware that the sex was occurring. She was deceived as to the identity of the man who climbed into her boyfriend’s bed.

Prosecutors apparently could have but didn’t charge sexual battery which prohibits someone touching, “for the purpose of sexual gratification, ‘another person’s genitals, pubic area, buttocks, or female breast when that person is unaware that the touching is occurring.'” But, even that only potentially covers the period of time where the guy was trying to initiate sex, rubbing on her and whatnot, while the woman was sleeping. The larger violation here was that he knew she wasn’t agreeing to have sex with him; she was agreeing to have sex with her boyfriend. If it had been her boyfriend, based on subsequent events, it seems like she would have been o.k. with the initiation while she was asleep. So, it’s not even clear that charge would have stuck.

This has led to legislative efforts to address what happened here. But, there are line drawing problems. I think most folks — myself included — are comfortable declaring that what this guy did was a crime and a pretty serious one at that. But what are the outer limits? “I know your consent is not directed toward me but is directed toward someone I’m impersonating with whom you already have an intimate relationship” is definitely fair to criminalize. Opponents of defining consent in the criminal laws to encompass something like this cite fears of over-reaching government and a slippery slope.

Some of that resonates with me. Much as I trust and appreciate our local Prosecutor to exercise sound discretion, you can’t always count on the right person being in that office, so I’m a bit skeptical of the advocate in the story who “rolls her eyes at the notion that prosecutors are going to bring criminal cases against men who falsely tell women they love them to get them in bed. There are evidentiary standards that need to be met, she argues, as well as prosecutorial discretion to pursue only the most egregious cases of deception.” Relying on the tender mercies of a Prosecutor acting in good faith can lead to bad places if the wrong person is in that office. As best we can, we should define as a crime only those things we wish to be prosecutable offenses and try not to rely on prosecutorial discretion any more than we have to.

That said, if a practice is wrong, toxic, and causing harm to some non-trivial cross-section of the public, we shouldn’t be afraid to criminalize the practice simply because it’s common or even if there are going to be some grey areas in hard cases. Wrongful prosecution is always a legitimate concern, but the fact is that instances of women being sexually abused, harassed, and otherwise mistreated are rampant while the number of men wrongfully prosecuted for such abuse, harassment, and mistreatment is and will likely continue to be miniscule in comparison. Ideally, of course, you try to create a system and a culture where none of that happens, but if bad things are still going to happen to good people, we have lots of room to adjust the scales in favor of women before men are in danger of getting worse treatment in this area.

So, if the legislature proceeds, what level of deception rises to a criminal offense? Maybe criminalizing saying “I love you” to have sex is too subjective and hard to prove; but how about saying “I’m not married?” I don’t know what level of crime that ought to be, but I wouldn’t be bothered by that kind of thing being criminalized even if there currently happen to be a lot of guys running around lying about their marital status to get laid. (But, again – line drawing problems – what if it’s a committed relationship rather than a state sanctioned marriage?)

The larger cultural issue is an “all’s fair in love and war” approach to sex — mostly when it comes to men trying to have sex with women. As a guy approaching 50 who’s been married for almost 20 years, I’m not really on the front lines of this sort of thing, but it seems to me that a big part of the problem is men being taught that sexual conquest will earn them a measure of esteem among other men. (Let’s call it the “pussy grabber” effect — something that’s done, not for enjoyment of the act itself, but so a guy can brag about it to P.J. and Squi.) That’s obviously not something the legislature can address directly, but maybe defining “consent” as excluding “consent” obtained by deception would be an indirect step toward reducing women becoming collateral damage of men trying to impress other men.

TribStar on Efforts to Locate New Vigo County Jail

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Dave Taylor, writing for the Tribune Star, has a good article on the efforts of Vigo County to locate a site for a new jail. The county is under pressure from lawsuits about overcrowding at the Vigo County jail. Expansion of the current facility sounds like something of a non-starter because it’s in town and two levels. The idea of transporting prisoners up and down in an elevator in the jail does sound like trouble.

I don’t know anything about Terre Haute or Vigo County, but some of the issues seem familiar to what we have in Tippecanoe County. The proposed new site is on County land near the Wabash River — which is exactly where Tippecanoe County’s current jail is. The move in Vigo County is opposed by an organization called Wabash River Development and Beautification (but commonly known as “Riverscape”). Riverscape is devoted to improving the land along the Wabash River. (In Tippecanoe County, we have an outfit known as the Wabash River Enhancement Corporation doing similar work.) Riverscape objects to using up land near the river as a jail because, in its opinion, doing so would limit options to improve and beautify the River in the future. Vigo County counters that the jail would not be on the part of the parcel adjacent to the River and that the remaining tract would presumably be available for River development. I don’t know anything about the history of Tippecanoe County’s relocation of the jail from in town Lafayette to land near the River, but it was done before WREC was up and running. That notwithstanding, WREC has developed long term plans for the river in Tippecanoe County that accommodate the fact that Tippecanoe County’s jail is in the area.

In any case, this issue is a nice microcosm of the types of cost-benefit analysis and weighing of priorities that local government has to undergo. This is the type of issue that has more of a practical impact on the day-to-day lives of citizens than the big, national issues of the day that consume our attention. So, kudos to the Riverscape folks who are working to transform their stretch of the Wabash into something more livable than what was left behind by heavy industrial uses or uses that tended to crop up along rivers before we were very conscious of urban planning. And kudos to the local officials in Vigo County and Terre Haute who are trying to come to grips with housing inmates in a humane way while being responsible with taxpayer dollars and trying to see that Wabash River is rehabilitated in a way that makes their area a better place to live. I’ve seen the folks in Tippecanoe County grapple with some of these things, and it’s definitely not always easy. But it is important.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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My post from Thanksgiving 2008 remains relevant:

So, Happy Thanksgiving everybody. To me, this seems like the holiday that has remained “purest” in some ways. Everybody gets the idea of celebrating things they have to be thankful about by stuffing themselves silly. Commercialization hasn’t really taken over – probably because Thanksgiving is in a sort of consumer rain shadow of Christmas. When the nagging details of day-to-day life get to be a hassle, it’s easy to forget how good I really have it. I have a beautiful, smart, loving wife and two healthy kids who, by initial indications, are sharp as a pair of whips and who still seem to think I’m pretty awesome. I have a roof over my head, and plenty to eat every day. It’s easy to forget that health, food, and shelter aren’t something everybody can take for granted.

On the other hand, Thanksgiving isn’t all happy-happy-joy-joy. I’m a history buff and there is always a Clash of Civilization element in my mind when I think about the holiday. From my Thanksgiving entry last year:

In 1620 a band of religious separatists who weren’t happy with their situation in England (Church of England) or Amsterdam or Leiden (cultural influences) departed for the New World. For some reason, they planned their trip such that they arrived in Massachusetts in December. They found land that had been cleared by a prior Indian settlement and subsequently decimated by disease – most likely smallpox – and were able to settle there during the winter.

Fortunately, a native Patuxet named Squanto who had twice been kidnapped and enslaved by Englishmen was able and willing to translate for the Pilgrims and teach them how to raise corn and catch eel. Having survived their first year by the skin of their teeth and brought in their first harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated their first Thanksgiving 386 years ago.

Considering the fate of the Patuxet really drives home how much we have to be thankful about given the relative lack of plague, famine, and waves of foreigners from across the sea. Squanto, as it turns out, was to be the last of the Patuxet tribe which died out entirely when Squanto died of smallpox in November 1622, about a year after the first Thanksgiving.

So, if you think you have it bad, it could probably be worse. Happy Thanksgiving everybody!