Offender

A Los Angeles County judge responsible for reconsidering the life prison terms of more than 1,000 offenders sentenced under the state's three-strikes law began the process Monday at a hearing where he reduced the punishments for five inmates convicted of relatively minor crimes. Among those given shorter sentences was a 74-year-old who has served more than 15 years for possessing $10 worth of drugs and an 81-year-old behind bars for more than 17 years for stealing dozens of packs of cigarettes.

A state appellate court has agreed to review Orange County's controversial law barring sex offenders from county parks and beaches, a move that may determine whether the ban - and other ordinances modeled after it - are legal. The county ordinance prohibits all registered sex offenders - even those not convicted of crimes against a child - from entering county parks, beaches and harbors without a written waiver from the sheriff. The district attorney's office has successfully urged about 16 other cities in the county to adopt versions of the ordinance, saying the law will help keep parks and seashores safe for children.

All people convicted of drunk driving should have special ignition interlock devices installed on their vehicles that keep them from starting the car if they are intoxicated, federal safety regulators said Tuesday. The National Transportation Safety Board said such a policy could be a major factor in preventing traffic collision deaths, especially those occurring in accidents caused by a wrong-way driver. About 60% of wrong-way accidents involve an intoxicated driver, said NTSB Chairman Deborah Hersman.

Amid reports of widespread sexual abuse of children in the late 1980s, several leading youth organizations began conducting criminal background checks of volunteers and staff members. Big Brothers Big Sisters ordered the checks for all volunteers starting in 1986. Boys and Girls Clubs of America recommended their use the same year. One of the nation's oldest and largest youth groups, however, was opposed - the Boy Scouts of America. DATABASE: Search the "perversion" files  Scouting officials argued that background checks would cost too much, scare away volunteers and provide a false sense of security.

A panel of Superior Court judges has challenged a controversial 2011 Orange County law that bans sex offenders from parks, beaches and even some roadways and asked the state Court of Appeal to review the measure. On Friday, the district attorney's office, which has pushed cities across the county to join in adopting a version of the sex offender ban, vowed to continue enforcing it. "I believe that protecting children from sex offenders is one of the highest priorities in law enforcement," Dist.

HONOLULU - The first thing you notice about 1st Circuit Judge Steven Alm is how excited he is about what he's doing. The buzz-cut, fast-talking judge was waiting for me in the lobby of the courthouse early on a recent morning and led me up to his third-floor chambers to explain Hawaii's promising approach to repeat offenders with drug and alcohol problems. I'd heard about Alm's program, Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE), from two Southern California drug policy professors - Mark Kleiman at UCLA and Angela Hawken at Pepperdine - who urged me to go have a look at Alm's operation.

One year into California's state prison realignment program, Los Angeles County is seeing an unexpected number of high-risk offenders coming into its probation system, including some with a history of severe mental illness. It remains unclear whether realignment - which shifted responsibility for some nonviolent offenders from prisons to county jails and from state parole to county probation - is having an effect on crime rates. But a report by a county advisory body found that a majority of state prison inmates who have been released to county probation are at a high risk of reoffending.

By a fairly solid margin, Tuesday's presidential election spared Americans the hand-wringing that would have accompanied a split decision like that of 2000. George W. Bush, of course, won the electoral college that year but fell just short in the popular vote. This year, Barack Obama cruised to victory in the electoral college and won the electorate by about 3 million votes. When a presidential candidate wins the electoral college but loses the popular vote - as Bush, Benjamin Harrison and Rutherford B. Hayes did - it does not diminish the legitimacy of the election.

Rose Steward woke up, certain someone else was in her bedroom. She saw a man, a red bandanna over his face and a knife in his hand, illuminated by a street light. She began to shake violently. For the next five hours, the man raped and choked her, twice to the point she lost consciousness. She was certain she would die. She grieved she was too young, only 22, and that her murder would destroy her mother. She struggled against panic and fought with her wits, pretending to like her attacker, cajoling him and sympathizing with him. When he finally left at dawn, she kissed him goodbye - then ran for help.

Dale Curtis Gaines has never been convicted of a violent offense, but his prison term of 27 years to life is longer than many sentences imposed on rapists, child molesters and killers. Gaines was sent to prison under California's tough three-strikes law, which targets repeat offenders with previous convictions for at least two violent or serious crimes when they commit any new felony. Two prior residential burglaries made Gaines eligible for a lengthy prison stint when a jury found him guilty of a new offense in 1998.