Nine months ago, a similar police decoy program called Operation Lucky Bag was effectively shut down by prosecutors and judges who were concerned that it was sweeping up the civic-minded alongside those bent on larceny. Shopping bags, backpacks and purses were left around the subway system, then stealthily watched by undercover officers. They arrested anyone who took the items and walked past a police officer in uniform without reporting the discovery.

Now, a new version of the operation has started to catch people in public places outside the subways, and at much higher stakes, Criminal Court records show.
Unlike the initial program, in which the props were worth at most a few hundred dollars, the bags are now salted with real American Express cards, issued under pseudonyms to the Police Department.

Because the theft of a credit card is grand larceny, a Class E felony, those convicted could face sentences of up to four years. The charges in the first round of Operation Lucky Bag were nearly all petty larceny, a misdemeanor, with a maximum penalty of one year in jail.

New statistics from the Justice Department show that nearly 2.4 million people were incarcerated in state and federal prisons at the end of last year. Another 5 million people were on parole or probation. This means about one in every 31 adults in the United States was in prison, in jail or on supervised release at the end of last year. According to an analysis of the data by the Sentencing Project, the data reflects deep racial disparities in the nation’s correctional institutions. A record 905,000 African-Americans are now being held in prison. In several states, incarceration rates for blacks were more than 10 times the rate of whites.

posted by Scats : 12/06/2007 04:03:00 PM