Chicago Detective charged in fatal off-duty shooting

By Stacy St. Clair and Jeremy Gorner

Tribune reporters 9:31 a.m. CST, November 25, 2013

In a rare move, Cook County prosecutors charged a Chicago police detective with involuntary manslaughter today for an off-duty shooting in which he killed an unarmed woman.

Detective Dante Servin, 40, becomes only the second officer since 1997 to be charged in connection with a shooting. He was also charged with reckless discharge of a firearm and reckless conduct, and is expected in bond court later today.

Servin, who joined the department in 1994, has cooperated with investigators and met with prosecutors at his home in January to walk them through his version of events, his criminal defense attorney Thomas Brandstrader said.

A Conservative Case for Prison Reform

By Richard A. Viguerie | 6/10/13

Conservatives should recognize that the entire criminal justice system is another government spending program fraught with the issues that plague all government programs. Criminal justice should be subject to the same level of skepticism and scrutiny that we apply to any other government program.

But it’s not just the excessive and unwise spending that offends conservative values. Prisons, for example, are harmful to prisoners and their families. Reform is therefore also an issue of compassion. The current system often turns out prisoners who are more harmful to society than when they went in, so prison and re-entry reform are issues of public safety as well.

These three principles — public safety, compassion and controlled government spending — lie at the core of conservative philosophy. Politically speaking, conservatives will have more credibility than liberals in addressing prison reform.

The United States now has 5 percent of the world’s population, yet 25 percent of its prisoners. Nearly one in every 33 American adults is in some form of correctional control. When Ronald Reagan was president, the total correctional control rate — everyone in prison or jail or on probation or parole — was less than half that: 1 in every 77 adults.