On Christmas Eve Day, Paul Krugman wrote a brief diary, "Yes, There Are Prisons" in which he reproduced the following graph by Mike Konczal, from "The Conservative World View and Prison Populations, Broken Windows", which he describes as "a cross-section of countries and the strong correlation between their prison population per capita and an index of their 'economic freedoms' [per Cato Institute], with a plot of the United States since 1970 over it":
The graph is arresting in itself, because of what it tells us--(1) that libertarian "economic freedom" is correlated with putting people into prison at the international level, and (2) that the growing power of movement conservatism is even more strongly correlated with putting people into prison, at the national level. But Krugman and Konczal both have more to say. Konczai has a number of points to make in support of "why I think we can think of our current prison population dilemma as a conservative project," and why, therefore, anyone who thinks that criminal justice reform might be an agenda item for the new Republican House is sorely mistaken. But let's take Krugman first, as his remarks are briefer:
I'll have to think about exactly what's going on here. But the discussion brings to mind something I ponder on now and then: what happened to the inevitable collapse of American society?
All through the 70s and 80s, and some way into the 90s, it was almost a given that all of America - or at least all of our central cities - would turn into something like the South Bronx, or worse. It was practically a cliche of popular culture; it was also a theme propounded solemnly and at great length by writers like Gertrude Himmelfarb, who insisted that only a return to traditional moral values could arrest our decline.
And then a funny thing happened. Values continued to shift: we kept on having premarital sex and getting divorces, gay and lesbian couples went out in public, relatively few Americans went to church (although a larger number claimed that they went.) Yet crime declined sharply, big cities (New York in particular) became safer than they had been in many decades, and in general society seemed to hold together.
Actually, this is not the least bit surprising. Conservatives have been proclaiming the imminent end of civilization since at least Heroditus, in Works and Days with his five ages of man, each one more debased than the one before. Liberals, on the other hand, have been telling tales of progress--unsteady progress, to be sure, but progress, nonetheless--for almost as long, as Eric Alfred Havelock argued in The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics. We cannot tell what the future holds, and there's been a great preponderance of folly lately, but historically so far, conservatives have repeatedly vastly under-estimated human resilience and our powers of renewal, and whatever the precise details this time, the big picture seems quite familiar.
Before turning to Konczal, who has a more complicated argument, I just want to supplement Krugman's observation with a brief presentation of some international data about the rise and fall of broad categories of crime rates, which unfortunately only start in 1988, but show a sharp 1991 peak for everything, followed by an almost equally broad, if slower decline ever since, thereby showing that the US was not alone:
If liberals were ever looking for a good subject over which to call for their smelling salts and fainting couches, holy crap here it is. Martin Joel Erzinger, an "ultra-wealth" fund manager hit-and-runs a cyclist leaving him seriously injured. The local Republican DA, Mark Hurlbert has declined to press felony charges opting for misdemeanor counts instead. His reasoning reads quite literally like something out of the medieval times' treatment of nobility:
"The money has never been a priority for them [DD note: the victim is a medical doctor]. It is for us," Hurlbert said. "Justice in this case includes restitution and the ability to pay it."
Hurlbert said Erzinger is willing to take responsibility and pay restitution.
"Felony convictions have some pretty serious job implications for someone in Mr. Erzinger's profession, and that entered into it," Hurlbert said. "When you're talking about restitution, you don't want to take away his ability to pay."
See, as long as the esteemed and noble lord pays the peasant for the damage, no harm should befall his excellency. Problem solved.
A story by Eric Lichtbau in the NY Times, published just before the report's release began as follows:
Lax State Gun Laws Tied to Crimes in Other States
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: September 26, 2010
WASHINGTON - Nearly 600 mayors nationwide, led by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and other city leaders, are mounting a new campaign to identify states with lax gun laws and push for tighter restrictions to prevent the trafficking of guns used in crimes.
A study due to be released this week by a coalition called Mayors Against Illegal Guns uses previously unavailable federal gun data to identify what it says are the states that most often export guns used in crimes across state lines. It concludes that the 10 worst offenders per capita, led by Mississippi, West Virginia and Kentucky, supplied nearly half the 43,000 guns traced to crime scenes in other states last year.
The study also seeks to draw a link between gun trafficking and gun control laws by analyzing gun restrictions in all 50 states in areas like background checks for gun purchases, policies on concealed weapons permits and state inspections of gun dealers. It finds that, across the board, those states with less restrictive gun laws exported guns used in crimes at significantly higher rates than states with more stringent laws. An advance copy of the study was provided to The New York Times.
"There are 12,000 gun murders a year in our country, and this report makes it perfectly clear how common-sense trafficking laws can prevent many of them," said Mr. Bloomberg, who is the co-chairman of the coalition with Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston. "For mayors around the country, this isn't about gun control. It's about crime control."
The report's executive summary lists four key findings:
The word partisanship is typically accompanied by the word mindless. That's not simply insulting to partisans; it's also untrue.
If we learn nothing else in 2010, can we please finally acknowledge that our partisan divisions are about authentic principles that lead to very different approaches to governing?
Amen to that. But what about the flip side? If partisanship actually reflects real differences in ideas, how much does bi-partisanship reflect a mindless approach that ignores not just ideas, but reality itself? (Including, of course, the mindless use of the term "mindless partisanship.") Take, for example, the mindless bipartisan approach to education, exhibited by Obama's support for firing all the teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island, which Jeff is going to be writing about 4 PM.
The bottom-line reason given for the firing in many news reports was a 48% graduation rate. Now, that rate is nothing to be proud of--even though it would have been quite respectable for the "Greatest Generation", which sent a lot of high school dropouts off to war. But 48% is still almost halfway to perfection. Contrast that with the violent crime rate for Oakland, California, 1917.8 per 100,000 in 2007 (the most recent year for which statistics are available in the DOJ online database). You'd have to double their performance (cut their violent crime rate in half) eleven times before you'd get close to perfection, a violent crime rate of less than 1 per 100,000.
Obviously, the entire Oakland Police Department should be fired. No other conclusion is possible. It's a no-brainer.
But why stop with Oakland?
The safest community in California is Laguna Woods, and it's violent crime rate is 16.4 per 100,000. You'd have double their police performance four times to get close to a violent crime rate of 1 per 100,000 and five times to get under 1 per 100,000. If perfection's your measure (and why shouldn't it be?) then the Laguna Woods police are spectacularly worse than the Central Falls High faculty and staff.
The conclusion is obvious: Every police department in America should be fired en masse.
The offenders put out a piece in the UK's Daily Telegraph suggesting that wearing provocative clothing makes women more likely to be raped. Only now, it's not just a nervous elderly relative or skeezy Bill O'Reilly saying it, but 'scientists.' As Goldacre was able to gather from talking to the dissertation candidate involved, her research showed nothing of the kind and the conclusion in the headline wasn't going to be reported as a finding because the evidence didn't support it.
But who wants to let facts and evidence get in the way of a little harmless slut-shaming?
Indeed, the research the paper was supposed to be reporting on seems not to have been focused on criminal behavior, and the researcher herself says that the survey structure wouldn't likely be suitable for answering the question assumed by the news article. But there has been research done on what marks people out for being crime victims, conducted by observing the responses of actual criminals, and the conclusions were very different than the prejudice-laden assumptions of the Daily Mail article.
First, a local nonprofit attempts to address the crime epidemic in Chicago ...
Second, antibiotic resistance is spreading across the world. An answer might lie in Georgia, the former Soviet Republic, where they use phage virus cocktails that only attack bacteria as a treatment for chronic, recurring infections. The catch for anyone who wants to benefit from this treatment in the US is that each of the thousands of bacteriophage strains that have been found to be medically useful would have to individually pass the FDA approval process. (via)
Leading human rights organizations in the United States on March 20th presented charges of human rights abuse and torture against the U.S. government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which can recommend actions, including prosecutions, to the U.S. government, other nations' governments, or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
People have noted for some time the curious phenomenae of conservatives attracted to Barack Obama. At Salon, Joe Conasan's article "Why conservatives love Barack Obama" carried the subhead, "Clinton haters who think the Illinois senator can beat Hillary support him now, but their affection will fade if he gets the nomination." The irrational exuberance of Hillary hatred seen before the New Hampshire primary certainly reminds us of how potent a force such hatred remains, not just within the official conservative establishment, but among its Versailles enablers as well. Still, that's only part of the story.
some conservatives, in particular, can't wait to bum rush the current crop of media-anointed black leaders out the door.
"The big losers, two big losers tonight are probably Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton," George Will observed after the Illinois senator swept the Iowa Democratic caucuses last week.
The Revs. Sharpton and Jackson, Mr. Will said, were "representative of those who have a sort of investment in the traditional and, I believe, utterly exhausted narrative about race relations in the United States."
Conservative radio host Bill Bennett said Mr. Obama "has taught the black community you don't have to act like Jesse Jackson; you don't have to act like Al Sharpton. You can talk about the issues. And, this is a breakthrough."
Page's reference to "media-anointed black leaders" is bizarre, of course. Jackson ran for President twice. In the 1988 primaries, he got over 7 million votes, won ten states and went to the convention with over 1,200 delegates. Sharpton ran in 2004, and repeatedly confounded expectations with his cogent arguments in the debates. This comment by Page is indicative of how, even when he's questioning what white conservatives are saying about black political issues at one level, he's buying into their assumptions at another: Jackson and Sharpton don't really represent the black community, according to the subtext that Page has casually endorsed. They are "media-anounted black leaders." (Unlike Obama?)
The faux religious zealots like to go around spouting about a "culture of death" in our country because we let women make their own decisions about their bodies. However the real culture of death in this country is the unjust death penalty. We join beacons of justice China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Sudan in accounting for 90 percent of all executions. 133 countries around the world have abolished the death penalty. And yet we stick on to this culture of death. However great news has been coming out in recent days for those who wish to end this injustice. Two days ago New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine on Monday signed a law abolishing the death penalty, the first state to ban it in 42 years. And then yesterday on a 104 to 54 vote, with 29 abstentions the U.N. General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution on Tuesday calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.
Does it seem like there's a new Republican scandal in the news every single week? Well, that may be because there is.
That seems like an awful lot of corruption, scandal, hypocrisy, impropriety, and jail-worthy crime, huh? A lot of corruption. One might say an entire Culture of Corruption.
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