Showing posts with label crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label crime. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 01, 2023

Police Killed in Line of Duty

 Turns out there's a wikipedia page for US police killed in line of duty. Quite a contrast with a page for UK police killed.

For anyone too lazy to click, US killings of police run about 50 or above, the UK runs about 1 a year.

The context is the culture: US view police as maintaining order against crime in the midst of an armed populace, meaning a focus on conflict and violence, while the UK has a different history. In short, there's not an arms race in the UK, there is in US.

Friday, June 24, 2022

Crime and My Six Convicts

 There's a lot of discussion of crime these days, particularly on Twitter where I follow Peter Moskos, @PeterMoskos, a professor who served as a policeman in Baltimore. 

A very popular book in 1951, so popular mom gave it to dad for Christmas, was this (from the entry in Goodreads):

My Six Convicts: A Psychologist's Three Years in Fort Leavenworth

really liked it 4.00  ·   Rating details ·  20 ratings  ·  2 reviews
With an appointment by the U.S.Public Health Service to conduct research in the relationship between drug addiction and criminality in the new research hospital at Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary, I arrived as a professor of psychology and left three years later as a professor of psychology in the 1930s, but not the same, not the same at all. But this book is not a record of the research project but rather a reminiscent impression of the "humors, whimsies and tragedies of my six convict assisants--my world as they saw it and their world as I saw it".

As he mentioned, he had six convicts who assisted in his research.  IIRC he didn't discuss his research much, but tells stories, stories which one reviewer found fictional.  But at the end, again if I remember, he described some of the six convicts as men who couldn't be rehabilitated and released. 


Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Guns--May 25

 Reading "Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight" which is good, better for anyone who didn't live through the Johnson administration and read her memoir.

Just reached June 4, 1968, when RFK was assassinated, following the killing of MLK in Memphis. The author quotes an excerpt from a speech by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the next day (who had campaigned for RFK) in which he said: "America is a land of violent people, with a violent history..."  Seems to fit today. 

I tweeted this today: "Is it strange that the NRA's good man with a gun guarding a school or church never requires an AR-15, but John Doe defending his home has an absolute right to an AR-15?"

Not sure that expresses my intent--in other words: shouldn't the good guys have weapons at least as good as possible assailants?  It's obvious to me that an AR-15 or similar weapon is not for self-defense. 

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Homicides, Car Accidents

 Homicides are up, fatal car accidents are up.  I suggest it's a combination of factors (that's always a safe suggestion):

  • the pandemic, obviously.  We've built up a lot of frustration as we've had to adapt to change.
  • Trump.  Leaders can set the tone.  In the former guy's case the tone he set was to act out your emotions, to be angry at situations you can't control, and to bully the people you can. (Wrote this yesterday, but see AOC making a similar point today--the tone set from the top can matter. 
  • for homicides, there's likely been an impact on policing from the "defund police" etc. 

Sunday, July 11, 2021

Metaphor--Society, Nuclear Reactors, and Pandemic

 Long discussion in Post of the possible causes for increase in murders this year in America (not occurring elsewhere if article is right).

Thinking of a metaphor for human society--as a nuclear reactor, with police as the control rods absorbing or not the excess neutrons, thereby damping or permitting greater interactions. 

One might expand the applicability of the metaphor to the pandemic, with the control rods being the vaccines, masks, lockdowns, etc. 

You'd have to expand the discussion to include the rates of the radioactivity of the alternative materials which could be used for a reactor.  (I'd assume that radium, for example, could explode given the right setup.)  

Back to homicide--it seems to me one effect of the pandemic likely has been to change the characteristics of the public, those who are active in exchanges with others.  During the past year the "public" has become younger and poorer as the old and the better-off have been much better able to reduce their time in public.  That might well mean that the remaining "public" is more reactive, somewhat as if the uranium was more highly enriched.  

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

On Chauvin--Changing the Parameters

 Mr. Chauvin was convicted yesterday.  I've not tried to follow the ins and outs, but based on what I've heard/read I've no problem with it.  Scott Johnson at Powerline says the prosecution case was stronger than his initial expectations, which is significant.

If I could, I'd like to gather people on both sides of the verdict and ask this question: if the parameters of the case could be changed, what change(s) would convince you to change your mind? By parameters I mean such things as the length of time Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck, Floyd's actions, the prosecution witnesses, Floyd's health condition (Bob Somerby has a hypothetical there.)

While the exercise would be interesting, I don't know if it would be educational at all.  I don't think people make decisions that way, by considering parameters one at a time.  It's like buying a house; the final choice is more a gut feel than reasoned.

Monday, February 22, 2021

Looking Forward to Rosa Brooks

 I really liked Rosa Brooks' last book, so I pre-ordered her new one, Tangled Up in Blue, Policing the American City. Haven't started it yet, as I'm still finishing Midnight in Chernobyl.  She and Peter Moskos, who I follow on Twitter, had an interesting exchange.  Here's a quote from a Georgetown interview:

It’s incredibly hard to be a good cop. This really came home to me once I started patrolling.

By underfunding other social services we’ve created a society in which cops are all-around first responders to everything from shootings, stabbings, domestic assaults and burglaries to mentally ill people walking down the middle of the street talking to themselves. And no one really has the skills to handle all those very different kinds of situations well.

In the interview she uses my favorite phrase: "It's complicated". 

Monday, June 08, 2020

Reboot the Police

That's my position.  I don't particularly want to reduce funding for police.  History says, I think, that the public overreacts to swings in crime, cutting police excessively in low-crime periods, ignore a period of increase in crime, then over-fund police in an attempt to catch up.  In other words, we overshoot both on increases and decreases.

What I do want is more research into policing-- we have so many different strategies proposed:

  • tough on crime, lots of policy,
  • community policing--cops on the beat knowing the community
  • broken-windows
  • social services--replacing cops on the beat with social workers
  • etc., etc.
Why can't we take precincts which are matched in demographics, etc. and use one strategy in one and a different one in the other.  Keep the experiment going for years and learn. 

Instead of taking money from police for the sake of taking money, raise taxes on me and you to fund needed and useful government services.

Monday, February 24, 2020

Michael Milken--Angel or Devil?

Keith Williamson had a short post the other day: 
Reis Thebault, writing in the Washington Post, identifies Michael Milken as “the ‘junk bond king’ who was charged with insider trading…”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board says that Milken “was never charged with insider trading.”
I was curious so I checked wikipedia. 
In March 1989, a federal grand jury indicted Milken on 98 counts of racketeering and fraud. The indictment accused Milken of a litany of misconduct, including insider trading, stock parking (concealing the real owner of a stock), tax evasion and numerous instances of repayment of illicit profits.
He pled guilty to six counts,  which likely were the least serious ones, securities and tax violations (i.e., not insider trading). So it sounds like a plea deal: the feds got jail time and a scalp on the wall; Milken avoided a long and expensive trial which might have resulted in much more serious penalties and which can be described as "technical", and therefore worthy of a pardon. 

Thursday, October 03, 2019

Interesting Questions on Foreign Investigations

When should an American official at any level suggest/request a foreign government investigate an American citizen?

I think the first question you have to answer is, what is the purpose of the investigation?  Is it because the official believes the citizen violated the laws of the foreign country?  Do we assume the country's judicial system is fair?  What is the US interest in seeing the citizen investigated and possibly convicted of a crime (or suffer civil penalties)?

Another set of questions around "investigate".  Is it okay for an American official to give incriminating information to a foreign government if the government is unaware of any offense?  What is the US interest is seeing the crime investigated?

How about trades of information--an intelligence operative trades info on citizen A for info on foreign citizen B?

How about cases where a crime/offense perhaps has crossed jurisdictional lines, so the start of an investigation in the foreign country might start dominoes toppling and permit an investigation in the US?

Without delving further into the issues, it seems to me possible circumstances in some cases could justify a request or a passing of information.  But, none of those would apply as I understand it in the case of Ukraine and the Bidens.

[update--addendum: I think the propoer course is to refer any suspicions to DOJ for an FBI investigation and possible grand jury.  If there's no offense under US laws but might be under foreign law, passing information from the FBI to the foreign country is possible.]

Monday, January 21, 2019

The Interplay of Tech and Behavior

Peter Moskos has an interesting post at his blog.  In New York City if a policeman answers a 911 call for a person who's waiting for an ambulance she has to  enter the person's data into her phone which results in a check of the database for outstanding warrants.  Moskos argues that's wrong and bad: people will associate EMTs with law enforcement and avoid calling for help.

Towards the end he notes a separate issue--in Baltimore every time the police stopped someone, they ran a check for outstanding warrants.  In NYC, they don't.  Moskos traces the difference to a difference in technology: apparently in NYC multiple precincts share a radio band; in Baltimore each precinct has its own band.  So, as an economist would predict, there's rationing of a scarce resource in NYC but not in Baltimore.

Saturday, January 05, 2019

Police Shootings by State

Moskos has two new pieces here and here on the subject:

First piece on  police shooting people
The national annual average (of police shootings) since 2015 is a rate of 0.31 (per 100,000). And yet New Mexico is 0.98 and New York is 0.09. This is a large difference. 
Western states worst, NE states best, highest black states better than average.
Second piece is mostly on people shooting police

Quotes from the second piece:

Lack of density -- more space -- is correlated with being more likely to be killed by cops. Think of what this means. Common sense tells you it's not a view of "big sky country" that makes cops shoot someone. Whatever really matters, is correlated to density (or lack thereof). Maybe it's single person patrol. Or the time for backup to arrive. Or meth labs. Or gun culture.
The greater the percentage of blacks in a state, the less likely cops are to shoot and kill people.
1) Whites don't really care about who police shoot; period; end of story. And without the pressure over bad (or even good) police-involved shootings, cops never learn how to shoot less. Other things being equal, cops simply shoot more people if there isn't any push-back from (to over-generalize) blacks and liberals and media and anti-police protesters. Call it the Al Sharpton Effect, if you will. Basically, in many places, police organization and culture do need to be pressured into changing for the better.

2) Police can be recruited, trained, and taught to less often use legally justifiable but not-needed lethal force less. The state variations in police use of lethal force are huge. Some states (and particularly jurisdictions within states) do it better than others. Instead of saying "police are the problem" we could look at the states and cities and department that are doing it better and learn. 

Tuesday, February 06, 2018

Imprisonment and Clemency: Two Examples

The Washington Post has two articles which offer perspectives on punishment and clemency:

This Metro article reporting on MD judges concerns about life sentences for juveniles:
A central question for the Maryland Court of Appeals is whether a young person can be sentenced to life without what prison reform advocates say is any realistic chance of release. The cases follow several Supreme Court rulings that distinguish between adult and juvenile offenders, who the court says are not as culpable and have a “heightened capacity for change.”
The high court in 2016 prohibited mandatory life sentences for juveniles without parole and has said young offenders must have a “meaningful” chance to show they have matured and to be released.
Then there's this Chico Harlan article about a North Korean spy who successfully bombed a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people, during the run-up to the Seoul summer Olympics.  She's living quietly as the mother of two teenagers.

The contrast between the situations is stark, mind-blowing in fact. 

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Attention Mr. Bezos: Adjuncts and Prison Classes

Bezos has asked for ideas on how to use his money for immediate impact, as opposed to long-range improvements.

I'd suggest funding classes for convicts.  Occasionally there are reports of successful programs of this kind: Bard College is one I've read about.  Seems to me it fits Bexos' criteria: the promise of near instant significant impact and a space where there don't seem to be other philanthropists venturing.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Reducing Prisons

Vox has a piece discussing a proposal to replace prisons with mandatory labor and geolocation--i.e., let the convict work to compensate his victim or society, but with an ankle bracelet.

It appeals to my squishy liberal heart.  However, I note that the Kentucky doctor who bilked Social Security of hundreds of millions of dollars by approving disability claims has now vanished.  He was out on bail with an ankle bracelet, but cut it off and vamoosed.  

That's not to say the proposal is totally impractical, but it could work only by a trade off of the difficulty of removing the bracelet, the likelihood of evading recapture, the gains of freedom, and the consequences of recapture.

Saturday, March 18, 2017

The Future Is California

An excerpt from a David Brin post:

From the Los Angeles Times: Californians are 30% less likely to die a violent death today than other Americans. Since 1980, California’s rate of reported crime overall has fallen by 62%. The state’s criminal arrest rates, too, have fallen considerably, by 55% overall, and by 80% among people younger than 18 — a population, it is worth noting, that is now 72% nonwhite. 

Violent crime in California has fallen by an impressive 50% in the same period. This includes drops in robberies (65%), homicide (68%), and rapes and assaults (more than 40%). That last figure is even more remarkable when you consider that the legal definitions of both assault and rape were expanded during these years.

Tuesday, March 07, 2017

Today's Great Sentence

" if there's anything we native-born Americans excel at, it's crime."

Kevin Drum in a long discussion on the statistics of immigrant crime rates.

Thursday, December 29, 2016

Public Service--Report Amazon Phishing

Received an email announcing either a $50 or $100 credit from Amazon.  Rather obvious phishing.

Forward such emails to stop-spoofing@amazon.com.

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Spikes in Homicides and Traffic Deaths

Peter Moskos picks up on the same thing I did.  The only difference is he wrote about it: the increases in traffic deaths and homicides are roughly the same percentages, but the Times minimized one and not the other.

Not good, NYT, not good.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Those Damn Boomers

I'm a member of the silent generation (born 1941) so naturally I don't like the boomers. Turns out I'm right, as usual.  Two sentences from a piece on trends in incarceration:
"Multiple factors account for the rising proportion of older Americans in prison. First, ever the trendsetters, baby boomers are somewhat more criminally active in late life than were previous generations."