April 21, 2008
Netherlands bicyclists
OK, one last post on Dutch velocipedal culture, because another reader reminded me of what may its most remarkable convention: no helmets! This one is really perplexing. Obviously, the only people who should wear a bicycle helmet are those who (i) use their heads for thinking or (ii) wish to appear as though they do; many Dutch people meet one...
Netherlands bicycles II
I received a lot of interesting mail in response to my speculations about the Dutch and their bicycles. Some important points, though the writers do not all agree with each other: A. Commuting and errands are done at a leisurely pace over fairly short distances; that, with the flatness of the country really does make a good bike (in the...
April 18, 2008
Paying prosecutors piece rates: oviously improper
No judge should have a financial stake in the outcome of a case. A prosecutor acts in a quasi-judicial capacity. Therefore prosecutors shouldn't be paid for the number of cases they handle. But the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles is doing just that.
Why do the Dutch ride lousy bicycles?
As is well known, the Dutch have an extensive, pervasive, and very green bicycle habit. Big cities have four completely separate surface circulation systems with integrated signals (cars, pedestrians, trams, and bikes); tourists wandering on foot into the bike path get hit or yelled at. Bicycle parking is not a matter of a few posts on the sidewalk, or bikes...
April 12, 2008
April 09, 2008
"Prison rape is not a punchline"
Ezra Klein calls out one of the most heartless aspects of our popular culture.
March 25, 2008
Crime as a campaign issue
Can we now have a sensible discussion of how to control what is after all a real problem, and a bigger problem for poor and minority neighborhoods than for the rest of us?
March 10, 2008
February 17, 2008
In case you have nothing better to do ...
I'll be addressing the West Los Angeles Political Action Committee at 2pm today under the title "A Progressive Agenda for Crime Control." The meeting is open to all comers.
November 21, 2007
Clearing the innocent
Tens of thousands of innocent people rot in prison. Why doesn't that count as a law enforcement problem?
November 12, 2007
The assault weapons ban and the Democrats
Since the assault weapons ban expired, AK-47s are showing up in the hands of criminals, and some of them are killing cops. Is this an issue for the Democrats? I'm not sure.
October 11, 2007
September 22, 2007
On gun-nuttery
It's identity politics; it's a reaction to the negative identity politics of the gun-control groups; it's about self-reliance; and (in the form of hunting) it's the only form in which a manly man can practice nature-meditation.
September 11, 2007
July 17, 2007
Mercy, justice, and Troy Davis
If he's innocent, as seems to be the case, then what's the point of commuting his sentence to life without parole? If he doesn't belong on Death Row, he doesn't belong on an ordinary cellblock either.
July 15, 2007
Too bad Troy Davis doesn't play lacrosse
Otherwise someone might be concerned that Davis is about to be executed for a crime he didn't commit.
July 08, 2007
Crime, lead, and Rudy
Yes, getting the lead out of gasoline no doubt explains a large share, maybe even the bulk, of the crime drop from 1990-2005. But that doesn't meant that more and better police services didn't count. Only the liberal (and libertarian) Bourbons, who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing, still regard law enforcement as a bigger problem than crime.
June 20, 2007
The dynamics of deterrence
Why concentrated enforcement is better than "equal-opportunity" enforcement.
May 30, 2007
GPS monitoring for gang members on parole
Good idea. But it shouldn't cost thousands of dollars per parolee. Cellphone providers provide the same service to parents for $200 for the device and $20/mo.
May 19, 2007
"Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen"
Big banks and big information brokers willingly act as accessories to fraud against the elderly.
February 18, 2007
Prison rape and libertarian theorizing
If you want to stop prison rape, ending the drug laws and privatizing prisons isn't the way to do it.
February 17, 2007
As True Now...
Mark is absolutely right in his posting below, about the way that new policing techniques allow America a way to dramatically reduce crime and in the process get out of our over-incarceration trap. It just so happens that Mark and I wrote an article seven years ago making pretty much the same point. I encourage the RBC's readers to take...
February 16, 2007
What to do about concentrated violence
David Kennedy lays out what we now know how to do, and says it's time to start doing it. Democratic candidates, please copy.
February 11, 2007
The Keystone ExeKutioners
It's easy to kill someone cleanly painlessly: put him in a room and replace the air in that room with an inert gas, such as nitrogen. So why do we insist on messy, painful means of execution?
January 06, 2007
December 26, 2006
December 25, 2006
GPS and community corrections
If cell phones allow parents to track the whereabouts of their children, they can also allow community corrections officials to track the whereabouts of probationers, parolees, and people on pretrial release.
December 12, 2006
Invitations
Open house in DC this Sunday from 1:30 on: 1020 16th Street, NW. Talk at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis Monday from 3:30-5: Landmark Building, Room 414A. Be there, or be square.
December 04, 2006
The dynamics of deterrence
The more credible you make a threat, the smaller the risk of actually having to carry it out. That may be the key to having less crime and less punishment.
November 19, 2006
October 16, 2006
Sarkozy as Nixon or Reagan
Looks as if the French socialists are making the same mistake the American Democrats made: they're handing the conservatives crime control as an issue.
October 10, 2006
Seminar announcement:
The Dynamics of Deterrence
I'll be giving a seminar at the National Institute of Justice this Thursday at 1 pm. Send me an email if you'd like to come.
September 08, 2006
Minor in larceny?
Twenty Division I schools are trying to recruit a star high school football player who is also an armed robber.
August 22, 2006
June 30, 2006
Letting murderers walk
The Feds seem to have lost a racketeering-murder conspiracy case on a technicality. But why can't the killers (who were New York City detectives at the time) be tried for murder under state law?
June 13, 2006
Bad news on the crime front
Violent crime has started to rise again. Maybe reducing federal aid to local law enforcement wasn't such a good idea after all.
June 01, 2006
Let the punishment fit the crime?
How about sentencing Lay and Skilling to spend the rest of their lives doing hard, menial jobs and living in grinding poverty?
May 30, 2006
Random thoughts on the Enron verdicts
If Ken Lay doesn't want to die in jail, he'd better figure out someone more important than he is who has committed crimes Lay knows about. Do any names leap to mind? If so, you're as insanely partisan as I am.
May 28, 2006
Note to the MK Fan Club
I'm on FM 89.3 in LA tonight at 9 p.m., as part of a panel discussion of crime control.
May 22, 2006
The Exclusionary Rule and a Note on Torture
I take issue with one piece of Mark's reflection on torture, which is his in-passing endorsement of the exclusionary rule. I think it's bad policy and bad law, mainly because maybe the guy is guilty, and putting him on the street is the wrong way to get the cops and DA's to act properly. Indeed, the "fruit of the poisonous...
Back to the drawing board
The California Youth Authority has abandoned plans to take over Alcatraz for a young offenders holding facility....
March 19, 2006
Cory Maye and the n-guilty-men problem
Interviews with jurors in the Cory Maye case reinforce the idea that justice was ill-served at his trial; one of them was on so many "medications" for her "nerves" that she can't remember much of what happened. The jury system allows too many false convictions, and judges ought to be more vigilant than they are about overturning verdicts based on inadequate evidence.
March 14, 2006
Not funny, dammit!
/POMPOUS MORALIZING It looks as if a number of prominent Republicans are headed off to prison for various corrupt activities, and more are likely on the way, for corruption, election fraud, and outing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA officer. No doubt they deserve it, and no doubt having them go away will encourage others to clean up their...
February 11, 2006
In defense (just this once) of Kenneth Starr
Looks to me as if he Starr was the bamboozlee, not the bamboozelor. And it also looks as if his client might actually not deserve to die.
January 13, 2006
January 03, 2006
Sick humor
An act can be voluntary even if made under pressure: that is, I can freely choose to accept a lesser evil rather than a greater. But to say, as the Abramoff plea agreement says, that "The defendant is entering into this agreement and is pleading guilty freely and voluntarily ... without threats, force, intimidation, or coercion of any kind," is transparently false. Why say it, then?
December 23, 2005
Second thoughts on the Tookie Williams case
Tookie Williams was responsible for hundreds of murders, so I find it hard to mourn his death. But he might well have been innocent of the particular murders for which he was actually executed.
December 22, 2005
The limits of blogger power
Radley Balko is still hammering on the Cory Maye case. But it's not getting any traction where it counts: in real politics and the mainstream media.
December 16, 2005
Black humor dep't
A criminal defendant has a right to defend himself in court, but not to have access to a law library to enable him to do so. Hilarious, isn't it?
December 12, 2005
Blogger Power and Cory Maye
No, bloggers can't save an innocent man, unless they can get actual reporters and actual politicians to pay attention.
December 11, 2005
Another miscarriage of justice
An eighteen-year-old and two of his friends have sex with seventeen-year-old, who is too young to consent under Oregon law. She complains. The men aren't charged. The complainant is charged, and convicted, of making a false statement, on what seems like obviously deficient evidence.
December 10, 2005
A miscarriage of justice
A cop makes an innocent mistake. The cop winds up dead, and an equally innocent homeowner winds up on death row.
December 02, 2005
November 29, 2005
Retribution v. just deserts
Forget what the offender deserves to have done to him. Concentrate on what the victim deserves to have done to the one who victimized him.
November 26, 2005
Even More Retribution
Below, Mark makes the argument, which I agree with, for the merits of retribution as a justification for punishment. The argument comes out of a deep aspect of human moral psychology, which is the need for public recognition of injustice. Human beings who are wronged, whether in small or large ways, need those who have committed wrong against them to...
Pinochet and retribution
His victims deserve to have him punished. Why is that a hard concept to grasp?
July 17, 2005
The public trust
Jordan at Confined Space has been all over a truly nasty story that has yet to get the attention it deserves. It seems that immigration agents (who now work for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which combines the old Customs Service with the enforcement part of the former INS) have using purported "OSHA briefings" to catch illegal immigrants at work....
July 15, 2005
June 06, 2005
April 12, 2005
Throw the book at them!
It looks as if the NYPD made a bunch of bad arrests and offered a stack of bad testimony in cases against the demonstrators at the RNC last summer. Can you say "perjury" and "evidence tampering" and "obstruction of justice"? I was sure you could.
April 08, 2005
Wal-Mart: Theft or union-busting?
At minimum, Wal-Mart has a corporate culture in which the No. 2 executive' story that he needed company cash for illegal union-bashing was convincing to his subordinates.