Thursday, November 3, 2011
Being a Priest
I believe that, for a man, there is no greater vocation in the world than that of being a Catholic priest, and a recent survey from Our Sunday Visitor finds priests are “among the happiest people in the country.”
I would suspect the same is true for women being a nun.
I have been very fortunate in the priests I have been honored to know—as are a vast majority of the faithful in the priests they know—for they all reflect the results found in this survey from Our Sunday Visitor.
An excerpt.
“Although modern secular portrayals often paint the priesthood in a negative light, the results of a new study reveal that Catholic priests are among the happiest people in the country.
“A thorough scientific evaluation conducted by Msgr. Stephen J. Rossetti, clinical associate professor of pastoral studies at The Catholic University of America, shows that priests as a whole are highly satisfied with their lives.
“The study, which includes data from a 2009 survey of 2,482 priests from 23 dioceses and a 2004 survey of 1,242 priests from 16 dioceses, is the basis of Msgr. Rossetti’s new book “Why Priests Are Happy: A Study of the Psychological and Spiritual Health of Priests” (Ave Maria Press, $18.95).
“Msgr. Rossetti, a licensed psychologist, told Our Sunday Visitor that at first the study’s findings may seem surprising or even counterintuitive.
“But the results, he explained, are in line with secular studies and social science research conducted over the past three decades.
“Studies consistently show that religious people, those with a strong spiritual life and a religious faith, tend to be happier, more well-adjusted people,” Msgr. Rossetti said. “Frankly, the reality is that religion is good for you, psychologically and spiritually.”
“That is especially true for priests, he said. In the study, priests tested slightly higher on standard psychological evaluations than the average person, and reported one of the highest rates of satisfaction with their work of people in any profession.”
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Progressive Catholics
It took several years after our conversion and baptism to recognize and fully appreciate how much they differed from conservative Catholics (within whose camp we've found our home) and while it really isn't a matter of progressive vs conservative, but being congruent with traditional Church teaching rather than not and conservatives tend to be the former, progressives the latter.
Once realizing the difference and understanding their perspective, the attempt to ally Peter with Occupy Wall Street isn’t a surprise.
George Weigel, one of the Church’s most important theologians—his books are at Amazon’s author page—writes about them on the Ethics & Public Policy Center.
An excerpt.
“It's been a bad three and a half decades for self-styled "progressive" Catholics.
“First, there was John Paul II, whom many in that camp habitually labeled a charismatic reactionary. Yet the Polish pope was a hero all over the world during an epic pontificate that bent history's arc in a more humane direction, and did so without the aid of liberation theology. John Paul's funeral Mass on April 8, 2005, became, in the apt phrase of NBC anchor Brian Williams, "the human event of a generation," a moniker unlikely to be attached to the obsequies of, say, Hans Küng, John Paul's most embittered progressive critic.
“Then came the election of the progressives' bête noire, Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI: a horror that a prominent progressive, Notre Dame's Fr. Richard McBrien, declared electorally impossible a mere 24 hours before it happened. Catholic progressives hunkered down for what they hoped would be a brief Ratzingerian interregnum. But Benedict XVI has proven an energetic pope whose pontificate has been in dynamic continuity with that of his predecessor, an astute analyst of the cultural crisis of the West, and a man determined to strengthen Catholic identity as the sine qua non of Catholic reform.
“Thus the Wojtyla-Ratzinger years have put paid to the notion, beloved of Catholic progressives, that Catholicism began anew -ex nihilo, as it were - at the Second Vatican Council. Committed to the hoary "liberal/conservative" hermeneutic of the Council's history, Catholic progressives hold that Vatican II represented a dramatic rupture with the past. The great teaching pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, however, have proposed a far more plausible interpretation of the Council as one in dynamic continuity with the great tradition of Christian orthodoxy. That interpretation, in turn, is shaping an entire new generation of Catholic intellectuals who are far more interested in exploring the complex riches of that tradition than in deconstructing it. Unlike the aging progressives, who have shown themselves rather infertile intellectually and who survive in large part because of that most conservative of institutions, the tenure system, many younger Catholic scholars are fully committed to putting theology at the service of the "New Evangelization" for which John Paul II and Benedict XVI have insistently called.
“In the United States, the progressives have also been steadily losing their grip at the national, diocesan, and local-parish levels. Various lay-renewal movements have become vital and self-consciously orthodox factors in Catholic life, and a new generation of priests and bishops, many of whom look explicitly to John Paul II as their model of ecclesiastical leadership, have come to the fore. For the past half-decade or more, the Catholic bishops of the United States, following the pope's lead, have increasingly stressed the importance of Catholic identity, by which they understand fidelity to Catholic teaching, in confronting an increasingly hostile cultural and legal/political environment. That problem has been considerably exacerbated by the Obama administration, which many Catholic progressives welcomed with loud hosannas, and for whose regulatory assault on Catholic health-care and social-service agencies progressives have provided cover, often by implausible appeals to Catholic social doctrine.
“Throughout this fairly rapid decline, progressive Catholicism's distinctive cultural marker has been its skepticism about the teaching authority of the Church: whether that teaching authority was formally and authoritatively addressing the ethics of human love, the suitability of women for Holy Orders, the uniqueness of Christ as universal savior, or the intrinsic evils of abortion and euthanasia. Thus it was another sign of the increasing incoherence of progressive Catholicism when several of its American paladins mounted a raucous defense of a "Note" - a kind of Vatican white paper - on international financial reform issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) on October 24. It was an extraordinary exercise: The progressives depicted Benedict XVI as a senior chaplain to Occupy Wall Street, described the Note in such overwrought terms that the gullible might have thought this white paper shared in the charism of papal infallibility, and darkly suggested that those who disagreed with the Note's prescriptions were cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing their doctrines to fit preexisting political tastes.
“The irony of men such as the former editor of America, Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr., and National Catholic Reporter blogger Michael Sean Winters promoting a notion of papal teaching authority more expansive than any imagined by the most wild-eyed traditionalist will not be lost on cognoscenti of ecclesiastical intrigue. This new notion of PCJP infallibility does, however, raise interesting questions - about the nature and modalities of Catholic teaching authority, about the organization of the Holy See, and about the state of Catholic progressivism in America.
“Given the continuing confusion caused by Father Reese's assertion that the Note positioned Benedict XVI "to the left of Nancy Pelosi" (which reverberated throughout the media echo chamber), it's important to pin down just what the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is, and what authority its statements bear.
“The Pontifical Council (with whose president, Cardinal Peter Turkson, I had an entirely cordial 90-minute conversation last year) was established after Vatican II as part of the "New Curia," a set of agencies intended to give organizational expression to some of Vatican II's pastoral concerns: the promotion of social doctrine, the family, the lay mission in the world, and so forth. Unlike the older Congregations of the Roman Curia, which exercise an authority of jurisdiction (over bishops, clergy, religious life, Catholic worship, etc.), and unlike the Tribunals of the Curia, which make binding legal decisions, the "Pontifical Councils" of the New Curia were intended to be in-house think-tanks. Bureaucracy being what it is, however, they quickly morphed into something else: paper factories issuing all sorts of statements on all sorts of issues. As I wrote in God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, there was concern during the 2005 conclave over the large amount of paper being generated by the New Curia: paper that was inevitably, if inaccurately, interpreted publicly as being the settled understanding of the Catholic Church and its highest teaching authority on X, Y, and Z.”
Once realizing the difference and understanding their perspective, the attempt to ally Peter with Occupy Wall Street isn’t a surprise.
George Weigel, one of the Church’s most important theologians—his books are at Amazon’s author page—writes about them on the Ethics & Public Policy Center.
An excerpt.
“It's been a bad three and a half decades for self-styled "progressive" Catholics.
“First, there was John Paul II, whom many in that camp habitually labeled a charismatic reactionary. Yet the Polish pope was a hero all over the world during an epic pontificate that bent history's arc in a more humane direction, and did so without the aid of liberation theology. John Paul's funeral Mass on April 8, 2005, became, in the apt phrase of NBC anchor Brian Williams, "the human event of a generation," a moniker unlikely to be attached to the obsequies of, say, Hans Küng, John Paul's most embittered progressive critic.
“Then came the election of the progressives' bête noire, Joseph Ratzinger, as Pope Benedict XVI: a horror that a prominent progressive, Notre Dame's Fr. Richard McBrien, declared electorally impossible a mere 24 hours before it happened. Catholic progressives hunkered down for what they hoped would be a brief Ratzingerian interregnum. But Benedict XVI has proven an energetic pope whose pontificate has been in dynamic continuity with that of his predecessor, an astute analyst of the cultural crisis of the West, and a man determined to strengthen Catholic identity as the sine qua non of Catholic reform.
“Thus the Wojtyla-Ratzinger years have put paid to the notion, beloved of Catholic progressives, that Catholicism began anew -ex nihilo, as it were - at the Second Vatican Council. Committed to the hoary "liberal/conservative" hermeneutic of the Council's history, Catholic progressives hold that Vatican II represented a dramatic rupture with the past. The great teaching pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, however, have proposed a far more plausible interpretation of the Council as one in dynamic continuity with the great tradition of Christian orthodoxy. That interpretation, in turn, is shaping an entire new generation of Catholic intellectuals who are far more interested in exploring the complex riches of that tradition than in deconstructing it. Unlike the aging progressives, who have shown themselves rather infertile intellectually and who survive in large part because of that most conservative of institutions, the tenure system, many younger Catholic scholars are fully committed to putting theology at the service of the "New Evangelization" for which John Paul II and Benedict XVI have insistently called.
“In the United States, the progressives have also been steadily losing their grip at the national, diocesan, and local-parish levels. Various lay-renewal movements have become vital and self-consciously orthodox factors in Catholic life, and a new generation of priests and bishops, many of whom look explicitly to John Paul II as their model of ecclesiastical leadership, have come to the fore. For the past half-decade or more, the Catholic bishops of the United States, following the pope's lead, have increasingly stressed the importance of Catholic identity, by which they understand fidelity to Catholic teaching, in confronting an increasingly hostile cultural and legal/political environment. That problem has been considerably exacerbated by the Obama administration, which many Catholic progressives welcomed with loud hosannas, and for whose regulatory assault on Catholic health-care and social-service agencies progressives have provided cover, often by implausible appeals to Catholic social doctrine.
“Throughout this fairly rapid decline, progressive Catholicism's distinctive cultural marker has been its skepticism about the teaching authority of the Church: whether that teaching authority was formally and authoritatively addressing the ethics of human love, the suitability of women for Holy Orders, the uniqueness of Christ as universal savior, or the intrinsic evils of abortion and euthanasia. Thus it was another sign of the increasing incoherence of progressive Catholicism when several of its American paladins mounted a raucous defense of a "Note" - a kind of Vatican white paper - on international financial reform issued by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (PCJP) on October 24. It was an extraordinary exercise: The progressives depicted Benedict XVI as a senior chaplain to Occupy Wall Street, described the Note in such overwrought terms that the gullible might have thought this white paper shared in the charism of papal infallibility, and darkly suggested that those who disagreed with the Note's prescriptions were cafeteria Catholics, picking and choosing their doctrines to fit preexisting political tastes.
“The irony of men such as the former editor of America, Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr., and National Catholic Reporter blogger Michael Sean Winters promoting a notion of papal teaching authority more expansive than any imagined by the most wild-eyed traditionalist will not be lost on cognoscenti of ecclesiastical intrigue. This new notion of PCJP infallibility does, however, raise interesting questions - about the nature and modalities of Catholic teaching authority, about the organization of the Holy See, and about the state of Catholic progressivism in America.
“Given the continuing confusion caused by Father Reese's assertion that the Note positioned Benedict XVI "to the left of Nancy Pelosi" (which reverberated throughout the media echo chamber), it's important to pin down just what the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace is, and what authority its statements bear.
“The Pontifical Council (with whose president, Cardinal Peter Turkson, I had an entirely cordial 90-minute conversation last year) was established after Vatican II as part of the "New Curia," a set of agencies intended to give organizational expression to some of Vatican II's pastoral concerns: the promotion of social doctrine, the family, the lay mission in the world, and so forth. Unlike the older Congregations of the Roman Curia, which exercise an authority of jurisdiction (over bishops, clergy, religious life, Catholic worship, etc.), and unlike the Tribunals of the Curia, which make binding legal decisions, the "Pontifical Councils" of the New Curia were intended to be in-house think-tanks. Bureaucracy being what it is, however, they quickly morphed into something else: paper factories issuing all sorts of statements on all sorts of issues. As I wrote in God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church, there was concern during the 2005 conclave over the large amount of paper being generated by the New Curia: paper that was inevitably, if inaccurately, interpreted publicly as being the settled understanding of the Catholic Church and its highest teaching authority on X, Y, and Z.”
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
U.S. Sexual Abuse Trial
The trial concerning the scandal in Philadelphia—involving an Archbishop—is moving along, as reported by the Washington Post.
An excerpt.
“PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors seeking to convict four Roman Catholic priests and a teacher in a pedophilia case want to use evidence of other sexual assault complaints and priest transfers in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
“They filed a motion Friday to include relevant conduct at the high-profile trial, which is scheduled for March.
“Monsignor William Lynn, 60, is the first U.S. church official charged with child endangerment and accused of transferring predator priests who then abused more victims. Two priests, an ex-priest and a teacher are charged in the same case with raping two boys.
“Prosecutors hope to show that Lynn had a pattern of transferring known predators and that priests “had the opportunity and cover” to abuse minors.
“They also want to show the jury broad evidence of the archdiocese’s handling of sex-abuse complaints, to try to prove the complaints were ignored, enabling predators and exposing them to new victims.
“The Commonwealth needs the ‘other acts’ evidence to make out core elements of the crimes charged: Lynn’s knowledge, and the intent he shared with his supervisors and with accused priests, are established by the patterns evident in his extensive history of handling priests who sexually assaulted children,” city prosecutors wrote in a pretrial motion filed Friday.
“Defense lawyers have a month to file their response and cannot comment on the filing because of a gag order.
“They have sought, unsuccessfully, to separate the rape charges from the case against Lynn, who is charged solely for his administrative actions as secretary for clergy.
“Lynn’s lawyers say their client was acting on orders from Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, whom he served from 1992 to 2004.
“In another key pretrial issue, prosecutors are seeking to preserve Bevilacqua’s testimony before trial. However, the archdiocese argues that the retired cardinal, at 92, suffers from cancer and dementia and should not be dragged into court.
“Lynn’s lawyers will clearly try to limit the scope of the trial testimony to job transfers involving the three priests on trial with him. They are the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 64, the Rev. James Brennan, 48, and former priest Edward Avery, 69, along with former teacher Bernard Shero, 48. All of them have denied the charges.”
An excerpt.
“PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors seeking to convict four Roman Catholic priests and a teacher in a pedophilia case want to use evidence of other sexual assault complaints and priest transfers in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
“They filed a motion Friday to include relevant conduct at the high-profile trial, which is scheduled for March.
“Monsignor William Lynn, 60, is the first U.S. church official charged with child endangerment and accused of transferring predator priests who then abused more victims. Two priests, an ex-priest and a teacher are charged in the same case with raping two boys.
“Prosecutors hope to show that Lynn had a pattern of transferring known predators and that priests “had the opportunity and cover” to abuse minors.
“They also want to show the jury broad evidence of the archdiocese’s handling of sex-abuse complaints, to try to prove the complaints were ignored, enabling predators and exposing them to new victims.
“The Commonwealth needs the ‘other acts’ evidence to make out core elements of the crimes charged: Lynn’s knowledge, and the intent he shared with his supervisors and with accused priests, are established by the patterns evident in his extensive history of handling priests who sexually assaulted children,” city prosecutors wrote in a pretrial motion filed Friday.
“Defense lawyers have a month to file their response and cannot comment on the filing because of a gag order.
“They have sought, unsuccessfully, to separate the rape charges from the case against Lynn, who is charged solely for his administrative actions as secretary for clergy.
“Lynn’s lawyers say their client was acting on orders from Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua, whom he served from 1992 to 2004.
“In another key pretrial issue, prosecutors are seeking to preserve Bevilacqua’s testimony before trial. However, the archdiocese argues that the retired cardinal, at 92, suffers from cancer and dementia and should not be dragged into court.
“Lynn’s lawyers will clearly try to limit the scope of the trial testimony to job transfers involving the three priests on trial with him. They are the Rev. Charles Engelhardt, 64, the Rev. James Brennan, 48, and former priest Edward Avery, 69, along with former teacher Bernard Shero, 48. All of them have denied the charges.”
Monday, October 31, 2011
Catholic Church & Occupy Vancouver
A local church almost got taken over by the group, as reported by All Headline News.
An excerpt.
“Organizers of the Occupy Vancouver movement almost took over the Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver on Sunday morning.
”Vancouver Police stopped the protesters from disrupting mass at the Catholic church. A spokesman for the group, which renamed itself Occupy Vatican, said the purpose of the aborted church takeover was to bring to the Catholic Church’s attention the thousands of residential school survivors who suffered under the clergy.
“However, some members of the Occupy Vancouver movement said that the Occupy Vatican movement did not secure consensus at their Saturday night general assembly and was not supported by the majority of protestors.
“Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miler anticipated the march of protesters and requested extra police protection outside the cathedral to prevent the disruption of the mass.
“In the U.S., protesters from Nashville and San Diego were arrested over the weekend after police moved into their camps at night.
“Nashville police used a new law that banned overnight camping near the Tennessee state capital. San Diego police arrest 51 protesters, removed tents, canopies, tables and other furniture.
“Making the Wall Street movements more challenging is an early cold storm that hit parts of the U.S. over the weekend, which also disrupted Halloween celebrations.”
An excerpt.
“Organizers of the Occupy Vancouver movement almost took over the Holy Rosary Cathedral in downtown Vancouver on Sunday morning.
”Vancouver Police stopped the protesters from disrupting mass at the Catholic church. A spokesman for the group, which renamed itself Occupy Vatican, said the purpose of the aborted church takeover was to bring to the Catholic Church’s attention the thousands of residential school survivors who suffered under the clergy.
“However, some members of the Occupy Vancouver movement said that the Occupy Vatican movement did not secure consensus at their Saturday night general assembly and was not supported by the majority of protestors.
“Vancouver Archbishop Michael Miler anticipated the march of protesters and requested extra police protection outside the cathedral to prevent the disruption of the mass.
“In the U.S., protesters from Nashville and San Diego were arrested over the weekend after police moved into their camps at night.
“Nashville police used a new law that banned overnight camping near the Tennessee state capital. San Diego police arrest 51 protesters, removed tents, canopies, tables and other furniture.
“Making the Wall Street movements more challenging is an early cold storm that hit parts of the U.S. over the weekend, which also disrupted Halloween celebrations.”
Friday, October 28, 2011
Economic Justice
The reaction to a recent Vatican document entitled: TOWARDS REFORMING THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL AND MONETARY SYSTEMS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBAL PUBLIC AUTHORITY, that came from the Pontifical Council of Justice & Peace has raised a lot of comment and after reading it I can see why the fuss, but it is a good document, thoughtful and well worth a read.
An excerpt.
“Preface
“The world situation requires the concerted effort of everyone, a thorough examination of every facet of the problem – social, economic, cultural and spiritual. The Church, which has long experience in human affairs and has no desire to be involved in the political activities of any nation, ‘seeks but one goal: to carry forward the work of Christ under the lead of the befriending Spirit. And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth; to save, not to judge; to serve, not to be served.’”
“With these words, in the prophetic and always relevant Encyclical Populorum Progressio of 1967, Paul VI outlined in a clear way “the trajectories” of the Church’s close relation with the world. These trajectories intersect in the profound value of human dignity and the quest for the common good, which make people responsible and free to act according to their highest aspirations.
“The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence. What is more, the crisis engages private actors and competent public authorities on the national, regional and international level in serious reflection on both causes and solutions of a political, economic and technical nature.
“In this perspective, as Benedict XVI teaches, the crisis “obliges us to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to discover new forms of commitment, to build on positive experiences and to reject negative ones. The crisis thus becomes an opportunity for discernment, in which to shape a new vision for the future. In this spirit, with confidence rather than resignation, it is appropriate to address the difficulties of the present time.”
“The G20 leaders themselves said in the Statement they adopted in Pittsburgh in 2009:
“The economic crisis demonstrates the importance of ushering in a new era of sustainable global economic activity grounded in responsibility.”
“The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace now responds to the Holy Father’s appeal, while making the concerns of everyone our own, especially the concerns of those who pay most dearly for the current situation. With due respect for the competent civil and political authorities, the Council hereby offers and shares its reflection: Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority.
“This reflection hopes to benefit world leaders and all people of good will. It is an exercise of responsibility not only towards the current but above all towards future generations, so that hope for a better future and confidence in human dignity and capacity for good may never be extinguished.
“Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson +Mario Toso
President Secretary”
An excerpt.
“Preface
“The world situation requires the concerted effort of everyone, a thorough examination of every facet of the problem – social, economic, cultural and spiritual. The Church, which has long experience in human affairs and has no desire to be involved in the political activities of any nation, ‘seeks but one goal: to carry forward the work of Christ under the lead of the befriending Spirit. And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth; to save, not to judge; to serve, not to be served.’”
“With these words, in the prophetic and always relevant Encyclical Populorum Progressio of 1967, Paul VI outlined in a clear way “the trajectories” of the Church’s close relation with the world. These trajectories intersect in the profound value of human dignity and the quest for the common good, which make people responsible and free to act according to their highest aspirations.
“The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence. What is more, the crisis engages private actors and competent public authorities on the national, regional and international level in serious reflection on both causes and solutions of a political, economic and technical nature.
“In this perspective, as Benedict XVI teaches, the crisis “obliges us to re-plan our journey, to set ourselves new rules and to discover new forms of commitment, to build on positive experiences and to reject negative ones. The crisis thus becomes an opportunity for discernment, in which to shape a new vision for the future. In this spirit, with confidence rather than resignation, it is appropriate to address the difficulties of the present time.”
“The G20 leaders themselves said in the Statement they adopted in Pittsburgh in 2009:
“The economic crisis demonstrates the importance of ushering in a new era of sustainable global economic activity grounded in responsibility.”
“The Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace now responds to the Holy Father’s appeal, while making the concerns of everyone our own, especially the concerns of those who pay most dearly for the current situation. With due respect for the competent civil and political authorities, the Council hereby offers and shares its reflection: Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority.
“This reflection hopes to benefit world leaders and all people of good will. It is an exercise of responsibility not only towards the current but above all towards future generations, so that hope for a better future and confidence in human dignity and capacity for good may never be extinguished.
“Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson +Mario Toso
President Secretary”
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Follow Up, Criminal Justice Collapse Book
Yesterday, I wrote about the book reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, “The Collapse of the American Criminal Justice System”, and after reading the table of contents at Amazon, I decided to not buy the book, which decision was validated by this excellent article about the book from the Crime & Consequences blog.
An excerpt.
“Prof. Doug Berman put up an entry today on Sentencing Law and Policy about the last book published by the late Harvard Law Prof. William Stuntz. The book is titled, "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice." Its thesis, not too surprisingly given the title, is that our criminal justice system has fallen into utter failure….
“The whole thing -- all of it -- is preposterous. Over the time this alleged disaster is supposed to have happened (roughly the last 20 years), the crime rate has fallen off a cliff. The property crime rate is down by 43%; the violent crime rate by 47%, and the murder rate by slightly more than 50%. The raw figures are here, and you can do the math yourself. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that the murder rate is lower now than it has been at any time in almost 50 years.
“Perhaps the most stunning figure, however, is this: The number of serious crimes annually 20 years ago was 14,872,900. The number last year was 10,329,135. That is a drop of 4,543,765. Four and a half million fewer crime victims….
“I will readily concede that the system looks "broken" to two categories of observers: (1) academics who never saw a criminal for whom an excuse could not be manufactured, and who thus lament their incarceration; and (2) the criminals themselves, now thankfully keeping each other company rather than the rest of us.”
An excerpt.
“Prof. Doug Berman put up an entry today on Sentencing Law and Policy about the last book published by the late Harvard Law Prof. William Stuntz. The book is titled, "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice." Its thesis, not too surprisingly given the title, is that our criminal justice system has fallen into utter failure….
“The whole thing -- all of it -- is preposterous. Over the time this alleged disaster is supposed to have happened (roughly the last 20 years), the crime rate has fallen off a cliff. The property crime rate is down by 43%; the violent crime rate by 47%, and the murder rate by slightly more than 50%. The raw figures are here, and you can do the math yourself. If you look at the numbers, you'll see that the murder rate is lower now than it has been at any time in almost 50 years.
“Perhaps the most stunning figure, however, is this: The number of serious crimes annually 20 years ago was 14,872,900. The number last year was 10,329,135. That is a drop of 4,543,765. Four and a half million fewer crime victims….
“I will readily concede that the system looks "broken" to two categories of observers: (1) academics who never saw a criminal for whom an excuse could not be manufactured, and who thus lament their incarceration; and (2) the criminals themselves, now thankfully keeping each other company rather than the rest of us.”
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Criminal Justice, Keeping Informed
Every few months I buy a new book on criminal justice containing the newest research to help keep me informed, and this one looked interesting after reading the review from the Wall Street Journal.
I went to Amazon and after reading the table of contents, decided against buying it, primarily because I have already obtained a 2011 book, Crime and Public Policy, which is an edited text book with several essays covering a broad array of criminal justice subjects, and secondly because Stuntz's book looked a little too focused on one area and one opinion, and wouldn't necessarily add that much to my library.
However, I did purchase, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which looks to be an extraordinary research project on violence, and about which I will let you know once I get a chance to peruse it.
Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal review.
“How has the American criminal-justice system become one of the most punitive in the world without providing a corresponding level of public safety? In "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," William J. Stuntz—a revered Harvard law professor who died of colon cancer earlier this year at the age of 52—offers a provocative big-picture answer.
“Perhaps aware that "collapse" in the book's title requires justification, Mr. Stuntz begins by reviewing some statistics. As he shows, in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, amid the largest crime wave in American history, the U.S. prison population declined. Imprisonment rates plummeted to some of the lowest ever seen in the modern Western world. High-crime neighborhoods, as Mr. Stuntz puts it, were "abandoned to their fate."
“The backlash to this crime wave was equally striking. Since the mid-1970s, America has punished crime more and more severely. New York's imprisonment rate, for example, has sextupled. In a span of a little more than 30 years, "America first embraced punishment levels lower than Sweden's, then built a justice system more punitive than Russia's."
“Mr. Stuntz readily acknowledges what many legal scholars do not: America's current lock-'em-up philosophy has dramatically helped to reduce urban crime. Since 1991, violent-crime rates have declined roughly a third nationwide and as much as two-thirds in a few cities (New York among them). Even so, Mr. Stuntz counts these declines as a pyrrhic victory, given that violence per capita in the U.S. today remains significantly higher than in 1950. And he is unwilling simply to assign all the credit for recent crime drops to increased punishment. He wonders, for example, why crime rates began falling only around 1991—two decades after prison populations started steeply rising.
“To unravel such complexities, Mr. Stuntz tries to place America's contemporary criminal-justice problems in their historical legal context. He first looks at the 14th Amendment's effort in 1868 to ensure that newly freed slaves received "the equal protection of the laws"—a promise that fell apart a few years later when the Supreme Court eviscerated the equal-protection guarantee and left generations of Southern blacks to be victimized by Klan violence. Mr. Stuntz argues that narrow equal-protection jurisprudence helps to explain why, nearly a century later, Chief Justice Earl Warren began spinning constitutional restrictions from the 14th Amendment's other important provision, the Due Process Clause.”
I went to Amazon and after reading the table of contents, decided against buying it, primarily because I have already obtained a 2011 book, Crime and Public Policy, which is an edited text book with several essays covering a broad array of criminal justice subjects, and secondly because Stuntz's book looked a little too focused on one area and one opinion, and wouldn't necessarily add that much to my library.
However, I did purchase, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which looks to be an extraordinary research project on violence, and about which I will let you know once I get a chance to peruse it.
Here is an excerpt from the Wall Street Journal review.
“How has the American criminal-justice system become one of the most punitive in the world without providing a corresponding level of public safety? In "The Collapse of American Criminal Justice," William J. Stuntz—a revered Harvard law professor who died of colon cancer earlier this year at the age of 52—offers a provocative big-picture answer.
“Perhaps aware that "collapse" in the book's title requires justification, Mr. Stuntz begins by reviewing some statistics. As he shows, in the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, amid the largest crime wave in American history, the U.S. prison population declined. Imprisonment rates plummeted to some of the lowest ever seen in the modern Western world. High-crime neighborhoods, as Mr. Stuntz puts it, were "abandoned to their fate."
“The backlash to this crime wave was equally striking. Since the mid-1970s, America has punished crime more and more severely. New York's imprisonment rate, for example, has sextupled. In a span of a little more than 30 years, "America first embraced punishment levels lower than Sweden's, then built a justice system more punitive than Russia's."
“Mr. Stuntz readily acknowledges what many legal scholars do not: America's current lock-'em-up philosophy has dramatically helped to reduce urban crime. Since 1991, violent-crime rates have declined roughly a third nationwide and as much as two-thirds in a few cities (New York among them). Even so, Mr. Stuntz counts these declines as a pyrrhic victory, given that violence per capita in the U.S. today remains significantly higher than in 1950. And he is unwilling simply to assign all the credit for recent crime drops to increased punishment. He wonders, for example, why crime rates began falling only around 1991—two decades after prison populations started steeply rising.
“To unravel such complexities, Mr. Stuntz tries to place America's contemporary criminal-justice problems in their historical legal context. He first looks at the 14th Amendment's effort in 1868 to ensure that newly freed slaves received "the equal protection of the laws"—a promise that fell apart a few years later when the Supreme Court eviscerated the equal-protection guarantee and left generations of Southern blacks to be victimized by Klan violence. Mr. Stuntz argues that narrow equal-protection jurisprudence helps to explain why, nearly a century later, Chief Justice Earl Warren began spinning constitutional restrictions from the 14th Amendment's other important provision, the Due Process Clause.”
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Criminal World Expansion
In a world whose prince is “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44, and entire verse is worth a read), where worldly truth is relative and subjective; the proliferation of criminal gangs—whose ability to provide for the worldly treasures promoted as life’s only true reward is faster and greater—is surely to be expected; and it will only be through the too-hidden truth that Catholics know and treasure, delivered by those who they respect, that criminal/carceral world growth can be turned back, redeemed, and transformed.
An excerpt from the article in the Washington Post reporting on criminal world growth.
“WASHINGTON — The gang problem in the United States is growing and there are an estimated 1.4 million members in some 33,000 gangs, the federal government said Friday.
“Gangs are collaborating with transnational drug trafficking organizations to make more money and are expanding the range of their illicit activities, engaging in mortgage fraud and counterfeiting as well as trafficking in guns and drugs, according to the national gang threat assessment for 2011.
“Gang membership “continues to flourish” and gang leaders are striking new alliances with other criminal organizations for profit, FBI agent Jayne Challman told reporters during a briefing at FBI headquarters.
“The gang member estimate of 1.4 million was up from 1 million two years ago, a 40 percent increase, but the report attributed the rise in part to improved reporting by law enforcement agencies….
“Gang membership is increasing most significantly in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country and many communities are experiencing an increase in ethnic-based gangs such as African, Asian and Caribbean gangs, said the report, which is based on federal, state and local law enforcement data.”
An excerpt from the article in the Washington Post reporting on criminal world growth.
“WASHINGTON — The gang problem in the United States is growing and there are an estimated 1.4 million members in some 33,000 gangs, the federal government said Friday.
“Gangs are collaborating with transnational drug trafficking organizations to make more money and are expanding the range of their illicit activities, engaging in mortgage fraud and counterfeiting as well as trafficking in guns and drugs, according to the national gang threat assessment for 2011.
“Gang membership “continues to flourish” and gang leaders are striking new alliances with other criminal organizations for profit, FBI agent Jayne Challman told reporters during a briefing at FBI headquarters.
“The gang member estimate of 1.4 million was up from 1 million two years ago, a 40 percent increase, but the report attributed the rise in part to improved reporting by law enforcement agencies….
“Gang membership is increasing most significantly in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country and many communities are experiencing an increase in ethnic-based gangs such as African, Asian and Caribbean gangs, said the report, which is based on federal, state and local law enforcement data.”
Monday, October 24, 2011
Satan & Catholics
Liberal/progressive Catholics tend to disregard Satan as a holdover from the Dark Ages, but Catholics who study their faith know the truth, that the fallen angel is as active as ever, as written about in The Catholic Thing.
An excerpt.
“In Freedom: To do What?, Georges Bernanos, the great French Catholic writer, observes: “There is in man a secret, incomprehensible hatred, not only of his fellowmen, but of himself. We can give this mysterious feeling whatever origin or explanation we want, but we must give it one. As far as we Christians are concerned, we believe that this hatred reflects another hatred, a thousand times more profound and lucid: the hatred of the ineffable spirit who was the most resplendent of all the luminaries of the abyss and who will never forgive us his cataclysmic fall”.
“He is referring of course to Satan.
“One manifestation of the hatred, according to the Catechism, is that “often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator.” This points us to two dimensions of the problem.
“On the one hand, we have lost the truth. Jesus was quite blunt in describing those who opposed him: “You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)
“These words are all the more incisive because the person speaking is the Incarnation of Truth. Here is also the key to our existence: standing in the truth. On the other hand, we fall into serving the creature rather than the Creator. If we serve the Creator, then and only then, do we really grasp what being human is all about. In America, we talk superficially – and glibly – about doing things “for the children,” as well we might since the United States has the worst child abuse and largest number of child deaths in the industrialized world.”
An excerpt.
“In Freedom: To do What?, Georges Bernanos, the great French Catholic writer, observes: “There is in man a secret, incomprehensible hatred, not only of his fellowmen, but of himself. We can give this mysterious feeling whatever origin or explanation we want, but we must give it one. As far as we Christians are concerned, we believe that this hatred reflects another hatred, a thousand times more profound and lucid: the hatred of the ineffable spirit who was the most resplendent of all the luminaries of the abyss and who will never forgive us his cataclysmic fall”.
“He is referring of course to Satan.
“One manifestation of the hatred, according to the Catechism, is that “often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator.” This points us to two dimensions of the problem.
“On the one hand, we have lost the truth. Jesus was quite blunt in describing those who opposed him: “You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)
“These words are all the more incisive because the person speaking is the Incarnation of Truth. Here is also the key to our existence: standing in the truth. On the other hand, we fall into serving the creature rather than the Creator. If we serve the Creator, then and only then, do we really grasp what being human is all about. In America, we talk superficially – and glibly – about doing things “for the children,” as well we might since the United States has the worst child abuse and largest number of child deaths in the industrialized world.”
Friday, October 21, 2011
Crime Data & Politics
Data on crime is one of the most vetted statistical recordings of human behavior in our country and also one of the most abused data sources politicians use to promote their preferred policies, as this article from the Washington Post reveals.
An excerpt, with links at the jump.
“In the battle over the administration’s jobs bill, Vice President Biden this week has been making the startling case that more people will be murdered or raped if the legislation is not passed. His argument is that in cities such as Flint, Mich., the murder and rape rates have soared as the police force has been cut back for budgetary reasons.
“When challenged by a reporter from a conservative publication about his charge (see video below), Biden stood his ground and said without more money, “murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise.” As he put it, “Go look at the numbers.”
“Okay, challenge taken. What do the numbers show?
“The Facts
“Flint is certainly a violent city, ranked number one in many categories. The website of the Flint Police Department only gives data through 2008, but both the FBI and the Michigan State Police have more recent figures that are provided to them by the Flint police. The numbers are not precisely the same because of different reporting requirements, but they are roughly the same—and show a different picture than reported by Biden.
“The Flint website for 2008 shows the same figures that Biden cited: 35 murders and 91 rapes.
“Here’s what the FBI shows:
“2008
“City of Flint: 32 murders, 103 rapes
“Surrounding area: 37 murders, 239 rapes
“RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 8.6; rape 55.5 percent
“2009
“City of Flint: 36 murders, 91 rapes
“Surrounding area: 44 murders, 235 rapes
“RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 10.3; rape, 55.1
“2010
“City of Flint: 53 murders, 92 rapes
“Surrounding area: 58 murders, 225 rapes
“RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 13.8; rape 53.7
“More important than the raw figures is the rate per 100,000 individuals. Murder did go up—though the rate did not double from 2009 to 2010, as Biden claimed. But rape has gone down. Biden actually asserted it had tripled.”
An excerpt, with links at the jump.
“In the battle over the administration’s jobs bill, Vice President Biden this week has been making the startling case that more people will be murdered or raped if the legislation is not passed. His argument is that in cities such as Flint, Mich., the murder and rape rates have soared as the police force has been cut back for budgetary reasons.
“When challenged by a reporter from a conservative publication about his charge (see video below), Biden stood his ground and said without more money, “murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crimes will continue to rise.” As he put it, “Go look at the numbers.”
“Okay, challenge taken. What do the numbers show?
“The Facts
“Flint is certainly a violent city, ranked number one in many categories. The website of the Flint Police Department only gives data through 2008, but both the FBI and the Michigan State Police have more recent figures that are provided to them by the Flint police. The numbers are not precisely the same because of different reporting requirements, but they are roughly the same—and show a different picture than reported by Biden.
“The Flint website for 2008 shows the same figures that Biden cited: 35 murders and 91 rapes.
“Here’s what the FBI shows:
“2008
“City of Flint: 32 murders, 103 rapes
“Surrounding area: 37 murders, 239 rapes
“RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 8.6; rape 55.5 percent
“2009
“City of Flint: 36 murders, 91 rapes
“Surrounding area: 44 murders, 235 rapes
“RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 10.3; rape, 55.1
“2010
“City of Flint: 53 murders, 92 rapes
“Surrounding area: 58 murders, 225 rapes
“RATE PER 100,000 INHABITANTS: murder, 13.8; rape 53.7
“More important than the raw figures is the rate per 100,000 individuals. Murder did go up—though the rate did not double from 2009 to 2010, as Biden claimed. But rape has gone down. Biden actually asserted it had tripled.”
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Medieval Prison
In perusing the book, The Medieval Prison: A Social History, I came across the following:
“Largely as a response to their persecution under the Romans, early Christian apologists developed a basic imaginary of the prison. Martyrological narratives set in and around Roman jails introduced literary “sweet inversion” of despair into hope, of physical suffering into spiritual empowerment, and of secular coercion into divine grace. In this way, theodicy helped disseminate incarceration as a leitmotif of Christian spirituality, first among ascetics and later in monastic circles. As we shall see, self-imposed incarceration became a common metaphor for the angelic life and soon assumed purgatorial qualities...
“The Martyrological literature conveying the experiences of Christian confessors presents the prison as a place of personal trial and eschatological triumph, and incarceration as a process of spiritual growth, potentially culminating in revelation. Thus, rather than precipitating apostasy, the harsh conditions of the Roman jail accelerated religious perfection: a classic “sweet inversion.” In the emphatic words that Prudentius (348-405?) attributed to Fructuosus, the martyred bishop of Tarragona (d. 259),
"Prison to the Christian faithful is the path to glory,
Prison propels to the heavens’ summit,
Prison unites God with the blessed."
“As a new locus of holiness, the prison attracted substantial attention from early Christians, whether laymen or clergy…
“In the words of Tertullian (140-230): “The prison serves the Christian as the desert served the prophet…Even if the body is confined, even if the flesh is detained, everything is open to the spirit.”
“By comparing the prison with the desert, Tertullian linked Christian asceticism with the formative experiences of the Israelites and Christ’s spiritual training….The metaphor subsequently found its way into monastic spirituality, which spawned a distinct new strand of carceral language. Thus, according to the Desert Mother Syncletica (d. ca. 400),
"In the world, if we commit an offence, even an involuntary one, we are thrown into prison; let us likewise cast ourselves into prison because of our sins, so that voluntary remembrance may anticipate the punishment that is to come.”
Geltner, G. (2008). The medieval prison: A social history. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (pp. 83-85)
“Largely as a response to their persecution under the Romans, early Christian apologists developed a basic imaginary of the prison. Martyrological narratives set in and around Roman jails introduced literary “sweet inversion” of despair into hope, of physical suffering into spiritual empowerment, and of secular coercion into divine grace. In this way, theodicy helped disseminate incarceration as a leitmotif of Christian spirituality, first among ascetics and later in monastic circles. As we shall see, self-imposed incarceration became a common metaphor for the angelic life and soon assumed purgatorial qualities...
“The Martyrological literature conveying the experiences of Christian confessors presents the prison as a place of personal trial and eschatological triumph, and incarceration as a process of spiritual growth, potentially culminating in revelation. Thus, rather than precipitating apostasy, the harsh conditions of the Roman jail accelerated religious perfection: a classic “sweet inversion.” In the emphatic words that Prudentius (348-405?) attributed to Fructuosus, the martyred bishop of Tarragona (d. 259),
"Prison to the Christian faithful is the path to glory,
Prison propels to the heavens’ summit,
Prison unites God with the blessed."
“As a new locus of holiness, the prison attracted substantial attention from early Christians, whether laymen or clergy…
“In the words of Tertullian (140-230): “The prison serves the Christian as the desert served the prophet…Even if the body is confined, even if the flesh is detained, everything is open to the spirit.”
“By comparing the prison with the desert, Tertullian linked Christian asceticism with the formative experiences of the Israelites and Christ’s spiritual training….The metaphor subsequently found its way into monastic spirituality, which spawned a distinct new strand of carceral language. Thus, according to the Desert Mother Syncletica (d. ca. 400),
"In the world, if we commit an offence, even an involuntary one, we are thrown into prison; let us likewise cast ourselves into prison because of our sins, so that voluntary remembrance may anticipate the punishment that is to come.”
Geltner, G. (2008). The medieval prison: A social history. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (pp. 83-85)
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Domestic Violence
Women who are in prison for killing their husbands after a clear public record has documented the domestic violence visited on them and a determination that the battered woman has tried all of the other means to protect herself—restraining orders, previous calls to police, etc.—should not be in prison for what is often pure self defense, and this story from the Daily Beast examines a prison support group for those women.
An excerpt.
“When Brenda Clubine killed her husband in 1983, there were 11 restraining orders against him and a warrant for his arrest. He’d put her in the ER more than once—tossing her across the room, fracturing her skull, and puncturing her lungs. But “domestic violence” was scarcely on the public radar back then: local police considered it a problem to be worked out in private; there was no hotline to call and few shelters to escape to. So when Brenda says her husband locked her in a hotel room and told her to hand over her wedding ring—so it would be “harder to identify her body”—Brenda knew she had only one option: she had to kill him first.
“Her husband, a retired cop who was twice her size, lay down on the bed, and Brenda saw her chance. “Everything started flashing before my eyes,” Brenda, now 63, remembers. “I started thinking about my son, and I thought, how could I have ended up here?” She grabbed an open wine bottle and swung it toward him, but he grabbed it. She backed up and swung again—connecting with his forehead. “All I remember from that point is grabbing my keys, my ring, my shoes, and running six miles down Colorado Avenue home.”
“Brenda would spend 26 years in prison for her husband’s murder—the blow to his head shattered his skull. At her trial, a judge would not permit a psychologist to testify about her mental state, nor friends or doctors who’d witnessed the physical scars of her abuse. Battered women’s syndrome, at the time, was still an untested theory (it remains highly controversial). So Brenda would face a sentence of 17 years to life—trading, as she puts it, “one prison for another.” But Brenda, who was once a licensed vocational nurse, would also change the way lawmakers think about domestic violence in this country—where one in four women is a victim of abuse.
“Clubine is one of half a dozen women featured in a new documentary Sin by Silence, which premieres on Investigation Discovery on Oct. 17—the directorial debut of filmmaker Olivia Klaus. Set on the sprawling brick campus of the high-security California Institution for Women, the state's oldest women’s prison, it tells the story of the prison support group Clubine founded—aimed at women like her, who’ve been imprisoned for killing the men they once loved.”
An excerpt.
“When Brenda Clubine killed her husband in 1983, there were 11 restraining orders against him and a warrant for his arrest. He’d put her in the ER more than once—tossing her across the room, fracturing her skull, and puncturing her lungs. But “domestic violence” was scarcely on the public radar back then: local police considered it a problem to be worked out in private; there was no hotline to call and few shelters to escape to. So when Brenda says her husband locked her in a hotel room and told her to hand over her wedding ring—so it would be “harder to identify her body”—Brenda knew she had only one option: she had to kill him first.
“Her husband, a retired cop who was twice her size, lay down on the bed, and Brenda saw her chance. “Everything started flashing before my eyes,” Brenda, now 63, remembers. “I started thinking about my son, and I thought, how could I have ended up here?” She grabbed an open wine bottle and swung it toward him, but he grabbed it. She backed up and swung again—connecting with his forehead. “All I remember from that point is grabbing my keys, my ring, my shoes, and running six miles down Colorado Avenue home.”
“Brenda would spend 26 years in prison for her husband’s murder—the blow to his head shattered his skull. At her trial, a judge would not permit a psychologist to testify about her mental state, nor friends or doctors who’d witnessed the physical scars of her abuse. Battered women’s syndrome, at the time, was still an untested theory (it remains highly controversial). So Brenda would face a sentence of 17 years to life—trading, as she puts it, “one prison for another.” But Brenda, who was once a licensed vocational nurse, would also change the way lawmakers think about domestic violence in this country—where one in four women is a victim of abuse.
“Clubine is one of half a dozen women featured in a new documentary Sin by Silence, which premieres on Investigation Discovery on Oct. 17—the directorial debut of filmmaker Olivia Klaus. Set on the sprawling brick campus of the high-security California Institution for Women, the state's oldest women’s prison, it tells the story of the prison support group Clubine founded—aimed at women like her, who’ve been imprisoned for killing the men they once loved.”
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Prison Time is a Disease and Crime is not Criminal's Fault
Two more tomes suggesting that respectively, are reviewed in the Washington Post.
An excerpt.
“Ernest Drucker, an internationally recognized public health scholar, professor and physician, contends that mass incarceration ought to be understood as a contagious disease, an epidemic of gargantuan proportions. With voluminous data and meticulous analysis, he persuasively demonstrates in his provocative new book, “A Plague of Prisons,” that the unprecedented surge in incarceration in recent decades is a social catastrophe on the scale of the worst global epidemics, and that modes of analysis employed by epidemiologists to combat plagues and similar public health crises are remarkably useful when assessing the origins, harm and potential cures for what he calls our “plague of imprisonment.”
“As with any metaphor, the comparison falls short in both obvious and subtle ways. But Drucker is relentless in his pursuit of a paradigm shift, pointing out that even the most obvious differences may be less significant than we may imagine. Biology isn’t everything, he explains, even when fighting medical plagues. Many non-biological, social factors frequently determine who lives and who dies.
“In the case of mass imprisonment, it is possible to calculate potential years of life lost and to measure who is most at risk. It is also possible to identify the precise time of the initial outbreak, the means of transmission, intergenerational trends and the ways in which the epidemic has become self-sustaining over time.
“Drucker traces the moment of outbreak to the war on drugs. Beginning with the Rockefeller drug laws adopted in New York state in the 1970s, followed by President Ronald Reagan’s declaration of war in 1982, our nation set out to incarcerate millions of Americans for relatively minor crimes and drug offenses. Such arrests go a long way toward explaining how the “infection” has spread. Arrests and convictions for drug offenses, Drucker writes, “are the most important agent of transmission that creates new cases of incarceration.”
“Even in the South Bronx, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden communities in New York, only 3 percent of convictions are for felonies. The relatively minor offenses of vagrancy, loitering and drug possession account for half of all arrests, with marijuana possession becoming the most frequent drug charge.
“These seemingly minor arrests are the means by which young people contract the virus of imprisonment, which soon becomes a full-blown disease — one they struggle to overcome for the rest of their lives. A criminal record virtually guarantees a lifetime of discrimination in employment, housing, education and public benefits. Millions are locked out of the mainstream society and economy, increasing the likelihood that they will commit more serious crimes. In this way, the epidemic of incarceration has become self-perpetuating, like a plague….
“William J. Stuntz thinks he has an answer. A Harvard Law professor who died earlier this year, Stuntz argues in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” that the stunning surge in imprisonment of poor people of color can be explained by two factors: a dramatic spike in crime in the 1950s and ’60s, coupled with profound changes in how our democracy is structured. Urban residents, he observes, once had far more control over police and prosecutors and could exert more influence in the jury box. When those who bear the costs of both crime and punishment exercise significant power over those who enforce the law, a more balanced and empathetic approach to crime is the predictable result.
“Stuntz contrasts the experience of early European immigrants with that of African Americans to make his point. When European immigrants flooded our nation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a crime wave followed, but it did not lead to mass imprisonment. The communities populated by recent immigrants held tremendous power. Then, as now, district attorneys and trial judges were elected at the county level, not at the city level, but suburbs were sparsely populated. As Stuntz puts it, back then, “cities contained the votes that mattered.” Spared harsh prison sentences and afforded considerable support, the young men who had left Europe for the United States eventually found work and turned away from crime.
“When African Americans flooded Northern cities during the Great Migration — fleeing Jim Crow segregation, white lynch mobs and severe poverty in the South — they faced a radically different political and economic landscape. Although they found work at higher wages, they were shut out of jobs and careers that offered any hope of rising paychecks and responsibility.
“They also confronted a changed political map. White flight and suburbanization resulted in a dramatic shift of power away from urban neighborhoods to counties. “This shift in local populations mattered enormously,” Stuntz notes, “because prosecutors and judges are usually elected at the county level.” The result was that predominately white suburban voters, who do not have to cope with high crime rates but who hold negative stereotypes of the urban poor, exercised far more power over urban criminal justice than in the past.
“Stuntz concludes that “one reason black criminals from poor neighborhoods have been treated with so much more severity than criminals from white immigrant communities in America’s past is because the former are more easily categorized as The Other, as a people whose lives are separate from the lives of those who judge them.” His answer to the “othering” of black America is to grant urban residents far more power over the criminal justice system than they have today.”
An excerpt.
“Ernest Drucker, an internationally recognized public health scholar, professor and physician, contends that mass incarceration ought to be understood as a contagious disease, an epidemic of gargantuan proportions. With voluminous data and meticulous analysis, he persuasively demonstrates in his provocative new book, “A Plague of Prisons,” that the unprecedented surge in incarceration in recent decades is a social catastrophe on the scale of the worst global epidemics, and that modes of analysis employed by epidemiologists to combat plagues and similar public health crises are remarkably useful when assessing the origins, harm and potential cures for what he calls our “plague of imprisonment.”
“As with any metaphor, the comparison falls short in both obvious and subtle ways. But Drucker is relentless in his pursuit of a paradigm shift, pointing out that even the most obvious differences may be less significant than we may imagine. Biology isn’t everything, he explains, even when fighting medical plagues. Many non-biological, social factors frequently determine who lives and who dies.
“In the case of mass imprisonment, it is possible to calculate potential years of life lost and to measure who is most at risk. It is also possible to identify the precise time of the initial outbreak, the means of transmission, intergenerational trends and the ways in which the epidemic has become self-sustaining over time.
“Drucker traces the moment of outbreak to the war on drugs. Beginning with the Rockefeller drug laws adopted in New York state in the 1970s, followed by President Ronald Reagan’s declaration of war in 1982, our nation set out to incarcerate millions of Americans for relatively minor crimes and drug offenses. Such arrests go a long way toward explaining how the “infection” has spread. Arrests and convictions for drug offenses, Drucker writes, “are the most important agent of transmission that creates new cases of incarceration.”
“Even in the South Bronx, one of the poorest and most crime-ridden communities in New York, only 3 percent of convictions are for felonies. The relatively minor offenses of vagrancy, loitering and drug possession account for half of all arrests, with marijuana possession becoming the most frequent drug charge.
“These seemingly minor arrests are the means by which young people contract the virus of imprisonment, which soon becomes a full-blown disease — one they struggle to overcome for the rest of their lives. A criminal record virtually guarantees a lifetime of discrimination in employment, housing, education and public benefits. Millions are locked out of the mainstream society and economy, increasing the likelihood that they will commit more serious crimes. In this way, the epidemic of incarceration has become self-perpetuating, like a plague….
“William J. Stuntz thinks he has an answer. A Harvard Law professor who died earlier this year, Stuntz argues in “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice” that the stunning surge in imprisonment of poor people of color can be explained by two factors: a dramatic spike in crime in the 1950s and ’60s, coupled with profound changes in how our democracy is structured. Urban residents, he observes, once had far more control over police and prosecutors and could exert more influence in the jury box. When those who bear the costs of both crime and punishment exercise significant power over those who enforce the law, a more balanced and empathetic approach to crime is the predictable result.
“Stuntz contrasts the experience of early European immigrants with that of African Americans to make his point. When European immigrants flooded our nation in the 19th and early 20th centuries, a crime wave followed, but it did not lead to mass imprisonment. The communities populated by recent immigrants held tremendous power. Then, as now, district attorneys and trial judges were elected at the county level, not at the city level, but suburbs were sparsely populated. As Stuntz puts it, back then, “cities contained the votes that mattered.” Spared harsh prison sentences and afforded considerable support, the young men who had left Europe for the United States eventually found work and turned away from crime.
“When African Americans flooded Northern cities during the Great Migration — fleeing Jim Crow segregation, white lynch mobs and severe poverty in the South — they faced a radically different political and economic landscape. Although they found work at higher wages, they were shut out of jobs and careers that offered any hope of rising paychecks and responsibility.
“They also confronted a changed political map. White flight and suburbanization resulted in a dramatic shift of power away from urban neighborhoods to counties. “This shift in local populations mattered enormously,” Stuntz notes, “because prosecutors and judges are usually elected at the county level.” The result was that predominately white suburban voters, who do not have to cope with high crime rates but who hold negative stereotypes of the urban poor, exercised far more power over urban criminal justice than in the past.
“Stuntz concludes that “one reason black criminals from poor neighborhoods have been treated with so much more severity than criminals from white immigrant communities in America’s past is because the former are more easily categorized as The Other, as a people whose lives are separate from the lives of those who judge them.” His answer to the “othering” of black America is to grant urban residents far more power over the criminal justice system than they have today.”
Monday, October 17, 2011
The 15 Decade Rosary
The rosary—as it has been for centuries—is at the center of the private devotions buttressing liturgical practice, and in this Month of the Rosary, it is timely to summarize reflections on it, and the larger truth it expresses, devotion to Christ through Mary.
I have turned to many resources in this study over the past few years since I began praying the rosary on a regular basis, and lately I have found much that resonates with my private devotions in the works of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, and his marvelous books, The Secret of the Rosary, and True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary (I would recommend you seek out the older editions in hardback) are crucial guides.
One aspect that leapt out in my study is that the five decade rosary I have been using is not the fullest expression of the rosary of tradition, as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:
"The Rosary", says the Roman Breviary, "is a certain form of prayer wherein we say fifteen decades or tens of Hail Marys with an Our Father between each ten, while at each of these fifteen decades we recall successively in pious meditation one of the mysteries of our Redemption."
The birth of the rosary as a feast day of the Church is powerfully connected to Catholic martiality by one of the great martial popes, Saint Pius V, who called forth the knights and armed men of Europe to fight in a decisive battle, noted by the Catholic Encyclopedia.
“On the day of the Battle of Lepanto, 7 Oct., 1571, he was working with the cardinals, when, suddenly, interrupting his work opening the window and looking at the sky, he cried out, "A truce to business; our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given the Christian army". He burst into tears when he heard of the victory, which dealt the Turkish power a blow from which it never recovered. In memory of this triumph he instituted for the first Sunday of October the feast of the Rosary.”
Saint Pope Pius V wrote in the Papal Bull of 1569 Consueverunt Romani—two years before the battle of Lepanto.
“And so Dominic looked to that simple way of praying and beseeching God, accessible to all and wholly pious, which is called the Rosary, or Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in which the same most Blessed Virgin is venerated by the angelic greeting repeated one hundred and fifty times, that is, according to the number of the Davidic Psalter, and by the Lord's Prayer with each decade. Interposed with these prayers are certain meditations showing forth the entire life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, thus completing the method of prayer devised by the by the Fathers of the Holy Roman Church.”
This aspect: “showing forth the entire life of Our Lord Jesus Christ” at each praying of the fifteen decades is very powerful, and is not enjoyed by praying only five, which results in a somewhat disjointed approach I had never noticed before praying the full fifteen.
Enjoy this Month of the Rosary and pray a fifteen decade rosary, which are hard to find but I found one at, where else, 15 Decade Rosaries, a wonderful apostolate.
I have turned to many resources in this study over the past few years since I began praying the rosary on a regular basis, and lately I have found much that resonates with my private devotions in the works of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, and his marvelous books, The Secret of the Rosary, and True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary (I would recommend you seek out the older editions in hardback) are crucial guides.
One aspect that leapt out in my study is that the five decade rosary I have been using is not the fullest expression of the rosary of tradition, as the Catholic Encyclopedia explains:
"The Rosary", says the Roman Breviary, "is a certain form of prayer wherein we say fifteen decades or tens of Hail Marys with an Our Father between each ten, while at each of these fifteen decades we recall successively in pious meditation one of the mysteries of our Redemption."
The birth of the rosary as a feast day of the Church is powerfully connected to Catholic martiality by one of the great martial popes, Saint Pius V, who called forth the knights and armed men of Europe to fight in a decisive battle, noted by the Catholic Encyclopedia.
“On the day of the Battle of Lepanto, 7 Oct., 1571, he was working with the cardinals, when, suddenly, interrupting his work opening the window and looking at the sky, he cried out, "A truce to business; our great task at present is to thank God for the victory which He has just given the Christian army". He burst into tears when he heard of the victory, which dealt the Turkish power a blow from which it never recovered. In memory of this triumph he instituted for the first Sunday of October the feast of the Rosary.”
Saint Pope Pius V wrote in the Papal Bull of 1569 Consueverunt Romani—two years before the battle of Lepanto.
“And so Dominic looked to that simple way of praying and beseeching God, accessible to all and wholly pious, which is called the Rosary, or Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in which the same most Blessed Virgin is venerated by the angelic greeting repeated one hundred and fifty times, that is, according to the number of the Davidic Psalter, and by the Lord's Prayer with each decade. Interposed with these prayers are certain meditations showing forth the entire life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, thus completing the method of prayer devised by the by the Fathers of the Holy Roman Church.”
This aspect: “showing forth the entire life of Our Lord Jesus Christ” at each praying of the fifteen decades is very powerful, and is not enjoyed by praying only five, which results in a somewhat disjointed approach I had never noticed before praying the full fifteen.
Enjoy this Month of the Rosary and pray a fifteen decade rosary, which are hard to find but I found one at, where else, 15 Decade Rosaries, a wonderful apostolate.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Living on Death Row
If you have to be in prison, especially in super-max, it is a good place to be, according to this article from the Atlantic Magazine.
It also points out that California is long overdue for capital punishment legislation that reduces the time it takes to carry out legal execution verdicts to a somewhat reasonable period, while still protecting the rights of the accused and convicted, and Texas comes to mind as one state that seems to have accomplished that by restricting the ability of lawyers to file numerous appeals.
An excerpt from the Atlantic article.
“AS AN ORANGE COUNTY jury debated in 2009 whether the white supremacist Billy Joe Johnson should live or die for murdering a fellow gang member, he asked to be sent to death row. Not because he felt any sudden remorse for the five people he’d killed over the years—“I commit crimes when people piss me off,” he once explained, matter-of-factly—but because Johnson believed he’d have better living conditions, including liberal phone privileges, a bigger cell, and daily human interaction, at San Quentin’s death row than he would at Pelican Bay, one of the state’s toughest maximum-security prisons, where he was serving a 46-year-to-life sentence, primarily in solitary confinement.
“He also knew that the odds were good that he might never be executed. Bogged down by constitutional challenges and appeals, California’s system takes an average of 20 years to move a prisoner from conviction to execution.
“Experts on both sides of the death-penalty debate have long agreed that California’s system is the nation’s costliest and least efficient. This June, a landmark report by Paula M. Mitchell, a professor at Loyola Law School, and Arthur L. Alarcón, a senior judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, unearthed new data that reveal just how bad the system is.
“Their report showed that since the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1978, taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on only 13 executions, or roughly $308 million per execution. As of 2009, prosecuting death-penalty cases cost upwards of $184 million more each year than life-without-parole cases. Housing, health care, and legal representation for California’s current death-row population of 714—the largest in the country—account for $144 million in annual extra costs. If juries continue to send an average of 20 convicts to San Quentin’s death row each year, and executions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the ranks of the condemned will have swelled to more than 1,000, and California’s taxpayers will have spent $9 billion to execute a total of 23 inmates.
“I was stunned by the report,” said Loni Hancock, a Democratic state senator from Oakland and a member of the senate budget committee. Hancock had spent the previous five months agonizing over deep cuts to California’s general budget, and “it broke my heart,” she said. “That’s when I decided the time had come for Californians to reconsider the death penalty.”
“In late June, Hancock introduced SB 490, the first bill to propose replacing death sentences with no-parole life imprisonment, only to withdraw it eight weeks later when she realized she didn’t have the votes to get it out of committee. Now anti-death-penalty activists are taking their case to the people. Buoyed by the Alarcón-Mitchell report and the media coverage it garnered, California Taxpayers for Justice kicked off a ballot-initiative drive in October to get the required 504,760 voter signatures in time for the 2012 general election.
“Law-enforcement groups want to keep the penalty in place. “We share the frustration of death-penalty opponents,” says Cory Salzillo, the legislative director of the California District Attorneys Association. “But we should pursue remedies to fix the problems rather than repeal it altogether.” (Hancock’s own stepson, Casey Bates, is known as an aggressive prosecutor in Alameda County’s District Attorney’s office, with several murder convictions under his belt. He declined to comment on SB 490, but Hancock told me: “We haven’t talked about it.”) To many advocates for victims, the initiatives are an insult. “You can’t take justice away from the victims’ families, not after everything they’ve gone through,” contends Harriet Salarno, the president of Crime Victims United of California, which she founded after her daughter’s murder. “No-parole life sentences will never give them the closure they seek. Sure, the death penalty is costly, but that’s because it’s not executed efficiently. Look at Texas and Virginia. They limit the years of appeals. We should copy them.”
It also points out that California is long overdue for capital punishment legislation that reduces the time it takes to carry out legal execution verdicts to a somewhat reasonable period, while still protecting the rights of the accused and convicted, and Texas comes to mind as one state that seems to have accomplished that by restricting the ability of lawyers to file numerous appeals.
An excerpt from the Atlantic article.
“AS AN ORANGE COUNTY jury debated in 2009 whether the white supremacist Billy Joe Johnson should live or die for murdering a fellow gang member, he asked to be sent to death row. Not because he felt any sudden remorse for the five people he’d killed over the years—“I commit crimes when people piss me off,” he once explained, matter-of-factly—but because Johnson believed he’d have better living conditions, including liberal phone privileges, a bigger cell, and daily human interaction, at San Quentin’s death row than he would at Pelican Bay, one of the state’s toughest maximum-security prisons, where he was serving a 46-year-to-life sentence, primarily in solitary confinement.
“He also knew that the odds were good that he might never be executed. Bogged down by constitutional challenges and appeals, California’s system takes an average of 20 years to move a prisoner from conviction to execution.
“Experts on both sides of the death-penalty debate have long agreed that California’s system is the nation’s costliest and least efficient. This June, a landmark report by Paula M. Mitchell, a professor at Loyola Law School, and Arthur L. Alarcón, a senior judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, unearthed new data that reveal just how bad the system is.
“Their report showed that since the current death-penalty statute was enacted in 1978, taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on only 13 executions, or roughly $308 million per execution. As of 2009, prosecuting death-penalty cases cost upwards of $184 million more each year than life-without-parole cases. Housing, health care, and legal representation for California’s current death-row population of 714—the largest in the country—account for $144 million in annual extra costs. If juries continue to send an average of 20 convicts to San Quentin’s death row each year, and executions continue at the present rate, by 2030 the ranks of the condemned will have swelled to more than 1,000, and California’s taxpayers will have spent $9 billion to execute a total of 23 inmates.
“I was stunned by the report,” said Loni Hancock, a Democratic state senator from Oakland and a member of the senate budget committee. Hancock had spent the previous five months agonizing over deep cuts to California’s general budget, and “it broke my heart,” she said. “That’s when I decided the time had come for Californians to reconsider the death penalty.”
“In late June, Hancock introduced SB 490, the first bill to propose replacing death sentences with no-parole life imprisonment, only to withdraw it eight weeks later when she realized she didn’t have the votes to get it out of committee. Now anti-death-penalty activists are taking their case to the people. Buoyed by the Alarcón-Mitchell report and the media coverage it garnered, California Taxpayers for Justice kicked off a ballot-initiative drive in October to get the required 504,760 voter signatures in time for the 2012 general election.
“Law-enforcement groups want to keep the penalty in place. “We share the frustration of death-penalty opponents,” says Cory Salzillo, the legislative director of the California District Attorneys Association. “But we should pursue remedies to fix the problems rather than repeal it altogether.” (Hancock’s own stepson, Casey Bates, is known as an aggressive prosecutor in Alameda County’s District Attorney’s office, with several murder convictions under his belt. He declined to comment on SB 490, but Hancock told me: “We haven’t talked about it.”) To many advocates for victims, the initiatives are an insult. “You can’t take justice away from the victims’ families, not after everything they’ve gone through,” contends Harriet Salarno, the president of Crime Victims United of California, which she founded after her daughter’s murder. “No-parole life sentences will never give them the closure they seek. Sure, the death penalty is costly, but that’s because it’s not executed efficiently. Look at Texas and Virginia. They limit the years of appeals. We should copy them.”
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Regensburg and Remembering
It was one of the most powerful talks in relation to the war on terror—which many consider World War IV—given by an international leader and it was delivered by the Holy Father.
This article from the Ethics and Public Policy Center looks at what has happened since.
An excerpt.
“In the flood of commentary surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I found but one reference to a related anniversary of considerable importance: the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Lecture. That lecture, given the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at the pope's old university in Germany, identified the two key challenges to 21st century Islam, if that faith of over a billion people is going to live within today's world in something other than a condition of war. On the fifth anniversary of Regensburg, therefore, it's worth reviewing what the Pope proposed, not least because the 9/11 anniversary commentary assiduously avoided the question that the Holy Father courageously confronted: the question of what-must-change in Islam in the future, to prevent an ongoing global war of Islam-against-the-rest.
“Benedict XVI made two proposals at Regensburg.
“Islam, he suggested, must find a way to affirm religious freedom as a fundamental human right that can be known by reason and that includes the right to change one's religion—and it must find this "way" from within its own religious, legal, philosophical, and theological resources. The question is not one of surrender to certain secularist conceptions of public life, any more than it was when Catholicism confronted political modernity and found a solution in the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom. The solution has to come from within, in what Christian theology would call a "development of doctrine."
“Secondly, Islam must find a way—again, from within its own religious and intellectual resources—to affirm a distinction between religious and political authority in a just state. This need not and indeed cannot mean a radical "wall of separation" between the two, based on some (mis)conceptions of the American constitutional order. It might mean something like what the Catholic Church did during the late 20th century, when Catholic scholars reached back into the fifth century and rediscovered a traditional distinction between priestly and imperial authority: a tradition whose deepest roots go back to the Lord's own distinction between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God [Matthew 15.21].
“Despite there being largely ignored during the 9/11 anniversary, these do seem to be the two key issues. An Islam that affirms religious freedom, including conversion from one faith to another, and that buttresses that affirmation through its own religious self-understanding and the arts of reason, is an Islam with which "the rest" can live at ease, and in enriching ways. An Islam in which religious and political authority are distinct, if related, is an Islam in which a genuinely civil society can begin to take root—and a robust civil society is one barrier against the corrupt authoritarianism that has bedeviled Islamic countries for centuries. A robust civil society in which there is room for religious freedom and multiple political perspectives is also essential to realizing the promise of today's "Arab Spring"—which could give birth to a hot summer and a bitter winter if its chief accomplishment is to effect a change from secular political authoritarianism to religiously-warranted political authoritarianism.”
This article from the Ethics and Public Policy Center looks at what has happened since.
An excerpt.
“In the flood of commentary surrounding the tenth anniversary of 9/11, I found but one reference to a related anniversary of considerable importance: the fifth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg Lecture. That lecture, given the day after the fifth anniversary of 9/11 at the pope's old university in Germany, identified the two key challenges to 21st century Islam, if that faith of over a billion people is going to live within today's world in something other than a condition of war. On the fifth anniversary of Regensburg, therefore, it's worth reviewing what the Pope proposed, not least because the 9/11 anniversary commentary assiduously avoided the question that the Holy Father courageously confronted: the question of what-must-change in Islam in the future, to prevent an ongoing global war of Islam-against-the-rest.
“Benedict XVI made two proposals at Regensburg.
“Islam, he suggested, must find a way to affirm religious freedom as a fundamental human right that can be known by reason and that includes the right to change one's religion—and it must find this "way" from within its own religious, legal, philosophical, and theological resources. The question is not one of surrender to certain secularist conceptions of public life, any more than it was when Catholicism confronted political modernity and found a solution in the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom. The solution has to come from within, in what Christian theology would call a "development of doctrine."
“Secondly, Islam must find a way—again, from within its own religious and intellectual resources—to affirm a distinction between religious and political authority in a just state. This need not and indeed cannot mean a radical "wall of separation" between the two, based on some (mis)conceptions of the American constitutional order. It might mean something like what the Catholic Church did during the late 20th century, when Catholic scholars reached back into the fifth century and rediscovered a traditional distinction between priestly and imperial authority: a tradition whose deepest roots go back to the Lord's own distinction between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God [Matthew 15.21].
“Despite there being largely ignored during the 9/11 anniversary, these do seem to be the two key issues. An Islam that affirms religious freedom, including conversion from one faith to another, and that buttresses that affirmation through its own religious self-understanding and the arts of reason, is an Islam with which "the rest" can live at ease, and in enriching ways. An Islam in which religious and political authority are distinct, if related, is an Islam in which a genuinely civil society can begin to take root—and a robust civil society is one barrier against the corrupt authoritarianism that has bedeviled Islamic countries for centuries. A robust civil society in which there is room for religious freedom and multiple political perspectives is also essential to realizing the promise of today's "Arab Spring"—which could give birth to a hot summer and a bitter winter if its chief accomplishment is to effect a change from secular political authoritarianism to religiously-warranted political authoritarianism.”
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Evolution of Criminality
Like any business model, the business of crime evolves according to the needs of its customers and government sanctions, as this story from the San Francisco Chronicle reports.
An excerpt.
“In many ways, the reputed drug dealers on Grandview Place were good neighbors.
“Their two-story, red-brick home in the New York City suburb of Fort Lee, N.J., looked perfectly ordinary with its white trim, gable porch and manicured shrubbery. Neither noise nor sketchy visitors were an issue, authorities say.
“The only sign that something was amiss was the rented van that would disappear into a lower-level garage each day. The driver's job: To deliver immigrant workers from the inner city to package heroin in thousands-upon-thousands of glassine envelopes stamped with catchy logos like "LeBron James" and "Roger Dat."
“The Fort Lee operation represented the new, more serene face of the ever-thriving heroin trade in the New York City area, the drug's national epicenter, according to the Manhattan-based narcotics investigators who shut it down.
"It can still be a violent, dirty business, but it's changed," said Bill Cook, a longtime investigator with the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City.
“Absent are scenes out of films like "American Gangster," with kingpins flaunting their wealth, settling turf wars with brazen gunplay and serving a clientele of strung-out junkies queuing up to buy low-grade product.
“The new business model calls for more discretion and discipline, and better branding and quality control. The heroin is purer and the users more mainstream, including college students and professionals who snort rather than shoot up. Many have seamlessly transitioned to heroin after first getting hooked on prescription painkillers belonging to the same opiate family.
“Compared to past eras marked by images of junkies cooking the drug with a dirty spoon, heroin "doesn't have the same stigma attached to it," said John Gilbride, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York office.
“Authorities say more abuse by a broader customer base has taken a devastating human toll that's difficult to measure. Rehab centers have told them that more people are seeking treatment, and there have been recent reports of fatal heroin overdoses by teenagers on Long Island and Westchester County.
“That hasn't discouraged retailers - mainly Dominican immigrants supplied with Colombian heroin by Mexican cartels - from steadily expanding their operations throughout the city and its suburbs.
"There are more mills, and they're better at what they do," Cook said.”
An excerpt.
“In many ways, the reputed drug dealers on Grandview Place were good neighbors.
“Their two-story, red-brick home in the New York City suburb of Fort Lee, N.J., looked perfectly ordinary with its white trim, gable porch and manicured shrubbery. Neither noise nor sketchy visitors were an issue, authorities say.
“The only sign that something was amiss was the rented van that would disappear into a lower-level garage each day. The driver's job: To deliver immigrant workers from the inner city to package heroin in thousands-upon-thousands of glassine envelopes stamped with catchy logos like "LeBron James" and "Roger Dat."
“The Fort Lee operation represented the new, more serene face of the ever-thriving heroin trade in the New York City area, the drug's national epicenter, according to the Manhattan-based narcotics investigators who shut it down.
"It can still be a violent, dirty business, but it's changed," said Bill Cook, a longtime investigator with the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for New York City.
“Absent are scenes out of films like "American Gangster," with kingpins flaunting their wealth, settling turf wars with brazen gunplay and serving a clientele of strung-out junkies queuing up to buy low-grade product.
“The new business model calls for more discretion and discipline, and better branding and quality control. The heroin is purer and the users more mainstream, including college students and professionals who snort rather than shoot up. Many have seamlessly transitioned to heroin after first getting hooked on prescription painkillers belonging to the same opiate family.
“Compared to past eras marked by images of junkies cooking the drug with a dirty spoon, heroin "doesn't have the same stigma attached to it," said John Gilbride, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York office.
“Authorities say more abuse by a broader customer base has taken a devastating human toll that's difficult to measure. Rehab centers have told them that more people are seeking treatment, and there have been recent reports of fatal heroin overdoses by teenagers on Long Island and Westchester County.
“That hasn't discouraged retailers - mainly Dominican immigrants supplied with Colombian heroin by Mexican cartels - from steadily expanding their operations throughout the city and its suburbs.
"There are more mills, and they're better at what they do," Cook said.”
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Nonviolent, Non-serious Offenders?
That’s the story on those being released from state prisons to local jails as a result of a federal court ruling, but, as with all things, the devil is really in the details, noted in this story from the San Francisco Chronicle.
An excerpt.
“Gov. Jerry Brown and others who supported the dramatic shift in California's sentencing law that took effect this week have said it will send only those convicted of nonviolent or non-serious crimes to county jails instead of state prison, a change designed to save the state money and reduce inmate crowding.
“Yet a review by The Associated Press of crimes that qualify for local sentences shows at least two dozen offenses shifting to local control that can be considered serious or violent.
“Among them: Involuntary manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, killing or injuring a police officer while resisting arrest, participating in a lynching, possession of weapons of mass destruction, possessing explosives, threatening a witness or juror, and using arson or explosives to terrorize a health facility or church. Assault, battery, statutory rape and sexual exploitation by doctors or psychotherapists are also covered by the prison realignment law and carry sentences that will be served in a county jail instead of state prison.
"These crimes include a variety of offenses that would strike many civilians as far from trivial," Public Policy Institute of California researcher Dean Misczynski wrote in a recent analysis of the new law.
“A list of 500 criminal code sections to be covered by the law was compiled by the California District Attorneys Association and posted late last month to its website. In response to a request by the AP, the state attorney general's office confirmed the association's review was accurate but said defendants with a previous felony conviction or those charged with enhancements would still be sent to state prison.
“Among those who could be affected by the new law if convicted is Dr. Conrad Murray, who is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Legal experts said he would serve his maximum four-year sentence in a Los Angeles County jail instead of state prison.
“The length of sentences won't necessarily change, but the realignment law does offer significant differences for inmates.
“Parole will disappear for offenders who serve their terms in county jails, including Murray, if he is convicted. Offenders who serve their full sentences behind bars will not be supervised once they are released. Parole officers will not be tracking their movements or making sure they comply with conditions such as substance abuse treatment.
“Judges also have the discretion to impose "hybrid" or "split sentences" in which offenders serve part of their sentence in county jail and the rest on what is being called "mandatory supervision," overseen by probation officers.
“Offenders convicted of more significant crimes still are likely get lengthier sentences, even if they are served in jail instead of prison, said Scott Thorpe, chief executive officer of the state district attorneys association. But sentencing more serious offenders to jail rather than state prison will likely force counties that already have crowded jails to release less serious offenders who are serving time for crimes such as auto theft, burglary, grand theft, forgery, counterfeiting and drug crimes.”
An excerpt.
“Gov. Jerry Brown and others who supported the dramatic shift in California's sentencing law that took effect this week have said it will send only those convicted of nonviolent or non-serious crimes to county jails instead of state prison, a change designed to save the state money and reduce inmate crowding.
“Yet a review by The Associated Press of crimes that qualify for local sentences shows at least two dozen offenses shifting to local control that can be considered serious or violent.
“Among them: Involuntary manslaughter, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, killing or injuring a police officer while resisting arrest, participating in a lynching, possession of weapons of mass destruction, possessing explosives, threatening a witness or juror, and using arson or explosives to terrorize a health facility or church. Assault, battery, statutory rape and sexual exploitation by doctors or psychotherapists are also covered by the prison realignment law and carry sentences that will be served in a county jail instead of state prison.
"These crimes include a variety of offenses that would strike many civilians as far from trivial," Public Policy Institute of California researcher Dean Misczynski wrote in a recent analysis of the new law.
“A list of 500 criminal code sections to be covered by the law was compiled by the California District Attorneys Association and posted late last month to its website. In response to a request by the AP, the state attorney general's office confirmed the association's review was accurate but said defendants with a previous felony conviction or those charged with enhancements would still be sent to state prison.
“Among those who could be affected by the new law if convicted is Dr. Conrad Murray, who is on trial for involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Legal experts said he would serve his maximum four-year sentence in a Los Angeles County jail instead of state prison.
“The length of sentences won't necessarily change, but the realignment law does offer significant differences for inmates.
“Parole will disappear for offenders who serve their terms in county jails, including Murray, if he is convicted. Offenders who serve their full sentences behind bars will not be supervised once they are released. Parole officers will not be tracking their movements or making sure they comply with conditions such as substance abuse treatment.
“Judges also have the discretion to impose "hybrid" or "split sentences" in which offenders serve part of their sentence in county jail and the rest on what is being called "mandatory supervision," overseen by probation officers.
“Offenders convicted of more significant crimes still are likely get lengthier sentences, even if they are served in jail instead of prison, said Scott Thorpe, chief executive officer of the state district attorneys association. But sentencing more serious offenders to jail rather than state prison will likely force counties that already have crowded jails to release less serious offenders who are serving time for crimes such as auto theft, burglary, grand theft, forgery, counterfeiting and drug crimes.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
