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.”
Showing posts with label Apostolate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Apostolate. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
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.”
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)
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.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Catholic Social Teaching
The marvelous book, Church State and Society: An Introduction to Catholic Social Doctrine, gets a wonderful review from Ignatius Insight, and while it is a book I have only begun to delve into, I have learned enough that it has joined the social teaching canon of my apostolate The Lampstand Foundation.
An excerpt from the Ignatius review.
"The concept of justice as order in the soul of the individual needs to be rediscovered today." — Benestad, 144.
"Nowadays, service to others is often presented as the distinguishing characteristic of a Catholic university; but without linking that service to the prior task of seeking truth and achieving some order in one's soul through prayer, a sacramental life, acceptance of the Catholic creeds, and the practice of Christian morality. It seems naïve to me, and even Pelagian, to think that Christ-like service can be informed and embrace without a foundation in Christian doctrine and a basis in learning." — Benestad, 284.
“I.
“We have been waiting for this remarkable book for a long time, one that knows not just episcopal and papal thought but the whole history of theology, political philosophy, and philosophy at large. This book has roots not only in the Greeks and Romans, but also in Scripture and the great theologians of the Church. And it is aware of the pitfalls of language and ideas that often steer Christian thinkers into the heady, dangerous realms of ideology. Dr. Brian Benestad knows his Locke and Hobbes, his Marx, and the more modern liberal relativist theories associated with Rawls and other American writers.
“Benestad, at the University of Scranton, is the best qualified and able of American scholars to write an overall understanding of Catholic Social Thought, which has tended to become a rather narrow and isolated body of knowledge. Benestad's mentor, whom he often cites and whose collected essays he edited, was the late Father Ernest Fortin, A.A. Fortin, along with Heinrich Rommen, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, John Courtney Murray, and Charles N. R. McCoy, was certainly the most critical and acute mind in the intellectual circles of his time. Fortin covered the whole gamut of thought from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, to the Fathers of the Church, Aquinas, Aquinas, Dante, and into the modern world. Fortin was familiar with Strauss and Bloom and their critiques of modernity.
“This book is more than the "introduction" of its sub-title. It is nothing less than a critical, philosophical reflection on the whole tradition of what is loosely called "social thought or doctrine." It knows its way through the relation of reason and revelation. Its range includes economics, environmentalism, universities, political institutions, war, life and family questions, subsidiarity, and culture. Metaphysics is always just below the surface.
“Benestad, to be sure, unlike Plato, Aristotle, and the current pope, does not have much to say about music. But he makes remarkable use of classic literature and novels to illustrate virtues and vices. He is obviously a broadly learned man in the tradition of liberal education. This overlook of social thought is doubly necessary as many of the basic words and notions that are found in modern thought and in political usage are anything but neutral or friendly to what Catholicism is and what it holds.
“II.
“Thus, a major effort of Benestad is to clarify what is meant by "justice," "rights," "social justice," "values," and "dignity," the language that even the popes and bishops have, sometimes incautiously, chosen to use to explain Catholic positions in the public order. Each of these words has an ancient or recent history that is anything but self-evident. Different philosophies make each concept in effect equivocal, not meaning at all what other users mean.
“Each concept or word needs to be carefully distinguished. We need to see that what Hobbes meant by "rights" was not what Aristotle meant by justice. Among these words and phrases, perhaps none is more necessary to rethink than that of "social justice," a very modern phrase from the late nineteenth century that cannot, in spite of heroic efforts to do so, easily be reconciled with classic political thought or Christian terms. The phrase is inspired largely by modern liberal thought that presupposes human autonomy with no relation to natural or divine law.
“Benestad does a remarkably fine job in tracing the roots and implications of this phrase and how it might be properly used so that it does not bear its ideological baggage from Locke or Rousseau. A major reason that Catholic thought has not had the impact that it should is because words like justice, values, rights, and dignity come from Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, Weber, and Kant. They do not mean what it looks like they mean from a tradition of Aquinas or Aristotle. Benestad, to his credit, is well aware both that these words are the meat of modern discourse and the source of considerable confusion. The book is a constant effort to relate rights to duty, dignity to being, values to objective norms, and justice to virtue.
"Indeed, it might well be said that the major effort of Benestad is to show how no concept of justice as some sort of rearrangement of society can stand by itself apart from the classical emphasis on the need of individual virtue. We cannot have a "just" society if we do not have "just" people who know that justice is not a subjective "right" or "want" but something that is objectively "due."
“Aristotle's political philosophy had been well aware that regimes reflect the virtue of the people that composed it. He knew we cannot have a good regime and un-virtuous citizens. Modern thought has largely rejected this to claim that vice and disorder can be cured simply by change of regime. It doesn't and cannot happen that way, even though some regimes are better than others.
“Benestad is completely familiar with what is known as modern Catholic social thought from the work of Leo XIII on. He knows of Pius XI and Pius XIII, John XXIII, and Paul VI. He is aware that in John Paul II and Benedict we have something in the Church that has perhaps never existed before: two popes, one following the other, both working together, who are themselves first class scholars and (particularly in the case of John Paul II) charismatic leaders of world historic significance. The world has done its best to refuse to acknowledge their genius and the truth of their lives and teachings. In this sense, our intellectual problems are initially moral ones.
“Benestad is well aware of the extra-ordinary genius of the present pope. His appendix is devoted to Caritas in veritate, the pope's third "social" encyclical. At one level, it is amusing to realize that the Catholic Church has been headed since Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century by men of superior intellect, but more recently by men the equals of any minds or their own or any other time. How little this intellectual foundation of the Church is appreciated within the Church and culture is a judgment on the quality of the lived faith and ongoing intelligence of our time.
“The book contains four parts with twelve chapters. The first part concerns "the human person, the political community, and the common good." Part two covers "civil society and the common good, three mediating societies (family, Church, and universities). Part three brings us to private property and the universal destination of goods. Finally, part four is on the international community and justice. It is in this latter section that Benestad deals sanely with war and international institutions.
“One thing that particularly struck me about this book is that Benestad always makes his own judgment on the issues that he presents. The reader always knows where he stands on the issues, and why. He is quite critical of many of the politicized American episcopal initiatives in the social order, none more so than that of Cardinal Bernadin's confused "seamless garment" doctrine. Often such documents bear ideological traits that never should be there.”
An excerpt from the Ignatius review.
"The concept of justice as order in the soul of the individual needs to be rediscovered today." — Benestad, 144.
"Nowadays, service to others is often presented as the distinguishing characteristic of a Catholic university; but without linking that service to the prior task of seeking truth and achieving some order in one's soul through prayer, a sacramental life, acceptance of the Catholic creeds, and the practice of Christian morality. It seems naïve to me, and even Pelagian, to think that Christ-like service can be informed and embrace without a foundation in Christian doctrine and a basis in learning." — Benestad, 284.
“I.
“We have been waiting for this remarkable book for a long time, one that knows not just episcopal and papal thought but the whole history of theology, political philosophy, and philosophy at large. This book has roots not only in the Greeks and Romans, but also in Scripture and the great theologians of the Church. And it is aware of the pitfalls of language and ideas that often steer Christian thinkers into the heady, dangerous realms of ideology. Dr. Brian Benestad knows his Locke and Hobbes, his Marx, and the more modern liberal relativist theories associated with Rawls and other American writers.
“Benestad, at the University of Scranton, is the best qualified and able of American scholars to write an overall understanding of Catholic Social Thought, which has tended to become a rather narrow and isolated body of knowledge. Benestad's mentor, whom he often cites and whose collected essays he edited, was the late Father Ernest Fortin, A.A. Fortin, along with Heinrich Rommen, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, John Courtney Murray, and Charles N. R. McCoy, was certainly the most critical and acute mind in the intellectual circles of his time. Fortin covered the whole gamut of thought from Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, to the Fathers of the Church, Aquinas, Aquinas, Dante, and into the modern world. Fortin was familiar with Strauss and Bloom and their critiques of modernity.
“This book is more than the "introduction" of its sub-title. It is nothing less than a critical, philosophical reflection on the whole tradition of what is loosely called "social thought or doctrine." It knows its way through the relation of reason and revelation. Its range includes economics, environmentalism, universities, political institutions, war, life and family questions, subsidiarity, and culture. Metaphysics is always just below the surface.
“Benestad, to be sure, unlike Plato, Aristotle, and the current pope, does not have much to say about music. But he makes remarkable use of classic literature and novels to illustrate virtues and vices. He is obviously a broadly learned man in the tradition of liberal education. This overlook of social thought is doubly necessary as many of the basic words and notions that are found in modern thought and in political usage are anything but neutral or friendly to what Catholicism is and what it holds.
“II.
“Thus, a major effort of Benestad is to clarify what is meant by "justice," "rights," "social justice," "values," and "dignity," the language that even the popes and bishops have, sometimes incautiously, chosen to use to explain Catholic positions in the public order. Each of these words has an ancient or recent history that is anything but self-evident. Different philosophies make each concept in effect equivocal, not meaning at all what other users mean.
“Each concept or word needs to be carefully distinguished. We need to see that what Hobbes meant by "rights" was not what Aristotle meant by justice. Among these words and phrases, perhaps none is more necessary to rethink than that of "social justice," a very modern phrase from the late nineteenth century that cannot, in spite of heroic efforts to do so, easily be reconciled with classic political thought or Christian terms. The phrase is inspired largely by modern liberal thought that presupposes human autonomy with no relation to natural or divine law.
“Benestad does a remarkably fine job in tracing the roots and implications of this phrase and how it might be properly used so that it does not bear its ideological baggage from Locke or Rousseau. A major reason that Catholic thought has not had the impact that it should is because words like justice, values, rights, and dignity come from Hobbes, Locke, Nietzsche, Weber, and Kant. They do not mean what it looks like they mean from a tradition of Aquinas or Aristotle. Benestad, to his credit, is well aware both that these words are the meat of modern discourse and the source of considerable confusion. The book is a constant effort to relate rights to duty, dignity to being, values to objective norms, and justice to virtue.
"Indeed, it might well be said that the major effort of Benestad is to show how no concept of justice as some sort of rearrangement of society can stand by itself apart from the classical emphasis on the need of individual virtue. We cannot have a "just" society if we do not have "just" people who know that justice is not a subjective "right" or "want" but something that is objectively "due."
“Aristotle's political philosophy had been well aware that regimes reflect the virtue of the people that composed it. He knew we cannot have a good regime and un-virtuous citizens. Modern thought has largely rejected this to claim that vice and disorder can be cured simply by change of regime. It doesn't and cannot happen that way, even though some regimes are better than others.
“Benestad is completely familiar with what is known as modern Catholic social thought from the work of Leo XIII on. He knows of Pius XI and Pius XIII, John XXIII, and Paul VI. He is aware that in John Paul II and Benedict we have something in the Church that has perhaps never existed before: two popes, one following the other, both working together, who are themselves first class scholars and (particularly in the case of John Paul II) charismatic leaders of world historic significance. The world has done its best to refuse to acknowledge their genius and the truth of their lives and teachings. In this sense, our intellectual problems are initially moral ones.
“Benestad is well aware of the extra-ordinary genius of the present pope. His appendix is devoted to Caritas in veritate, the pope's third "social" encyclical. At one level, it is amusing to realize that the Catholic Church has been headed since Leo XIII at the end of the nineteenth century by men of superior intellect, but more recently by men the equals of any minds or their own or any other time. How little this intellectual foundation of the Church is appreciated within the Church and culture is a judgment on the quality of the lived faith and ongoing intelligence of our time.
“The book contains four parts with twelve chapters. The first part concerns "the human person, the political community, and the common good." Part two covers "civil society and the common good, three mediating societies (family, Church, and universities). Part three brings us to private property and the universal destination of goods. Finally, part four is on the international community and justice. It is in this latter section that Benestad deals sanely with war and international institutions.
“One thing that particularly struck me about this book is that Benestad always makes his own judgment on the issues that he presents. The reader always knows where he stands on the issues, and why. He is quite critical of many of the politicized American episcopal initiatives in the social order, none more so than that of Cardinal Bernadin's confused "seamless garment" doctrine. Often such documents bear ideological traits that never should be there.”
Friday, September 30, 2011
Defining Rape Accurately
This is very good news, as reported by the New York Times, that one of the most horrific of crimes—which we feel deserves a capital punishment sanction option—will now be defined more accurately than it has been.
An excerpt.
“Many law enforcement officials and advocates for women say that this underreporting misleads the public about the prevalence of rape and results in fewer federal, state and local resources being devoted to catching rapists and helping rape victims. Rape crisis centers are among groups that cite the federal figures in applying for private and public financing.
“The public has the right to know about the prevalence of crime and violent crime in our communities, and we know that data drives practices, resources, policies and programs,” said Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, whose office has campaigned to get the F.B.I. to change its definition of sexual assault. “It’s critical that we strive to have accurate information about this.”
“Ms. Tracy spoke Friday at a meeting in Washington, organized by the Police Executive Research Forum, that brought together police chiefs, sex-crime investigators, federal officials and advocates to discuss the limitations of the federal definition and the wider issue of local police departments’ not adequately investigating rape.
“According to the 2010 Uniform Crime Report, released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week, there were 84,767 sexual assaults in the United States last year, a 5 percent drop from 2009.
“The definition of rape used by the F.B.I. — “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will” — was written more than 80 years ago. The yearly report on violent crime, which uses data provided voluntarily by the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies, is widely cited as an indicator of national crime trends.
“But that definition, critics say, does not take into account sexual-assault cases that involve anal or oral penetration or penetration with an object, cases where the victims were drugged or under the influence of alcohol or cases with male victims. As a result, many sexual assaults are not counted as rapes in the yearly federal accounting.
“The data that are reported to the public come from this definition, and sadly, it portrays a very, very distorted picture,” said Susan B. Carbon, director of the Office on Violence Against Women, part of the Department of Justice. “It’s the message that we’re sending to victims, and if you don’t fit that very narrow definition, you weren’t a victim and your rape didn’t count.”
“Steve Anderson, chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said that the F.B.I.’s definition created a double standard for police departments.
“We prosecute by one criteria, but we report by another criteria,” Chief Anderson said. “The only people who have a true picture of what’s going on are the people in the sex-crimes unit.”
“In Chicago, the Police Department recorded close to 1,400 sexual assaults in 2010, according to the department’s Web site. But none of these appeared in the federal crime report because Chicago’s broader definition of rape is not accepted by the F.B.I.
“The New York Police Department reported 1,369 rapes, but only 1,036 — the ones that fit the federal definition — were entered in the federal figures. And in Elizabeth Township, Pa., the sexual assault of a woman last year was widely discussed by residents. Yet according to the F.B.I.’s report, no rapes were reported in Elizabeth in 2010.”
An excerpt.
“Many law enforcement officials and advocates for women say that this underreporting misleads the public about the prevalence of rape and results in fewer federal, state and local resources being devoted to catching rapists and helping rape victims. Rape crisis centers are among groups that cite the federal figures in applying for private and public financing.
“The public has the right to know about the prevalence of crime and violent crime in our communities, and we know that data drives practices, resources, policies and programs,” said Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia, whose office has campaigned to get the F.B.I. to change its definition of sexual assault. “It’s critical that we strive to have accurate information about this.”
“Ms. Tracy spoke Friday at a meeting in Washington, organized by the Police Executive Research Forum, that brought together police chiefs, sex-crime investigators, federal officials and advocates to discuss the limitations of the federal definition and the wider issue of local police departments’ not adequately investigating rape.
“According to the 2010 Uniform Crime Report, released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation last week, there were 84,767 sexual assaults in the United States last year, a 5 percent drop from 2009.
“The definition of rape used by the F.B.I. — “the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will” — was written more than 80 years ago. The yearly report on violent crime, which uses data provided voluntarily by the nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies, is widely cited as an indicator of national crime trends.
“But that definition, critics say, does not take into account sexual-assault cases that involve anal or oral penetration or penetration with an object, cases where the victims were drugged or under the influence of alcohol or cases with male victims. As a result, many sexual assaults are not counted as rapes in the yearly federal accounting.
“The data that are reported to the public come from this definition, and sadly, it portrays a very, very distorted picture,” said Susan B. Carbon, director of the Office on Violence Against Women, part of the Department of Justice. “It’s the message that we’re sending to victims, and if you don’t fit that very narrow definition, you weren’t a victim and your rape didn’t count.”
“Steve Anderson, chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, said that the F.B.I.’s definition created a double standard for police departments.
“We prosecute by one criteria, but we report by another criteria,” Chief Anderson said. “The only people who have a true picture of what’s going on are the people in the sex-crimes unit.”
“In Chicago, the Police Department recorded close to 1,400 sexual assaults in 2010, according to the department’s Web site. But none of these appeared in the federal crime report because Chicago’s broader definition of rape is not accepted by the F.B.I.
“The New York Police Department reported 1,369 rapes, but only 1,036 — the ones that fit the federal definition — were entered in the federal figures. And in Elizabeth Township, Pa., the sexual assault of a woman last year was widely discussed by residents. Yet according to the F.B.I.’s report, no rapes were reported in Elizabeth in 2010.”
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
We Hold These Truths
It is one of the most remarkable books from an American Catholic theologian—We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition, by John Courtney Murray, S. J. (1960)—ever written, and I was reminded of that in the new issue of The Catholic Social Science Review, the journal of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists, where, in introducing a symposium on Murray’s book, Kenneth L. Grasso (2011) wrote:
“…I would suggest that the task of understanding and critically engaging its far ranging, complex, and subtle argument remains among the most important pieces of unfinished business facing American Catholic thought.” (Getting Murray Right, in The Catholic Social Science Review: Volume XVI, (p. 85)
And, in rereading Murray, I came across this:
“Perhaps one day the noble many-storied mansion of democracy will be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged. Perhaps there will one day be wide dissent even from the political principles which emerge from natural law, as well as dissent from the constellation of ideas that have historically undergirded these principles—the idea that government has a moral basis; that the universal moral law is the foundation of society; that the legal order of society—that is, the state—is subject to judgment by a law that is not statistical but inherent in the nature of man; that the eternal reason of God is the ultimate origin of all law; that this nation in all its aspects—as a society, a state, an ordered and free relationship between governors and governed—is under God. The possibility that widespread dissent from these principles should develop is not foreclosed. If that evil day should come, the results would introduce one more paradox into history. The Catholic community would still be speaking in the ethical and political idiom familiar to them as it was familiar to their fathers, both the Fathers of the Church and the Fathers of the American Republic. The guardianship of the original American consensus, based on the Western heritage, would have passed to the Catholic community, within which the heritage was elaborated long before America was. And it would be for others, not Catholics, to ask themselves whether they still shared the consensus which first fashioned the American people into a body politic and determined the structure of its fundamental law." (1960) Sheed and Ward, New York. (pp. 42-43)
This hearkens back to the first post of this blog in 2007 commenting on a book written 47 years after Murrays’.
“…I would suggest that the task of understanding and critically engaging its far ranging, complex, and subtle argument remains among the most important pieces of unfinished business facing American Catholic thought.” (Getting Murray Right, in The Catholic Social Science Review: Volume XVI, (p. 85)
And, in rereading Murray, I came across this:
“Perhaps one day the noble many-storied mansion of democracy will be dismantled, leveled to the dimensions of a flat majoritarianism, which is no mansion but a barn, perhaps even a tool shed in which the weapons of tyranny may be forged. Perhaps there will one day be wide dissent even from the political principles which emerge from natural law, as well as dissent from the constellation of ideas that have historically undergirded these principles—the idea that government has a moral basis; that the universal moral law is the foundation of society; that the legal order of society—that is, the state—is subject to judgment by a law that is not statistical but inherent in the nature of man; that the eternal reason of God is the ultimate origin of all law; that this nation in all its aspects—as a society, a state, an ordered and free relationship between governors and governed—is under God. The possibility that widespread dissent from these principles should develop is not foreclosed. If that evil day should come, the results would introduce one more paradox into history. The Catholic community would still be speaking in the ethical and political idiom familiar to them as it was familiar to their fathers, both the Fathers of the Church and the Fathers of the American Republic. The guardianship of the original American consensus, based on the Western heritage, would have passed to the Catholic community, within which the heritage was elaborated long before America was. And it would be for others, not Catholics, to ask themselves whether they still shared the consensus which first fashioned the American people into a body politic and determined the structure of its fundamental law." (1960) Sheed and Ward, New York. (pp. 42-43)
This hearkens back to the first post of this blog in 2007 commenting on a book written 47 years after Murrays’.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Politics of Capital Punishment
It is an issue that represents a dividing line between conservative and liberal Catholics, with liberal Catholics interpreting the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church as supporting the abolishment of capital punishment, which it does not; as our book—supporting the many other conservative Catholics reaching the same conclusion—reveals.
It is an issue that also divides conservative and liberal voters, so well captured by this article in the Wall Street Journal.
An excerpt.
“Perhaps the most striking statement at last night's Republican presidential debate came not from Rick Perry or Mitt Romney but from the audience, which applauded the preface of one of moderator Brian Williams’ questions. Here's how it looked in the transcript:
“Williams: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you . . .
(APPLAUSE)
“Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?
“Perry answered: "No sir," pointed out that death-row convicts are entitled to extensive appeals, and crisply declared: "In the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice."
“Williams then asked Perry to explain the audience's reaction to Williams’ question:
"What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?"
“Although Williams surely did not intend it as such, this question was a gift for Perry, who got to reiterate his position while flattering voters by praising their wisdom: "I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of--of cases, supportive of capital punishment. When you have committed heinous crimes against our citizens--and it's a state-by-state issue, but in the state of Texas, our citizens have made that decision, and they made it clear, and they don't want you to commit those crimes against our citizens. And if you do, you will face the ultimate justice."
“Brian Williams was far from alone in being vexed by the audience's applause. "That crowd cheering for all of Rick Perry's executions was truly creepy," tweeted Glenn Greenwald, an expert on creepiness. "Any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join," wrote the excitable Andrew Sullivan. "This is the crowd that believes in torture and executions." (Sullivan is hallucinating again. No jurisdiction in America employs torture as a criminal penalty.)”
It is an issue that also divides conservative and liberal voters, so well captured by this article in the Wall Street Journal.
An excerpt.
“Perhaps the most striking statement at last night's Republican presidential debate came not from Rick Perry or Mitt Romney but from the audience, which applauded the preface of one of moderator Brian Williams’ questions. Here's how it looked in the transcript:
“Williams: Governor Perry, a question about Texas. Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. Have you . . .
(APPLAUSE)
“Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?
“Perry answered: "No sir," pointed out that death-row convicts are entitled to extensive appeals, and crisply declared: "In the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice."
“Williams then asked Perry to explain the audience's reaction to Williams’ question:
"What do you make of that dynamic that just happened here, the mention of the execution of 234 people drew applause?"
“Although Williams surely did not intend it as such, this question was a gift for Perry, who got to reiterate his position while flattering voters by praising their wisdom: "I think Americans understand justice. I think Americans are clearly, in the vast majority of--of cases, supportive of capital punishment. When you have committed heinous crimes against our citizens--and it's a state-by-state issue, but in the state of Texas, our citizens have made that decision, and they made it clear, and they don't want you to commit those crimes against our citizens. And if you do, you will face the ultimate justice."
“Brian Williams was far from alone in being vexed by the audience's applause. "That crowd cheering for all of Rick Perry's executions was truly creepy," tweeted Glenn Greenwald, an expert on creepiness. "Any crowd that instantly cheers the execution of 234 individuals is a crowd I want to flee, not join," wrote the excitable Andrew Sullivan. "This is the crowd that believes in torture and executions." (Sullivan is hallucinating again. No jurisdiction in America employs torture as a criminal penalty.)”
Monday, August 1, 2011
Human Behavior is a Mystery
A good article from the Wall Street Journal about the futility of the scientific pursuit of knowing why humans act the way they do.
An excerpt.
“Theodore Dalrymple worked as a prison doctor and psychiatrist in Britain for 15 years. He's known serial killers, petty thieves and everything in between. As he puts it, with a mischievous grin, "I've probably spent more time in prison than the average murderer."
“It's a beautiful summer day in the south of France, and Dr. Dalrymple is holding forth on what we can—and can't—know about the mind of a mass murderer like the Oslo shooter, Anders Behring Breivik. "I don't think we'll ever understand" what makes a person capable of this kind of premeditated murder, Dr. Dalrymple tells me over lunch. What's more, he says, "we don't even know what it is to understand. At what point do you say, 'Aha! Now I understand!'" he asks.
“Dr. Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, author of more than a dozen books of scathing social commentary on everything from crime to travel to, most recently, what he calls "the toxic cult of sentimentality" in modern society. In his writing and in conversation, he returns frequently to the criminals he's known and treated.
“Your garden-variety convicts, he contends, are much simpler subjects than a man like Breivik. To ask them why they steal, he says, "is like asking you why you have lunch." They want something, so they take it. "And since in Britain," he adds with a smirk, "the state does very little to discourage [thieves]," or to incarcerate them when they are caught, "the question is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few."
“A Breivik is a deeper mystery. Of him, "you can say, 'This man is highly narcissistic, paranoid and grandiose,'" and this may lead you to seek reasons for that in his past—"his father disappeared at the age of 15 and so on and so forth." But uncovering such facts doesn't solve the mystery because "whatever you find, you would also find among hundreds or thousands or even millions of people who didn't do what he did." There is, he says, "always a gap between what is to be explained and your alleged explanation. So there's always a mystery, and I think that's going to remain."
“Even so, we find irresistible the urge to understand an atrocity like Breivik's, even as we are repulsed by it. When asked whether we hope thereby to understand something about ourselves, the former prison doctor offers an arch denial: "Well, he doesn't tell me much about me." And then, with a morbid chuckle and wary look—"I can't say for you," before adding: "I suppose the only thing one can say is that he tells us about the range of human possibility. But we knew that already."
“The human impulse to explain the inexplicably horrific is revealing, according to Dr. Dalrymple, in two respects—one personal, one political. First, it says something about us that we feel compelled to explain evil in a way that we don't feel about people's good actions. The discrepancy arises, he says, "because [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has triumphed," by which he means that "we believe ourselves to be good, and that evil, or bad, is the deviation from what is natural."
“For most of human history, the prevailing view was different. Our intrinsic nature was something to be overcome, restrained and civilized. But Rousseau's view, famously, was that society corrupted man's pristine nature. This is not only wrong, Dr. Dalrymple argues, but it has had profound and baleful effects on society and our attitude toward crime and punishment. For one thing, it has alienated us from responsibility for our own actions. For another, it has reduced our willingness to hold others responsible for theirs.”
An excerpt.
“Theodore Dalrymple worked as a prison doctor and psychiatrist in Britain for 15 years. He's known serial killers, petty thieves and everything in between. As he puts it, with a mischievous grin, "I've probably spent more time in prison than the average murderer."
“It's a beautiful summer day in the south of France, and Dr. Dalrymple is holding forth on what we can—and can't—know about the mind of a mass murderer like the Oslo shooter, Anders Behring Breivik. "I don't think we'll ever understand" what makes a person capable of this kind of premeditated murder, Dr. Dalrymple tells me over lunch. What's more, he says, "we don't even know what it is to understand. At what point do you say, 'Aha! Now I understand!'" he asks.
“Dr. Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, author of more than a dozen books of scathing social commentary on everything from crime to travel to, most recently, what he calls "the toxic cult of sentimentality" in modern society. In his writing and in conversation, he returns frequently to the criminals he's known and treated.
“Your garden-variety convicts, he contends, are much simpler subjects than a man like Breivik. To ask them why they steal, he says, "is like asking you why you have lunch." They want something, so they take it. "And since in Britain," he adds with a smirk, "the state does very little to discourage [thieves]," or to incarcerate them when they are caught, "the question is not why there are so many burglars, but why there are so few."
“A Breivik is a deeper mystery. Of him, "you can say, 'This man is highly narcissistic, paranoid and grandiose,'" and this may lead you to seek reasons for that in his past—"his father disappeared at the age of 15 and so on and so forth." But uncovering such facts doesn't solve the mystery because "whatever you find, you would also find among hundreds or thousands or even millions of people who didn't do what he did." There is, he says, "always a gap between what is to be explained and your alleged explanation. So there's always a mystery, and I think that's going to remain."
“Even so, we find irresistible the urge to understand an atrocity like Breivik's, even as we are repulsed by it. When asked whether we hope thereby to understand something about ourselves, the former prison doctor offers an arch denial: "Well, he doesn't tell me much about me." And then, with a morbid chuckle and wary look—"I can't say for you," before adding: "I suppose the only thing one can say is that he tells us about the range of human possibility. But we knew that already."
“The human impulse to explain the inexplicably horrific is revealing, according to Dr. Dalrymple, in two respects—one personal, one political. First, it says something about us that we feel compelled to explain evil in a way that we don't feel about people's good actions. The discrepancy arises, he says, "because [Jean-Jacques] Rousseau has triumphed," by which he means that "we believe ourselves to be good, and that evil, or bad, is the deviation from what is natural."
“For most of human history, the prevailing view was different. Our intrinsic nature was something to be overcome, restrained and civilized. But Rousseau's view, famously, was that society corrupted man's pristine nature. This is not only wrong, Dr. Dalrymple argues, but it has had profound and baleful effects on society and our attitude toward crime and punishment. For one thing, it has alienated us from responsibility for our own actions. For another, it has reduced our willingness to hold others responsible for theirs.”
Friday, July 22, 2011
Prison Success & Rehabilitation Failure
Imprisonment is the only documented response to crime that actually reduces crime across the board, as noted by Conklin …”13 to 54 per cent of the decline in crime rates in the 1990’s was due to growth of the prison population…” John E. Conklin (2003). Why Crime Rates Fell. New York: Pearson Education, Inc. (p. 95).
Piehl & Useem wrote…”Crime rates did fall, due in part to the expanded use of prisons.” Anne Morrison Piehl & Bert Useem (2011). Prisons, in Crime & Public Policy, Edited by James Q. Wilson & Joan Petersilia, New York: Oxford University Press, (p.551).
Rehabilitation programs are a failure virtually across the board (with the exception of a slight success shown by cognitive behavioral efforts) and if the public was clearly informed of this by public leadership, the polls would show a different result than that reported by the Los Angeles Times.
An excerpt.
“Cash-strapped Californians would rather ease "third-strike" penalties for some criminals and accept felons as neighbors than dig deeper into their pockets to relieve prison overcrowding, a new poll shows.
“In the wake of a court order that the state move more than 33,000 inmates out of its packed prisons, an overwhelming number of voters oppose higher taxes — as well as cuts in key state services — to pay for more lockup space.
“The survey, by The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, shows a clear shift in attitude by residents forced to confront the cost of tough sentencing laws passed in recent decades.
“The poll canvassed 1,507 registered California voters between July 6 and July 17, about six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier court order requiring the inmate numbers to be cut. It was conducted by two firms in the Washington, D.C., area: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic firm, and American Viewpoint, a Republican firm. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.52 percentage points.
“The ailing economy far outweighs crime as the top concern for most people today, the pollsters said. That, along with the court order, could help explain voters' new receptivity to changes long sought by prisoner-rights advocates:
“— More than 60% of respondents, including majorities among Democrats, Republicans and those who declined to state a party preference, said they would support reducing life sentences for third strike offenders convicted of property crimes such as burglary, auto theft and shoplifting.
“— Nearly 70% said they would sanction the early release of some low-level offenders whose crimes did not involve violence.
“— About 80% said they approve of keeping low-level, nonviolent offenders in county custody — including jails, home detention or parole — instead of sending them to state prisons. The same percentage favors paroling inmates who are paralyzed, in comas or so debilitated by advanced disease that they no longer pose a threat to public safety.”
Piehl & Useem wrote…”Crime rates did fall, due in part to the expanded use of prisons.” Anne Morrison Piehl & Bert Useem (2011). Prisons, in Crime & Public Policy, Edited by James Q. Wilson & Joan Petersilia, New York: Oxford University Press, (p.551).
Rehabilitation programs are a failure virtually across the board (with the exception of a slight success shown by cognitive behavioral efforts) and if the public was clearly informed of this by public leadership, the polls would show a different result than that reported by the Los Angeles Times.
An excerpt.
“Cash-strapped Californians would rather ease "third-strike" penalties for some criminals and accept felons as neighbors than dig deeper into their pockets to relieve prison overcrowding, a new poll shows.
“In the wake of a court order that the state move more than 33,000 inmates out of its packed prisons, an overwhelming number of voters oppose higher taxes — as well as cuts in key state services — to pay for more lockup space.
“The survey, by The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, shows a clear shift in attitude by residents forced to confront the cost of tough sentencing laws passed in recent decades.
“The poll canvassed 1,507 registered California voters between July 6 and July 17, about six weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an earlier court order requiring the inmate numbers to be cut. It was conducted by two firms in the Washington, D.C., area: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic firm, and American Viewpoint, a Republican firm. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 2.52 percentage points.
“The ailing economy far outweighs crime as the top concern for most people today, the pollsters said. That, along with the court order, could help explain voters' new receptivity to changes long sought by prisoner-rights advocates:
“— More than 60% of respondents, including majorities among Democrats, Republicans and those who declined to state a party preference, said they would support reducing life sentences for third strike offenders convicted of property crimes such as burglary, auto theft and shoplifting.
“— Nearly 70% said they would sanction the early release of some low-level offenders whose crimes did not involve violence.
“— About 80% said they approve of keeping low-level, nonviolent offenders in county custody — including jails, home detention or parole — instead of sending them to state prisons. The same percentage favors paroling inmates who are paralyzed, in comas or so debilitated by advanced disease that they no longer pose a threat to public safety.”
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Capital Punishment for Rape
Our organization believes this to be an appropriate sanction, see our fourth guiding criminal justice principle.
The Supreme Court recently disagreed, and an article in the Washington Post, by Charles Lane—whose book on capital punishment was commented on in a previous post—speculates on that decision after reading Jaycee Lee Dugard’s book.
An excerpt from the Post article.
“A Stolen Life , Jaycee Lee Dugard’s harrowing memoir of sexual torture and confinement at the hands of Phillip Garrido, has hit the top of Amazon’s best-seller list. I read it, astonished at her courage and her eloquence — and disgusted at the crimes Garrido, on parole for a previous rape, committed against Dugard for years, starting when she was 11.
“I also wondered how history might have been different if Dugard had escaped from her 18-year hell before the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, instead of a year after it. This was the case in which the court voted 5-4 to ban the death penalty for raping a child. No future Phillip Garrido need ever fear execution, though many who read Dugard’s book will agree with me that he would richly deserve it.
“At the time, the majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy struck me as a mixed salad of moralizing and debatable assertions. Post-Dugard, it’s even less persuasive.
“In previous cases, the Supreme Court banned certain applications of capital punishment partly because a large majority of states had abandoned them, suggesting a “national consensus.” For example, when the court struck down the death penalty for the rape of an adult in 1977 it cited the fact that only Georgia still allowed it.
“In Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Kennedy (no relation, obviously) claimed a “national consensus” against the death penalty for raping a child, because only six states allowed it. But they were all post-1995 statutes; under the court’s precedents, the one-way direction of the recent trend argued for their constitutionality.”
The Supreme Court recently disagreed, and an article in the Washington Post, by Charles Lane—whose book on capital punishment was commented on in a previous post—speculates on that decision after reading Jaycee Lee Dugard’s book.
An excerpt from the Post article.
“A Stolen Life , Jaycee Lee Dugard’s harrowing memoir of sexual torture and confinement at the hands of Phillip Garrido, has hit the top of Amazon’s best-seller list. I read it, astonished at her courage and her eloquence — and disgusted at the crimes Garrido, on parole for a previous rape, committed against Dugard for years, starting when she was 11.
“I also wondered how history might have been different if Dugard had escaped from her 18-year hell before the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana, instead of a year after it. This was the case in which the court voted 5-4 to ban the death penalty for raping a child. No future Phillip Garrido need ever fear execution, though many who read Dugard’s book will agree with me that he would richly deserve it.
“At the time, the majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy struck me as a mixed salad of moralizing and debatable assertions. Post-Dugard, it’s even less persuasive.
“In previous cases, the Supreme Court banned certain applications of capital punishment partly because a large majority of states had abandoned them, suggesting a “national consensus.” For example, when the court struck down the death penalty for the rape of an adult in 1977 it cited the fact that only Georgia still allowed it.
“In Kennedy v. Louisiana, Justice Kennedy (no relation, obviously) claimed a “national consensus” against the death penalty for raping a child, because only six states allowed it. But they were all post-1995 statutes; under the court’s precedents, the one-way direction of the recent trend argued for their constitutionality.”
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Daily Practice & Latin Mass
A little over three years ago—June 9, 2008—I began a regime of daily mass, praying the rosary, and other daily devotions that have greatly strengthened my internal life and during that time I have attended daily mass at our home parish, very close to home, and another parish a bit further away.
Both were joys to attend, but my heart was yearning for the Latin Mass I had been attending on Sundays prior to beginning the daily practice in 2008, which I had hoped to see begin at either parish after Pope Benedicts opening up of it, as the local parish offering it daily—which we had been attending on Sundays—was a substantial drive away for daily use.
However, as we approach yet another changing of the missal in November, I have embraced the extra drive to fulfill my heart with the beauty and solemnity of the Latin Mass, encouraged to do so after rereading Romano Amerio, the great Swiss scholar of the Catholic Church, from his seminal book, Iota Unum, concerning the change resulting from Vatican II, that of the orientation of the mass.
An excerpt.
“An altar facing the congregation presents serious difficulties. If, as often happens, it stands in front of the tabernacle, then the celebrant most unbecomingly turns his back on the Blessed Sacrament in order to face the people. This arrangement recalls the “abomination” deplored in Ezekiel 8:16 [And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord; and behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshipping the sun toward the east.] where the priests sacrifice with their backs turned to the Sancta Sanctorum, the Holy of Holies. The unsuitability of this arrangement is all the more obvious when one considers that under the Old Law the Sancta Sanctorum was merely a prefigurations of what was to come, whereas in a Catholic church we are dealing with the Sanctissimum; the Holy One Himself. Again, it should be remembered that pulpits were built at the side of the nave so the preacher would not have to turn his back on the host, and during the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, if there was to be a sermon, the host and monstrance were veiled, as it was held to be irreverent even to be in sight of the Sacrament without directing one’s attention to it.
“But apart from questions of reverence to the Blessed Sacrament, the celebration of Mass facing the congregation has specific difficulties of its own. The spaces in which we move have an emotional and symbolic significance; common space, within which all material bodies exist, is divided not only by physical objects but by non-physical meanings that are the basis of symbolism, which in its turn provides the intelligible face of the sacred. For example, forwards means hope, and backwards means something suspect; the right is favorable, the left unfortunate; high signifies divine, low signifies evil; straight is truth, oblique is uncertainty, etc. Thus in the liturgy too, the placing and arrangement of persons and things has an underlying meaning that either does or does not conform to the sacred realities involved. For the priest to turn his face to the people and the people to face the priest during the most sacred parts of the ceremony expresses a completely different ethos from that which prevailed when they both faced the same way. This face to face celebration breaks the symbolic unanimity of the whole assembly. As Mass was usually celebrated in the pre-conciliar period, priest and people were all of them turned towards a God who is symbolically before and above them all. These positions reflect a hierarchical arrangement and a theocentric orientation; they look God-ward. In the new “back-front” Mass, both people and priest are turned towards man, in an anthropocentric arrangement. The united sense of the Church is spoiled, because the God towards whom the people are turned stands, as it were, in the opposite place to the God whom the priest is facing. The priest’s right also becomes the people’s left. The celebrant stands before a God on whom the people turn their back, and vice versa. Of course one can ignore this arrangement of persons and concentrate instead on the host upon the altar, but it is nonetheless natural for human piety to proceed figuratively and to think of people in symbolic places. As I have said then, the united sense of the Church is spoiled by face to face celebration, because the Church’s sense of worship depends on a united looking towards God, and not upon its members contemplating one another. The Church is reduced to a closed community of human beings, when by nature it is really a community directed outwards beyond itself, towards a single transcendent point.”
Romano Amerio. (1996). Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century. Kansas City: Sarto House. (pp. 646-647).
Both were joys to attend, but my heart was yearning for the Latin Mass I had been attending on Sundays prior to beginning the daily practice in 2008, which I had hoped to see begin at either parish after Pope Benedicts opening up of it, as the local parish offering it daily—which we had been attending on Sundays—was a substantial drive away for daily use.
However, as we approach yet another changing of the missal in November, I have embraced the extra drive to fulfill my heart with the beauty and solemnity of the Latin Mass, encouraged to do so after rereading Romano Amerio, the great Swiss scholar of the Catholic Church, from his seminal book, Iota Unum, concerning the change resulting from Vatican II, that of the orientation of the mass.
An excerpt.
“An altar facing the congregation presents serious difficulties. If, as often happens, it stands in front of the tabernacle, then the celebrant most unbecomingly turns his back on the Blessed Sacrament in order to face the people. This arrangement recalls the “abomination” deplored in Ezekiel 8:16 [And he brought me into the inner court of the house of the Lord; and behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men, with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshipping the sun toward the east.] where the priests sacrifice with their backs turned to the Sancta Sanctorum, the Holy of Holies. The unsuitability of this arrangement is all the more obvious when one considers that under the Old Law the Sancta Sanctorum was merely a prefigurations of what was to come, whereas in a Catholic church we are dealing with the Sanctissimum; the Holy One Himself. Again, it should be remembered that pulpits were built at the side of the nave so the preacher would not have to turn his back on the host, and during the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, if there was to be a sermon, the host and monstrance were veiled, as it was held to be irreverent even to be in sight of the Sacrament without directing one’s attention to it.
“But apart from questions of reverence to the Blessed Sacrament, the celebration of Mass facing the congregation has specific difficulties of its own. The spaces in which we move have an emotional and symbolic significance; common space, within which all material bodies exist, is divided not only by physical objects but by non-physical meanings that are the basis of symbolism, which in its turn provides the intelligible face of the sacred. For example, forwards means hope, and backwards means something suspect; the right is favorable, the left unfortunate; high signifies divine, low signifies evil; straight is truth, oblique is uncertainty, etc. Thus in the liturgy too, the placing and arrangement of persons and things has an underlying meaning that either does or does not conform to the sacred realities involved. For the priest to turn his face to the people and the people to face the priest during the most sacred parts of the ceremony expresses a completely different ethos from that which prevailed when they both faced the same way. This face to face celebration breaks the symbolic unanimity of the whole assembly. As Mass was usually celebrated in the pre-conciliar period, priest and people were all of them turned towards a God who is symbolically before and above them all. These positions reflect a hierarchical arrangement and a theocentric orientation; they look God-ward. In the new “back-front” Mass, both people and priest are turned towards man, in an anthropocentric arrangement. The united sense of the Church is spoiled, because the God towards whom the people are turned stands, as it were, in the opposite place to the God whom the priest is facing. The priest’s right also becomes the people’s left. The celebrant stands before a God on whom the people turn their back, and vice versa. Of course one can ignore this arrangement of persons and concentrate instead on the host upon the altar, but it is nonetheless natural for human piety to proceed figuratively and to think of people in symbolic places. As I have said then, the united sense of the Church is spoiled by face to face celebration, because the Church’s sense of worship depends on a united looking towards God, and not upon its members contemplating one another. The Church is reduced to a closed community of human beings, when by nature it is really a community directed outwards beyond itself, towards a single transcendent point.”
Romano Amerio. (1996). Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the XXth Century. Kansas City: Sarto House. (pp. 646-647).
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Criminal Justice Reform?
It is billed as that, as this article from the San Diego News about sending more criminals to local jurisdictions rather than to state prison, and this one from the San Francisco Chronicle about changing the three-strikes sentencing; as well as this older effort to abolish capital punishment by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and all indicate a moving away from incapacitation as a criminal deterrent.
A criminal in prison won’t be harming the innocent directly—though if he can get access to a cell phone he can indirectly—and capital punishment removes the particularly horrible criminals from their earthly life and the possibility they may repeat their horrors, as well as providing the deep stimulus facing death can have on seeking redemption.
Unfortunately, too many policy makers—even among Catholic leadership—seem driven by a certain cloudiness of mind, leading them to adopt a pacifistic approach to evil, which renders it supremacy on the ground; rather that a vigorous response to evil, which can render it impotent.
A criminal in prison won’t be harming the innocent directly—though if he can get access to a cell phone he can indirectly—and capital punishment removes the particularly horrible criminals from their earthly life and the possibility they may repeat their horrors, as well as providing the deep stimulus facing death can have on seeking redemption.
Unfortunately, too many policy makers—even among Catholic leadership—seem driven by a certain cloudiness of mind, leading them to adopt a pacifistic approach to evil, which renders it supremacy on the ground; rather that a vigorous response to evil, which can render it impotent.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Capital Punishment Support
The fourth guiding criminal justice principle of the Lampstand Foundation is:
4) Capital punishment is an appropriate response to the criminal evil of murder, rape, and pedophilia.
Capital punishment is often the only effective social method available to protect the innocent and applied with dispatch after legal review of the crimes charged and determining the fitness of its application, should be considered an appropriate sentence for murderers, rapists, and pedophiles; who, knowing the time of their death, are able, with certainty of their remaining time to do so, seek God's forgiveness.
From the Vatican Catechism (2007):
"2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor."
Lane (2010) notes: "During the decade beginning in 1997, five states enacted the death penalty for rape of a child--though the Supreme Court struck those laws down in 2008." Lane, C. (2010). Stay of execution: Saving the death penalty from itself. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. (p. 66)
The Lampstand article, Capital Punishment and the Constancy of Catholic Social Teaching, is available at Social Justice Review.
A recent survey by Rasmussen Reports finds high support from the American public for capital punishment.
An excerpt, with links at the jump.
“Support for the death penalty remains high, and adults are a bit more confident that capital punishment helps deter crime than they were a year ago.
"The latest Rasmussen Reports national survey shows that 63% of American Adults favor the death penalty, while 25% oppose it. Another 12% are undecided.
“The number of adults who support the death penalty is virtually identical to surveys conducted last June and in November 2009.
“Forty-seven percent (47%) of adults believe the death penalty helps deter crime, but 39% disagree. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure. Still, Americans are more confident that the death penalty helps deter crime than they were last June, when they were evenly divided on the question. The latest results are similar to those found in late 2009.
“The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on June 25-26, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.”
4) Capital punishment is an appropriate response to the criminal evil of murder, rape, and pedophilia.
Capital punishment is often the only effective social method available to protect the innocent and applied with dispatch after legal review of the crimes charged and determining the fitness of its application, should be considered an appropriate sentence for murderers, rapists, and pedophiles; who, knowing the time of their death, are able, with certainty of their remaining time to do so, seek God's forgiveness.
From the Vatican Catechism (2007):
"2267 The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude, presupposing full ascertainment of the identity and responsibility of the offender, recourse to the death penalty, when this is the only practicable way to defend the lives of human beings effectively against the aggressor."
Lane (2010) notes: "During the decade beginning in 1997, five states enacted the death penalty for rape of a child--though the Supreme Court struck those laws down in 2008." Lane, C. (2010). Stay of execution: Saving the death penalty from itself. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. (p. 66)
The Lampstand article, Capital Punishment and the Constancy of Catholic Social Teaching, is available at Social Justice Review.
A recent survey by Rasmussen Reports finds high support from the American public for capital punishment.
An excerpt, with links at the jump.
“Support for the death penalty remains high, and adults are a bit more confident that capital punishment helps deter crime than they were a year ago.
"The latest Rasmussen Reports national survey shows that 63% of American Adults favor the death penalty, while 25% oppose it. Another 12% are undecided.
“The number of adults who support the death penalty is virtually identical to surveys conducted last June and in November 2009.
“Forty-seven percent (47%) of adults believe the death penalty helps deter crime, but 39% disagree. Fourteen percent (14%) are not sure. Still, Americans are more confident that the death penalty helps deter crime than they were last June, when they were evenly divided on the question. The latest results are similar to those found in late 2009.
“The survey of 1,000 Adults was conducted on June 25-26, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.”
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Magic Genetic Bullet
Physiological causes of crime have been an object of search for a long time, and every criminal justice student will remember the Lombroso approach.
The belief of this apostolate, based on the teachings of the Catholic Church, is that criminals largely choose to become criminal and though certain social and psychological situations can play a role—though many others in the same situation will choose not to become criminals—it is largely a matter of individual choice as the Catechism teaches:
"Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:
-by partcipating directly and voluntarily in them;
-by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;
-by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;
-by protecting evil-doers.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1868).
But the search continues for the magic bullet, as this article from the New York Times remarks.
An excerpt.
“It was less than 20 years ago that the National Institutes of Health abruptly withdrew funds for a conference on genetics and crime after outraged complaints that the idea smacked of eugenics. The president of the Association of Black Psychologists at the time declared that such research was in itself “a blatant form of stereotyping and racism.”
“The tainted history of using biology to explain criminal behavior has pushed criminologists to reject or ignore genetics and concentrate on social causes: miserable poverty, corrosive addictions, guns. Now that the human genome has been sequenced, and scientists are studying the genetics of areas as varied as alcoholism and party affiliation, criminologists are cautiously returning to the subject. A small cadre of experts is exploring how genes might heighten the risk of committing a crime and whether such a trait can be inherited.
“The turnabout will be evident on Monday at the annual National Institute of Justice conference in Arlington, Va. On the opening day criminologists from around the country can attend a panel on creating databases for information about DNA and “new genetic markers” that forensic scientists are discovering.
“Throughout the past 30 or 40 years most criminologists couldn’t say the word ‘genetics’ without spitting,” Terrie E. Moffitt, a behavioral scientist at Duke University, said. “Today the most compelling modern theories of crime and violence weave social and biological themes together.”
“Researchers estimate that at least 100 studies have shown that genes play a role in crimes. “Very good methodological advances have meant that a wide range of genetic work is being done,” said John H. Laub, the director of the justice institute, who won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology last week. He and others take pains to emphasize, however, that genes are ruled by the environment, which can either mute or aggravate violent impulses. Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals.
“The subject still raises thorny ethical and policy questions. Should a genetic predisposition influence sentencing? Could genetic tests be used to tailor rehabilitation programs to individual criminals? Should adults or children with a biological marker for violence be identified?
“Everyone in the field agrees there is no “crime gene.” What most researchers are looking for are inherited traits that are linked to aggression and antisocial behaviors, which may in turn lead to violent crime. Don’t expect anyone to discover how someone’s DNA might identify the next Bernard L. Madoff.”
The belief of this apostolate, based on the teachings of the Catholic Church, is that criminals largely choose to become criminal and though certain social and psychological situations can play a role—though many others in the same situation will choose not to become criminals—it is largely a matter of individual choice as the Catechism teaches:
"Sin is a personal act. Moreover, we have a responsibility for the sins committed by others when we cooperate in them:
-by partcipating directly and voluntarily in them;
-by ordering, advising, praising, or approving them;
-by not disclosing or not hindering them when we have an obligation to do so;
-by protecting evil-doers.
Catechism of the Catholic Church (#1868).
But the search continues for the magic bullet, as this article from the New York Times remarks.
An excerpt.
“It was less than 20 years ago that the National Institutes of Health abruptly withdrew funds for a conference on genetics and crime after outraged complaints that the idea smacked of eugenics. The president of the Association of Black Psychologists at the time declared that such research was in itself “a blatant form of stereotyping and racism.”
“The tainted history of using biology to explain criminal behavior has pushed criminologists to reject or ignore genetics and concentrate on social causes: miserable poverty, corrosive addictions, guns. Now that the human genome has been sequenced, and scientists are studying the genetics of areas as varied as alcoholism and party affiliation, criminologists are cautiously returning to the subject. A small cadre of experts is exploring how genes might heighten the risk of committing a crime and whether such a trait can be inherited.
“The turnabout will be evident on Monday at the annual National Institute of Justice conference in Arlington, Va. On the opening day criminologists from around the country can attend a panel on creating databases for information about DNA and “new genetic markers” that forensic scientists are discovering.
“Throughout the past 30 or 40 years most criminologists couldn’t say the word ‘genetics’ without spitting,” Terrie E. Moffitt, a behavioral scientist at Duke University, said. “Today the most compelling modern theories of crime and violence weave social and biological themes together.”
“Researchers estimate that at least 100 studies have shown that genes play a role in crimes. “Very good methodological advances have meant that a wide range of genetic work is being done,” said John H. Laub, the director of the justice institute, who won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology last week. He and others take pains to emphasize, however, that genes are ruled by the environment, which can either mute or aggravate violent impulses. Many people with the same genetic tendency for aggressiveness will never throw a punch, while others without it could be career criminals.
“The subject still raises thorny ethical and policy questions. Should a genetic predisposition influence sentencing? Could genetic tests be used to tailor rehabilitation programs to individual criminals? Should adults or children with a biological marker for violence be identified?
“Everyone in the field agrees there is no “crime gene.” What most researchers are looking for are inherited traits that are linked to aggression and antisocial behaviors, which may in turn lead to violent crime. Don’t expect anyone to discover how someone’s DNA might identify the next Bernard L. Madoff.”
Monday, June 6, 2011
Lower Crime Rates
As we blogged about earlier, crime has dropped, and the cause is clear to the clear eyed—though not to the perplexed criminologists—as this article from James Q. Wilson in the Wall Street Journal notes.
You would think at some point perplexed criminoligists would realize that more criminals in prison means less criminals on the streets.
An excerpt.
“When the FBI announced last week that violent crime in the U.S. had reached a 40-year low in 2010, many criminologists were perplexed. It had been a dismal year economically, and the standard view in the field, echoed for decades by the media, is that unemployment and poverty are strongly linked to crime. The argument is straightforward: When less legal work is available, more illegal "work" takes place.
“The economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate, gave the standard view its classic formulation in the 1960s. He argued that crime is a rational act, committed when the criminal's "expected utility" exceeds that of using his time and other resources in pursuit of alternative activities, such as leisure or legitimate work. Observation may appear to bear this theory out. After all, neighborhoods with elevated crime rates tend to be those where poverty and unemployment are high as well.
“But there have long been difficulties with the notion that unemployment causes crime. For one thing, the 1960s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when crime fell. And during the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25%, the crime rate in many cities went down. Among the explanations offered for this puzzle is that unemployment and poverty were so common during the Great Depression that families became closer, devoted themselves to mutual support, and kept young people, who might be more inclined to criminal behavior, under constant adult supervision. These days, because many families are weaker and children are more independent, we would not see the same effect, so certain criminologists continue to suggest that a 1% increase in the unemployment rate should produce as much as a 2% increase in property-crime rates.
“Yet when the recent recession struck, that didn't happen. As the national unemployment rate doubled from around 5% to nearly 10%, the property-crime rate, far from spiking, fell significantly. For 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported an 8% drop in the nationwide robbery rate and a 17% reduction in the auto-theft rate from the previous year. Big-city reports show the same thing. Between 2008 and 2010, New York City experienced a 4% decline in the robbery rate and a 10% fall in the burglary rate. Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines.
“Some scholars argue that the unemployment rate is too crude a measure of economic frustration to prove the connection between unemployment and crime, since it estimates only the percentage of the labor force that is looking for work and hasn't found it. But other economic indicators tell much the same story. The labor-force participation rate lets us determine the percentage of the labor force that is neither working nor looking for work—individuals who are, in effect, detached from the labor force. These people should be especially vulnerable to criminal inclinations, if the bad-economy-leads-to-crime theory holds. In 2008, though, even as crime was falling, only about half of men aged 16 to 24 (who are disproportionately likely to commit crimes) were in the labor force, down from over two-thirds in 1988, and a comparable decline took place among African-American men (who are also disproportionately likely to commit crimes).
“The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index offers another way to assess the link between the economy and crime. This measure rests on thousands of interviews asking people how their financial situations have changed over the last year, how they think the economy will do during the next year, and about their plans for buying durable goods. The index measures the way people feel, rather than the objective conditions they face. It has proved to be a very good predictor of stock-market behavior and, for a while, of the crime rate, which tended to climb when people lost confidence. When the index collapsed in 2009 and 2010, the stock market predictably went down with it—but this time, the crime rate went down, too.
“So we have little reason to ascribe the recent crime decline to jobs, the labor market or consumer sentiment. The question remains: Why is the crime rate falling?
“One obvious answer is that many more people are in prison than in the past. Experts differ on the size of the effect, but I think that William Spelman and Steven Levitt have it about right in believing that greater incarceration can explain about one-quarter or more of the crime decline. Yes, many thoughtful observers think that we put too many offenders in prison for too long. For some criminals, such as low-level drug dealers and former inmates returned to prison for parole violations, that may be so. But it's true nevertheless that when prisoners are kept off the street, they can attack only one another, not you or your family.”
You would think at some point perplexed criminoligists would realize that more criminals in prison means less criminals on the streets.
An excerpt.
“When the FBI announced last week that violent crime in the U.S. had reached a 40-year low in 2010, many criminologists were perplexed. It had been a dismal year economically, and the standard view in the field, echoed for decades by the media, is that unemployment and poverty are strongly linked to crime. The argument is straightforward: When less legal work is available, more illegal "work" takes place.
“The economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, a Nobel laureate, gave the standard view its classic formulation in the 1960s. He argued that crime is a rational act, committed when the criminal's "expected utility" exceeds that of using his time and other resources in pursuit of alternative activities, such as leisure or legitimate work. Observation may appear to bear this theory out. After all, neighborhoods with elevated crime rates tend to be those where poverty and unemployment are high as well.
“But there have long been difficulties with the notion that unemployment causes crime. For one thing, the 1960s, a period of rising crime, had essentially the same unemployment rate as the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period when crime fell. And during the Great Depression, when unemployment hit 25%, the crime rate in many cities went down. Among the explanations offered for this puzzle is that unemployment and poverty were so common during the Great Depression that families became closer, devoted themselves to mutual support, and kept young people, who might be more inclined to criminal behavior, under constant adult supervision. These days, because many families are weaker and children are more independent, we would not see the same effect, so certain criminologists continue to suggest that a 1% increase in the unemployment rate should produce as much as a 2% increase in property-crime rates.
“Yet when the recent recession struck, that didn't happen. As the national unemployment rate doubled from around 5% to nearly 10%, the property-crime rate, far from spiking, fell significantly. For 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported an 8% drop in the nationwide robbery rate and a 17% reduction in the auto-theft rate from the previous year. Big-city reports show the same thing. Between 2008 and 2010, New York City experienced a 4% decline in the robbery rate and a 10% fall in the burglary rate. Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles witnessed similar declines.
“Some scholars argue that the unemployment rate is too crude a measure of economic frustration to prove the connection between unemployment and crime, since it estimates only the percentage of the labor force that is looking for work and hasn't found it. But other economic indicators tell much the same story. The labor-force participation rate lets us determine the percentage of the labor force that is neither working nor looking for work—individuals who are, in effect, detached from the labor force. These people should be especially vulnerable to criminal inclinations, if the bad-economy-leads-to-crime theory holds. In 2008, though, even as crime was falling, only about half of men aged 16 to 24 (who are disproportionately likely to commit crimes) were in the labor force, down from over two-thirds in 1988, and a comparable decline took place among African-American men (who are also disproportionately likely to commit crimes).
“The University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index offers another way to assess the link between the economy and crime. This measure rests on thousands of interviews asking people how their financial situations have changed over the last year, how they think the economy will do during the next year, and about their plans for buying durable goods. The index measures the way people feel, rather than the objective conditions they face. It has proved to be a very good predictor of stock-market behavior and, for a while, of the crime rate, which tended to climb when people lost confidence. When the index collapsed in 2009 and 2010, the stock market predictably went down with it—but this time, the crime rate went down, too.
“So we have little reason to ascribe the recent crime decline to jobs, the labor market or consumer sentiment. The question remains: Why is the crime rate falling?
“One obvious answer is that many more people are in prison than in the past. Experts differ on the size of the effect, but I think that William Spelman and Steven Levitt have it about right in believing that greater incarceration can explain about one-quarter or more of the crime decline. Yes, many thoughtful observers think that we put too many offenders in prison for too long. For some criminals, such as low-level drug dealers and former inmates returned to prison for parole violations, that may be so. But it's true nevertheless that when prisoners are kept off the street, they can attack only one another, not you or your family.”
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Continuing the Destructive Narrative
For decades, academics and many criminal justice practitioners have been proclaiming that the key to rehabilitation for reentering prisoners is to provide services like mentoring, job training, substance abuse, drug counseling, and transition housing.
However, years of evaluations show that these service-based programs are failures, often to the point of actually making the problem worse, as we have noted.
The only vigorously evaluated programs that have shown some success are cognitive behavioral efforts, those working to encourage an internal change within criminals.
Unfortunately, this new effort being broadcast for California is sticking with what doesn’t work, and, according to this report in the San Diego Union-Tribune, isn’t using what does.
An excerpt.
“More than 160,000 inmates are serving time in California prisons. Two-thirds of released state prisoners return to prison within three years – contributing to the high cost of incarceration. Our state currently spends nearly $9 billion annually on corrections.
“To help California close this revolving door, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has created a partnership with Prison Fellowship, which reaches out to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, to strengthen rehabilitation services. Next week, we are inaugurating Out4Life California, a statewide effort to bring together businesses, nonprofit organizations, churches and other community groups. Our goal is to form local coalitions to help returning offenders make a successful transition back to the community by providing training, mentoring and other services.
“Ninety-five percent of California inmates will eventually be released and become our neighbors. More than 10,000 offenders a month are released from overcrowded state prisons and return back to our local communities. At a time when the government cannot afford to expand programs to prepare prisoners for release, community and faith-based groups should be called on to help provide needed services at no additional cost to the taxpayers.
“Most corrections experts agree that a successful prisoner re-entry strategy must include a variety of components, including hands-on community supervision, access to substance abuse treatment, educational programs, and job training and placement. We are seeking coalition members who are willing to help released prisoners in communities across California by providing:
• Mentoring, to provide a strong support structure during the critical first six to 12 months after release.
• Job training and assistance in finding steady jobs.
• Substance abuse treatment services.
• Mental health services.
• Transitional housing.
• Help for the children of ex-prisoners, who face unique challenges at home, in school and in all aspects of their lives.”
However, years of evaluations show that these service-based programs are failures, often to the point of actually making the problem worse, as we have noted.
The only vigorously evaluated programs that have shown some success are cognitive behavioral efforts, those working to encourage an internal change within criminals.
Unfortunately, this new effort being broadcast for California is sticking with what doesn’t work, and, according to this report in the San Diego Union-Tribune, isn’t using what does.
An excerpt.
“More than 160,000 inmates are serving time in California prisons. Two-thirds of released state prisoners return to prison within three years – contributing to the high cost of incarceration. Our state currently spends nearly $9 billion annually on corrections.
“To help California close this revolving door, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has created a partnership with Prison Fellowship, which reaches out to prisoners, ex-prisoners and their families, to strengthen rehabilitation services. Next week, we are inaugurating Out4Life California, a statewide effort to bring together businesses, nonprofit organizations, churches and other community groups. Our goal is to form local coalitions to help returning offenders make a successful transition back to the community by providing training, mentoring and other services.
“Ninety-five percent of California inmates will eventually be released and become our neighbors. More than 10,000 offenders a month are released from overcrowded state prisons and return back to our local communities. At a time when the government cannot afford to expand programs to prepare prisoners for release, community and faith-based groups should be called on to help provide needed services at no additional cost to the taxpayers.
“Most corrections experts agree that a successful prisoner re-entry strategy must include a variety of components, including hands-on community supervision, access to substance abuse treatment, educational programs, and job training and placement. We are seeking coalition members who are willing to help released prisoners in communities across California by providing:
• Mentoring, to provide a strong support structure during the critical first six to 12 months after release.
• Job training and assistance in finding steady jobs.
• Substance abuse treatment services.
• Mental health services.
• Transitional housing.
• Help for the children of ex-prisoners, who face unique challenges at home, in school and in all aspects of their lives.”
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Professional Criminals are Smart
As this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports, but some, of course, are not; but I continue to be perplexed by the reality that most of the reentry programs being foisted on funding sources operate on the assumption that all criminals are not smart, one of reasons the programs have a pronounced record of failure, noted earlier on our blog.
An excerpt from the Atlanta Journal Constitution article.
“NEWARK, N.J. — The package surprised even veteran law enforcement officials used to seeing all kinds of contraband smuggled into prisons: It was a child's coloring book, dedicated "to daddy" and mailed to a New Jersey inmate, with crayon-colored scribbling made from a paste containing drugs.
“The discovery of the book last month prompted the Cape May County sheriff to warn others in law enforcement that smuggling techniques were reaching new levels.
“In Pennsylvania last month, prosecutors disrupted a prescription drug smuggling ring that was mailing narcotics into prisons concealed under postage stamps.
“And in Clifton, N.J., police once uncovered a drug-smuggling operation under the guise of an importer bringing fresh flowers from South America in cardboard boxes that, when shredded and mixed with a solution, dissolved into liquid heroin.
“Experts say even as surveillance equipment, airport scanning technology and cargo X-rays modernize, drug-smuggling techniques are keeping pace.
"It's a question of building a better mousetrap," said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Corrections Department. "Somebody's going to always try and think of a new way."
“It's been more than a decade since sending food to prisoners was prohibited, but today, drugs, weapons and cell phones still find their way behind bars, according to Fedkenheuer. New Jersey's prison system has added dogs trained not only to sniff drugs, but to detect the odor of cell phones as well, which are banned.
“It's not only prison smuggling that gets creative, according to U.S. Customs officials. Smugglers try all sorts of techniques to bring contraband into the country by air, sea and land.
“Smuggling drugs into the U.S. has been going on as long as there's been a market for illegal substances, according to John Saleh, a Customs and Border Protection officer based in New York.
"The drug industry, drug trafficking, is a billion-dollar or trillion-dollar business," Saleh said. "It's a business that makes money, so they're very cunning in their ways of masking something, or smuggling something in so they can make a profit."
“In the past two months alone, inventory confiscated at New York-area airports and ports included opium concealed in porcelain cat figurines, cocaine in bags of freeze-dried coffee, drugs built into the railings of a suitcase, sewn into pants, molded into sneakers, concealed in clothing hangers or packed into the console of a Nintendo Wii video game system.”
An excerpt from the Atlanta Journal Constitution article.
“NEWARK, N.J. — The package surprised even veteran law enforcement officials used to seeing all kinds of contraband smuggled into prisons: It was a child's coloring book, dedicated "to daddy" and mailed to a New Jersey inmate, with crayon-colored scribbling made from a paste containing drugs.
“The discovery of the book last month prompted the Cape May County sheriff to warn others in law enforcement that smuggling techniques were reaching new levels.
“In Pennsylvania last month, prosecutors disrupted a prescription drug smuggling ring that was mailing narcotics into prisons concealed under postage stamps.
“And in Clifton, N.J., police once uncovered a drug-smuggling operation under the guise of an importer bringing fresh flowers from South America in cardboard boxes that, when shredded and mixed with a solution, dissolved into liquid heroin.
“Experts say even as surveillance equipment, airport scanning technology and cargo X-rays modernize, drug-smuggling techniques are keeping pace.
"It's a question of building a better mousetrap," said Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Corrections Department. "Somebody's going to always try and think of a new way."
“It's been more than a decade since sending food to prisoners was prohibited, but today, drugs, weapons and cell phones still find their way behind bars, according to Fedkenheuer. New Jersey's prison system has added dogs trained not only to sniff drugs, but to detect the odor of cell phones as well, which are banned.
“It's not only prison smuggling that gets creative, according to U.S. Customs officials. Smugglers try all sorts of techniques to bring contraband into the country by air, sea and land.
“Smuggling drugs into the U.S. has been going on as long as there's been a market for illegal substances, according to John Saleh, a Customs and Border Protection officer based in New York.
"The drug industry, drug trafficking, is a billion-dollar or trillion-dollar business," Saleh said. "It's a business that makes money, so they're very cunning in their ways of masking something, or smuggling something in so they can make a profit."
“In the past two months alone, inventory confiscated at New York-area airports and ports included opium concealed in porcelain cat figurines, cocaine in bags of freeze-dried coffee, drugs built into the railings of a suitcase, sewn into pants, molded into sneakers, concealed in clothing hangers or packed into the console of a Nintendo Wii video game system.”
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Former Criminal Helps Other Criminals
A nice story from the New York Times about a housing program for released prisoners in New York managed by a former criminal, and part of an organization, The Fortune Society, developed and managed by former criminals.
An excerpt.
“IN a nod to hue, not heft, Chris Carney christened his 600-pound Treadlok safe “the Leprechaun.” It is nearly the same color as the tattoo of a four-leaf clover on the knuckle of the middle finger of his right hand — a tattoo his mother threatened to scrub off with steel wool after he got it as a defiant ninth grader.
“Back in the day,” which is how he refers to his criminal past, Mr. Carney kept guns, drugs and money in the safe. The guns were for protection and ego, souvenirs of a misbegotten boyhood near Boston that included family hunting trips and the drill team at military school. The money was for a Stuyvesant Town apartment, a Corvette, trips to the Caribbean, top-shelf alcohol, gambling and cocaine. He supplemented his salary as a union painter by stealing from drug dealers and bookies, as a sort of low-life Robin Hood. “I guess I was another criminal’s worst nightmare,” Mr. Carney said.
“After nine years in prison, he retrieved the Leprechaun from storage in 2008. Today, it hulks impressively in the corner of his tiny office at Castle Gardens, an environmentally conscious apartment building in Harlem that serves a fallen-between-the-cracks clientele. The safe holds nothing but pristine keys, hundreds of them, one for every door at the $44 million building where Mr. Carney, 41, a multiple offender and multiple substance abuser in his angry-young-man 20s, became the primary caretaker — and first tenant — last summer.
“The reincarnation of the Leprechaun is fitting for Castle Gardens, a place of redemption: more than half of the building’s 114 units are reserved for the formerly incarcerated or the formerly homeless. A project of the Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping ex-convicts re-enter society, Castle Gardens is next to Fortune Academy, a 62-bed halfway house on Riverside Drive for offenders fresh from prison. It got its nickname, “the Castle,” because it resembles one.
“Mr. Carney landed at the Castle within weeks of his release in 2008, and eager to stay out of jail but spurned by the painters’ union, he started mopping floors and cleaning toilets there and at the Fortune Society’s offices in Long Island City, Queens. He moved out of the halfway house, to Jackson Heights, Queens, and then to the South Bronx. He was promoted to superintendent at the Castle. He got off parole. Be it ever so humble, it was a start, and it was legal.
“A year later, Mr. Carney stood among officials at the Castle Gardens dedication ceremony, all of them holding shovels he had spray-painted a festive shade of gold for the occasion. He had been named superintendent of the new building, with a base salary of $33,000 a year, a staff of four and a rent-free two-bedroom apartment.
“If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told the crowd that September day. “But sometimes you need a second chance to get your priorities straight.”
“Mr. Carney saved a few of the shovels; they are in his office, leaning against the Leprechaun.”
An excerpt.
“IN a nod to hue, not heft, Chris Carney christened his 600-pound Treadlok safe “the Leprechaun.” It is nearly the same color as the tattoo of a four-leaf clover on the knuckle of the middle finger of his right hand — a tattoo his mother threatened to scrub off with steel wool after he got it as a defiant ninth grader.
“Back in the day,” which is how he refers to his criminal past, Mr. Carney kept guns, drugs and money in the safe. The guns were for protection and ego, souvenirs of a misbegotten boyhood near Boston that included family hunting trips and the drill team at military school. The money was for a Stuyvesant Town apartment, a Corvette, trips to the Caribbean, top-shelf alcohol, gambling and cocaine. He supplemented his salary as a union painter by stealing from drug dealers and bookies, as a sort of low-life Robin Hood. “I guess I was another criminal’s worst nightmare,” Mr. Carney said.
“After nine years in prison, he retrieved the Leprechaun from storage in 2008. Today, it hulks impressively in the corner of his tiny office at Castle Gardens, an environmentally conscious apartment building in Harlem that serves a fallen-between-the-cracks clientele. The safe holds nothing but pristine keys, hundreds of them, one for every door at the $44 million building where Mr. Carney, 41, a multiple offender and multiple substance abuser in his angry-young-man 20s, became the primary caretaker — and first tenant — last summer.
“The reincarnation of the Leprechaun is fitting for Castle Gardens, a place of redemption: more than half of the building’s 114 units are reserved for the formerly incarcerated or the formerly homeless. A project of the Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization devoted to helping ex-convicts re-enter society, Castle Gardens is next to Fortune Academy, a 62-bed halfway house on Riverside Drive for offenders fresh from prison. It got its nickname, “the Castle,” because it resembles one.
“Mr. Carney landed at the Castle within weeks of his release in 2008, and eager to stay out of jail but spurned by the painters’ union, he started mopping floors and cleaning toilets there and at the Fortune Society’s offices in Long Island City, Queens. He moved out of the halfway house, to Jackson Heights, Queens, and then to the South Bronx. He was promoted to superintendent at the Castle. He got off parole. Be it ever so humble, it was a start, and it was legal.
“A year later, Mr. Carney stood among officials at the Castle Gardens dedication ceremony, all of them holding shovels he had spray-painted a festive shade of gold for the occasion. He had been named superintendent of the new building, with a base salary of $33,000 a year, a staff of four and a rent-free two-bedroom apartment.
“If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told the crowd that September day. “But sometimes you need a second chance to get your priorities straight.”
“Mr. Carney saved a few of the shovels; they are in his office, leaning against the Leprechaun.”
Friday, March 25, 2011
College Education in Prison
While it is a powerful tool of rehabilitation, the case can be made that providing it free when state budgets are shrinking and no one else gets it for free, is not a good idea, as reported by the Austin American-Statesman.
Hopefully, criminal justice/rehabilitative stakeholders in Texas will seek to replace the funds that might be lost with private philanthropy.
An excerpt.
“For the past decade, Texas' imprisoned criminals have been allowed to work on college degrees and take vocational courses while behind bars.
“They're supposed to repay taxpayers once they get out. But of the more than 22,000 felon-students who are out of prison, only 6,630 have repaid the state in full, to the tune of $4.2 million, according to state records.
“The remaining 16,088 ex-convicts owe the state $9.5 million, the records show.
“Over the 10 years the program has been in effect, the state has spent $26.9 million on higher education for inmates, while getting reimbursed only $4.7 million.
“Overseen by the prison system's embattled Windham School District, which legislative leaders last week threatened to whack from the budget to save money, the little program is now the target of a move to shut it down, as well.
"We don't provide free college tuition for anyone else like this, so with the budget crisis we're facing, why should we for convicted felons?" said House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, who said he wants the program eliminated.
"The idea of having anyone paying us back in a program like this is ludicrous. There's no way to collect."
“Despite the criticism, Windham officials say the intent of the program is good: to help convicts advance their knowledge and skills so they will stand a better chance of becoming law-abiding citizens once they leave prison.
"The statistics show more inmates who participate have a lower recidivism rate," said Windham Superintendent Debbie Roberts. "There is an advantage from a program like this.
"We have some inmates who are continuing to send us checks after they get out — not many, but some."
“Under the program, convicts who are within seven years of release, who have a record of good conduct and who meet the entrance requirements for the courses taught by the 17 Texas junior colleges that participate can enroll.”
Hopefully, criminal justice/rehabilitative stakeholders in Texas will seek to replace the funds that might be lost with private philanthropy.
An excerpt.
“For the past decade, Texas' imprisoned criminals have been allowed to work on college degrees and take vocational courses while behind bars.
“They're supposed to repay taxpayers once they get out. But of the more than 22,000 felon-students who are out of prison, only 6,630 have repaid the state in full, to the tune of $4.2 million, according to state records.
“The remaining 16,088 ex-convicts owe the state $9.5 million, the records show.
“Over the 10 years the program has been in effect, the state has spent $26.9 million on higher education for inmates, while getting reimbursed only $4.7 million.
“Overseen by the prison system's embattled Windham School District, which legislative leaders last week threatened to whack from the budget to save money, the little program is now the target of a move to shut it down, as well.
"We don't provide free college tuition for anyone else like this, so with the budget crisis we're facing, why should we for convicted felons?" said House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, who said he wants the program eliminated.
"The idea of having anyone paying us back in a program like this is ludicrous. There's no way to collect."
“Despite the criticism, Windham officials say the intent of the program is good: to help convicts advance their knowledge and skills so they will stand a better chance of becoming law-abiding citizens once they leave prison.
"The statistics show more inmates who participate have a lower recidivism rate," said Windham Superintendent Debbie Roberts. "There is an advantage from a program like this.
"We have some inmates who are continuing to send us checks after they get out — not many, but some."
“Under the program, convicts who are within seven years of release, who have a record of good conduct and who meet the entrance requirements for the courses taught by the 17 Texas junior colleges that participate can enroll.”
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