Showing posts with label Criminal Justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Criminal Justice. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Cops Gone Wild
Thank goodness. As we hashed out quite thoroughly in e-debates past, I am no police-hater. Far from it. But the Philly PD needs to make a strong statement here. This kind of crap just plays into all the nonsense "don't snitch" crap. The PD cannot do its work effectively if it loses its political legitimacy by doing this kind of thing.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Unemployment Adjustments
Take a look at this on the deteriorating U.S. labor market.
Highlights:
If you include the underemployed (those who want full time jobs but can only get part-time work) and people not currently search for a job, the unemployment rate is 8.9%. I'm not sure how our European brethren reflect these concepts in their numbers but it's very possible that our unemployment figures are simply not comparable to other countries' figures, and that our relative labor market situation is not nearly as strong as official unemployment numbers would suggest.
Also, as a former professor of mine noted, we should incorporate the number of people we incarcerate into the unemployment figures. This would noticeably increase our relative unemployment rate, since we are so incarceration-crazed.
The bottom line: Be skeptical when economic right-wingers point to our relatively low unemployment figures as a way of justifying right-wing style capitalism.
Highlights:
If you include the underemployed (those who want full time jobs but can only get part-time work) and people not currently search for a job, the unemployment rate is 8.9%. I'm not sure how our European brethren reflect these concepts in their numbers but it's very possible that our unemployment figures are simply not comparable to other countries' figures, and that our relative labor market situation is not nearly as strong as official unemployment numbers would suggest.
Also, as a former professor of mine noted, we should incorporate the number of people we incarcerate into the unemployment figures. This would noticeably increase our relative unemployment rate, since we are so incarceration-crazed.
The bottom line: Be skeptical when economic right-wingers point to our relatively low unemployment figures as a way of justifying right-wing style capitalism.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
America the Free
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/02/28/prison.population.ap/index.html
This is pretty crazy stuff. Some highlights:
-The U.S. leads the world in people incarcerated per capital (over 1%), ahead of runners up, the notoriously authoritarian ex-Soviet Bloc.
-We have a higher absolute number of people in prison than China.
-Astronomical recent increases in the imprisoned population do not reflect proportional (or even remotely close to proportional) increases in crime.
-For men between 20-34, 1 in 30 are in prison; for black men of that age group, the figure is 1 in 9.
I would also be interested to see what percentage of black men have ever been prison, as opposed to the percentage that is in prison right now. I'm sure the answer would be frightening.
Anyway, what the hell is wrong with us? I have no radical objection to imprisonment in serious cases (e.g., rape, muder, battery, kidnapping), but it strikes me as impossible to deny that we imprison far too many people for relatively minor crimes. I think we should use restitution and community-service based punishment for all property crimes, except the most serious (e.g., large-scale fraud, serious white collar crime, armed robbery, arson). Other than that, the only way you should end up in prison is if you really physically hurt somebody.
Obviously, we should also seriously tackle the problem of spatially concentrated urban minority poverty. Previous posts should shed some light on how I would go about doing that.
This is pretty crazy stuff. Some highlights:
-The U.S. leads the world in people incarcerated per capital (over 1%), ahead of runners up, the notoriously authoritarian ex-Soviet Bloc.
-We have a higher absolute number of people in prison than China.
-Astronomical recent increases in the imprisoned population do not reflect proportional (or even remotely close to proportional) increases in crime.
-For men between 20-34, 1 in 30 are in prison; for black men of that age group, the figure is 1 in 9.
I would also be interested to see what percentage of black men have ever been prison, as opposed to the percentage that is in prison right now. I'm sure the answer would be frightening.
Anyway, what the hell is wrong with us? I have no radical objection to imprisonment in serious cases (e.g., rape, muder, battery, kidnapping), but it strikes me as impossible to deny that we imprison far too many people for relatively minor crimes. I think we should use restitution and community-service based punishment for all property crimes, except the most serious (e.g., large-scale fraud, serious white collar crime, armed robbery, arson). Other than that, the only way you should end up in prison is if you really physically hurt somebody.
Obviously, we should also seriously tackle the problem of spatially concentrated urban minority poverty. Previous posts should shed some light on how I would go about doing that.
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