A feature by Stephen Erlanger in today's NYTimes on Israel's infrastructure planning for its settlements around Jerusalem, provides a glimpse of how American cities may look if a global warming inspired return to central cities takes place without a significant reduction of governing through crime.
The Isreali's are constructing a new kind of divided highway. That used to mean traffic going in different directions is separate, it now means traffic of different ethnicities is separated. Israeli drivers will have all kinds of exit options on their side of the wall. Palestinians will be forced to stay on the road as it travels near East Jerusalem; despite the fact that it is a significant demographic and cultural hub for Palestinians. The political objections raised are being dismissed by Israeli planners with one word, "security."
The same word will be on the lips of future city planners as infrastructures are laid down for an eventual revitalization of abandoned central cities like Detroit, Cleveland, and Baltimore. As Americans are compelled by high gas prices to return to central cities, their demand for security will likely take the form of an architecture of segregation designed to make sure that denizens of "high crime" districts cannot easily access the new posh neighborhoods around them. Americans are used to accomplishing this with vast distances by moving out to ex-urbs. As that strategy dies, a new one of close proximity plus enforced segregation may take root.
For those who value the cosmopolitan ethos and routine accessibility of cities, now is the time for total resistance to governing through crime.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Governing Work through Crime: Hello Kitty
American models of crime control have a way of being transferred around the world. In the 1990s, Phoenix, Arizona's publicity hungry sheriff Joe Arpaio (read his Wikipedia entry), who likes to be known as "America's toughest sheriff," started making his inmates where pink underwear. Now according to an article by Seth Mydans in the New York Times, the Bangkok police department has introduced a new disciplinary rule that will force police officers who show up late, or break other department rules, to wear a pink "Hello Kitty" arm band over their uniforms.
Sure enough, Pongpat Chayaphan, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division, who introduced the new management method, trained with the American Secret Service and says he "he wants to modernize his force."
Sure enough, Pongpat Chayaphan, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division, who introduced the new management method, trained with the American Secret Service and says he "he wants to modernize his force."
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
When Criminals Set the Agenda
Continuing coverage of the terrifying home invasion and murders of three members of a suburban Connecticut family (read today's feature in the NY Times) underscores why it will be so hard to to eliminate the death penalty in the United States. Connecticut is a death penalty state located in a region where the trend in recent years has been against the death penalty. New York's death penalty was struck down by the Court of Appeals several years ago and there has been no move by political leaders to revive it. New Jersey is actively exploring the abolition of its death penalty. In a region where there is little cultural emphasis on capital punishment and where traditions of due process make obtaining and implementing capital verdicts difficult and expensive, abolition has real prospects.
But even in such a promising region it only takes one particularly horrible and well-publicized crime to set back abolition for years. This case has all the elements: the rape of a mother and daughter, their murders by strangulation and fire (along with one other daughter), the burglary of a clearly occupied home, and two criminals with very lengthy records of repeated crimes and chances at rehabilitation.
Stephen J. Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky are the new poster children for the death penalty in America. For each there will no doubt be mitigating circumstances (Komisarjevsky was raped himself at 14 by a foster brother in his own home), and good defense lawyers may well be able to convince a jury compelled to think hard about the evidence to spare their lives. But in the jury of public opinion, where evidence and hard thinking are in short supply, the two will serve as prime examples of why a death penalty is justified and necessary. Politicians, even the Northeast, will likely be deterred from open support for abolition for some time, out of fear of being linked as sympathizers with scoundrels like these.
So what are death penalty opponents to do? It's too late to wish that these two miscreants had died of drug overdoses during their many previous sordid escapades (although that's where my fantasies remain). Abolition for the moment remains primarily a political path. So long as it is, criminals like Hayes and Komisarjevsky get to set the agenda.
It will not be an easy path, but the only road to abolition that criminals do not control is one that runs through human rights charters and the steadfastly abolitionist demands of international human rights tribunals. The US has tried to play both sides of human rights, claiming fealty to the ideal of human rights, but maneuvering to avoid placing its own policies under a rigorous charter of human rights.
Those of us who support abolishing the death penalty should probably stop talking about it altogether and focus on obtaining comprehensive US adherence to all existing United Nation's human rights provisions and the adoption of a Universal Charter of Human Rights modeled on the current European version. Here, we may find unwitting help from the Bush administration's disastrous policies of torture, and the tremendous setbacks for American influence in the world they have led to.
But even in such a promising region it only takes one particularly horrible and well-publicized crime to set back abolition for years. This case has all the elements: the rape of a mother and daughter, their murders by strangulation and fire (along with one other daughter), the burglary of a clearly occupied home, and two criminals with very lengthy records of repeated crimes and chances at rehabilitation.
Stephen J. Hayes and Joshua Komisarjevsky are the new poster children for the death penalty in America. For each there will no doubt be mitigating circumstances (Komisarjevsky was raped himself at 14 by a foster brother in his own home), and good defense lawyers may well be able to convince a jury compelled to think hard about the evidence to spare their lives. But in the jury of public opinion, where evidence and hard thinking are in short supply, the two will serve as prime examples of why a death penalty is justified and necessary. Politicians, even the Northeast, will likely be deterred from open support for abolition for some time, out of fear of being linked as sympathizers with scoundrels like these.
So what are death penalty opponents to do? It's too late to wish that these two miscreants had died of drug overdoses during their many previous sordid escapades (although that's where my fantasies remain). Abolition for the moment remains primarily a political path. So long as it is, criminals like Hayes and Komisarjevsky get to set the agenda.
It will not be an easy path, but the only road to abolition that criminals do not control is one that runs through human rights charters and the steadfastly abolitionist demands of international human rights tribunals. The US has tried to play both sides of human rights, claiming fealty to the ideal of human rights, but maneuvering to avoid placing its own policies under a rigorous charter of human rights.
Those of us who support abolishing the death penalty should probably stop talking about it altogether and focus on obtaining comprehensive US adherence to all existing United Nation's human rights provisions and the adoption of a Universal Charter of Human Rights modeled on the current European version. Here, we may find unwitting help from the Bush administration's disastrous policies of torture, and the tremendous setbacks for American influence in the world they have led to.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Locking Out Violence: Petty Offenders and Mass Incarceration
The sorry life story of suspected killer Steven J. Hayes reported by Alison Cowan and Christine Stuart in today's NYTimes is an excellent example of why so many Americans support mass incarceration. The suspected slayer of a Connecticut mother and her two daughters had a twenty year history of small property and drug crimes, with numerous incarcerations, paroles, and revocations. The chance that such a petty criminal will turn murderous is what motivates many Americans to support laws like California's 3 Strikes law (although even it requires at least one serious crime before you get an extended sentences for a petty one).
In an oped in the LA Times a couple of days ago I called on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to release thousands of parolees whose records look a lot like that of Steven J. Hayes. The fear that one of them will do what Hayes did paralyzes most politicians ("Remember Willie Horton" has replaced "Remember the Alamo" among our current crop).
I wish I had a really satisfying answer to the Steven J. Haye's of our society. I'd like to believe we could develop effective methods of rehabilitating people like Hayes, but I haven't seen the evidence to support that. In the end, I think we need to view them as risks that we tolerate because the cost of locking up every Steven J. Hayes who might someday turn murderous is just too high and too destructive of our open society.
Because murders are deliberate, it is very hard to think about the analogy to accidents, but I think it applies. Petty criminals like Hayes who suddenly turn murderous are like bad drivers who, after wracking up numerous violations, one day finally run into a minivan full of kids and cause a tragedy. We should try to suspend licenses and compel bad drivers to become more careful, but in the end we cannot altogether prevent such tragedies. Of course the analogy breaks down because suspending licenses is actually a far less destructive measure than locking people up because it leaves them other ways to get around and function (and because it doesn't really guarantee they won't drive).
Maybe someday we will have a technological fix to both problems. In the meantime we shudder and accept that life has risks.
In an oped in the LA Times a couple of days ago I called on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to release thousands of parolees whose records look a lot like that of Steven J. Hayes. The fear that one of them will do what Hayes did paralyzes most politicians ("Remember Willie Horton" has replaced "Remember the Alamo" among our current crop).
I wish I had a really satisfying answer to the Steven J. Haye's of our society. I'd like to believe we could develop effective methods of rehabilitating people like Hayes, but I haven't seen the evidence to support that. In the end, I think we need to view them as risks that we tolerate because the cost of locking up every Steven J. Hayes who might someday turn murderous is just too high and too destructive of our open society.
Because murders are deliberate, it is very hard to think about the analogy to accidents, but I think it applies. Petty criminals like Hayes who suddenly turn murderous are like bad drivers who, after wracking up numerous violations, one day finally run into a minivan full of kids and cause a tragedy. We should try to suspend licenses and compel bad drivers to become more careful, but in the end we cannot altogether prevent such tragedies. Of course the analogy breaks down because suspending licenses is actually a far less destructive measure than locking people up because it leaves them other ways to get around and function (and because it doesn't really guarantee they won't drive).
Maybe someday we will have a technological fix to both problems. In the meantime we shudder and accept that life has risks.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
29,000 Fewer Sex Offenders on MySpace
Sam Diaz reports in the Washington Post on the latest twists in the evolving struggle to rid cyberspace of sexual predators. MySpace and other social networking corporations, in an effort to stave off legislation that would make it harder for their key market of teenagers to participate without parental approval, have hired ex-police officers to lead corporate efforts at cleansing their webpages of sex offenders. According to story MySpace removed 29,000 registered sex offenders just last week (which makes you wonder how many of them must be on there).
With the opportunity that online social networking provides for anonymity and the popularity of such sites among pre-teens and teenagers it is little wonder that they attract people with a propensity to seek sexual activity with the very young. Those familiar with Governing through Crime will recognize that this represents an all too familiar pattern in which ever more aspects of life are opened up to scrutiny and action around the problem of crime.
Corporations hire cops to do what cops have always done, sleuth out bad guys. Sounding like a classic gumshoe, former NYPD member, now MySpace security expert, John Cardillo explains:
Attorney Generals and legislatures can develop new laws requiring sex offenders to make their emails available and segregating youth centered portions of the web from registered sex offenders.
Parents facilitated by social networking sites can develop new strategies to control their children in the name of keeping them safe from predators.
None of this is meant to suggest that social networking sites do not attract sex offenders (of course they do, why wouldn't they be attracted to sites full of pictures and details about the young subjects they crave). But it is interesting that among its other marvelous and useful functions, cyberspace now allows those who have already done everything possible to separate themselves from the deviant and dangerous by moving to a gated community, sending their kids to class- and race- segregated private schools, and insisting on 24/7 control over their kids can now have a nearly endless space in which to still feel vulnerable about crime and their kids.
Moreover, it seems clear that no one can actually get molested online. Unless you agree to go somewhere and meet one of these sexual offenders, you don't get hurt. Which underscores another repetitious feature of governing through crime, that the best strategies have to do with making potential victims smarter about their own behavior rather than seeking to exercise more control over the X minus 29,000 sexual offenders still on MySpace.
With the opportunity that online social networking provides for anonymity and the popularity of such sites among pre-teens and teenagers it is little wonder that they attract people with a propensity to seek sexual activity with the very young. Those familiar with Governing through Crime will recognize that this represents an all too familiar pattern in which ever more aspects of life are opened up to scrutiny and action around the problem of crime.
Corporations hire cops to do what cops have always done, sleuth out bad guys. Sounding like a classic gumshoe, former NYPD member, now MySpace security expert, John Cardillo explains:
"Criminals are impulsive; predators are impulsive," said Cardillo, chief executive of Security Tech. "They trip up more than they think they do, if you know what to look for. And we do."
Attorney Generals and legislatures can develop new laws requiring sex offenders to make their emails available and segregating youth centered portions of the web from registered sex offenders.
Parents facilitated by social networking sites can develop new strategies to control their children in the name of keeping them safe from predators.
None of this is meant to suggest that social networking sites do not attract sex offenders (of course they do, why wouldn't they be attracted to sites full of pictures and details about the young subjects they crave). But it is interesting that among its other marvelous and useful functions, cyberspace now allows those who have already done everything possible to separate themselves from the deviant and dangerous by moving to a gated community, sending their kids to class- and race- segregated private schools, and insisting on 24/7 control over their kids can now have a nearly endless space in which to still feel vulnerable about crime and their kids.
Moreover, it seems clear that no one can actually get molested online. Unless you agree to go somewhere and meet one of these sexual offenders, you don't get hurt. Which underscores another repetitious feature of governing through crime, that the best strategies have to do with making potential victims smarter about their own behavior rather than seeking to exercise more control over the X minus 29,000 sexual offenders still on MySpace.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Lose it or Pay: Governing the Workplace through Crime
In the latest sign of the governing through crime trend towards favoring sticks over carrots, a growing number of workplaces are fining workers who fail to lose weight or meet other objectives aimed at lowering health care costs. Daniel Costello reports in the LA Times that "some employers are starting to make overweight employees pay if they don't slim down."
No doubt there is a correlation between obesity and the health problems that can drive up employer health costs. Economists might not see much difference between such "stick" policies, and "carrot" approaches that reward employees who do slim down with bonuses. But to overweight workers the threat to lose it or pay is likely to feel a lot different. Like other punitive approaches toward steering behavior, fatness fines are likely to make people feel stigmatized and shamed over a condition that many find very difficult to change.
Moreover, the new policies show just how natural it has come to seem for institutions to treat complex problems as crimes to be blamed on individuals who are punished if they do not conform.
No doubt there is a correlation between obesity and the health problems that can drive up employer health costs. Economists might not see much difference between such "stick" policies, and "carrot" approaches that reward employees who do slim down with bonuses. But to overweight workers the threat to lose it or pay is likely to feel a lot different. Like other punitive approaches toward steering behavior, fatness fines are likely to make people feel stigmatized and shamed over a condition that many find very difficult to change.
Moreover, the new policies show just how natural it has come to seem for institutions to treat complex problems as crimes to be blamed on individuals who are punished if they do not conform.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Governor Schwarzenegger Responds to Court Orders in California Prison Crisis
Governor Schwarzenegger's response to the judicial orders on Monday did invoke the eternal dangerousness of anyone in prison but was generally more measured than has been typical of Governors in recent years.
Although the Governor continues to invest in the notion that everyone in prison is dangerous and that the task of the state is to keep them locked up as long as possible, the fact that he did not attack the courts more aggressively is a good sign.
"California prison overcrowding developed over the past 30 years, leading to the current crisis in our prisons. That is why I issued an Emergency Proclamation to address overcrowding and directed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to transfer thousands of inmates to out-of-state prisons. And that is why my administration and the Legislature enacted AB 900, major prison reform that will reduce overcrowding and recidivism, and change parole policies, without releasing dangerous criminals into our communities.
"Today, the federal judges encouraged the State of California to continue with our efforts to reduce overcrowding and to implement AB 900. The judges said that if we are successful, further population orders will not be necessary. There is no immediate threat of inmate release, which one federal judge noted would be a "radical step."
"I'm confident that the steps the state has taken and will continue taking to reduce overcrowding will meet the court's concerns. At the same time, we intend to appeal these orders to ensure that dangerous criminals are not released into our communities."
Although the Governor continues to invest in the notion that everyone in prison is dangerous and that the task of the state is to keep them locked up as long as possible, the fact that he did not attack the courts more aggressively is a good sign.
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