Governing Tigers: Behave Yourself or Beware

Readers of this blog will recognize the pattern. A major (or minor) public (or private) institution fails to protect its constituents (or customers, or clients), and then compounds failure by making self-serving misstatements and lies. Faced with sudden questions about its competence (or legitimacy), the institution and its leaders look to see if there is some kind of personal irresponsibility connected in any way to the failure and the damages caused by that failure.

In New Orleans, when thousands of dependent people were left unprotected from the aftermath of Katrina, and nearly drowned in the process, it was looting (of which there was predictably some) and then claims of rapes and murders (which proved utterly false). In Los Angeles, after this fall's damaging wildfires, it was a ten year old playing with matches who prosecutors were considering charges against. In San Francisco, after a Siberian Tiger escaped from its pen on Christmas day and mauled three teenage visitors (one fatally), the Zoo compounded its failure to respond promptly and effectively to the escape (the cat was eventually shot to death by police officers, but only after chewing on its victims for sometime after officials learned of the problem), by mis-stating its own precautions (the trumpeted 18-foot wall separating the cat from the visitors turned out to be 12 feet). Zoo leaders also quickly turned to blaming the injured visitors, claiming that only extreme provocation on their part could explain the cat's sudden motivation to escape the cage (even though a year earlier the same cat ate the meat off the arm of a keeper who was engaged in a public feeding of the cats).

In today's SF Chronicle, Patricia Yollin, Tanya Schevitz, Kevin Fagan report on the Zoo's continuing effort to push that story. On Wednesday, witnesses emerged who claimed to have seen as many as four teenagers "taunting" the tiger, although it is unclear whether these apparently misbehaving teens were the same unfortunates who met the tiger's claws and teeth.

How much taunting can a tiger take? I'll invite your speculations, but as long as I've been going to zoos, kids (ok, boys especially, of all ages to my observation) have been drawn to taunting big cats. Maybe that is irresponsible or even cruel behavior, but it is utterly predictable and perhaps even capitalized on by zoos (like SF's which has made its cat feeding one of its biggest draws for years).

Although taunting zoo animals is apparently a misdemeanor, SF Police (who were able to down the cat within minutes of their arrival during the Christmas escape) seem skeptical about the provocation theory. Police Inspector Valerie Matthews noted: "I don't know if what they did was any more than what kindergartners do at the zoo every day." Police did apparently find an empty vodka bottle in the car in which at least some of the injured visitors arrived (read the AP story).

Look to Zoo officials to continue to focus on the crime story even while doing the environmental security fixes that should have been done decades ago. Perhaps the whole saga is no big deal (visitors flocked to the still open Oakland Zoo the day after the tragedy). But the SF Zoo is only a small part of the mentality of governance which prefers to emphasize the role of personal responsibility in managing risks of all kind.

Don't feel threatened by tigers? How about earthquakes, wildfires, and hurricanes?

Immigration, Race, and Law: It Matters if Crime Metaphors Prevail

The gathering storm around immigration that has been building in 2007 looks likely to make landfall in early 2008 as the two party nominees are identified and the huge gulf between the base of each party on this issue swings into marked contrast. If the two parties operate in what Paul Krugman called "separate moral and intellectual universes" in his New Year's Eve column, they also do so for the most part on immigration. John McCain is practically the only Republican who would promise a path to legalization for at least a significant portion of the millions of undocumented immigrants who can document a sustained history of work here (along with assorted other conditions). While Hillary showed some timidity in backing down from Eliot Spitzer's bold stand on driver's licenses (as did the Governor), all the Democrats would create a path to legalization (and presumably citzenship) for an even more substantial portion of the undocumented.

With such a big difference, the proper way government should respond to the presence in the borders of the United States of millions of foreign nationals with no documented lawful basis for remaining here but with a history of sustained residence and work here could easily become the "crime" issue of the 2008 election.

Crime itself seems decidedly unlikely to surface as a dominant (notwithstanding Huckabee's inclusion of "no executions" in the list of Mitt Romney's gubernatorial failures in the negative ad he didn't run but had a news conference to show and announced he would not run, see AP story which doesn't quote execution line unfortunately). Twenty years after George H W Bush was thought to have fatally wounded the campaign of Michael Dukakis by raising the death penalty and the governance of murderers, Huckabee is the odd candidate out who has exposure on it (and it doesn't yet appear to have been fatal). But many of the very same emotions, metaphors, and mentalities of governing will be deployed in an election on the legal status of immigrants.

As in many culture wars, the two sides are as often voices in the same people as much as between people. One voices articulates the view that in the absence of legal authorization, immigration is a crime, the moral corruptness of which defiles all that follows. "They broke our laws when they came here and they may commit further crimes against us when they find it opportunistic to do so."

For others, these are upstanding citizens of states near and far who have been beckoned to risk much for the chance to labor in our factories, kitchens, and fields, whose stake in this country (including ties of family as well as employment) is entitled to significant weight in a dignified and fair process.

Like 1988, a 2008 election on the legal status of immigrants would have for many an undeniably racial cast. The image of urban crime in America has had a Latino as well as African-American face since at least the 1980s (Miami Vice) if not earlier. The persistent and unfounded fear that those who enter without documented permission to work will likely commit crimes (or acts of terrorism) emanates in part from that belief. This has been exacerbated by the reluctance (now understandable politically) of state and local government to civilly govern the social practices that have grown up around immigrant labor, including informal day labor markets that often mimic in appearance the loitering groups of youth on urban streets that both television and official criminology (Broken Windows) has helped link to crime in the public mind.

The danger of another racialized election like 1988 is clear. A word about the promise in this brewing culture war. The talk of law on both sides (criminal law on the side of those who demand punitive action) and human rights law on the side of those who would begin by granting immigrant workers their dignity and good motives, points to a common anxiety and hope for the place of law in our society. For reasons that readers of the blog will not need reminding our continuing emphasis on criminal law as a model for governing society is a proven remedy for increasing fractionalization and mistrust in America. Can human rights law speak to that desire for more law on the part of the entire public?

The Availability Heuristic: Your "Clear Channel" to Fear of Crime

It's what psychologists and economists like to call "the availability heuristic," the more available a particular risk is to your consciousness, the more likely you are to prioritize managing that risk, even if the probability of the risk coming to pass times the degree of harm it would result in makes it a lot less serious than many other risks in your environment. (For a great reading list on the topic check here).

One of the forces that has driven governing through crime is the availability of crime in the information environment. The mass media, and especially television, is obviously a big source of this availability. On primetime, one might say, the crime rate is always up. But the true density of crime information and its degree of apparent urgency and plausibility derives from a complex web of knowledge and power that binds government, the mass media, academia, and the endless semiotic web of conversations and images across the landscape of an average day.

Increasingly road signs are part of this web. The National Amber Alert System, created by an Act of Congress (growing from an informal collaboration between Texas radio DJs and police departments), means that smart highway signs all over America now periodically flash information about child abductions in progress. The latest addition to this already stocked field of crime information availability will bring the FBI's most wanted list to digital billboards in 20 US cities early next year.

According to Joe Milicia's reporting for the AP (read it in the sacbee):

The FBI's most wanted bank robbers, violent criminals and terrorists will soon appear on 150 digital billboards in 20 cities nationwide.

The agency has teamed up with Phoenix-based Clear Channel Outdoor to begin airing mug shots following a successful test run in Philadelphia that led to several arrests.

One of those arrests was that of a man suspected in the fatal shooting of a Philadelphia police officer, the agency said Thursday. He was captured in Florida as a result of exposure on the billboard, the FBI said.

Subprime Prisons: Pay Your Debt to Society and then Pay Some More

We need to hold offenders accountable! How many times have you heard that soundbite accompanying efforts to enhance prison sentences for one crime or another. Prison alone, it would seem, is capable of delivering on the law's promises and threats. And yet, the more you look at the prisons created by this fetish for imprisonment, the more you see that accountability is just another myth.

The latest example comes from California's distended prison system, which at roughly 173,000 inmates is approaching 200 percent of capacity and court-ordered population caps. As reported by Jordan Rau in the LATimes, the prison, which promises to hold wrongdoers accountable, cannot account for itself. With antiquated computer systems, inmate data has been unable to follow inmates through their frequent transfers among prisons. While crime has gone down for more than a decade, prison populations have continued to go up as sentences increased and inmates returned to prison from parole for technical violations often unrelated to crime rates. Perhaps the ultimate symbol of the system's basic lack of interest in accountability is its recent admission that more than 30 thousand inmates were held beyond their lawful sentence because administrators miscalculated their time served.

Can the World Save Us? And China, Pakistan, Iran...

For the first time in history, a majority of the world's nations have gone on record calling for a moratorium in the use of legal executions. In a 104 to 54 vote, the United Nation's General Assembly voted to support a non-binding resolution calling capital punishment's deterrence value dubious, and its errors and miscarriages of justice "irreversible" and seeking a global moratorium on its use. According to Maggie Farley's reporting in the LATimes, the US joined with traditional allies China, Syria, and the Sudan to oppose the resolution.

While the US aggressively insists on its right to invade other countries that flout international standards of human rights, we blithely insist on our own sovereign right to kill. Don't look for any of our Presidential candidates to lead the charge here. When it comes to execution, Hillary, Barak, and John Edwards are ostensibly as ready to execute as Romney, Giuliani, or Mike Huckabee (who as Governor of Arkansas can claim 17 hides). Still, the next occupant of the Oval office will find that repairing America's standing in the world is a top priority. It is in that light, that the General Assembly's vote takes on its real importance. By defining abolition as part of a general global consensus on human rights, this week's vote will help put American capital punishment on the endangered species list.

The Next Disaster

Thankfully 2007 turned out to be an unexpectedly gentle hurricane season in the United States, which did not receive a direct hit in a season in which there were fewer named storms than predicted. Hallelujah, Insha Alla, Thank God, on behalf of all our friends and loved ones in harm's way down there (I used to live in Miami). But I don't think God messes with long-term trends (especially not ones aggravated by human misconduct). Based on the science of global warming we must prepare for a lot more terrible hurricane seasons like the savage fall of 2005 in which Katrina and Wilma left death and havoc across the Gulf coast and into Florida.

We cannot do much about the storms themselves (other than try to reduce our current carbon footprint), but there is much we need to do to prepare our people and our infrastructure (which as Katrina demonstrated is in terrible shape and not just in New Orleans). Above all else we need to change our governing paradigm from our relentless focus on "stranger danger" set by the war on crime to one capable of mobilizing collective trust and cooperation to reduce carbon and improve the efficiency of local capacities for self-help during severe disasters. I've argued for some time that the mentalities shaped by a generation of governing through crime are totally unhelpful when it comes to preparing for these 21st century disasters.

But this change will not come by itself. As the coverage of Katrina demonstrated, our media and political leaders will emphasize crime and stranger danger at every possible moment. Only last week, as reported by the AP, Texas officials outlined a new procedure to screen evacuees being bussed away from disaster areas for sex crimes.

AUSTIN (AP) — Texans who board evacuation buses during hurricanes or other emergencies must now submit to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director said.

The policy is an effort to keep sex offenders and fugitives from boarding evacuation buses with children, the elderly and the disabled, Jack Colley, the chief of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, told The Houston Chronicle, which posted the article on its Web site Saturday.

The fact that they are not going to leave sex offenders (a group that includes many people who were convicted of nothing more serious than having consensual sex with their under-aged girlfriends when they were also very young) behind, but only segregate them, is not very reassuring. The logic of this policy is utterly flawed. Consider that your child is unlikely to be molested on a crowded bus and that they are in more danger from the undetected pedophile within the family than from a stranger with a record of sex offenses. What is significant however is not how stupid the policy is and how readily it panders to our most self-reassuring fears, but how it directs or misdirects our fears in the face of the next disaster.

But its Illegal! Immigration and the False Premise of Crime Control

The most alarming trend in this election year is the growing body of sentiment that any effort to respond to the plight of millions of undocumented non-citizens working in the United States, other than by arresting and deporting them, constitutes an abandonment of the rule of law. Although the federal government backed off of a recent effort to heighten the criminalization of undocumented workers, state and municipal efforts are producing a growing body of mostly punitive laws.

Arizona's new law punishing businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens with fines and eventual loss of their business license is typical and that in a state that depends on aliens, many of them undocumented, to sustain its large agricultural industry. (Read Randal Archibald's story on the Arizona law in the NYT)

But just because its illegal, does not mean that the problem of undocumented foreign workers is primarily a problem of crime. It is often true, for example, that homeless people sleeping in parks or on the street are violating laws and ordinances backed by criminal penalties. But rounding up the homeless and jailing them is a cruel and generally futile way to govern the problem of homelessness. Instead, the most innovative communities are finding that well targeted housing assistance combined with concentrated efforts to treat mental illness can make a difference. Choosing not to pointlessly punish the homeless for crimes that are a product of their situation does not sap our moral character or prove that we do not respect the law.

Likewise, our response to illegal immigration must begin with the recognition that the fact that it is a crime does not provide a satisfying strategy for addressing it. Indeed, unlike the homeless, who are often victims of extreme poverty, mental illness, and histories of substance abuse, undocumented workers are generally involved in producing goods and services of value to our society. Choosing not to punish them for breaking our laws does not diminish our moral character or weaken the rule of law.

There is another choice, one even more in line with our devotion to the rule of law. We should recognize that there is an under supply of law in this situation and move to remedy that. For example, new legal mechanisms could be established for ameliorating the often degrading and dangerous conditions that undocumented workers put up with. Giving them drivers' licenses as New York's courageous Governor Elliot Spitzer tried to do, was a good start. Bringing labor laws fully to bear to protect their working conditions and pay would be an excellent follow up. The workers would remain illegal, but the job conditions and domestic lives they lead would become less so. The rule of law would be expanded.