It is not often that I hear a cable news anchor offer an astute criminological analysis (or, really, an astute analysis of any type). And yet, I couldn't agree more with CNN's Mike Galanos about the absurdity -- and potentially devastating consequences -- of this decision:
The other day I received in my inbox a call for papers for the following conference:
When I graduated from high school in the mid-90s, life in my home town in northern Minnesota was, for the most part, stereotypically idyllic. While there is not much crime in most rural areas anyway, my small town had almost none. I went to college wanting to to do police work in this way of life. The cops I knew never arrested anyone – they simply drove around town “BS-ing” with the locals and talking about where the fish were biting or who shot the biggest deer this season.
The year after I left, the taconite mine that literally built the town in the 50s unexpectedly and immediately shut down. Some of my classmates who had stuck around to live the lives their fathers had were shell-shocked when only a few months after signing 30-year mortgages they found out that their well-paying job had just been pulled out from underneath them. Many people speculated that the town would not make it. Taxes had been essentially paid by the mining company, and so there would be no money to fix roads and pay for teachers and cops (my parents still pay less than $200 PER YEAR for property taxes). As a result of the closure, many people left the town. Surprisingly, though, many people stayed. Many of the residents were retirees and could survive because of the low cost of living.
Something even more surprising has happened in the last few years: the price of precious metals has increased so much that now other mining companies are talking about coming back to the Iron Range. One company has spent the last 3 years fixing up the facilities abandoned by the original mine. There are multi-million dollar building projects going on and hundreds of new jobs are forecasted. In fact, everyone is talking about this being the biggest economic boom for northeastern Minnesota in a generation. Seems like all good things for my childhood community.
The question I want to pose here, is, what are the social (and criminological) implications of such a rapid change? The area went from boom to bust and now back to an apparent boom in the matter of only a few years. Sounds like classic anomie to me. There is a very good article in the Duluth News-Tribune this morning written by an economist at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth about some of these issues. Tony Barrett writes:
Face it, we’re in for several years of upheaval. Positive upheaval, for the most part, but upheaval nonetheless. Change does not come easily for anyone and the communities on the Range will be no different.Are we prepared for such changes and should we expect an increase in crime as a result? How will the life-long Rangers get along with those who come from elsewhere? What can we do NOW to prepare for the changes? There is very little analysis of rural crime issues in the literature, though it seems to me that this is a case study of how rapid social change can affect rural areas.
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms, stepmoms, foster moms, mothers-in-law, mothers-to-be, grandmas, great-grandmas, and other caregivers working hard to raise little ones. You are loved and appreciated!
It's no secret that us GBOCers love a good, dumb joke....especially Patch. (All together now: "you know!") In that spirit, today's Friday CJ Funny comes from a website devoted entirely to compiling lawyer jokes:
Q: What is a criminal lawyer?
A: Redundant.
[insert groan here]
Some of you may have seen the recent video of more than a dozen (white) Philadelphia police officers using extreme, and most likely excessive, force against three (Black) shooting suspects:
This situation is being described by many as an instance of police brutality. To help understand why, here is some important contextual information:
According to the Ground Report,
The grim event took place in the Huntington Park section of one of the United States' biggest cities (by population). Recently, in the close-by Port Richmond part of town, 12-year law enforcement veteran Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski, 39 years of age, was gunned down, making him the third Philly law enforcement member killed while on duty in the last two years...And, from the Philadelphia Inquirer:
According to police officers on the scene, the three men are all suspects in a drug-dealing ring and possibly in the killing of the police officer and they were observed firing guns from their car, shots which resulted in the injury of at least three citizens on a street corner. There was a fourth suspect but he ran away from the scene on foot, according to observers.
The video shows as many as 15 officers, all of them white, rushing the vehicle of the three black suspects, yanking them from the car, and kicking and beating them after they were prone....So, Philadelphia officers' emotions were understandably running high after the tragic death of Sgt. Liczbinski, and the three men shown being beaten in the video -- who allegedly had fired shots from their moving vehicle, injuring several people -- were believed to be connected to Sgt. Liczbinski's slaying. Add to this the racial implications of yet another instance of white police officers using extreme force against Black suspects, and it is easy to see why this situation has garnered so much media attention.
The news of sanctions against seven more officers came just hours after police captured Eric DeShawn Floyd, 33, the last of three men suspected in Saturday's slaying of Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski - and shortly before the beginning of last evening's viewing for the 12-year police veteran in Northeast Philadelphia....
Among other developments yesterday, D. Scott Perrine, the attorney for Dawayne Dyches, one of the three men beaten and arrested Monday night, said police had pursued Dyches because they believed he was Floyd....
Police have said the three men - Dyches, 24, of the 2000 block of North Marshall Street in North Philadelphia; Brian Hall, 23, of the 1900 block of North Marshall Street; and Pete Hopkins, 19, of the 2000 block of East Firth Street in Kensington - were arrested after they drove from Fourth and Annsbury Streets, the scene of the shooting in North Philadelphia's Feltonville section, shortly after 10 p.m. Monday.Police say a fourth man had arrived with the three suspects and fled on foot after firing into a crowd. Police said that 15 spent 9mm casings had been found at the scene, but that no weapon had been recovered from the vehicle, which was stopped about two miles away in the 3700 block of North Second Street.
At that point, the video shows officers charging to the suspects' vehicle with guns drawn. In the next minute, the officers pull the three from the car, beating them after they have been forced to the street. The beatings take up about one minute of the video.
Yesterday I joked about blog-writing as therapy. Today, though, I want to share a very serious -- and moving -- essay about one rape survivor's journey toward healing and understanding by writing publicly about an assault she had kept secret for decades.
Joanna Connors, a writer for the Cleveland-based Plain Dealer newspaper, was raped in the summer of 1984. Though she told her family and friends about the attack and immediately reported it to the authorities, in the years that followed she discussed her ordeal less and less until it became a secret she harbored from everyone who knew her. Recently, though, she came to realize that true healing only could be achieved by writing about and sharing her experiences with others.
The six-part story that ran in a special section of last Sunday's Plain Dealer offers an emotional, honest, and extremely powerful analysis of many of the issues we deal with as criminologists: violent crime, sexual assault, victimization, and career criminality. It also offers a sociological analysis as well. Connors is a white woman who was raped by a Black man; accordingly, her essay addresses issues of race, class and gender; of privilege and power, poverty and disadvantage. Perhaps most movingly, it chronicles the restorative power of the relationships Connors forged with her attacker's relatives all these years later, and of the understanding that resulted from learning about his life and deciphering how and why their lives collided in such a brutal way more than two decades ago.
I hope that folks will take time to read this essay and share their comments about it here. It is extremely well-written and could be useful for facilitating in-class discussions, especially surrounding issues of race, class, power, and privilege as they relate to violent crime. One important warning, though: the description of the attack is graphic and could potentially serve as a trigger for sexual assault survivors.
From CNN.com:
Even more confirmation that blogging really *isn't* just a pointless time-suck! But I wonder: does this mean we owe each other counseling fees now?Writing long has been considered a therapeutic outlet for people facing problems. A 2003 British Psychological Society study of 36 people suggested that writing about emotions could even speed the healing of physical wounds: Researchers found that small wounds healed more quickly in those who wrote about traumatic personal events than in those who wrote about mundane activities.
But it's the public nature of blogs that creates the sense of support...
John Suler, a psychology professor at Rider University in New Jersey, has studied the overlap of psychology and cyberspace. Blog audiences are usually small, he says, but "going public with one's thoughts and experiences can be a self-affirming process."...
JP and I recently had one of our articles reprinted in an edited book. The book is edited by a number of very well-respected authors, and the book includes a number of prominent articles. Good news. The problem is that we were never contacted by the editors or the publishers as to give permission to have the article reprinted. I found the book when I was doing an unrelated Google search.
I understand that I sign away my rights of publication to the journal in which it was published. At the same time, wouldn't it be nice to get a heads up from the editors or get a free copy of the book in the mail. Does anyone know how this process works?
I don't know why I can't get the story of Eight Belles and the Derby out of my head. I have enjoyed many a horse race with my family in KY, and the grandeur of the animals is amazing. I have friends who own horses who argue that the derby is torture because of the age and the frailty of the horses.* Thoughts from our sportswriters?
As an aside, hubby's grandpa still participates in horse cart races at the age of 80.
