More on the Candidates' Crime Positions

In addition to the information we've already posted about the presidential candidates' positions on crime issues, the International Association of Chiefs of Police has just published a report detailing Senator Obama and Senator McCain's responses to six questions about issues related to crime, terrorism, and homeland security that were posed to them by the IACP. This Q-and-A with the candidates is a potentially important step in helping to correct the absence of crime issues in the national political discourse, as we have already noted.

Friday CJ Funnies: D-U-M Spells Dumb

Many thanks to my sis for directing me to this hilarious blog from TruTV (formerly known as CourtTV) that salutes dumb criminals. "Dumb as a Blog," a self-described "daily digest of the dumbest stuff people do," devotes many of its posts to dumb criminals, like the good folks featured in the most recent entry:

New Hampshire police stopped Luis Aponte to discuss an outstanding arrest warrant against the 46-year-old. He tried to oblige, but words didn't come easy to Aponte, what with having 19 bags of cocaine and heroin in his mouth, according to the cops....

[Check out another] case in Georgia featuring a similarly stupid suspect who attempted to get chatty with a cop even though his mouth was full of marijuana....

Question: What ever happened to hiding drugs in holes that one doesn't talk through? 

LOL!  Be sure to check out the full post to see video clips of the encounters.  Thanks for the heads up, Megs -- I have a suspicion this might become one of my favorite blogs!

The Absence of Crime Issues in the National Political Discourse

Via Ted Gest:

Neal Peirce of the National League of Cities has a column in the current issue of Nation's Cities Weekly bemoaning the absence of issues related to drugs, crime, and prison in the national political discourse:

Will America’s ill-starred “war on drugs” and its expanding prison culture make it into the presidential campaign?

Standard wisdom says “no way.”

We may have the world’s highest rate of incarceration — with only 5 percent of global population, 25 percent of prisoners worldwide. We may be throwing hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders, many barely of age, behind bars — one reason a stunning one out of every 100 Americans is now imprisoned. We may have created a huge “prison-industrial complex” of prison builders, contractors and swollen criminal justice bureaucracies.

Federal, state and local outlays for law enforcement and incarceration are costing, according to a Senate committee estimate, a stunning $200 billion annually, siphoning off funds from enterprises that actually build our future: universities, schools, health, infrastructure.

We are reaping the whirlwind of “get tough” on crime statutes ranging from “three strikes you’re in” to mandatory sentences to reincarcerating recent prisoners for minor parole violations. And every year we’re seeing hundreds of thousands of convicts leave prison with scant chances of being employed, no right to vote, no access to public housing, high levels of addiction, illiteracy and mental illness. Overwhelmed by the odds against them, at least 50 percent get rearrested within two years.

A serious set of problems, a shadow over our national future? No doubt. But do our politicians talk much about alternatives? No way — they typically find it too risky to be attacked as “soft on crime.”

Peirce's reading of the candidates' crime platforms suggests that chances for reform would be "much brighter" in an Obama administration than a McCain administration, especially in light of Obama's more nuanced approach to drug offenders (i.e., supporting diversion programs, drug courts, etc.) relative to McCain's more "hawkish" position (i.e., supporting "get tough" policies like death penalty eligibilty for drug kingpins). Still, Peirce concedes that a discussion of either candidates' views is not likely occur during the remainder of the campaign, noting that "it's been 20 years since drugs and prisons have even been mentioned in the televised presidential debates."

What do you think? Why aren't crime issues featured more prominently in the national political discourse, especially during a presidential election season? Is it because crime issues seem less-than-consequential relative to hugely important topics like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the struggling economy? Or are candidates of either party loath to discuss these issues for fear of being labeled "soft on crime"? Or perhaps it is a supply-and-demand issue, in which the press and public don't push candidates to share their views about crime, so they don't? I'm not sure, but I do wish that the "crime conversation" was a bigger part of the national political discourse, especially in the run-up to a presidential election.

(On the other hand, perhaps I should be careful what I wish for.)

The High Point Initiative on Primetime!

Last night after watching Project Runway (good riddance, Daniel!) I was flipping through the channels and stopped at ABC, where an episode of Primetime:Crime caught my eye. The episode featured a story about implementation of The High Point Initiative in chronically drug-plagued Hempstead, NY. The High Point Initiative is an innovative strategy designed to reduce drug crime that was piloted in High Point, NC by law enforcement officials and John Jay criminologist David Kennedy.

The story was quite compelling. Primetime cameras documented the implementation of the program in Hempstead over an eight-month period. (NPR also did a story a few months ago about the efforts in Hempstead, which you can listen to here.) First, drug dealers were caught on camera selling drugs. Then an assistant DA along with members of the community knocked on the doors of these folks, telling them that rather than arresting them the prosecutor's office had decided to give them a pass. To avoid jail time, all they would have to do is show up to a community meeting, keep a job, attend a support group, and avoid getting arrested for any crime.

You can read the print article and watch video clips of the story to see how well the Initiative worked in Hempstead -- and worked it did! Perhaps the most important component of the program is that participants are provided jobs. It is one thing to stress to dealers how much their actions are harming the community; it is quite another to offer them legal, viable alternatives for earning income.

I'm sure that there is much to discuss about this program (and others like it), but I am not familiar enough with the research to offer much of an analysis. I will say, though, how pleased I was to see a true-crime TV show focus on an innovative, community-based crime prevention strategy rather than the usual, bloody "whodunits".

More on NPR Prison Series

Last week I wrote about the first of a three-part NPR series on the U.S. prison population. That initial segment profiled incarcerated women who are mothers.

The second entry in the series examines the substantial number of inmates who are mentally ill. (Listen to the story here.) An excerpt from the print story:

Until the 1970s, the mentally ill were usually treated in public psychiatric hospitals, more commonly known as insane asylums.

Then, a social movement aimed at freeing patients from big, overcrowded and often squalid state hospitals succeeded. Rather than leading to quality treatment in small, community settings, however, it often resulted in no treatment at all.

As a consequence, thousands of mentally ill ended up on the streets, where they became involved in criminal activity. Their crimes, though frequently minor, led them in droves to jails such as Twin Towers, says Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca.

"Incarcerating the mentally ill is not the right thing to do," he says....

"They're here, and they're going to be cared for, but is this what we want in the way of a policy? Are we saying the legal system is the solution for the mentally ill in L.A. County? I don't think so. I'm saying criminals belong in jail, not the mentally ill."

The third entry in the series covers first-time offenders, especially drug and alcohol offenders processed in Dallas' "DIVERT Court". (Listen here.) An excerpt:

[DIVERT Court Judge John] Creuzot says what's different about DIVERT Court is the intense judicial oversight. "A person who relapses on drugs needs further treatment. Our responses are research-driven," he says.

The statistics back him up. Two studies by Southern Methodist University show that DIVERT Court cuts the recidivism rate by 68 percent over the regular Texas criminal justice courts. For every dollar spent on the court, $9 are saved in future criminal justice costs....

The courts have been so successful that even the tough-on-crime, Republican-dominated Texas Legislature approves.

Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano), chairman of the corrections committee, says that instead of worrying about the expanding outflow from prison, he wants to choke off the inflow with DIVERT-type courts...

State officials estimate that unless changes are made, Texas will need 17,000 more prison beds just four years from now. Releasing prisoners on parole is politically untenable — which makes "diversion" an increasingly appealing way to avoid what's looking like a $2 billion invoice.

These are short but informative pieces, and would be very suitable for kicking off lectures or classroom discussions about special needs populations in the CJ system or alternatives to traditional crime control policies. Good stuff!

Another True Crime TV Obsession in the Making

I've written before about my obsession with the A&E program The First 48. (It's a really, really good show, and you should totally watch it.) But now I'm afraid that another true crime show might be slowly working its way into our DVR queue: Locked Up Abroad on the National Geographic Channel. This show -- which uses a combination of documentary-style interviews and dramatizations of real events -- features the stories of people who for one reason or another ended up incarcerated in foreign prisons.

Some of these folks got locked up after making colossally stupid decisions while overseas. Like the couple from the UK who agreed to smuggle a few kilos of marijuana out of Costa Rica and into Amsterdam in exchange for a nice sum of money. Turns out that the heavier-than-expected briefcases they were given by the Costa Rican drug lords actually contained -- whoopsy! -- seventeen kilos of pure Colombian cocaine. Or the dude who swallowed sixty-seven cocaine-filled condoms, duct-taped the rest of his stash to his torso, and waltzed into Sydney Airport hoping to smuggle the drugs back into the UK. (Spoiler alert: He got caught, and was subsequently rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery to remove the condoms, some of which had begun to rupture. In his words, getting caught literally saved his life.)

Other folks, though, were kidnapped by various guerrilla or rebel forces while working overseas and were detained, incarcerated, and -- at times -- tortured.

It remains to be seen whether this show will become a full-fledged addiction for me like the First 48...but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might!

Totally Unshocking Crime Headlines, Vol. 10

"[Nathaniel] Abraham arraigned on drug charges"

A refresher: In 1997, 11-year old Nathaniel Abraham shot and killed 18-year old Ronnie Greene, Jr. Two years later, at the age of 13, Abraham became one of the youngest people ever tried and convicted as an adult in the U.S. -- and the youngest ever in Michigan. Though tried as an adult, Abraham received a juvenile sentence in January 2000: he was incarcerated in a maximum-security juvenile detention facility until his 21st birthday, after which he was released in January of last year.

Naturally, at the time of his trial Abraham gained national (and international) notoriety, propelled in no small part by defense counsel Geoffrey Feiger. (Who can forget the image of an avuncular Feiger leading a cardigan-clad Abraham into court by hand? A stroke of theatrical brilliance if ever I saw one.) However, Abraham caused an equally big media stir last year for the outlandish outfit he wore upon his release, which many observers interpreted as a tasteless (and egomanical) taunt to the public. As if to underscore Abraham's prominence in the public consciousness, he was personally summoned by Oprah Winfrey to a private meeting with Greene's relatives, during which Winfrey convinced Abraham to apologize to the Greene family. Needless to say, this young man was under far more public scrutiny than the average recently-released offender.

However, Abraham also received far more benefits than the average recently-released offender as well -- namely, state-funded rent and college tuition:

[Abraham] is being given free services through a Foster Care Demonstration Project. The pilot program is designed to help Wayne County foster care children who are phased out of the system at age 18 but still need the support of the state....

Under the program, Abraham will be eligible for two years of free rent, full college tuition paid by Michigan Rehabilitation Services through age 25 and food stamps, which he has applied for. He must live in Michigan and attend college in the state to remain eligible in the program.

And yet. And yet. And yet last week he was picked up on drug charges -- specifically, possession with intent to distribute ecstasy:

Undercover officers were working surveillance at about 1 a.m. in the neighborhood where there had been three separate armed robberies recently, when one of them witnessed what appeared to be a drug sale between Abraham and a man on a bicycle.

Abraham, 22, had parked a red 1970 Cadillac convertible in the parking lot of a Sunoco station on North Perry Street just south of Pontiac Northern High School. After the officers witnessed the exchange, they called for additional officers and moved in on Abraham, who was standing behind the vehicle with the trunk open. As the officers approached, they asked to see Abraham’s hand, and he said he was just changing a tire.

“He didn’t see the guys coming up behind him, and he threw away a bag,” said Pontiac police Sgt. Kevin Braddock.

When officers recovered a purple Crown Royal liquor bag, they found inside 254 individual tablets of the street drug ecstasy. Police said the pills typically sell on the street for between $10 and $30 each. Abraham was arrested without incident, and the vehicle, which did have a flat, was impounded.

Since his release, the Michigan Department of Human Services has spent $1,200 on Abraham – money that helped him set up an apartment and paid his rent, said DHS spokeswoman Maureen Sorbet.

And really, how many people expected any other outcome? Though his mentors and supporters are "shocked and devastated" that Abraham failed to make good on his promise to stay clean (by -- what else? -- becoming a famous rapper), he exhibited many warning signs of failure:

Looking back on the year, Abraham says he tried college, one semester at Wayne State University last fall, but chose not to reapply to focus on his music. He is also writing stories that he hopes to put into a book.

Abraham has his own apartment in Oakland County and has worked a series of odd jobs, but has not taken any full-time employment.

So, all of this makes his arrest last week a complete and utter non-surprise. The only question is, who is to blame here? Is it Abraham himself, who has made incredibly poor choices even in the face of unparalleled social and economic support? Or the system itself, which treated a troubled boy (who committed a very serious crime, true) as a mature adult and incarcerated him for the bulk of his formative years? Or the news media, whose incessant coverage of his case granted an impressionable youngster instant celebrity status of the worst kind? Most likely the answer is "all of the above" -- not that attributions of blame make this case any less sad.

Spring Break and Risky Decision-Making

I just came across an article on MSNBC.COM about how students on spring break in Texas are avoiding Mexican border towns in light of increased drug-related violence.

So here's a question: how many times in your life have you looked back on past events and thought, "what in the HELL was I thinking?" (And then later, my mother would probably still kill me if she knew I ever did that....)

Anyway, when I was a sophomore at the University of Texas in1988, my roommate and I agreed to go to South Padre Island for spring break with a group of her friends that I barely knew. They seemed OK and were in the marching band, so how much trouble could we get in to? (Come on, I was in the marching band in high school, I know the score.)

At the last minute, she dropped out of the trip and I was left to travel 6.5 hours by car to SPI with a group of near strangers (Thanks a lot, Jill!!). Her friends turned out to be fine, but unfortunately the weather was not--the cold, gray skies lasted all week and nixed our beach plans. The first night, the gang wanted to go to Matamoros, across the border in Mexico. We were early arrivals and the towns were still quiet--not yet flooded with UT and A&M students on break.

So, we crossed the Rio Grande and entered the first bar we found. It was like a scene from a movie--we walk in, the music stops, and everyone turns to stare at us. We're all dressed in our 80's pastels and big hair and the room is full of local Mexican workers, probably enjoying their last night in town until it's taken over by obnoxious American students. There was even a guy in the corner--I kid you not--playing a game which entails holding on to electrodes for as long as you can. I was freaked out--my New Jersey upbringing had not prepared me for this. We ordered some Dos Equis, drank our beer quickly and crossed back immediately thereafter.

Two days later, the town was COMPLETELY different--it was a tourist trap, with loud music, cheap goods for sale, and alcohol everywhere. The gang decided they wanted to go deep, deep, DEEP into Matamoros since the beach was not going to happen, so we hailed a taxi and told him to take us into the town to a decent restaurant. We ate lunch in a place with dirt floors and live chickens running around--it was a hoot. However, 20 years later I look at the satellite picture of Matamoros above, and think--MY GOD, that city is SO BIG--who knows where we were or what might have happened. And of course, we didn't have cell phones back then--no one knew I was there (they knew I was in South Padre, but none of my family members knew I would visit Mexico on the trip).

Anyway, we ended up having a fun time and the friends-of-Jill were pretty cool. We came back to Austin and got back to our studies.

The following year (1989), I stayed in Austin for spring break and slept late every day. Watching the news one night, I caught a story about Mark Kilroy, a UT student who was reported missing in Matamoros. He was a junior, as was I, and he had wandered away from his friends to take a leak in an adjacent alley. A few minutes later, he was gone.

They searched for him and questioned over 100 known criminals for weeks, until finally, someone picked up on a routine drug sting provided evidence to the police that led to Mark. He had been abducted and murdered in a satanic worship ceremony on a ranch outside Matamoros. The description of what they did to him is not for the faint of heart.

Perhaps the saddest part of this story is that many Mexicans were also killed by this Satanic group, few of which received any attention from the Mexican government until Mark. It took the murder of a U.S. citizen for them to recognize the dozens of murders that had already taken place and seek out the offenders. The "mastermind" of the group eventually committed suicide just as he was about to be arrested.

I didn't know Mark, but I've been thinking about how to tie his story to our field's study of risk and victimization. He placed himself at risk by visiting a border town, likely drinking too much, wandering away from his friends, and pissing in an alley. Natalee Holloway similarly took risks, purportedly leaving a bar with a man she had just met. How many hundreds (or thousands) of stupid, drunk college students make similar risky decisions and are luckily to survive to the next day? How many of those students are raped or assaulted as a result of their risky behavior? How many stupid risks have I personally taken in my life, and somehow have emerged unscathed?

Food for thought. Perhaps the ShockSpouse will share his thoughts on the Kilroy incident as well.

So Much for Evidence-Based Decision-Making

Looks like my former hometown has decided that DARE needs to stay after all. Oh well, at least I tried...

"Undone by its Own Metaphor": The Failure of America's War on Drugs

About two weeks ago, NPR's Talk of the Nation took up the issue of America's War on Drugs. Featured in this discussion was Ben Wallace-Wells, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone who recently authored a damning account of U.S. drug policy entitled "How America Lost the War on Drugs".

I don't typically consider Rolling Stone to be a source of hard-hitting investigative journalism, but listening to Mr. Wallace-Wells' interview I was impressed and intrigued by the extent of his knowledge about the War on Drugs. When I finally sat down to read his article (linked above), I found it to be a fascinating and fairly comprehensive analysis of contemporary American drug policy. I know some of you may balk at this, but I would totally consider assigning this article in class, so impressive is its scope. (It's very lengthy; divided into twelve chapters, it took me over an hour to read.)

What I appreciated most about this article is that it recognizes, and sharply criticizes, the utter disconnect between contemporary American drug policy, on the one hand, and the findings of empirical drug policy evaluation research on the other:

Thanks to new research, U.S. policy-makers knew with increasing certainty what would work and what wouldn't. The tragedy of the War on Drugs is that this knowledge hasn't been heeded. We continue to treat marijuana as a major threat to public health, even though we know it isn't. We continue to lock up generations of teenage drug dealers, even though we know imprisonment does little to reduce the amount of drugs sold on the street. And we continue to spend billions to fight drugs abroad, even though we know that military efforts are an ineffective way to cut the supply of narcotics in America or raise the price.

This article also examines many criminal justice policies and initiatives that developed as a consequence of the War on Drugs: The Boston Gun Project and Operation Ceasefire, community policing efforts in Boston, High Point, NC, and elsewhere, drug courts, mandatory minimums, and so on. It also offers a cogent political analysis, deftly illustrating how thoroughly efforts to appear "tough on crime"-- by Republicans and Democrats alike -- have influenced and shaped contemporary drug policy, even while academic research has been largely ignored:

The federal budget that [former Clinton-era drug czar Lee] Brown's office submitted in 1994 remains a kind of fetish object for certain liberals in the field, the moment when their own ideas came close to making it into law. The budget sought to cut overseas interdiction, beef up community policing, funnel low-level drug criminals into treatment programs instead of prison, and devote $355 million to treating hardcore addicts, the drug users responsible for much of the illegal-drug market and most of the crime associated with it. White House political handlers, wary of appearing soft on crime, were skeptical of even this limited commitment, but Brown persuaded the president to offer his support, and the plan stayed. Still, the politics of the issue were difficult. Convincing Congress to dramatically alter the direction of America's drug war required a brilliant sales job. "And Lee Brown," says Bergman, his former legislative liaison, "was not an effective salesman."

...But in the early days of the Bush administration, police departments were in no hurry to experiment with an approach that focused on drug-related murders and mostly ignored users who weren't committing violence. [Criminologist and pioneer of the Boston Gun Project David] Kennedy's efforts proved to be yet another missed opportunity in the War on Drugs - an experience that made clear how difficult it is for science to influence the nation's drug policy.

Indeed, from an academic perspective, this is perhaps the most dispiriting observation of this article: that U.S. drug policy has been, and continues to be, woefully uninformed by criminological and governmental research and instead is shaped largely by political concerns:

But despite their evident success, the most forward-looking programs remain buried at the fringes of drug policy, featured not in the president's budgets but in academic journals and water-cooler talk in cities like High Point....Thirty-five years after Richard Nixon launched the War on Drugs, the most promising ­programs continue to be shunted aside by Washington's unswerving emphasis on law and order.

I would love to hear others' thoughts on this article, given that I am not a drug researcher. What do you make of the author's conclusions? How can his research be used to inform discussions about the extent to which academic research matters to policy-makers? What does that mean for us as criminologists? I am left with many questions...not the least of which is: would I lose all credibility if I assigned a Rolling Stone article for my students?

The Ineffectiveness of DARE and Its Implications for CJ Policy

(The article below is the op-ed I mentioned in my previous post. It is reprinted with permission from the Daily Record, 1/11/08. Links have been added to this blog post that did not appear in the original piece.)

I read with interest the article about Denville township’s decision to cut funding for the DARE program. While I no longer live in New Jersey, I attended school in Denville from kindergarten through high school, and I like to keep informed on the goings-on in my former hometown.

While it may not be a popular decision among parents in the district, the decision to cut funding for DARE programming was a correct one. A large body of research on this topic indicates that the DARE program is not effective. Even the federal government has acknowledged this fact. In 2003 the Government Accountability Office reviewed several long-term studies of the DARE program and reported that DARE neither reduces drug use among juveniles nor changes their attitudes about drugs. These studies compared students in schools with DARE programs to schools without DARE programs, and found no meaningful differences in drug use, attitudes, or in susceptibility to peer pressure.

While it does not reduce drug use, DARE may have some positive effects—it improves community perceptions of the police. This is certainly a benefit IF the district believes improving police/community relations is something needed and worthy of funding. If so, there are other programs that are actually designed to improve police/community and police/youth relationships that may have lower costs. If not, the program is unnecessary.

So, if DARE doesn’t work, how do we reduce drug use among teenagers? Research has determined that parental involvement is a key factor in reducing the likelihood of drug use. Parents need to know where their children are, whom they are with, and what they are doing. They need to know the parents of their children’s friends and make sure that those parents are capable guardians. Difficult as it is to believe, there are parents who allow drinking and drug use in their homes or at least turn a blind eye to the behavior. As the saying goes, knowledge is power—and that seems to hold true for juvenile drug use, and juvenile delinquency more broadly.

Parents can also reduce the likelihood of drug use by their children by displaying a strong anti-drug philosophy. One might conclude that drug resistance education by parents has a greater effect on drug use than the education provided by police in the DARE program.

Another factor that can lower the risk of drug use among adolescents is the behavior of their peers. Children who have drug-using peers are significantly more likely to use drugs themselves. Here also, parental involvement is vitally important—the more involved parents are with their children and the more aware they are of their children’s activities, the less likely they are to come into contact with drug-using peers.

Finally, parents who use (or abuse) alcohol and drugs increase their children’s risk of illicit drug use, just as parents who smoke are more likely to have children who smoke. You may recall the public service announcement in the mid-1980’s, in which a young boy is caught using drugs by his father. After being confronted by his father, the boy responds “I learned it by watching you!” The tag line, “parents who use drugs have children who use drugs” has been supported in the academic literature.

One of the frustrations of criminal justice researchers is the common belief that a program that “sounds good” will work. Unfortunately, common sense does not always mean a program, no matter how well intended, will be effective. In fact, programs with positive goals can actually be harmful to participants. For example, the documentary “Scared Straight”, filmed in Rahway State Prison in New Jersey, led to programs in several states attempting to divert youth from a life of crime. A recent review of the studies in this area has indicated that Scared Straight programs actually makes high-risk youth WORSE than if they had not experienced the program at all. Like DARE, these programs are difficult to cut due to the public belief that the programs work. Unlike DARE, there are young men being harmed by participating in these programs by increasing their risk of future crime and incarceration.

One of the most difficult things for leaders to do is to cut popular programs that do not work. Like it or not, Denville has made the correct decision to cut DARE—something other districts should consider as well.

ShockProf is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. She graduated from Morris Knolls High School in 1986, and has focused her research on the effect of drug use on recidivism, violence against women, and police response to crime.

Why Can't We Admit When Programs Don't Work?

Well, I opened my big mouth last week and am now hated by parents and police officers alike in Denville, New Jersey.

It seems the Mayor of Denville (my former home town) decided to cut personnel in the Police Department. The Chief of Police then decided the three people being cut would mean the DARE program must be cut in Denville schools. At the following public meeting, the parents arrived in great numbers to protest the cuts (I'd like to link to the original story, but it's archived).

I wrote a letter to the editor, something I have never done. They emailed me back the next day asking if I could lengthen it to an op-ed piece. I did, and they published it last Friday. Basically, I cited the research and findings that DARE isn't working, including the GAO report from 2003. It appeared in the paper on Friday, but did not appear on the paper's web page (sorry, no link).

I've been peeking in to read the letters to the editor though, and wanted to share. This one in particular contains a comment written by a police officer who also emailed me directly. While his letter to me was a bit nicer than the comments, I'm still left bewildered by how anyone can think my personal feelings have entered into this at all.

So, why can't we let go of programs when presented with evidence that they are ineffective? I suppose it has to do with the idea of "buy in". Maybe it's that people feel so strongly about DARE, they find it hard to believe it doesn't do anything. A police officer once told me that she didn't care what the research said--she knew DARE worked and helped keep kids off drugs. I didn't try to change her mind, because I knew I couldn't--just as I can't change the mind of at least one police officer in Northern New Jersey.

(And it is not lost on me that by linking to the article above I have allowed the public and our blog readers--all 8 of them, and by "them" I mean "us"... the ones who write it--to see behind the mask and know my secret identity!)

Legal Ramifications of the Mitchell Report (Major League Baseball)

By now, most people are aware that the Mitchell Report was released to the public yesterday at 2:00PM EST. Conducted by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell, the report is ostensibly a detailed investigation into the use of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) within Major League Baseball and its associated minor league franchises. Although much of the emphasis was on the use of steroids, there is also some discussion of the increasing use of human growth hormone, for which there has never been a positive test result at any national or international level (including with the International Olympic Committee, which has tested since 2004).

While the report spans 409 pages, and includes interesting tidbits such as photocopies of personal checks written by players to an admitted steroid supplier, as an investigation conducted by MLB there has been the question of what sort of "teeth" the report will have on the use of PEDs. Although MLB commissioner Bud Selig immediately declared that "something" would be done, and there are a number of specific recommendations made, it seems unlikely that the game of baseball will change much over the next few years. Simply put, of the 89 players named specifically in the report, almost none have ever tested positive for, or admitted to using, steroids. There are the usual suspects among those named, including those who: (1) have admitted use (Jose Canseco, David Segui); (2) have tested positive (Guillermo Mota); (3) have admitted to unknowing use (Barry Bonds - yes, he admitted he took "The Clear" and "The Cream", which are steroids, but he claimed he didn't know what they were. Wake up, people!); and (4) inspire large amounts of schadenfreude amongst many baseball fans (i.e. all of the Yankees named in the report, but particularly the surly, 'roid-raging (he threw a bat shard at Piazza!) Roger Clemens).

Many people have derided the report as nothing more than a look into the past, and have consistently claimed that the prohibition against use of steroids did not take effect until the Collective Bargaining Agreement of 2002 between MLB and the MLBPA (Player's Association). However, this is not entirely true. As noted in one of the introductory pages (labelled SR-10) of the Mitchell Report, MLB's drug policy beginning in 1971 specifically prohibits the use of any medication without a valid doctor's prescription, and in 1991 then-commissioner Fay Vincent expressly included steroids in this provision. In addition, even before 2002 (again, as noted in the report), players were suspended from play for drug offenses, which is a category that has included steroids since as early as 1971, and since 1991 at the latest. However, even if we accept the premise that steroids were not specifically banned by MLB until 2002, and that none of the 89 named players used steroids after that period of time (truly an absurd assumption), there is one problem here: The Controlled Substances Act (CSA) of February 27, 1991 placed steroids on Schedule III, under federal law. Thus, beginning in 1991 (hmm, that seems to coincide with the year that Fay Vincent outlawed steroids in MLB drug policy. wonder why?), it became a federal offense to sell, distribute, or possess steroids without a valid doctor's prescription. A first offense for possession carries a maximum of 1 year in prison, and a minimum $1,000 fine.

These issues have been touched on here before, re: (1) disparities in drug sentencing; and (2) the ability of pro sports organizations to punish their players for criminal conduct. In the end, the Mitchell report makes it quite clear that a number of players bought steroids, regardless of whether or not they actually used them (note to those in the report - you should have paid in cash, rather than personal check). It is equally clear that very few players had a doctor's prescription for these steroids, and fewer still had a valid medical excuse for obtaining such a prescription. Obviously, our criminal justice system is already clogged with drug offenders, and attempting to go to trial with steroid-abusing millionaires would likely grind the system to a halt, but at least we can still go to the ballpark and make our feelings known.

Hey Clemens, you suck!

Alleviating Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System

Today came news of two efforts -- one at the federal level and one at the state level -- aimed at alleviating racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system.

First, the U.S. Sentencing Commission voted unanimously yesterday to retroactively apply a recently-passed amendment to the federal sentencing guidelines reducing sentences for crack cocaine offenses. The goal of this amendment is to help bring some measure of parity to the federal sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses.

The Commission’s actions today, as well as promulgation of the original amendment for crack cocaine offenses, are only a partial step in mitigating the unwarranted sentencing disparity that exists between Federal powder and crack cocaine defendants. The Commission has continued to call on Congress to address the issue of the 100-to-1 statutory ratio that drives Federal cocaine sentencing policy. Only Congress can provide a comprehensive solution to a fundamental unfairness in Federal sentencing policy. The Commission has consistently expressed its readiness and willingness to work with Congress and others in the criminal justice community to address this very important issue.

While not addressed specifically in the Sentencing Commission's statement, a key element of the fundamental unfairness of federal cocaine laws -- aside from the 100-to-1 ratio -- is racial disparities, with Blacks receiving a disproportionate number of the harsher crack sentences.

Talk of the Nation had a terrific discussion of this decision today. It's somewhat lengthy (30 minutes), but if you have time it's worth a listen. I was disappointed that race was not discussed more explicitly (the commissioner of the Sentencing Commission skirted the issue, in my opinion), but at the very least it was included in the broader conversation.

Second, the Michigan House of Representatives reviewed a proposal today to broaden the pool from which potential jurors are drawn, in an effort to increase the representation of racial/ethnic minorities (as well as people living in poor communities) on juries:

The bills could potentially add the names of taxpayers, registered voters and the recipients of government assistance to the pool of potential jurors; currently, jury pools are formed from lists of driver's license and state identification card holders.

One measure also calls for jury pools to be required to maintain proportional representation by ZIP code, to address what backers said was low participation by the poor concentrated in urban areas...

Wayne County Circuit Judge Deborah Thomas told the committee a 2006 study of the county’s jury selection system found the names of more than one million residents had been removed from consideration for jury duty because they had failed to respond to a jury questionnaire. Thomas also urged the committee to consider restoring the rights of convicted felons to serve on juries after they have finished their sentences and parole or probation.

In addition to jury composition, this proposal also addresses felony disenfranchisement, another criminal justice policy that disproportionately disadvantages people of color, particularly Black men. (According to the Sentencing Project, Black men are disenfranchised at a rate seven times the national average.)

I was pleased to read about both of these efforts, and curious to see what (if any) real-life changes occur because of them.

Totally Unshocking Crime Headlines, Vol. 2

"Drugs behind string of killings, cops say"

Inner-city gun crime is motivated by a feud over drugs? You don't say!