Furlough Days...

Hello fellow bloggers,

Given the current economic situation everyone is going through right now, I wondered how many of your institutions have cut your pay, laid off faculty, mandated ‘furlough days,’ or other means to temporarily (or permanently) trim the budget. We are required to take 12 furlough days over the next two years (6 state-mandated days and 6 that I can choose), but of course none of the days can be teaching days. This essentially amounts to a 3% pay cut, but terming it a ‘furlough’ seems to be politically popular as the public thinks we get 12 days off. Of course, while other state employees do get the day off when they take a furlough day, it doesn’t work that way for faculty members. Our duties and responsibilities are not reduced at all. In fact, our work has actually increased because we have to fill out paperwork to account for our furlough days. The University literally demands that we stay home on these days (though our department chair, like others on campus, are not going to enforce that rule). What are we supposed to cut out? Publishing? Prepping courses? Committee meetings? Blogging with my buddies?!? NEVER!

I guess I am just curious about how common this is. I have spoken to two other colleagues in different parts of the country (one in Maryland and another in Arizona) who also have mandatory furlough days. What is your institution doing? What about those of you at private schools? By the way, in the backdrop of our pay cuts, the technical college that is literally adjacent to our University gave employees a 3% pay raise this year. And they are funded through public dollars as well. I wonder if they are hiring.

PS – here is a question for you: So, are prisoners who work making license plates or street signs (or in the case of WI, office furniture) technically ‘state employees’ and therefore required to take furlough days as well? Perhaps state officials do not realize that furlough means something different in prisons…

The Ricci Verdict & Sotomayor's Confirmation

Anybody have thoughts about whether, or how, the Supreme Court's decision in the Ricci case will affect the confirmation of nominee Sonia Sotomayor? SCOTUSBLOG's Tom Goldstein doesn't think that the Court's 5-4 reversal of the Second Circuit's ruling will be a deal-breaker, nor does Salon's Glenn Greenwald, though others disagree. (Here is a great roundup of commentary on the Ricci ruling from various sources -- left, right, and otherwise.)

Perhaps more to the point, should it affect her confirmation?

Five-Part Series on Sexual Assault in MI Women's Prisons

Yesterday's Detroit Free Press ran the first of a 5-part series on guard-perpetrated sexual assault in Michigan women's prisons. Hundreds of incarcerated women have successfully sued the state (to the tune of $50 million) in a class action lawsuit, which the state is now appealing. (The state's position, in a nutshell? "Prisoners lie, so these women are probably lying about being raped. And besides, if they really were being raped, why didn't they tell anyone? We can't fix what we don't know is broken.") Although Human Rights Watch (along with the Michigan Women's Commission and the DOJ) published several reports in the mid-nineties detailing "pervasive" sexual misconduct in MI women's facilities -- and a near complete failure of the state government to acknowledge or address the problem -- little was done about it until the class action suit was filed. Now some of the victimized women are speaking out publicly and sharing their stories via this Free Press investigation.

Links to the five chapters in this expose are provided below, and will be updated as each installment is published. Each page also includes links to related stories, including excerpts from the HRW reports.

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Chapter 1 (Sunday): Sexual assaults on female inmates went unheeded
Chapter 2 (Monday): The trial begins with everything at stake
Chapter 3 (Tuesday): Breaking the silence
Chapter 4 (Wednesday): A jury surprise
Chapter 5 (Thursday): A new life?

ASC Panel on Politics & Crime

This year's ASC Annual Meeting program featured four high-profile "Presidential Sessions" -- panels of interest organized by ASC President Bob Bursik (and advertised by giant blue signs stationed throughout the conference hotel lobby). One of these Presidential Sessions focused on re-entry issues and featured our very own Velma (as well as friend-of-the-blog Tim Bynum). Another one, as I mentioned in my ASC recap, focused on issues related to politics and crime in 2009.

The politics panel was moderated by Ted Gest and included the following panelists: St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch, John Jay president and former NIJ director Jeremy Travis, and Charles Wellford of the University of Maryland and the National Academy of Sciences. I thought it was a superbly informative discussion.

Right off the bat, Ted Gest won me over by acknowledging the obvious problem of having a panel on politics and crime with "four white guys." Alas, originally-slated panelists MO Senator Claire McCaskill and University of Pennsylvania Senior Fellow (and former Assistant Attorney General for the OJP) Laurie Robinson had to cancel unexpectedly. So, Mr. McCulloch and Dr. Travis filled in at the last minute, hence the all-(white) male panel.

Mr. McCulloch went first. He began by discussing his tenure on the "Obama Truth Squad" in Missouri, during which time he was (erronously?) accused of targeting for prosecution anyone who made negative comments about Senator Obama during the campaign. Turning to crime policy, he discussed the need to shore up re-entry programs, for example, by funding Byrne grants -- a strategy President-Elect Obama endorses. (Click here for a link to the IACP report in which Obama outlines his commitment to Byrne.) He also briefly discussed another Obama-favored crime policy, drug courts.

Dr. Travis followed Mr. McCulloch. His remarks were, in my estimation, the most influential. The major issues he addressed are as follows:

I. What crime policy challenges should the federal government focus on?

1. Reduce rates of violence. Yes, we have seen some decline in violent crime, but that reduction loses significance when you:
   
   a.) Compare lethal violence rates in the U.S. and Europe
   b.) Consider fluctuations in sub-national/local violence rates
   c.) Disaggregate violence by age, race, gender, and geography
   
   
2. Reduce rates of incarceration. (Consider the Pew 1 in 100 study, for example.)
   
   
3. Address issue of race, crime, and justice.
   
   a.) Racial disparities in the system undermine efforts to move toward racial justice
   b.) The issue is less about disparities per se than the overall impact of disparities on communities of color

II. How should the federal government carry out crime research?

1. Reorganize the federal government, with the help of the new administration, so that NIJ, BJS, etc. exist under the proposed "Office of Justice Research" in the Department of Justice, rather than under the Office of Justice Programs where they currently reside.

Wow. It's not every day that someone sets out to re-structure the federal government, but Dr. Travis has done exactly that. You can read more about his suggestion to create an Office of Justice Research here, and read the full text of his open letter to the ASC detailing his proposal here. Basically, in his letter Dr. Travis argues that scientific research cannot thrive in a unit dominated by programmatic culture. Specifically, he identifies three risks of housing the research arm of the federal government in a program office:

"First, the scientific integrity of the research functions is vulnerable to compromise. Second, the research and development function will never be given the priority treatment that is needed to meet the enormous crime challenges we face in this country. Third, the research agenda on crime and justice will more likely relfect short-term, programmatic needs rather than the long-term need to develop a better understanding of the phenomeon of crime in America and the best ways to prevent and respond to crime."

Fascinating stuff, in my opinion. I couldn't agree more...especially with the recent scandal at OJJDP.

Finally, Dr. Wellford spoke, and in some ways he picked up where Dr. Travis left off. First, though, he began with a brief but useful formula for determining when crime issues are addressed during a presidential campaign. Consider two factors: the presence of a domestic economic crisis and the presence of a foreign national security crisis. When both of those factors score a zero, crime will be addressed during a presidential campaign; if either factor scores a 1, crime will be ignored. (Very true, yes?) Of course, in 2008 both factors scored a 1, so crime issues were especially absent from the national political dialogue, as we've discussed before.

Once that issue was settled, Dr. Wellford encouraged the ASC to become more active in applying its expertise by making policy statements, echoing Dr. Travis' plea to the ASC to formally support his Office of Justice Research proposal. Additionally, Dr. Wellford identified a list of things that we as criminologists should and should not do in the coming 12 months. In 2009, criminologists should not:

1. Lobby for an increase in research funding (let's figure out which of our currently-funded programs work before we ask for more money)
   
   
2. Focus on "rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic" (e.g., the DOJ is in serious trouble, so let's not worry about minor issues while major crises exist)
   

Conversely, in 2009 criminologists should:

1. Commission position papers identifying crime control policies and strategies that are proven to reduce crime (e.g., Bryne/COPS grants)
   
   
2. Call for a new National Crime Commission (the previous one is nearly 40-years old!)
   
   
3. Focus less on causes of crime and more on improving justice in America (e.g., justice is a "forgotten theme" in the field of criminology, so we need to re-emphasize justice and focus less on correlates of crime)

Once the panelists concluded their remarks the session was opened up for questions from the audience members, including one about the historic reluctance of the ASC to make official policy statements posed by yours truly. All in all, I thought it was easily one of the most topical, interesting, and informative sessions I've ever attended. As someone who teaches drug policy, and who is constantly encouraging students to critically analyze the political context in which various drug policies (especially "get tough" policies like mandatory minimums) are passed, I found the frank acknowledgment of the undeniable relationship between politics and crime policy to be entirely refreshing.

Friday CJ Funnies: Down the 'Tubes'

On Tuesday the Justice Department indicted Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) on seven counts of failing to disclose financial gifts. (More on this story from the Wall Street Journal can be found here.) The senator had been the subject of a federal corruption investigation, which ultimately resulted in criminal charges being filed against him earlier this week.

While indictment on federal corruption charges is no laughing matter...the good senator himself has offered some (unintentionally) hilarious insights in recent years. Perhaps my favorite morsel of wisdom from Senator Stevens involves his take on the Internet, which he famously described as "a series of tubes". The Daily Show, as usual, offers a terrific send-up: