Broken Windows Completely Broken

Broken Windows policing—the policing of quality of life crimes like subway fare evasion, to stop the emergence of more serious crime—is what saved New York City years ago when rampant quality of life crime was virtually unopposed by police strategy.

According to this article from City Journal, it appears to have been replaced by something much darker.

An excerpt.

“A large demonstration, numbering around 1,000 people, marched through downtown Brooklyn Friday evening to protest alleged police brutality in the subway system. Protesters chanted familiar slogans such as “No justice, no peace/Fuck these racist police,” and the message was intensified by calls for violence. Choruses of “punch a cop in the face/every nation, every race,” were echoed by large banners reading, “Ante Up! Punch that cop!” Vehicles were tagged “NYPD KKK,” and eggs and garbage were thrown at a police cruiser.

“The “#FTP” (fuck the police) action was inspired by two recent incidents where police made arrests on subway platforms. In one case, an early-morning melee spilled underground, and cops were filmed using force to break up the fighting and subdue people resisting arrest; one teenager shoved a cop and was punched in the face; he’s suing the city for $5 million. In another instance, a group of police swarmed Adrian Napier, whom they believed was carrying a gun; they found no weapon but arrested him for jumping the turnstile. The incident, captured on video, received national attention. “Officers should be working to deescalate,” former HUD secretary Julian Castro commented, “not putting dozens of lives at risk over $2.75.” But Napier was apprehended after fleeing the police and escaping into the subway; his arrest was not precipitated by jumping a turnstile.

“These incidents took place in the context of a campaign against fare evasion, which has accelerated dramatically following the announcement that local prosecutors would no longer pursue “theft of service” charges against arrestees. Arrests for turnstile-jumping are down about 40 percent since last year. The NYPD now largely writes tickets for the violation, reserving arrest for serial evaders.

“Part of last Friday’s protest included a mass refusal to pay subway fares, with scores of people clambering over the turnstiles in reaction against what advocates call the “criminalization of poverty”—or enforcement of fare collection. Congresswoman “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted her support, explaining, “ending mass incarceration means challenging a system that jails the poor to free the rich. Arresting people who can’t afford a $2.75 fare makes no one safer and destabilizes our community.”

“But almost nobody goes to jail for fare evasion, as Ocasio-Cortez surely knows. The Mayor’s Office for Criminal Justice reports 32 jail admissions for fare evasion in the first three months of 2019, though on any given day roughly two people get incarcerated for the crime. Over that same period, 992 people got arrested for fare evasion, and another 18,000 received summonses for theft of service. A miniscule fraction—about 0.2 percent—of people stopped and charged with jumping turnstiles wound up in jail, likely repeat offenders.

“Outrage about fare enforcement has been brewing for months, but it exploded after Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that he would hire 500 new police to patrol the subways. Driven more by Cuomo’s political rivalry with Mayor de Blasio than by necessity, the proposal infuriated activists, especially when it emerged that the new officers—as agents of the MTA, not the NYPD—would not have to wear body cameras. State senator Alessandra Biaggi of the Bronx tweeted, “Let me get this straight—cops are underground surveilling NYers who can’t afford the rising costs of the MTA, without any mechanism for objective documentation to maintain accountability & transparency . . . am I getting that right? Are you kidding me?”

Retrieved November 5, 2019 from https://www.city-journal.org/brooklyn-anti-cop-protests-fare-evasion

 

 

California Waking Up?

Let’s hope so—as the state has proven to be a national trend setter for decades—and this recent poll from the California Chamber says maybe.

An excerpt.

“California voters are anxious.

“Reports of steady growth and low unemployment cheer political leaders, but voters are disturbed by decaying public order and an unaffordable cost of living, according to a recently released CalChamber poll, The People’s Voice, 2019.

Top of mind for voters is the erosion of public order.

“Central to that perception is homelessness. Fully half of voters say they see homeless people on the street more than five times a week. Three out of four voters say homelessness has gotten worse in California, and their perception is not much better in their own communities, where 64% of voters say homelessness has gotten worse.

“While voters generally prefer policy solutions created by officials closer to home, they are so frustrated with lack of action that Californians now put responsibility for solving the homelessness problem on state officials over local officials, by a 62% – 38% margin.

“Regarding proposed solutions, voters indicate a mix of compassion and no-nonsense. Voters most strongly supported:

• Funding more mental health and homeless service centers specifically focused on serving homeless populations (91% support; 60% strong support).
• Involuntary commitment of homeless individuals who have severe mental/behavioral issues that may be a danger or harm to themselves or others in the community (89% support; 49% strong support).
• Build more homeless shelters (86% support; 50% strong support).
• Allow law enforcement to arrest homeless people who use dangerous and illegal drugs (82% support; 49% strong support).
• Another take on public order is growing unease over public safety. Seventy-nine percent agree (41% strongly) that homelessness and criminal behavior have become rampant throughout California. Seventy-three percent agree (37% strongly) that street crime, shoplifting and car theft have become rampant throughout California. And 60% agree (25% strongly) with the statement, “I no longer feel safe because of the danger and disorder in society today.” Retrieved October 29, 2019 from https://advocacy.calchamber.com/2019/10/21/new-calchamber-survey-homelessness-public-safety-top-concerns-for-california-voters/

Catholic International Thought; the Recent Change

This article from OnePeterFive is an excellent companion piece to yesterdays on crime, where the focus in Catholic Progressive circles, in both cases, has moved from individual causation to structural; not a good sign.

An excerpt.

“It is no secret that since the 1960s the Catholic tradition of moral reflection on international affairs, a tradition that has been unfolding at least since the time of Saint Augustine, has taken a decidedly leftward turn. Whether the issue has to do with war and peace, development and the fight against poverty, protecting the environment, or encouraging disarmament, Catholic doctrine — as articulated most comprehensively in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church — has become virtually indistinguishable from the views of leftist scholars and activists.

“Nor are the reasons for this turn unknown. Beginning in the interwar period but accelerating in the 1960s, Catholic international thought was powerfully reshaped by several emergent intellectual trends, chief among them Marxist theories of imperialism; the dependencia theories of thinkers like André Gunder Frank and Samir Amin; the writings of the Frankfurt School theorists such as Herbert Marcuse; the works of peace studies scholars such as Johan Galtung; the Catholic pacifism of activists like James Douglass and Gordon Zahn; the active nonviolence embodied in Gandhi and MLK; and, of course, the liberation theology of thinkers like the Jesuit priest Juan Luis Segundo.

What is less well understood, however, is the profound degree to which this “progressive turn” constitutes a rupture in the 1,500-year-long tradition of what I will call the “deep tradition of Catholic international thought.”

“The conceit on the left is that developments in the Church’s moral reflection on international affairs in the decades since the second Vatican Council have been nothing more than the unfolding of that millennium-and-a-half tradition. The reality, however, is quite different: for the past half-century or so, “progressive” Catholic thinkers have been less interested in updating traditional Catholic international doctrine in light of “the signs of the times” than in remaking that doctrine in the image of their radically non-traditional political theology of war and peace.

“The result has been the death of Catholic international theory, at least in the sense that the distinctively Catholic tradition of reflection on international affairs that persisted for the fifteen hundred years before the mid-twentieth century has passed from this world. In its place has congealed a toxic brew of “progressive” bromides that is indistinguishable, except for a thin theological froth, from the secular and materialist international thought currently prevalent on the political left.

“Elsewhere I have addressed the revolutionary break in traditional Catholic international thought that has taken place since the interwar period. In this article I will focus on a relatively under-explored rupture in this tradition of thought: the causes of war.

“Pre–20^th century Catholic international thought located the causes of war in both humanity’s fallen nature and the anarchic nature of the international system. With respect to the first of these, from the time of the Church Fathers, key Christian thinkers such as Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine argued that war was a byproduct of personal sin. As a result of Adam’s fall, they all agree, pride, vanity, and what Augustine called libdo dominandi — the lust for domination — drive princes to attempt to subjugate their neighbors or perpetrate other grave evils. As Augustine and Aquinas argued most explicitly, humanity’s fallen nature thus gives rise to two kinds of war: unjust wars motivated by pride, vanity, and libdo dominandi and just wars fought in self-defense against unjust aggression or to otherwise punish evildoers.

“From the Middle Ages on, Catholic thinkers such as Dante Alighieri and Pierre Dubois also came to view what we would now call the “anarchic international system” as an important, if merely permissive, cause of war. Such an international system, they argued, by its very nature lacked a universal political power that could adjudicate disputes among kingdoms and other lesser powers and so maintain the peace. As a result, they argued, the conflicts that naturally arise between political units pursuing their own interests can be resolved only by arbitration; diplomacy; or, if those two fail, war. For Dante, this argument took a specific form: war is caused by the lack of a universal empire that could definitively adjudicate disputes among lesser powers. So too for Dubois: war is caused by the lack of an international council charged with maintaining what we would now call collective security.

“This was the prevailing etiology of war in the world of Catholic international thought through the early twentieth century: war is the product of fallen human nature and the anarchic nature of the international order. Beginning in earnest in the 1960s, however, the Church initiated a root-and-branch re-examination of its approach to war. As the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, usually referred to by its Latin title, Gaudium et Spes, put it, the post–Vatican II era was to be a time for “a completely fresh appraisal” of war.

“What was the result of this “completely fresh appraisal” of war? For the purposes of this article, the answer to this question is that in the aftermath of Vatican II, the Church’s core teaching on the causes of war began to give way to an entirely new set of explanations — explanations that ultimately represented not a gradual unfolding of traditional Catholic international thought, but a radical rupture with it.

“The first of these departures from tradition was the belief that war is caused not by personal sin, but by structural sin, sometimes referred to as structural evil. What do progressive Catholics mean by structural sin? Put directly, they used the term to refer to evil that extends beyond the sin committed by individual people — that is, to refer to the violence and injustice produced and reproduced through societal institutions and cultural norms. These institutions and norms may be political in nature, having to do with the direct oppression of groups or peoples through state power. But they may also be economic in nature, taking the form of unjust systems of economic organization that systematically redistribute wealth in ways that harm people by preventing them from meeting their basic needs. Finally, these institutions and norms may be social in nature, systematically marginalizing, excluding or subordinating certain groups on the basis of ascribed identities.

“How does structural sin cause war? Simply put, progressive Catholic international thought asserts that wars happen when those seeking to perpetuate unjust or violent institutions and cultural norms clash with those who seek to resist or overturn them.”

Retrieved September 23, 2019 from https://onepeterfive.com/death-catholic-war/

Great Article on Much of Crime’s Roots

The Left would have us believe that social structures cause the bad behavior leading to crime but research proves that generally, individual bad behavior causes crime, as this article from City Journal reports.

This is also aligned with Cathoic social teaching.

An excerpt.

“More than 50 years of social-sciences evidence demonstrates that behavior is highly predictive of many important life outcomes. Children who are temperamental, fussy, and aggressive often cause their parents to withdraw affection and to limit supervision, which leads to further bad behavior later on, along with subsequent struggles and frustration. Adolescents who verbally accost or threaten their schoolteachers are more likely to be suspended or expelled, as well as to spend less time studying, working on homework, and attending classes. And adults who engage in crime are the same ones who not only frequently end up in jail and prison, of course, but also remain voluntarily unemployed, and often find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder. Behavior is predictive from one setting to the next, and consequences snowball. The body of research linking bad behavior to negative and cumulative consequences is remarkably robust, extends across countries, and has been replicated across academic disciplines with diverse samples, methodologies, and analytical techniques. These findings provide the basis for a range of policies and cultural narratives that could, if embraced, help people avoid many of life’s costly pitfalls.

“Many thinkers and activists on the left, however, prefer to disconnect an individual’s behavior from his lot in life—whether it’s by obscuring the violence committed by criminals or blaming it on external forces, downplaying the aggression of problem students in public schools when they’re minorities and talking instead about the “school-to-prison pipeline,” or suggesting that the vagaries of chance explain individual success and failure. In this way of thinking, implicit bias is invariably to blame for police conflicts with minority communities, rather than uncooperative or violent arrestees, and the “prison-industrial complex,” not chronic felonious behavior, explains why 2 million Americans are behind bars. From the Left’s point of view, bad behavior, at least by certain favored groups, should be ignored, or, if not ignored, then explained away by diabolical social forces—poverty, in particular—that cause the bad behavior. This harms society and does nothing to help the people whom the Left claims to want to help, especially since its explanation is backward: poverty is far more often the outcome of bad behavior, not the cause of it.

“The contention that behavior matters, that it has profound effects on individual lives, is what got law professors Amy Wax and Larry Alexander in trouble with left-leaning colleagues. In a 2017 op-ed defending “bourgeois culture,” Wax and Alexander argued that traditional social norms provided people with the values and ways of acting that ultimately improved their lives. What were these recommended behaviors? To get married before having children and to stay married, to get an education, to be a good employee, to serve one’s country, to be neighborly and charitable, to avoid lewd public language, to respect authority, and to avoid crime and drug abuse. This is the same kind of advice offered to most young people by their parents. Even so, Wax and Alexander committed a sin in the Left’s eyes: they made the connection between behavior and life outcomes explicit and thereby rejected the narrative that unjust social structures, not individual choices, block people from reaching their potential.

“By the same token, what we could call behavioral poverty helps explain how some individuals spend their lives mired in poverty and social dysfunction. Behavioral poverty is reflected in the attitudes, values, and beliefs that justify entitlement thinking, the spurning of personal responsibility, and the rejection of traditional social mechanisms of advancement. It is characterized by high self-indulgence, low self-regulation, exploitation of others, and limited motivation and effort. It can be correlated with a range of antisocial, immoral, and imprudent behaviors, including substance abuse, gambling, insolvency, poor health habits, and crime.

“While behavioral poverty’s causes are likely complex—involving the interplay between parents, genes, and culture—understanding its consequences is not complex: they are depressingly predictable. Because behavioral poverty can emerge early in life and remain stable over time, it’s not uncommon to see behaviorally poor children perform badly at school, compile arrest records as juveniles, and transition into adulthood with few or any skills outside those valued on the street. Few who work in the juvenile-justice system, for example, are surprised to find out that former clients get arrested as adults, or involved with drugs, or pregnant with no means of support.

“Behavioral poverty helps us see why those caught up in the criminal-justice system often struggle in many areas of life, whether it’s the squalor of their lifestyle, their seeming imperviousness to correctional interventions designed to improve their lives, or their often-obstinate refusal to engage in productive adult conduct. Though many sociologists and criminologists would be reluctant to invoke a concept like this because it “blames the victim”—in this case, criminals—for their life circumstances, extensive work in the social sciences over the past half-century provides compelling evidence for it.

“One of the first scholars to document the continuity in antisocial conduct over an individual’s life was Lee Robins, a versatile social scientist whose work includes seminal research on antisocial personality disorder. In one of her landmark papers, Robins compared developmental trajectories of prosocial and antisocial behavior, using data from various samples—some composed entirely of whites, some entirely of blacks, and some racially representative of the U.S. population. Robins found that behavior was the foremost predictor of subsequent conduct and life circumstances and that social class or poverty played little role. This finding was particularly pronounced for pathological criminal behavior—environmental conditions, such as poverty, had relatively little effect in explaining such behavior. Poverty, Robins found, was often a result—not a precipitating cause—of the behavioral repertoire that produced relationship strife, school dropout, chronic unemployment, substance problems, and transiency. The same characterological deficiencies that plagued the research subjects as children in Robins’s work remained evident decades later, when they were adults.”

Retrieved September 23, 2019 from https://www.city-journal.org/behavioral-poverty

Sanctuary for Illegal Immigrants

An excellent history of this bizarre policy which undercuts a major principle of the criminal justice system (accountability), from Criminal Justice Legal Foundation President Michael Rushford.

An excerpt.

“Citizens of foreign countries who enter the United States illegally are by definition criminals.

“Granted, the crime is not considered serious under U.S. law, roughly comparable to trespassing, but it is a crime and 50 years ago, in both Democrat and Republican administrations, illegal immigrants who were caught were usually deported. But, beginning in 1971, progressive cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Berkeley and the state of Oregon, enacted laws making them sanctuaries for illegal aliens.

“In October 1986, Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (ICRA), which authorized legalization for undocumented immigrants who could prove they had resided in the U.S. continually, although without appropriate documentation, since January 1, 1982, hence the term “undocumented” immigrant.

“Since adoption of that act, the odds of deportation for those whose only crime was crossing the U.S. border illegally had dropped to near zero.

“During the President George Bush Jr. and Barack Obama administrations, almost all deportations were for illegals who committed additional crimes in the United States with most of the emphasis on violent crimes.

“The 9/11 terrorist attack focused public and government attention on both illegal and legal immigration, leading to the 2002 passage of the Homeland Security Act by Congress, and the creation of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The mission of ICE is to protect America from cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threatens national security and public safety. This is distinct from the U. S. Border Patrol which is tasked with securing the nation’s borders.

“Until 2016, the leaders of both political parties had repeatedly expressed support for border security and the deportation of criminal aliens, but politicians were never able to agree on the specific policies to accomplish this. During the eight years of the Obama administration, while the president talked tough on illegal immigration and the mainstream media falsely reported increased deportations, they had actually declined. In the last year of his presidency, Bush Jr. had deported 1,171,000 illegal aliens. Under the Obama administration, ICE reported that deportations began to decrease every year, ending in 2016 with 240,000 illegals deported. In 2012, Obama also initiated the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which gave temporary legal status to 1.8 million illegals under the age of 31. In 2014, Obama expanded DACA to waive the age limit and include illegals who entered the U. S. prior to 2010. All of this was done without the approval of Congress.

“In early 2017, the newly elected President, keeping a promise he made during his campaign, stepped up illegal immigration enforcement at the border and repeatedly announced his plans to substantially increase border security and more aggressively identify and remove illegals who had committed crimes. In response, eight states, including California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Washington state, and scores of cities, including New York, Cincinnati, and Philadelphia enacted sanctuary laws prohibiting local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, even in cases involving criminal aliens.

“As ICE began carrying out sweeps to capture criminal aliens for deportation, progressive politicians took action to undermine the effort. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, when notified that ICE would be looking for criminal aliens in her city in January 2018, publicly announced the pending sweep to warn illegals, making her an instant celebrity among progressives.

“For several years, ICE has been compiling data on its requests to local police departments to detain criminal illegal aliens eligible for release from jail so that immigration enforcement officers can take them into federal custody for deportation. A recently released Declined Detainer Report, for the first quarter of 2018, indicates how laws which prohibit local police from cooperating with ICE have turned law-abiding citizens into victims at the hands of criminal aliens.

“Some examples:

• “On January 7, 2018, Los Angeles Police arrested a 30-year-old alien from Mexico on drug charges. ICE issued a detainer on the offender, but it was not honored and the alien was released from jail. On February 26, 2018, the same illegal alien was arrested for murder.
• In December of 2017, a 29-year-old criminal alien was arrested in San Luis Obispo for a probation violation. ICE issued a detainer but it was not honored and the defendant was released. A month later the same criminal alien was arrested for rape and ICE issued another detainer, which was not honored and the criminal was again released.
• On January 17, 2018, a 38-year-old illegal alien was arrested in Los Angeles for domestic violence. An ICE detainer was issued but not honored and the criminal was released. In April the same man was arrested for drunk driving. An ICE detainer was not honored and the criminal alien was released from jail and remains at large.
• On January 31, 2018, a 41-year-old illegal alien from Honduras was arrested in San Francisco for burglary and fighting with the arresting officer. An ICE detainer was not honored and the alien was released. In April the same illegal alien was arrested by San Francisco Police for drug trafficking and auto theft. After an ICE detainer was not honored the criminal was released and remains at large.
• On February 13, 2018, a 26-year-old illegal alien from Mexico was arrested in Beverly Hills for auto theft. After an ICE detainer was ignored, the alien was released. On April 13, 2018 the same criminal alien was arrested for attempted murder. ICE issued a detainer that was ignored and the alien was released and remains at large.
• On February 18, 2018, a 23-year-old illegal alien from Honduras was first arrested in San Francisco on auto theft and receiving stolen property. Between that date and January 21, 2019, the same criminal alien was rearrested 12 more times for multiple crimes including burglary, drug charges, and stealing five cars. Upon each arrest, ICE issued detainers which were not honored and the criminal was released and remains at large.”      Retrieved August 22, 2019 from https://californiaglobe.com/section-2/california-sanctuary-for-criminals/

Mass Shootings, Imitation’s Possible Role

An insightful article by a retired prison psychiatrist from City Journal examines that.

An excerpt.

“Most people, said La Rochefoucauld, would never fall in love if they’d never heard of it. Whether or not it is true of love, it might be true of mass shootings—that is, one mass shooting encourages another, so that they seem to come in clusters, piling horror on horror. Few people will believe that the mass shooting in Dayton, in which nine people so far have lost their lives, is entirely unconnected with the shooting just hours earlier in El Paso, in which 20 people have died.

The role of imitation in the commission of acts of violence by the susceptible has been known since at least the end of the eighteenth century, when romantic young men in Europe committed suicide after the publication of Goethe’s novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, the eponymous hero of which killed himself for unrequited love. Even today, a suicide in a soap opera is sometimes followed by a brief spate of suicides—such that producers are now wary of depicting suicides, for fear of being accused of provoking them.

“The violence of suicide, of course, affects principally the person who commits it, but often—especially among the young—it contains a significant element of aggression toward others, wreaking vengeance upon others for injuries done, real or imagined, to the suicidal person’s self-esteem. Mass shooting, which has been interpreted as a form of suicide because so high a proportion of perpetrators end up dead, takes vengeance to a higher level altogether. The suicide’s vengeance is directed against certain people in particular; the mass shooter’s is against people, or society, in general.

“There are exceptions: the pilot who deliberately crashed a Germanwings airliner into the mountainside might have been trying to ruin his ex-girlfriend’s life forever by means of causing her an unassuageable sense of guilt; Anders Breivik killed those whom he believed would further dilute Norwegian national identity by their espousal of multiculturalism as a political ideology; and the El Paso shooter, yesterday, apparently explicitly intended to kill Hispanics. (The motives of the Dayton shooter are not yet known.) Some mass shooters have also returned to their former places of work and killed their former colleagues. More often, however, the victims and the grievance are only loosely connected—so loosely connected, in fact, that the mass killing suggests an inchoate rage against existence, against society, and against the perpetrator’s own life.

“Modern mass killing, usually though not always by shooting, seems to have started (because imitation must start somewhere) with the case of Charles Whitman, who consulted a psychiatrist about his increasing bad temper and desire to shoot people—then killed his mother and father, climbed the tower on the campus of the University of Texas, and shot and killed 16 people at random and injured 44 others. This case has intrigued doctors ever since because at postmortem, Whitman was found to have a brain tumor, which might (or might not) have caused the removal of his normal inhibition against killing. In any case, he had undergone a character change before he killed.

“Mass shooters tend to be of above-average intelligence but not high achievers. In a society in which fame, recognition, and success are of capital importance, in which lives of quiet desperation are not à la mode, they often feel deeply wounded, insulted in fact, by the supposed failure of society to take them at their own estimate, to recognize their true worth. They are rarely at ease in their personal relationships, either—but they look outward, not inward, for the source of their failures. The world for them is evil and unjust, and it will get, at their hands, what it deserves. In the process, of course, as another benefit, they will achieve their deserved fame or notoriety. They will be the subject of articles, news items, a Wikipedia entry, perhaps even of books; they will be an object of puzzlement by the learned and the famous. If they go far enough, they might even be mentioned by the president of the United States.”

Retrieved August 5, 2019 from https://www.city-journal.org/mass-shootings-el-paso-dayton

 

The Mentally Ill, Homelessness, & Violence

In this article from City Journal, the sad history of public leadership’s failure to address the three effectively is outlined.

An excerpt.

“Early last month, 29-year-old Christopher Morisette rampaged through the streets of Seattle, stabbing three pedestrians with a steel folding knife, then stripped off his clothes and ran naked across a freeway interchange, where he was arrested. In the past six months, three similar “random stabbings” occurred in Seattle’s downtown commercial district.

“Despite the police department’s repeated efforts—including a block-by-block strategy targeting open-air drug-dealing and violence—crime and anti-social behavior stubbornly persist. In 2018, just in the downtown precinct, Seattle police received 44,246 calls for service, including 7,215 reports of violence, 3,861 reports of narcotics and public intoxication, and 1,069 reports of mental health crises and suicidal behavior. Numerous eruptions of violence at one street intersection—3rd and Pine—have led residents to dub it “3rd and Crime”; they call the corner McDonald’s “McStabby’s.”

“Within this disintegrating social landscape, Christopher Morisette’s story is no longer atypical. According to news reports, he was born to a schizophrenic mother, grew up in the foster care system, developed a methamphetamine addiction, cycled in and out of jail, lived in homeless shelters for the past three years, and suffers—in the opinion of his adoptive mother—from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Morisette was certainly groomed for failure by the familial and social conditions around him. He was also deprived of the institutions that might have provided some love, care, and restraint. “You just get to the point you’re numb and you’re not surprised when things happen,” Morisette’s adoptive mother said to reporters after the attack.

“What can be done? Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan has admitted that the city government is “unable to deal with significant mental health needs” and called for new investments in mental health facilities. She’s right—the state should have the capacity to put the dangerously mentally ill into conservatorship—but the crisis runs much deeper than public administrators comprehend.

“A century ago, French sociologist Émile Durkheim formulated the concept of anomic suicide, in which a general breakdown in social conditions influences the decision of some individuals to end their lives. Today, with age-old restraints—family, religion, community, tradition—collapsing under the forces of modernity, and homelessness, addiction, and madness on the rise, many cities are seeing what might be called anomic violence: random assaults of strangers on urban streets.

“It’s not that the United States hasn’t developed institutions to deal with these problems. We have, over several generations, vastly expanded the so-called therapeutic state, to the point that federal and state governments now spend more than $2 trillion on health and welfare programs annually. We have constructed a vast technical apparatus that, despite its good intentions, has failed to reverse these social pathologies. In fact, in cities like Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, social scientists and political leaders have abandoned the goal of restoring the social fabric and reintegrating the addicted and mentally ill into society—shifting, instead, to a model of “harm reduction.” The best we can hope for now, they appear to believe, is to contain widespread dysfunction in a downtown corridor.”

Retrieved August 2, 2019 from https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-stabbings

Mass Incarceration, Fact & Fiction

The real story behind the political trope, from City Journal.

An excerpt.

“Certain must-pass ideological litmus tests have arisen for the 25 declared candidates (so far) seeking the Democratic Party presidential nomination. Perhaps chief among them is subscription to the belief that the American criminal-justice system is racist and overly punitive. This Democratic unanimity makes sense in light of the criticism that many of the leading candidates have faced from activists, left-wing media, and other, more “woke,” presidential hopefuls for their earlier acceptance, or even endorsement, of proactive policing, quality-of-life enforcement, and incarceration as reasonable methods of combating crime.

“JOE BIDEN’S ROLE IN ’90S CRIME LAW COULD HAUNT ANY PRESIDENTIAL BID, ran a prescient 2015 New York Times headline. Doubtless sensing vulnerability, the former vice president and current Democratic front-runner made a Martin Luther King Day speech to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network this year, telling the audience that “I haven’t always been right” about criminal justice and that “white America has to admit there’s still a systematic racism, and it goes almost unnoticed by so many of us.”

“That hasn’t stopped some of Biden’s Democratic opponents (not to mention President Trump) from pushing the incarceration button. California senator Kamala Harris, one of his leading rivals, hit Biden for backing the 1994 omnibus crime bill, which, she says, contributed to “mass incarceration in this country.” Harris herself, though, has met criticism for being too tough on crime in her days as a prosecutor and as California attorney general. New Jersey senator Cory Booker—one of the most outspoken of the candidates on criminal-justice reform—has also had his reformist credentials questioned, with a recent Times story criticizing his “zero-tolerance” approach to crime when serving as Newark’s mayor from 2006 to 2013, citing ACLU complaints. But all the Democrats are striking the same chord. “More people [are] locked up for low-level offenses on marijuana than for all violent crimes in this country,” Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, another top-tier Biden challenger, declared at last year’s We the People Summit. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator known best for his left-wing economic populism, has described felon disenfranchisement as racist voter suppression. And South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg told Out that incarceration is “clearly worsening some of the patterns of racial inequality in our country.”

“Eight of the declared candidates contributed to a recent compendium published by the Brennan Center for Justice, titled Ending Mass Incarceration. The essays provide a useful summation of Democratic talking points on criminal justice. That the United States over-incarcerates is evidenced, reformers say, by the numbers: though it has about 5 percent of the global population, the U.S. houses about a quarter of the prisoners worldwide. America’s high incarceration rate, goes another assertion, is driven by the unjust enforcement of “low-level” and “nonviolent” offenses, particularly drug crimes. A further charge: the system is racist, given how much more likely blacks are to be behind bars compared with whites. Finally, they say that sentences have gotten way too long.

“True, for a subset of America’s prison population, incarceration does not serve a legitimate penological end, either because these individuals have been incarcerated for too long or because they should not have been incarcerated to begin with. Justice dictates that we identify these individuals and secure their releases with haste. But none of the above claims advanced by the presidential hopefuls is correct—and acting on any of them would be disastrous.

“Start with drugs. Contrary to the claims in Michelle Alexander’s much-discussed 2010 bestseller The New Jim Crow, drug prohibition is not driving incarceration rates. Yes, about half of federal prisoners are in on drug charges; but federal inmates constitute only 12 percent of all American prisoners—the vast majority are in state facilities. Those incarcerated primarily for drug offenses constitute less than 15 percent of state prisoners. Four times as many state inmates are behind bars for one of five very serious crimes: murder (14.2 percent), rape or sexual assault (12.8 percent), robbery (13.1 percent), aggravated or simple assault (10.5 percent), and burglary (9.4 percent). The terms served for state prisoners incarcerated primarily on drug charges typically aren’t that long, either. One in five state drug offenders serves less than six months in prison, and nearly half (45 percent) of drug offenders serve less than one year.

“That a prisoner is categorized as a drug offender, moreover, does not mean that he is nonviolent or otherwise law-abiding. Most criminal cases are disposed of through plea bargains, and, given that charges often get downgraded or dropped as part of plea negotiations, an inmate’s conviction record will usually understate the crimes he committed. The claim that drug offenders are nonviolent and pose zero threat to the public if they’re put back on the street is also undermined by a striking fact: more than three-quarters of released drug offenders are rearrested for a nondrug crime. It’s worth noting that Baltimore police identified 118 homicide suspects in 2017, and 70 percent had been previously arrested on drug charges.

“Not only are most prisoners doing time for serious, often violent, offenses; they’ve usually received (and blown) the second chance that so many reformers say they deserve. Justice Department studies from 2000 through 2009 reveal that only about 40 percent of state felony convictions result in a prison sentence. A Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) study of violent felons convicted over a 12-year period in America’s 75 largest counties shows that 56 percent of the offenders had a prior conviction record.

“Even though most state prisoners are serious and serial offenders, nearly 40 percent of inmates serve less than a year in prison, with the median time served about 16 months. Lengthy sentences tend to be reserved for the most serious violent crimes—but even 20 percent of convicted murderers and nearly 60 percent of those convicted for rape or sexual assault serve less than five years of their sentences. Nor have sentences gotten longer, as reformers contend. In his book Locked In, John Pfaff—a leader in the decarceration movement—plotted state prison admissions and releases from 1978 through 2014 on a graph. If sentence lengths had increased, the two lines would diverge as admissions outpaced releases; in fact, the lines are almost identical.

“Getting these facts straight is important, especially since reformers unfavorably contrast the U.S.’s criminal-justice system with those of other nations—Western European democracies, in particular—with significantly lower incarceration rates. Because so few American prisoners are serving time for trivial infractions, aligning America’s incarceration numbers with those of, say, England or Germany would require releasing many very serious and frequently violent offenders. Yet many in the decarceration camp have been calling for just such a mass release. The #cut50 initiative, founded by activist and CNN host Van Jones, aims to halve the prison population. Scholars at the Brennan Center have called for an immediate 40 percent reduction in the number of inmates.

“Such drastic cuts could produce significant crime increases, as communities lose the incapacitation benefits that they currently enjoy. Already, there’s no shortage of cautionary examples. In March, the New York Police Department released a montage of security-camera footage that captured ten gang members in East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood, as they hunted down and killed a man in broad daylight. The chilling images show the victim, 21-year-old Tyquan Eversley (out on bail, facing a rap for armed robbery), running, as his armed assailants give chase. Eversley gets entangled in barbed wire after jumping a fence into someone’s backyard; one of his pursuers hurls what looks like part of a cinder block over the fence at him, as another points his gun over the top and fires five fatal rounds. The rock-slinging thug, according to the NYPD, is 25-year-old Michael Reid, who has since been identified and arrested. Reid, it was subsequently reported, had been recently released from federal custody and was wearing an ankle monitor at the time of the murder.”

Retrieved July 22, 2019 from https://www.city-journal.org/mass-incarceration

Story Behind the Story

No one does it better than Ann Coulter.

An excerpt.

If the left has its way in the next few years, there won’t be anyone left in prison because, you see, they’re overflowing with innocent black men locked up for “nonviolent drug crimes.” All of them!

Over the weekend, NBC News investigative reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell appeared on MSNBC’s “Kasie DC” to tell the story of Bill Underwood, loving parent and prison mentor, who has already spent nearly 30 years in prison for a nonviolent drug crime.

Caldwell reported:

“William Underwood, now 65 years old, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a nonviolent drug-related crime. It was his first felony, but in the middle of the tough-on-crime era, the judge showed no leniency. With no hope of ever walking free again, Underwood has made the best of his time in prison, mentoring others and staying devoted to his children and grandchildren, as (his daughter) Ebony fights for his release.”

Another black body in prison for mere possession of a joint!

Actually, no one is in prison anywhere for possession of a joint, except in the pea-brain fantasies of chubby college coeds everywhere. We don’t have the prison space.

NBC’s Caldwell interviewed Underwood, noting how “for 30 years from inside prison walls, he still tried to be a father first.” The poor man concurred, saying, “That’s all I was ever taught, you know? Children first, first, foremost. That’s what I try to emulate.”

Can it be long before Ivanka pops up, lobbying for his release?

Despite what I’m sure was an exhaustive investigation, I was suspicious of Caldwell’s characterization of Underwood’s crime. My rule is: If you’re not telling me why someone was sentenced to life in prison, there’s probably a reason you’re not telling me.

All we got from Caldwell was: Here’s this great father behind bars; He just got caught up in something, we’re really not sure what it was — and here’s his daughter, Ebony, to tell us what a terrific father he is.

Considering that she’s arguing for Underwood’s immediate release into the general public, it seems odd that Caldwell doesn’t know what he’s in prison for, nor does she have the slightest interest in finding out.

Maybe at NBC they don’t have access to the internet. But I do! I spent a full 60 seconds doing a Nexis search on William Underwood.

Here are some excerpts from a Newsday article on Underwood’s conviction, dated Jan. 10, 1990:

“A rock band manager was convicted yesterday as the head of a vicious Harlem drug gang that prosecutors said carried out six murders, including the controversial slaying of a witness in 1983.”

Caldwell didn’t bother to mention Underwood’s SIX MURDERS?

NBC: We don’t have room for everything. These stories are only so long.

“William Underwood, 36, faces up to life in prison without parole for his conviction in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on charges of racketeering and operating a continuing criminal enterprise — the so-called federal narcotics ‘kingpin’ law.”

It’s weird that Caldwell never managed to turn up the fact that he was convicted of being the kingpin of a drug empire, distributing heroin throughout Harlem in the 1980s. “Yes, your honor, I was convicted of operating a CONTINUING CRIMINAL ENTERPRISE — but it’s my first offense.”

“A federal jury found him guilty of heading the murderous and now-broken Vigilantes drug gang … known for extraordinary violence. All told, police say, it may have killed as many as 23 people.”

I feel like Caldwell may not have gone the extra mile in researching this story.

The evidence against Underwood included the testimony of 50 witnesses, undercover video-recordings and confessions of Vigilante gang members — which is especially impressive, considering that he ordered the murder of witnesses preparing to testify against him. (I guess he couldn’t kill all 50.) In addition to killing witnesses, Underwood’s outfit killed customers, members of rival drug gangs and innocent passersby.

In a 1988 article titled, “Brutal Drug Gangs Wage War of Terror in Upper Manhattan,” The New York Times reported that Underwood’s heroin operation was “considered by law-enforcement experts to be the most dangerous drug gang in Harlem.” All told, the gangs were “believed to be responsible for as many as 523 slayings in upper Manhattan in the last five years.”

Retrieved July 17, 2019 from http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2019-07-17.html#read_more

And here is a link to a local crime and justice foundation lawyer who checked out these reported facts, all true… http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/crimblog/2019/07/a-poster-boy-for-the-long-sent.html#more

Broken Windows Works

As if we needed another reminder, but here’s one from City Journal.

An excerpt.

Three months ago, the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system that serves San Francisco and surrounding counties began a “blitz” to deter morning rush-hour fare evasion at four downtown stations. As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, the first month’s results were startling: proof-of-payment citations rose 13 percent, new ticket sales rose 10 percent, add-value transactions to existing tickets rose 29 percent, and—most significantly—average weekly calls to police dropped a remarkable 45 percent. This rapid turnaround in behavior was achieved simply by staffing the stations with extra police officers, fare inspectors, and BART managers wearing bright yellow vests so that anyone trying to jump a fare gate or use a bypass door saw their way blocked by an official.

These results should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the Broken Windows theory of policing developed by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling. The theory’s simple premise: responding proactively to minor crime (vandalism, disorderly behavior, and fare evasion) also reduces serious crime, including violent crime. Before he made New York City the safest large city in the country as commissioner of its police department, William Bratton put Broken Windows into effect as the head of the New York Transit Police, directing his officers to focus on fare evasion. The effect of the policy—first in the subway tunnels and then on the streets of New York—is now legendary.

San Francisco’s BART “blitz” demonstrates the effectiveness of Broken Windows. Just by putting people at the gates who looked to be in charge—neither the fare inspectors nor the yellow-vested managers were badged police officers—BART was able to cut crime in those stations almost in half. Exactly as Broken Windows predicts, those willing to commit serious crime often start by committing minor crimes, like fare evasion. Keeping such people out of the transit system means that everyone paying the fare is safer.

The data also put to rest two common arguments against fighting fare evasion—and, by extension, against Broken Windows policing. Advocates claim that enforcing laws against fare evasion criminalizes the poor. People don’t evade fares out of malice, the argument goes, but because they’re struggling and can’t spare the cash. But the more than 600 additional fares bought during a recent month show that fare-jumpers can pay—they just chose not to do so, knowing that they faced no consequence. Furthermore, the large increase in add-value transactions demonstrates that it’s not only poor people who jump the turnstile. People who already have a ticket or transit card are more likely to be regular riders, perhaps commuters, who figured that they may as well skip paying the fare since no one was watching. Jumping the gates instead of buying a valid fare remains a choice, not an involuntary circumstance.

Another argument against Broken Windows policing is that monitoring petty transactions is a waste of resources because the money spent paying public employees to do this exceeds the revenue from fines or additional tickets. Some of the police officers involved in the new BART policy worked overtime, and their additional salary may have exceeded the value of fines and extra fares. But this argument discounts the cost of the approximately 40 police calls that did not occur as a result of stationing guards in the stations. Each response to a crime is expensive in terms of officer time, the potential deployment of medical personnel, and justice-system costs—but the social benefits of establishing public order are incalculable. Letting people get away with jumping turnstiles leads to a deterioration of the transit environment. When some commuters become cheats, some cheats become thieves—and some thieves become muggers, a progression that Broken Windows seeks to interrupt.

Retrieved July 11, 2019 from https://www.city-journal.org/san-francisco-bart-blitz