Archive: Oct 2006

president bush signed legislation to criminalize internet gambling on friday. under the unlawful internet gambling enforcement act, it is illegal to use credit cards, checks and other bank instruments for online bets. i’ve never gambled online, unless you count my emotional and ill-fated email dinner bets with friends (points? i don’t need yer stinking points — my vikings will win straight up, and you’ll be buyin’, my friend). whenever new rules are made, however, i like to suss out the winners and losers.

senate majority leader dr. bill frist evidently took the lead in attaching gambling restrictions to a port security bill that was virtually assured of passage. the national football league lobbied hard for this one, employing two lobbyists who were former senior aides to senator frist.

the nfl gains much by upholding the perceived integrity of their games, while some senators benefit by distancing themselves from jack abramoff (who had successfully lobbied on behalf of internet gambling) and shoring up the christian conservative base before the election. the big losers, of course, are individual american gamblers and offshore internet gambling operators. those who view gambling as evil or addictive would argue that such costs are offset by the reduced social and individual harm associated with the practice. but will internet gamblers really stop betting?

if these folks continue to bet their $6-12 billion per year, i can think of another beneficiary of criminalization. most serious gamblers probably know a small businessperson who loves the new unlawful internet gambling enforcement act: the local bookmaker. bookies don’t usually hire lobbyists like the nfl, but you can bet they are just as pleased with the result. with decreased competition online, demand for their services should increase significantly. now, if the local numbers bankers could just get rid of those pesky state lotteries…

given my pop culture avocations, people can’t understand why i’ve never plugged into the cable. just when i think i really need cnn or comedy central, however, i flip channels in a hotel room and see something too horrible for words. such is the case with [warning: the following link is brutal] ultimate fighting.

i raise the issue because i spoke this weekend with an intelligent young woman who attended a pay-per-view UFC event with her boyfriend. when i asked what she liked about it, she pointed to “passion” and the faces of the participants. dang. they’d get as much passion and intensity watching a good guitar face at the local bar.

but she’s not alone, and that’s got me worried. ultimate fighting is outdrawing the baseball playoffs among males age 18-34. is this the state of american masculinity in 2006? i’ll summarize a spike tv bout i saw while traveling this summer: palooka A knocks palooka B into chain-link fence, straddles B’s chest, and pounds face until some savagery threshold is crossed (unconsciousness? a two-quart blood rule?), whereupon A is declared the victor. i’ve seen more civilized fights in prison yards.

after one has physically dominated an opponent, doesn’t man law dictate mercy? or is mercy the crucial distinction between ultimate fighting and plain vanilla penultimate fighting? somewhere along the line i picked up the idea that a man doesn’t continue hitting or kicking a fallen opponent into unconsciousness, or immobilize him and then cave in his face with elbow shots.

i admit that i’m the wrong guy to cluck about this, given my own conflicted history with violence. among my edumacated friends, i’m a lonely defender of disciplined and attenuated violent forms such as football, rugby, and wrestling — and i continue to applaud my significantly larger lad’s participation in such activities. if anything, he’s learned discipline and control in these sports. to my knowledge, at least, he has yet to throw a punch in anger.

i lost my stomach for boxing after boom-boom mancini v. duk-koo kim, but i’ll admit that i’ve probably participated in more violence than most sociologists or criminologists. on the other hand, with the possible exception of murray straus, i also watch far less of it than any sociologist or criminologist i know. i’ve simply got no time for the phony played-out bloodfests by scorcese and tarantino. i’ll grant you that straw dogs, mean streets, and clockwork may have had something important to say. but thirty years later i’m amazed that critics, most of whom have neither thrown nor taken a punch, still lap up the same old tired movie tropes as authentic.

i work hard as a criminologist because i want a little more Justice and a whole lot less violence in the world. for me, real violence is only interesting in the way that hiv/aids and earthquakes are interesting. but that’s a rant for another day. ultimate fighting strikes me as straight-up pornography, perhaps a step or two below cockfighting on the debasement scale. as long as i’ve got kids in the house and comcast is pushing UFC (and, frankly, i could throw goodfellas and reservoir dogs in there as well), they’ll just have to make do without me. i see an ugly human transaction whenever two human beings come to blows, made all the uglier by money and spectators.

president bush signed legislation to criminalize internet gambling on friday. under the unlawful internet gambling enforcement act, it is illegal to use credit cards, checks and other bank instruments for online bets. i’ve never gambled online, unless you count my emotional and ill-fated email dinner bets with friends (points? i don’t need yer stinking points — my vikings will win straight up, and you’ll be buyin’, my friend). whenever new rules are made, however, i like to suss out the winners and losers.

senate majority leader dr. bill frist evidently took the lead in attaching gambling restrictions to a port security bill that was virtually assured of passage. the national football league lobbied hard for this one, employing two lobbyists who were former senior aides to senator frist.

the nfl gains much by upholding the perceived integrity of their games, while some senators benefit by distancing themselves from jack abramoff (who had successfully lobbied on behalf of internet gambling) and shoring up the christian conservative base before the election. the big losers, of course, are individual american gamblers and offshore internet gambling operators. those who view gambling as evil or addictive would argue that such costs are offset by the reduced social and individual harm associated with the practice. but will internet gamblers really stop betting?

if these folks continue to bet their $6-12 billion per year, i can think of another beneficiary of criminalization. most serious gamblers probably know a small businessperson who loves the new unlawful internet gambling enforcement act: the local bookmaker. bookies don’t usually hire lobbyists like the nfl, but you can bet they are just as pleased with the result. with decreased competition online, demand for their services should increase significantly. now, if the local numbers bankers could just get rid of those pesky state lotteries…

given my pop culture avocations, people can’t understand why i’ve never plugged into the cable. just when i think i really need cnn or comedy central, however, i flip channels in a hotel room and see something too horrible for words. such is the case with [warning: the following link is brutal] ultimate fighting.

i raise the issue because i spoke this weekend with an intelligent young woman who attended a pay-per-view UFC event with her boyfriend. when i asked what she liked about it, she pointed to “passion” and the faces of the participants. dang. they’d get as much passion and intensity watching a good guitar face at the local bar.

but she’s not alone, and that’s got me worried. ultimate fighting is outdrawing the baseball playoffs among males age 18-34. is this the state of american masculinity in 2006? i’ll summarize a spike tv bout i saw while traveling this summer: palooka A knocks palooka B into chain-link fence, straddles B’s chest, and pounds face until some savagery threshold is crossed (unconsciousness? a two-quart blood rule?), whereupon A is declared the victor. i’ve seen more civilized fights in prison yards.

after one has physically dominated an opponent, doesn’t man law dictate mercy? or is mercy the crucial distinction between ultimate fighting and plain vanilla penultimate fighting? somewhere along the line i picked up the idea that a man doesn’t continue hitting or kicking a fallen opponent into unconsciousness, or immobilize him and then cave in his face with elbow shots.

i admit that i’m the wrong guy to cluck about this, given my own conflicted history with violence. among my edumacated friends, i’m a lonely defender of disciplined and attenuated violent forms such as football, rugby, and wrestling — and i continue to applaud my significantly larger lad’s participation in such activities. if anything, he’s learned discipline and control in these sports. to my knowledge, at least, he has yet to throw a punch in anger.

i lost my stomach for boxing after boom-boom mancini v. duk-koo kim, but i’ll admit that i’ve probably participated in more violence than most sociologists or criminologists. on the other hand, with the possible exception of murray straus, i also watch far less of it than any sociologist or criminologist i know. i’ve simply got no time for the phony played-out bloodfests by scorcese and tarantino. i’ll grant you that straw dogs, mean streets, and clockwork may have had something important to say. but thirty years later i’m amazed that critics, most of whom have neither thrown nor taken a punch, still lap up the same old tired movie tropes as authentic.

i work hard as a criminologist because i want a little more Justice and a whole lot less violence in the world. for me, real violence is only interesting in the way that hiv/aids and earthquakes are interesting. but that’s a rant for another day. ultimate fighting strikes me as straight-up pornography, perhaps a step or two below cockfighting on the debasement scale. as long as i’ve got kids in the house and comcast is pushing UFC (and, frankly, i could throw goodfellas and reservoir dogs in there as well), they’ll just have to make do without me. i see an ugly human transaction whenever two human beings come to blows, made all the uglier by money and spectators.

the new york times features a story today that a mugging victim’s attitude led to her death. anemona hartocllis reports from the defendant’s trial: “It wasn’t the color of her skin, or the amount of money in her purse, the mugger said, but the victim’s attitude — her insouciance, defiance and disdain that made the mugger’s accomplice shoot the actress, 28-year-old Nicole duFresne, once in the chest, killing her.”

you may remember this case. in january, 2005, two couples were mugged by a group of seven youths. now, the youngest of these youths is testifying against the leader who pulled the trigger and killed nicole dufresne. tatiana mcdonald, now 16, testified that ms. dufresne taunted rudy fleming, the 19-year-old leader of the pack, going eye to eye with him and shouting: “What are you going to do, you going to shoot us? Is that what you wanted?”

apparently mr. fleming got so angry that he responded to the challenge by shooting ms. dufresne at very close range and killing her. her friends, who apparently kept quiet, were not shot.

so what’s the message here? i guess if you end up in a dangerous situation like this one, you don’t want to taunt your mugger. the code of the street may demand a response.

allen hornblum writes on prisons in the october 6 chronicle of higher education. he isn’t concerned with criminological research so much as human medical experimentation ranging from “relatively innocuous studies of deodorants and detergents to dangerous work on dioxin and chemical warfare.”

after writing a book on mistreatment in a philadelphia prison from the 1940s to the 1970s, professor hornblum is today concerned that a new national academies report (Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners) will greenlight a new generation of biomedical research on prisoners.

i applaud any national academies report that will help prevent abuses of prisoners, but professor hornblum does raise some troubling questions.

first, we know about the risks to the subjects of such research, but what are the benefits to prisoners? do we really need to be testing cosmetics on inmates (rather than, say, supermodels who might actually use such products)? given the absence of health care for prison releasees, how many subjects could even afford the costly drugs they tested?

second, aside from biomedical companies and individual researchers, who else wins and loses in such research? the state? what about the non-prisoners paid to offer up their bodies for medical experimentation? will they be undercut by cheaper and more plentiful prison “volunteers?”

third, to what extent do normal human subjects procedures apply behind prison walls? while principles of voluntariness and confidentiality are given great weight by internal review boards, they can be extremely difficult to achieve in a coercive environment such as a prison.*

i complain as loudly as anyone whenever i must go through several sets of arduous human subjects procedures before i can ask prisoners fairly innocuous questions (e.g., whether and how they voted). i don’t anticipate another tuskegee, but a new wave of high-profit biomedical research will certainly require continued vigilance to prevent similar abuses.

*for example, one prison administrator discouraged me from paying inmates for the interviews published in locked out. s/he said that if i offered as little as two dollars per interview, almost every inmate would want to participate and this would create problems among those not selected for interviews. this was an exaggeration, but not that far from reality — where else would two dollars seem like a coercive inducement?

allen hornblum writes on prisons in the october 6 chronicle of higher education. he isn’t concerned with criminological research so much as human medical experimentation ranging from “relatively innocuous studies of deodorants and detergents to dangerous work on dioxin and chemical warfare.”

after writing a book on mistreatment in a philadelphia prison from the 1940s to the 1970s, professor hornblum is today concerned that a new national academies report (Ethical Considerations for Research Involving Prisoners) will greenlight a new generation of biomedical research on prisoners.

i applaud any national academies report that will help prevent abuses of prisoners, but professor hornblum does raise some troubling questions.

first, we know about the risks to the subjects of such research, but what are the benefits to prisoners? do we really need to be testing cosmetics on inmates (rather than, say, supermodels who might actually use such products)? given the absence of health care for prison releasees, how many subjects could even afford the costly drugs they tested?

second, aside from biomedical companies and individual researchers, who else wins and loses in such research? the state? what about the non-prisoners paid to offer up their bodies for medical experimentation? will they be undercut by cheaper and more plentiful prison “volunteers?”

third, to what extent do normal human subjects procedures apply behind prison walls? while principles of voluntariness and confidentiality are given great weight by internal review boards, they can be extremely difficult to achieve in a coercive environment such as a prison.*

i complain as loudly as anyone whenever i must go through several sets of arduous human subjects procedures before i can ask prisoners fairly innocuous questions (e.g., whether and how they voted). i don’t anticipate another tuskegee, but a new wave of high-profit biomedical research will certainly require continued vigilance to prevent similar abuses.

*for example, one prison administrator discouraged me from paying inmates for the interviews published in locked out. s/he said that if i offered as little as two dollars per interview, almost every inmate would want to participate and this would create problems among those not selected for interviews. this was an exaggeration, but not that far from reality — where else would two dollars seem like a coercive inducement?

the new york times features a story today that a mugging victim’s attitude led to her death. anemona hartocllis reports from the defendant’s trial: “It wasn’t the color of her skin, or the amount of money in her purse, the mugger said, but the victim’s attitude — her insouciance, defiance and disdain that made the mugger’s accomplice shoot the actress, 28-year-old Nicole duFresne, once in the chest, killing her.”

you may remember this case. in january, 2005, two couples were mugged by a group of seven youths. now, the youngest of these youths is testifying against the leader who pulled the trigger and killed nicole dufresne. tatiana mcdonald, now 16, testified that ms. dufresne taunted rudy fleming, the 19-year-old leader of the pack, going eye to eye with him and shouting: “What are you going to do, you going to shoot us? Is that what you wanted?”

apparently mr. fleming got so angry that he responded to the challenge by shooting ms. dufresne at very close range and killing her. her friends, who apparently kept quiet, were not shot.

so what’s the message here? i guess if you end up in a dangerous situation like this one, you don’t want to taunt your mugger. the code of the street may demand a response.

well, i was all set to lecture tomorrow on labeling theory, moral panics, and congressman mark foley. on first reading, his emails to a young page didn’t strike me as all that creepy.if you squint a little, you can almost construe them as a dorky but caring adult reaching out as a big brother-type (are you weathering the hurricane ok? what’s school like for you this year?).

i wasn’t eager to come to the congressman’s defense, but i didn’t like the way that the pundits cited his resignation as damning evidence that he must be hiding something worse. turns out, of course, he likely was hiding something worse. after reading a transcript of his instant message correspondence from abc news, i’m less interested in even discussing the case in class. yeesh.

on the other hand, his entry into an alcohol rehab program might be a useful sidebar to tomorrow’s lecture. there is currently no moral panic swirling around lawful alcohol use — at least nothing on a scale approaching child sexual abuse. so, alcohol treatment could function as a strategic stigma management technique. the post quotes congressman foley thusly: “I strongly believe that I am an alcoholic and have accepted the need for immediate treatment for alcoholism and other behavioral problems.”

by scaling rehab mountain, congressman foley signals that booze is the real problem, relegating his sexual contact with minors to an ancillary grab-bag of other behavioral problems. wonkette has the whole sordid tale.

serving time in prison leaves all kinds of scars — some visible, some not. two recent news stories have reminded me of this point. first, is the story of the inmate who was forcibly tattooed with the words “Katie’s Revenge” in large letters across his forehead. anthony ray stockelman, 39, is serving a life sentence for molesting and murdering a 10-year-old girl named katie. while tattoos are against prison regulations, motivated inmates can be very creative and at least one found a way to leave a permanent reminder of his distaste across stockelman’s face. you can see a photo of the tattoo here on cnn’s website.

the tacoma news tribune offers the second story about murder defendant ulysses handy III. handy recently plead “guilty as charged” to three counts of aggravated first-degree murder. his plea bargain saved him from a death sentence; instead he will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. he laughed when family members of his victims spoke of their pain and their hope that he would be killed in prison, telling them in court: “pain is part of life. deal with it. get over it.” reporter karen hucks quotes handy as saying that pain was the only constant in his life. in court, he claimed:

“I know why I did what I did,” he said. “It wasn’t over no money. It wasn’t over a jacket. And it ain’t no secret who or what I am,” he continued. “I never covered that up, never tried to … I shoot people, kill people, all that other good stuff, only when I’m provoked. Vengeance, karma, whatever you want to call it. People cross me, I did what I did. And that’s not going to change.”

Handy blamed his inability to feel anything on the eight years he spent in prison for hitting a man over the head with a baseball bat. “I went into prison a kid,” Handy said. “Whatever love or compassion or mercy or sympathy I had, prison took that away from me. Anything I was died a long time ago.”

prison leaves scars on those who live behind the walls, but it does not take away the free will of individuals, and in mr. handy’s case, it does not excuse aggravated murder. there’s more to the story, of course, including handy’s anguished mother begging the victims’ families for forgiveness outside of the courtroom, claiming “he was not raised this way.” but handy does not want to remember his days as an honor student, a boy scout, and an altar boy. he claims that prison killed all that was good within him.

while prison leaves it mark, there are hundreds of thousands of former inmates who have returned to their communities, changed, but willing to work incredibly hard to rebuild their lives. their stories may not have the high drama that garners media attention, but they are filled with courage, frustration, obstacles, and small triumphs. we should remember them and applaud their efforts even as we condemn the system’s many failures.