zheng xiaoyu has been executed. the former head of china’s food and drug safety agency had been convicted of accepting bribes from pharmaceutical companies this may.

leftist criminologists often rail against the light sentences given to white-collar criminals in the united states, particularly when measured against the lengthy prison time served by those convicted of street crimes. this sort of disproportionality case is most convincing with respect to drug convictions and property crimes. it doesn’t take a marxist to notice that poor people who steal $2,000 worth of property sometimes do longer (and harder) time than executives who steal $2,000,000 emptying a pension fund.

i suppose that a few criminologists will read zheng xiaoyu’s execution as evidence that an appropriate consideration of social harm has been given its due weight at sentencing. more cynically, of course, most of us will interpret this execution as signaling that scapegoats will be found and crucified whenever big-time market interests are threatened — in china, as elsewhere.

either way, i doubt that this execution will do much to purge the diethylene glycol from your counterfeit colgate or the melamine from your cat food.

nate chapnick of edmunds.com offers a nice piece on surveillance systems and in-car cameras that allow parents to monitor their teen drivers. one firm will track your car’s sudden movements, record the data on a website, and assign your kid a “risk score.”

i once scoffed at such surveillance measures. then i thought about the two teenagers in my house hurtling down the road in three-thousand pounds of steel.

the data tell us that when teenagers die, they are likely to die behind the wheel. the centers for disease control report that “motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, accounting for 36% of all deaths in this age group” and that “the risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among 16- to 19-year-olds than among any other age group …. per mile driven, teen drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash.”

though i understand these risks, i’m too much of a small-l libertarian to monitor my kids electronically. i’ve decided to adopt a probable cause standard for implementing such surveillance. that means that i won’t hassle with such stuff unless and until i have information sufficient to warrant a prudent person’s belief that tor or esperanza had been delinquent or that evidence of delinquency or contraband would be found in a search.

but that doesn’t mean that i won’t take steps short of full-on surveillance, such as implementing curfews, based on a less-stringent reasonable suspicion standard. if i judge that a reasonable parent in my circumstances could reasonably believe that tor or esperanza has been, is, or is about to be, engaged in delinquent activity, i will strike down upon them with great rulemaking and furious anger. plus, i’ll take the keys.

come to think of it, my kids don’t really need to drive at all. if they broach the probable cause standard and behave so irresponsibly that i feel the need to purchase an in-car surveillance system, i’ll just hold the keys until they can afford to buy it for me. that’ll teach ’em.

australia has a reputation for producing particularly nasty anti-speeding public service announcements. newsweek’s kendall hill reports on a new campaign with a lighter touch:

via the sentencing project and talkleft:

i’m more concerned with rates than numbers, so my figure above standardizes by population to show the long-term trend in prison incarceration. the 2006 rate was 497 per 100,000 u.s. residents, or 750 per 100,000 counting jail inmates.

most people know that incarceration rates are highest for african american males, but it is sometimes tough to get one’s head around the magnitude of group differences in punishment. in 2006, about 4.8 percent of all african american men and about 11.7 percent of african american men in their twenties were incarcerated. as the figure below shows, the incarceration rate for african american men is currently fifty times higher than the incarceration rate for white women (4,789/94 = 50.9).

the disparities are much greater, of course, when age is thrown into the mix. the rate for african american men in their twenties is about 1,300 times higher than the incarceration rate for white women aged 55 and over. white guys my age have a rate of 1,419 per 100,000, which is significantly higher than any of the female rates (which top out at 999 for african american women in their late thirties), but significantly lower than the rates for latino or african american men in all but the oldest age group.

finally, there is great state-to-state variation, with louisiana (835 per 100,000 residents), texas (687), and oklahoma (658) leading the nation in punishment. the lowest incarceration rates were in maine (141 per 100,000 residents), minnesota (189) and rhode island (195).

ever heard the term shoulder tapping? today’s strib describes a new minnversity study in which young-looking research assistants offered liquor store patrons money to buy them beer.

epidemiologist traci toomey finds that young males are significantly more likely to respond favorably to such requests: 19 percent agreed to purchase the beer, relative to about 8 percent in the general population.

this is an intriguing finding, i suppose, and consistent with the general tendency toward greater delinquency among young men relative to other demographic groups. the study used 4 female research assistants and 1 male RA, however, so i’m a bit concerned that chivalry or some sort of ican’tbelievethiscutegirlisactuallytalkingtome phenomenon might have something to do with the propensity of young dudes to violate the law and respond favorably to the request.

i can’t imagine a scenario in which i’d buy booze for minors, partly because i’m afraid they’d drink themselves to death (well, i did see a bit of this while attending college in madison) and partly because i’d assumed one would be severely punished for such an offense. in case you’d consider making such purchases for your undergrads, here’s the formal deterrent:

St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said they have charged individuals with providing alcohol to a minor, a gross misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, for buying in such circumstances.

if someone taps you on the shoulder, just say no.

photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii , Star Tribune

the bureau of Justice statistics just released a report with data from the first national census of medical examiners’ and coroners’ offices.

i personally discovered obscene recordings back in elementary school. a friend had somehow obtained comedy albums by cheech and chong, richard pryor, george carlin, and redd foxx on one of those “get 14 records for a penny!” record club promotions. the sexual references surely sailed over our heads, but we knew this stuff had to be funny and guffawed accordingly.

now i learn that obscene recordings have been with us since, well, any kind of recordings. yesterday’s npr’s weekend edition featured a new collection of lewd victorian-era recordings titled Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s. the feature replayed clips from the original wax cylinders, showing that there’s nothing terribly novel about lewd, crude, and immature humor.

in light of the rapid pornographication of any new medium today, it really shouldn’t surprise us to learn that by the late-1890s one could hear, say, “The Whore’s Union” or “Dennis Reilly at Maggie Murphy’s Home after Nine O’Clock.” nevertheless, the clips are still a bit jarring to modern ears. they might not be funny” but they are certainly obscene, as evidenced by the bleeping necessary to get them on the airwaves in 2007.

i can imagine that this sort of phenomenon is old news to social historians, who could likely point out ancient (e.g., socrates’ whoopee cushion) or far nastier attempts at humor over the course of human history. i’m personally fascinated by the social control aspects of the story — some of the actors heard on the recordings were actually incarcerated — and will likely order the CD for my sociology of deviance class. i’m guessing that enforcement under the comstock act must have been somewhat effective at policing such vice, for precious few of these recordings exist today.

with schools closing up shop for the summer, the subject of curfews has drawn renewed attention in the local news. when high-profile crimes involving juvenile victims and perpetrators occur after midnight, of course, calls for enforcing the curfews intensify.

the chart above is taken from Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report, which shows the time of occurrence for the violent crimes of murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. the data are taken from the National Incident-Based Reporting System for 2000-2001. curfews can be part of a useful strategy to reduce juvenile crime and victimization, though it almost looks as though curfews might be more effective among adults.

in minneapolis, the curfew rules are a bit complicated:
• Under 12: 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
• 12-14: 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
• 15-17: 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 12: 01 a.m to 5 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.

i didn’t even know the curfew rules in my hometown, so i looked them up this morning. esperanza, and anyone age 15 and younger, must be home by 10 p.m. tor, and others age 16-17, must be home by midnight in our town. regardless of the juvenile crime clock and the formal rules, however, i try to get my kids home as early as possible.