james frey is under siege for fabricating big chunks of his monster-selling memoir, a million little pieces. the minneapolis strib had questioned his accounts of surgery without anesthesia and a northwest airlines flight in which he was bleeding, with a hole in his cheek, and covered with “a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.” as the smoking gun reports, frey represented the memoir as non-fiction but, to put it charitably, seems to have seriously exaggerated his experiences. here’s the short version:

“When recalling criminal activities, looming prison sentences, and jailhouse rituals, Frey writes with a swaggering machismo and bravado that absolutely crackles. Which is truly impressive considering that, as TSG discovered, he made much of it up. The closest Frey has ever come to a jail cell was the few unshackled hours he once spent in a small Ohio police headquarters waiting for a buddy to post $733 cash bond.”

i think we should give folks a little wiggle-room on their memoirs, so i feel bad for mr. frey. of course, misrepresenting one’s criminal history probably seems like a pathetic way to do masculinity, at least for those over 25. still, i won’t deny the seductions of embellishing such experiences. my juvenile delinquency students know that i’ll sometimes refer to my experiences in the system. i’ve never hidden the fact that i was arrested several times at 16 and 17 (mostly for fighting and disorderly conduct) or that i had sleepovers in jails and other secure facilities. it can be useful in showing the discrepancy between the clean flow-chart picture of the system in textbooks and the messy experience of things like juvenile intake from a kid’s perspective. but whenever i feel any semblance of “swaggering machismo” in telling such stories, i know i’m starting to embellish — because it was never like that.

the first and most important reality checks are that i never did time (and certainly not hard time in a state penitentiary), that i’ve only seen prisons as a visitor or professor, and that i felt and was perceived as a nerd at the time or, more charitably, a hipster doofus or confused kid rather than a badass or tough guy. my guess is that frey has a similar history. this is important because the real badasses sniff out a phony in a second. when i interview men and women in prison, i represent myself as a dork professor rather than someone who has “been there.” even if i wanted to sell myself as an ex-con, i couldn’t pull it off. similarly, none of my publications on crime make any mention of my own history — i’m not embarrassed, it is just way too “thin” to be of any use. it certainly affects the kinds of questions i ask and the perspectives i adopt, but it would be the height of phoniness to trade on it.

also, the memory plays tricks. for example, i think i was arrested at 17 for stupidly attacking a bouncer at the cabooze, right down cedar avenue from my current office in minneapolis. if i were writing an account of the evening for my memoirs (or blog, i suppose), it would be tempting to embellish this “fight” (which was probably over in 2.4 seconds) as some sort of gladiator-style struggle and half-remember all sorts of details from all sorts of sources. just like mr. frey, i could see myself writing about being covered with “a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.” after 24 years, though, all i can really remember is that the band was wilma and the wilburs. i think i was handcuffed for a long time that night/morning and that it hurt, but that could have been a different night altogether. if the smoking gun investigated my blogoirs, they might discover that it was bullwinkles rather than the cabooze or, worse, that i was not arrested in hennepin county that night (hmm. was it ryan’s in ramsey county?).

i’m thinking about embellishment because my son is now a wrestler and musician — two activities that i explored at 14 too. i thought i was a pretty scrappy wrestler, but had to ask my dad whether i was really any good at it (verdict: fought like hell, but lost as much as i won). i know that i was never a good guitar player (“scrappy” probably applies here as well), though i’m sometimes tempted to embellish my experiences or abilities here too. my delinquent history hasn’t really been questioned, though those who knew me at 16 love my little joke about preparing a lifetime to “teach a course in juvenile delinquency.”

so, even if mr. frey was never the badass of a million little pieces, he probably had some experiences that were something like the events described in the book. or maybe they were stories he heard in treatment. why do we embellish our deviance? hmmm. edwin lemert noted long ago (1951) that rewards as well as penalties derive from deviant roles. rw connell explains the general swagger and jack katz explicated the specific ways of the badass. now that he’s apparently been busted, the arc of frey’s story fits goffman’s (1961) sad tale, and shadd maruna‘s redemption scripts might help us figure out his next move.

prediction: his next book is gonna be huge.

i recently received an email from the homeland security institute, a federally funded interdisciplinary think tank for the department of homeland security. they did not ask me to keep the request confidential, so i’ll reproduce the main text here:

We are currently working on a project for the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, in which we are cataloging consequence assessment tools/methodologies/suites in an attempt to assess those that have homeland security applications. Political Consequences Methodology has been selected for inclusion into our report. Since this report impinges on matters of national security, we are attempting to make all information as accurate as possible. Would you be so kind as to fill in the table provided and return it to me at the email address below?

the questions in the table seemed designed for researchers who had developed software or other tools far beyond anything i’ve done (i.e., geographical information systems stuff). i had never thought of my felon voting project with jeff as having homeland security applications, so i don’t know why this project was selected. i just did my best with the table and returned it to the institute. the national science foundation funded the research and i’m glad to provide any information i can about it.

i’ve always sought to do “engaged” scholarship that would somehow be useful. once the work is public, however, i’m always surprised at how it is used. for example, the republican party in washington cited my work in challenging a closely-contested democratic victory. i’ve heard anecdotally that my study showing job training success among older ex-prisoners was used to cut funding for job training among younger ex-prisoners, which wasn’t quite what i’d intended. still, i’m happy as long as the work provides decent social facts that allow for better informed decisions, even if the outcome isn’t consistent with my preferences as a citizen. in this case, i’d like to think that the institute’s interests have something to do with protecting the integrity of national elections, though i can, of course, think of less virtuous reasons.

when i was just out of college, some of my other work was put to far-flung purposes. i was 22 and working in a madison social service agency when i helped develop software to track the employment and training experiences of people on public assistance. when wisconsin-style “welfare reform” went national, ibm and some locals tried to market the software to all sorts of organizations (including, as i recall, fire departments). i felt a little cheated that i didn’t get paid on that venture, since i was making about seven dollars per hour when i did the screen shots with the coders. to be fair, the ibm folks did buy me a nice lunch at pedro’s (mmm…chimi) and say nice things about me to my boss.

of course, i’m relieved i didn’t have to kill myself rewriting code to somehow satisfy the poor fire department that actually bought the software. i guess the lesson here is mostly caveat emptor for those using our research. still, public sociologists and criminologists would do well to heed warnings of caveat venditor as well.

i recently received an email from the homeland security institute, a federally funded interdisciplinary think tank for the department of homeland security. they did not ask me to keep the request confidential, so i’ll reproduce the main text here:

We are currently working on a project for the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security, in which we are cataloging consequence assessment tools/methodologies/suites in an attempt to assess those that have homeland security applications. Political Consequences Methodology has been selected for inclusion into our report. Since this report impinges on matters of national security, we are attempting to make all information as accurate as possible. Would you be so kind as to fill in the table provided and return it to me at the email address below?

the questions in the table seemed designed for researchers who had developed software or other tools far beyond anything i’ve done (i.e., geographical information systems stuff). i had never thought of my felon voting project with jeff as having homeland security applications, so i don’t know why this project was selected. i just did my best with the table and returned it to the institute. the national science foundation funded the research and i’m glad to provide any information i can about it.

i’ve always sought to do “engaged” scholarship that would somehow be useful. once the work is public, however, i’m always surprised at how it is used. for example, the republican party in washington cited my work in challenging a closely-contested democratic victory. i’ve heard anecdotally that my study showing job training success among older ex-prisoners was used to cut funding for job training among younger ex-prisoners, which wasn’t quite what i’d intended. still, i’m happy as long as the work provides decent social facts that allow for better informed decisions, even if the outcome isn’t consistent with my preferences as a citizen. in this case, i’d like to think that the institute’s interests have something to do with protecting the integrity of national elections, though i can, of course, think of less virtuous reasons.

when i was just out of college, some of my other work was put to far-flung purposes. i was 22 and working in a madison social service agency when i helped develop software to track the employment and training experiences of people on public assistance. when wisconsin-style “welfare reform” went national, ibm and some locals tried to market the software to all sorts of organizations (including, as i recall, fire departments). i felt a little cheated that i didn’t get paid on that venture, since i was making about seven dollars per hour when i did the screen shots with the coders. to be fair, the ibm folks did buy me a nice lunch at pedro’s (mmm…chimi) and say nice things about me to my boss.

of course, i’m relieved i didn’t have to kill myself rewriting code to somehow satisfy the poor fire department that actually bought the software. i guess the lesson here is mostly caveat emptor for those using our research. still, public sociologists and criminologists would do well to heed warnings of caveat venditor as well.

when michelle makes a post, she can include a link to a cool west coast story in the seattle times. then, she can include a photo . if she doesn’t want to post it right away, she can just save it as a draft.

this time of year often brings media requests regarding trends in crime and punishment. answering such calls is important public criminology, but responding can be tricky. reporters often focus on year-to-year changes in rare events such as homicide, but the percent change in such cases can be very misleading. i see my role as providing some context for the local numbers, putting them in historical, national, and international perspective. reporters typically speak with both law enforcement officials and academics, so i try to offer some perspective. i usually focus on 5-, 10-, and 20-year trends and consider the magnitude as well as the direction of change.

by most measures, crime in minneapolis and st. paul rose from 2004 to 2005. this is cause for concern, in part because serious personal crimes such as aggravated assaults and robberies have increased sharply. that said, the base rate of crime in the twin cities is quite low relative to similar-sized cities and relative to local crime rates in the near and distant past. moreover, some of the bad news is a product of legal changes rather than behavioral changes. for example, a new state “strangulation” statute means that many domestic assault cases once considered misdemeanors are now counted among the aggravated assaults in the violent crime index (i learned this speaking with pete crum of the st. paul police department last week). despite the uptick, my take-home message for reporters who want my opinion this year is that national crime rates are at the lowest levels we’ve seen in forty years and that these are good times rather than bad ones.

here is my evidence for this assertion. rates of serious violent crime — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault — continue a long decline, at least through midyear 2005. the chart above shows the national picture for violence as measured by both victimization (red dashed lines – – -) and crimes reported to police (solid lines). i plotted these on separate y-axes so you can see the relative change in each measure. note that violent victimization has been dropping like a stone since the mid-nineties, as have police reports of these four serious offenses.

the next figure shows that property crimes of burglary, larceny/theft, and motor vehicle theft also show a decline, although here the rates have flattened since 2002. nevertheless, for both violent and property crimes, victimization levels are at or near record lows, at rates roughly half those of a decade earlier.

of course, none of this makes crime victims or their families feel any better about it, nor does it mean that we no longer need to lock our doors or that we can scale back investments in law enforcement (punishment is another matter). it just means that rates of serious crime are lower today than they were 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago. good news, right?

this time of year often brings media requests regarding trends in crime and punishment. answering such calls is important public criminology, but responding can be tricky. reporters often focus on year-to-year changes in rare events such as homicide, but the percent change in such cases can be very misleading. i see my role as providing some context for the local numbers, putting them in historical, national, and international perspective. reporters typically speak with both law enforcement officials and academics, so i try to offer some perspective. i usually focus on 5-, 10-, and 20-year trends and consider the magnitude as well as the direction of change.

by most measures, crime in minneapolis and st. paul rose from 2004 to 2005. this is cause for concern, in part because serious personal crimes such as aggravated assaults and robberies have increased sharply. that said, the base rate of crime in the twin cities is quite low relative to similar-sized cities and relative to local crime rates in the near and distant past. moreover, some of the bad news is a product of legal changes rather than behavioral changes. for example, a new state “strangulation” statute means that many domestic assault cases once considered misdemeanors are now counted among the aggravated assaults in the violent crime index (i learned this speaking with pete crum of the st. paul police department last week). despite the uptick, my take-home message for reporters who want my opinion this year is that national crime rates are at the lowest levels we’ve seen in forty years and that these are good times rather than bad ones.

here is my evidence for this assertion. rates of serious violent crime — murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault — continue a long decline, at least through midyear 2005. the chart above shows the national picture for violence as measured by both victimization (red dashed lines – – –) and crimes reported to police (solid lines). i plotted these on separate y-axes so you can see the relative change in each measure. note that violent victimization has been dropping like a stone since the mid-nineties, as have police reports of these four serious offenses.

the next figure shows that property crimes of burglary, larceny/theft, and motor vehicle theft also show a decline, although here the rates have flattened since 2002. nevertheless, for both violent and property crimes, victimization levels are at or near record lows, at rates roughly half those of a decade earlier.

of course, none of this makes crime victims or their families feel any better about it, nor does it mean that we no longer need to lock our doors or that we can scale back investments in law enforcement (punishment is another matter). it just means that rates of serious crime are lower today than they were 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, and 30 years ago. good news, right?

i just screened democracy’s ghosts: how 5 million americans have lost the right to vote, an aclu documentary made by off-ramp films.

the 34-minute film features some persuasive interviews with former felons and activists, as well as lani guinier and alex keyssar of harvard, marc mauer of the sentencing project, congressman/civil rights icon john lewis, evangelist/watergate icon chuck colson, and actor charles dutton. the dvd also includes a 10-minute short version, 5 “expert perspective” segments (where i pop up briefly — i did a quick interview in dc on my way to maryland this spring), 5 issue-specific pieces, a graphic video, and a short trailer, which you can see in quicktime or windows media player. the film is designed as an “advocacy tool,” so it doesn’t give much time to the perspectives of disenfranchisement defenders such as roger clegg. florida governor jeb bush is shown in clemency hearings, but i doubt he’ll be using this particular footage for campaign ads.

that said, i think it could be useful in provoking classroom discussion in criminology or political sociology or racial and ethnic studies courses. i’m too close to really judge whether students would find it interesting, but the film seems lively and well-informed to me. it was nice to see some research on the issue put to use, albeit without the caveats that we always try to include in the articles. the dvd touches on the racial history and impact of disenfranchisement, the numbers affected, recidivism and reentry, and other issues that jeff, and melissa, and angie and i have studied. my quick google search couldn’t find a site for the film yet, but www.democracysghosts.org should be online anytime now. i got my copy of the dvd through rachel devaney at commtemp@aclu.org.

i just screened democracy’s ghosts: how 5 million americans have lost the right to vote, an aclu documentary made by off-ramp films.

the 34-minute film features some persuasive interviews with former felons and activists, as well as lani guinier and alex keyssar of harvard, marc mauer of the sentencing project, congressman/civil rights icon john lewis, evangelist/watergate icon chuck colson, and actor charles dutton. the dvd also includes a 10-minute short version, 5 “expert perspective” segments (where i pop up briefly — i did a quick interview in dc on my way to maryland this spring), 5 issue-specific pieces, a graphic video, and a short trailer, which you can see in quicktime or windows media player. the film is designed as an “advocacy tool,” so it doesn’t give much time to the perspectives of disenfranchisement defenders such as roger clegg. florida governor jeb bush is shown in clemency hearings, but i doubt he’ll be using this particular footage for campaign ads.

that said, i think it could be useful in provoking classroom discussion in criminology or political sociology or racial and ethnic studies courses. i’m too close to really judge whether students would find it interesting, but the film seems lively and well-informed to me. it was nice to see some research on the issue put to use, albeit without the caveats that we always try to include in the articles. the dvd touches on the racial history and impact of disenfranchisement, the numbers affected, recidivism and reentry, and other issues that jeff, and melissa, and angie and i have studied. my quick google search couldn’t find a site for the film yet, but www.democracysghosts.org should be online anytime now. i got my copy of the dvd through rachel devaney at commtemp@aclu.org.

volokh reports a strange tale involving the yale law journal‘s decision to publish an author who used racist speech in his online notes. kiwi camara posted notes from his property class in a harvard law outline bank, complete with a “disclaimer” noting that they “may contain racially offensive shorthand.”

on shelley v. kraemer, a case involving racially restrictive covenants, camara wrote: “Nigs buy land with no nig covenant; Q: Enforceable?”

yep! that counts as “racially offensive shorthand” in my book. when the notes came to light, yale law students circulated a petition that began as follows:

THE PETITION
We, the undersigned students of Yale Law School, request that the leadership of the Yale Law Journal reconsider its decision to publish the work of Kiwi Camara and to have him speak at its Symposium this Spring…

yale law journal nevertheless decided to publish, writing a lengthy response in defense of its decision. as social scientists who’ve written for such outlets know, law reviews operate way, way, way differently than american sociological review or criminology. law faculty submit the same article to dozens of journals simultaneously. then, student-run editorial boards read them all and make offers to those deemed worthy. after the faculty ruthlessly exploit the free labor of the law students, however, the students exact vengeance by obsessively critiquing every footnote. here’s the sort of email exchange that plays out over a few weeks:

journal: please provide a citation to your assertion on page 1 that “criminologists study the life course.”
author: no problem. please cite as “sampson and laub 1993.”
journal: i will need a page number for this citation.
author: ok, let’s go with page 8.
journal: sampson and laub make a related point on page 8, noting that the life course “is studied” and that criminologists study “crime” but they do not indicate that “criminologists study the life course.” please provide a proper citation. with page numbers.
author: i tell you what — let’s just strike the sentence and any other references to criminologists studying the life course.
journal: we will strike the sentence if you really think that is best.

but i digress. there are all sorts of distracting digressions to this case. for example, the precocious mr. camara was age 17 when he wrote the notes, which led some lawprofs to the “adolescent racist boys will be adolescent racist boys” defense. the very clever but slightly-less-precocious students, in contrast, think that the doogie howsers of the world should be held to the same standards as any other students. finally, mr. camara has issued something sort of like an apology. still, this doesn’t address the larger issue of whether to publish work by known or suspected racists (or sexists, or homophobes…).

i’m guessing that most sociology journals “pre-ject” papers by known or suspected racists, sending them out for external review but reading them and their reviews with a jaundiced eye. if such sentiments came to light following formal acceptance, however, they would likely abide by their publication decision unless (and this is an important ‘unless’) such sentiments had some plausible bearing on the article’s findings or conclusions. what about your favorite sociology and criminology journals? would they, could they, withdraw their acceptance on the basis of offensive speech that came to light? is racist speech different than other forms of offensive speech in this regard?

now that i think about it, i remember writing racist speech in my first year sociology notes –quotes taken verbatim from durkheim and weber.

volokh reports a strange tale involving the yale law journal‘s decision to publish an author who used racist speech in his online notes. kiwi camara posted notes from his property class in a harvard law outline bank, complete with a “disclaimer” noting that they “may contain racially offensive shorthand.”

on shelley v. kraemer, a case involving racially restrictive covenants, camara wrote: “Nigs buy land with no nig covenant; Q: Enforceable?”

yep! that counts as “racially offensive shorthand” in my book. when the notes came to light, yale law students circulated a petition that began as follows:

THE PETITION
We, the undersigned students of Yale Law School, request that the leadership of the Yale Law Journal reconsider its decision to publish the work of Kiwi Camara and to have him speak at its Symposium this Spring…

yale law journal nevertheless decided to publish, writing a lengthy response in defense of its decision. as social scientists who’ve written for such outlets know, law reviews operate way, way, way differently than american sociological review or criminology. law faculty submit the same article to dozens of journals simultaneously. then, student-run editorial boards read them all and make offers to those deemed worthy. after the faculty ruthlessly exploit the free labor of the law students, however, the students exact vengeance by obsessively critiquing every footnote. here’s the sort of email exchange that plays out over a few weeks:

journal: please provide a citation to your assertion on page 1 that “criminologists study the life course.”
author: no problem. please cite as “sampson and laub 1993.”
journal: i will need a page number for this citation.
author: ok, let’s go with page 8.
journal: sampson and laub make a related point on page 8, noting that the life course “is studied” and that criminologists study “crime” but they do not indicate that “criminologists study the life course.” please provide a proper citation. with page numbers.
author: i tell you what — let’s just strike the sentence and any other references to criminologists studying the life course.
journal: we will strike the sentence if you really think that is best.

but i digress. there are all sorts of distracting digressions to this case. for example, the precocious mr. camara was age 17 when he wrote the notes, which led some lawprofs to the “adolescent racist boys will be adolescent racist boys” defense. the very clever but slightly-less-precocious students, in contrast, think that the doogie howsers of the world should be held to the same standards as any other students. finally, mr. camara has issued something sort of like an apology. still, this doesn’t address the larger issue of whether to publish work by known or suspected racists (or sexists, or homophobes…).

i’m guessing that most sociology journals “pre-ject” papers by known or suspected racists, sending them out for external review but reading them and their reviews with a jaundiced eye. if such sentiments came to light following formal acceptance, however, they would likely abide by their publication decision unless (and this is an important ‘unless’) such sentiments had some plausible bearing on the article’s findings or conclusions. what about your favorite sociology and criminology journals? would they, could they, withdraw their acceptance on the basis of offensive speech that came to light? is racist speech different than other forms of offensive speech in this regard?

now that i think about it, i remember writing racist speech in my first year sociology notes –quotes taken verbatim from durkheim and weber.