The american civil liberties union and talkleft reports on a civil suit that begins today in federal district court. In Johnson v. Wathen, inmate Roderick Johnson seeks damages against texas prison officials, alleging that they ignored his pleas for help and did little to protect him from repeated rape and sexual abuse. According to the ACLU:

Beginning in September 2000, Roderick Johnson was housed at the James A. Allred Unit in Iowa Park, Texas where prison gangs bought and sold him as a sexual slave, raping, abusing, and degrading him nearly every day for 18 months. Johnson filed numerous complaints with prison officials and appeared before the unit’s classification committee seven separate times asking to be transferred to safekeeping, protective custody, or another prison, but each time they refused…Instead of protecting Johnson, the ACLU complaint charges, the committee members taunted him and called him a “dirty tramp,” and one said, “There’s no reason why Black punks can’t fight if they don’t want to fuck.”

The suit alleges denial of equal protection based on race and sexual orientation and that administrators could have protected Johnson without compromising “legitimate correctional needs.” Although the latter issue might seem paradoxical (how could stopping rape compromise security or legitimate penological objectives?), it is a common defense in prisoners’ rights cases. The ACLU shows numerous pages of Johnson’s handwritten complaints to officials, such as:

The extent of sexual abuse and rape in prisons is often debated by criminologists and reliable data on the subject have historically been hard to find. In the past five years, however, prison rape has received increasing attention and documentation, with a 2005 bureau of Justice statistics study, 2001 and 2003 human rights watch reports, and the prison rape elimination act of 2003. A call for accountability from prison officials seems like a basic step, but complaints from inmates such as Johnson have historically been dismissed as self-serving (the prisoner is “working the system”) or exaggerated (“prison is supposed to be hard”) and still fall on deaf ears in some prison systems. The Johnson complaint cites Farmer v. Brennen, a 1994 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that “prison officials violate prisoners’ Eighth Amendment right not to be sexually assaulted when, with conscious disregard of a substantial risk that a prisoner will be raped, they fail to take reasonable measures to abate that risk.”

It isn’t just prison officials, either. People who would never joke about rape outside prisons casually laugh off the idea of prison rape (e.g., when a white-collar offender is sentenced). Either they minimize the harm (as was the case with “marital rape” and “date rape” until recently) or they see inmates as “other” — so dehumanized that they do not suffer the way the rest of us would. The stigma of a criminal record is part of the reason for such “deliberate indifference” on the part of officials and the public, but an inmate’s race, gender, and sexual orientation also appear to play a role in the societal reaction to complaints.

This week’s troubletown cartoon is not alone in its race- and class-based critique of the administration’s response to hurricane katrina. Nevertheless, troubletown’s Lloyd Dangle may be the first to link hurricane non-response to a racially motivated purge of felon voting.* Just a couple weeks ago I was complaining about race and class being ignored in coverage of the hurricane. Today people are using katrina as a node to connect the dots between diverse manifestations of power on one side and distributive inJustice on the other. Mr. Dangle (is that a cool name, or what?) points here to the actions of the privileged rather than the powerless. Disenfranchisement is the last dot connected, but an important one when it comes to political inequality. In addition to a website of “politics, fun, and satirical humor” with its own superstore, Dangle also maintains a troubletown (“yeah we’ve got a @*%$+#”) blog.

*thanks for the heads-up, dad.

This week’s troubletown cartoon is not alone in its race- and class-based critique of the administration’s response to hurricane katrina. Nevertheless, troubletown’s Lloyd Dangle may be the first to link hurricane non-response to a racially motivated purge of felon voting.* Just a couple weeks ago I was complaining about race and class being ignored in coverage of the hurricane. Today people are using katrina as a node to connect the dots between diverse manifestations of power on one side and distributive inJustice on the other. Mr. Dangle (is that a cool name, or what?) points here to the actions of the privileged rather than the powerless. Disenfranchisement is the last dot connected, but an important one when it comes to political inequality. In addition to a website of “politics, fun, and satirical humor” with its own superstore, Dangle also maintains a troubletown (“yeah we’ve got a @*%$+#”) blog.

*thanks for the heads-up, dad.

Until this spring, former felons in Nebraska were permanently disenfranchised unless they received a formal pardon. Now, people who have completed their felony sentences are eligible to vote after a two-year waiting period. According to the York News-Times (which sort of sounds like another paper, doesn’t it?), the League of Women Voters and the Nebraska Voting Rights Coalition are trying to register these newly-enfranchised ex-felons.

Getting the word out is a real problem. Even in Minnesota, where ex-felons can vote, I found that few of those I interviewed knew whether or when they’d become eligible. A Minneapolis man on probation told me how he went to the polls with his family and tried to vote, but was turned away as ineligible. If there’s even a chance of this happening in view of one’s friends and neighbors, who would even try? In some states, one must also pay off all outstanding financial obligations to the state (e.g., fines, court fees) before regaining eligibility, adding a further disincentive.

Jeff and I have some proposals for improving information and access for newly eligible voters exiting the Justice system, but special efforts are required to reach those released years ago. That said, names of releasees are publicly available by cohort and there’s little to stop an organization from obtaining a list of names and birthdates, looking up current addresses or phone numbers with peoplesearch engines, and doing some direct outreach.

Until this spring, former felons in Nebraska were permanently disenfranchised unless they received a formal pardon. Now, people who have completed their felony sentences are eligible to vote after a two-year waiting period. According to the York News-Times (which sort of sounds like another paper, doesn’t it?), the League of Women Voters and the Nebraska Voting Rights Coalition are trying to register these newly-enfranchised ex-felons.

Getting the word out is a real problem. Even in Minnesota, where ex-felons can vote, I found that few of those I interviewed knew whether or when they’d become eligible. A Minneapolis man on probation told me how he went to the polls with his family and tried to vote, but was turned away as ineligible. If there’s even a chance of this happening in view of one’s friends and neighbors, who would even try? In some states, one must also pay off all outstanding financial obligations to the state (e.g., fines, court fees) before regaining eligibility, adding a further disincentive.

Jeff and I have some proposals for improving information and access for newly eligible voters exiting the Justice system, but special efforts are required to reach those released years ago. That said, names of releasees are publicly available by cohort and there’s little to stop an organization from obtaining a list of names and birthdates, looking up current addresses or phone numbers with peoplesearch engines, and doing some direct outreach.

My undergraduate students complete notecards the first day of class telling me about their hometowns, interests, work experiences, goals, and a description to help identify them. This year, one student wrote “I look like a pot dealer” in the description section because he had been approached twice by people looking to buy marijuana. Just to be absolutely clear, the student was not, nor had he ever been, a pot dealer. So what does a stereotypical pot dealer look like? My personal little thought bubble calls to mind somebody who looks like this and sounds like this but I’m sure there are other models.

Is this a common experience? It brought to mind my first days at college, when two instructors asked me for drugs (one of them calling me at home). Just to be absolutely clear, I was not, nor have I ever been, a pot dealer. I was really spooked both times. My reaction was probably a “lite” version of what women feel when solicited for prostitution when pushing a stroller on their way to the grocery store — fear, anger, then confusion (what could you possibly have been thinking?). Today, drug convictions can make one permanently ineligible for student financial aid in addition to serious jail or prison time. Of course, marijuana is common on campus (the prevalence rate was 76% in one of my recent upper division classes) and it wasn’t as though they asked me to be a hit man. Still, the incidents told me I was sending the wrong signals — I wanted an “A” and a letter of recommendation, not a mandatory minimum sentence. I never discussed drugs and certainly didn’t carry any signs of substance use other than bloodshot eyes from studying too late and concert t-shirts. At 18, I could have been arrested for impersonating a musician but never a drug dealer. At the time, I was trying to make friends and present myself as a bright-eyed, creative, and hardworking young hipster — I talked excitedly and goofed around in class, visiting every TA and prof in their office hours.

In retrospect, they probably didn’t approach me (or my student) because we gave off “dealer vibes” or showed signs of drug use. Instead, they probably just thought we’d be safe to ask. That is, the instructors figured I was “cool” and they could trust me not to report them as potheads to their departments or university administration. Plus, they didn’t ask whether I could sell them pot, but instead asked whether I knew where to get some. So it’s a network thing: instructors sized me up as nonconforming and trustworthy, and thought that my social networks might include people (or people who knew people) who might be in the business. Crudely put,

P(asked) = f(style cues, interpersonal trust, perceived networks)

Bruce Jacobs has some fascinating work on the “perceptual shorthand” and cues used by street dealers and undercover officers. Here’s a partial abstract from a 1996 piece on undercover high school officers (e.g., Johnny Depp in Jump Street) in Soc. Quarterly (37: 391-412):

…Officers must move from new student to peer to drug purchaser without any informant assistance and with severe time constraints. Three specific techniques are used to trigger this process: class clowning, retreatism, and troublemaking. Each is a variation on the single theme of rebellion…these techniques generate interpersonal familiarity from a distance by creating reputations that drug dealers identify with and vest legitimacy in. Reputation substitutes for introductions informants could otherwise give, establishes a pretransaction comfort zone, and lays the interpersonal groundwork officers need before they can solicit drugs. Officers’ behavior is conceptualized through the notion of a cognitive bridge, a hybrid of interactionist and microstructural principles. …

Now that’s interesting. In my early college days, I was inadvertently sending the same signals that undercover narcotics officers use to gain trust — establishing a comfort zone by clowning in a mildly rebellious way and hanging out with instructors. I still try to lay an “interpersonal groundwork” with people, but fortunately (in the drug-free workplace of today) nobody asks me to help them score weed. If they did, I’d panic — I wouldn’t even tell them about students who look like pot dealers. The last time I was approached as anything other than a professor was last year, when a Nashville boot salesman asked “are you an entertainer, son?” Now that’s what I was after all along. Too bad he probably asks it of all the tourists and conventioneers…

My undergraduate students complete notecards the first day of class telling me about their hometowns, interests, work experiences, goals, and a description to help identify them. This year, one student wrote “I look like a pot dealer” in the description section because he had been approached twice by people looking to buy marijuana. Just to be absolutely clear, the student was not, nor had he ever been, a pot dealer. So what does a stereotypical pot dealer look like? My personal little thought bubble calls to mind somebody who looks like this and sounds like this but I’m sure there are other models.

Is this a common experience? It brought to mind my first days at college, when two instructors asked me for drugs (one of them calling me at home). Just to be absolutely clear, I was not, nor have I ever been, a pot dealer. I was really spooked both times. My reaction was probably a “lite” version of what women feel when solicited for prostitution when pushing a stroller on their way to the grocery store — fear, anger, then confusion (what could you possibly have been thinking?). Today, drug convictions can make one permanently ineligible for student financial aid in addition to serious jail or prison time. Of course, marijuana is common on campus (the prevalence rate was 76% in one of my recent upper division classes) and it wasn’t as though they asked me to be a hit man. Still, the incidents told me I was sending the wrong signals — I wanted an “A” and a letter of recommendation, not a mandatory minimum sentence. I never discussed drugs and certainly didn’t carry any signs of substance use other than bloodshot eyes from studying too late and concert t-shirts. At 18, I could have been arrested for impersonating a musician but never a drug dealer. At the time, I was trying to make friends and present myself as a bright-eyed, creative, and hardworking young hipster — I talked excitedly and goofed around in class, visiting every TA and prof in their office hours.

In retrospect, they probably didn’t approach me (or my student) because we gave off “dealer vibes” or showed signs of drug use. Instead, they probably just thought we’d be safe to ask. That is, the instructors figured I was “cool” and they could trust me not to report them as potheads to their departments or university administration. Plus, they didn’t ask whether I could sell them pot, but instead asked whether I knew where to get some. So it’s a network thing: instructors sized me up as nonconforming and trustworthy, and thought that my social networks might include people (or people who knew people) who might be in the business. Crudely put,

P(asked) = f(style cues, interpersonal trust, perceived networks)

Bruce Jacobs has some fascinating work on the “perceptual shorthand” and cues used by street dealers and undercover officers. Here’s a partial abstract from a 1996 piece on undercover high school officers (e.g., Johnny Depp in Jump Street) in Soc. Quarterly (37: 391-412):

…Officers must move from new student to peer to drug purchaser without any informant assistance and with severe time constraints. Three specific techniques are used to trigger this process: class clowning, retreatism, and troublemaking. Each is a variation on the single theme of rebellion…these techniques generate interpersonal familiarity from a distance by creating reputations that drug dealers identify with and vest legitimacy in. Reputation substitutes for introductions informants could otherwise give, establishes a pretransaction comfort zone, and lays the interpersonal groundwork officers need before they can solicit drugs. Officers’ behavior is conceptualized through the notion of a cognitive bridge, a hybrid of interactionist and microstructural principles. …

Now that’s interesting. In my early college days, I was inadvertently sending the same signals that undercover narcotics officers use to gain trust — establishing a comfort zone by clowning in a mildly rebellious way and hanging out with instructors. I still try to lay an “interpersonal groundwork” with people, but fortunately (in the drug-free workplace of today) nobody asks me to help them score weed. If they did, I’d panic — I wouldn’t even tell them about students who look like pot dealers. The last time I was approached as anything other than a professor was last year, when a Nashville boot salesman asked “are you an entertainer, son?” Now that’s what I was after all along. Too bad he probably asks it of all the tourists and conventioneers…

The minneapolis strib and ap reported this weekend that Kevin Williams, the minnesota vikings all-pro defensive lineman, is charged with fifth-degree domestic assault. Domestic violence is horrible, whether it involves enormous athletes or anyone else, but we’re especially outraged when a 6’5″ 304 pound football player ends up in a physical altercation with a 5’7″ woman. According to police reports, Tasha Williams had blood on her shirt and lacerations on her forearm when officers arrived. Her husband told police she had grabbed a knife — of course she did, and I probably would too when facing someone twice my size (not that it would do me much good).

Does a large person have an even greater responsibility to avoid violence than a small person? Does an athlete have a greater responsibility than a non-athlete? I think so. As the parent of a son who approaches Williams’ size, I’ve always taken the position that he should be held to a higher standard. Well, I’m not actually that noble. I’ve told him that he will be held to a higher standard. There are both humanitarian reasons for him to avoid violence — he could really hurt somebody — and labeling effects that will make violence an especially poor choice for him. I’ve always wanted to study the relationship between physical size and punishment severity — my working hypothesis is that big kids tend to be waived into adult court and they tend to get tougher, more secure placements, all else equal. I can also hypothesize some race*size interactions and gender*size interactions that might be interesting to test.

Any aggressive move made by a burly 6’4″ man (or mannish boy) looks and feels a lot different than someone 5’10” making the same move. Simply standing up quickly attracts a lot of attention in the former case but few would notice in the latter. Child A (lg.) once lamented that child B (sm.) never gets into trouble for her own violent behavior “because she’s supposedly harmless,” and I guess A has a point. But it is different — a bigger person can generally do a lot more damage. So, in any serious fight, he’ll be the first attacked and likely the first arrested. That said, I’ve been stoked about him playing football because it gives him a safe place to cut loose and (finally!) throw his body around with abandon. I always loved going full-tilt in contact sports, and I was really a pretty awful football player. Still, I liked the idea of testing physical limits and think I learned something from the experience, especially as an adolescent. Reading about football players and domestic violence obviously tempers this excitement, even if such violence turns out to be less common among athletes than non-athletes (frankly, I don’t know the literature on this question, but I suspect that a number of good statistical controls would be needed to make a valid comparison).

I guess the danger is spillover — if football somehow supports a culture of off-field macho/violent behavior then the risks outweigh the benefits. Plus, I’d wager that sociology professors tend to be some of the least physically aggressive people on the planet, so it seems especially deviant to celebrate violence in any form — no matter how contained or institutionalized. Whenever I read something like the Williams story I want to start yelling at my son (“DON’T YOU EVER…), but he didn’t do anything wrong. It is almost an involuntary reaction — I see the story and start sputtering, until I’m quickly dispatched with a snarky comment (e.g., “yeah, dad, that’s exactly what I was planning to do today before you read me that article”). So, I’ll try to explain this one to him when I can be cooler about it. He’s heard it all a hundred times before and he has a nice arsenal of conflict resolution skills — he says things like “I’m too mad to talk to you right now, so I’m going to come back when I’m calmed down” (heaven knows, he didn’t get that from me). Still, I just can’t ignore something like the Kevin Williams story — especially when Williams is playing the same position and when others seem all-too-eager to look the other way on what they’d euphemistically call “off-field problems.”

Maybe there’s a way to put a positive spin on it. Alan Page (#88 above) was a defensive tackle too. He was one of the most dominating and aggressive football players in history — the first defensive MVP in national football league history. Now he’s the first African American Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court (and, of course, a fine distance runner). I suspect that Justice Page didn’t simply morph from being a fierce and aggressive young man into a thoughtful and reflective middle-aged jurist, but that he carried both capacities within himself throughout both careers. Perhaps he just knew where to draw the lines.

The minneapolis strib and ap reported this weekend that Kevin Williams, the minnesota vikings all-pro defensive lineman, is charged with fifth-degree domestic assault. Domestic violence is horrible, whether it involves enormous athletes or anyone else, but we’re especially outraged when a 6’5″ 304 pound football player ends up in a physical altercation with a 5’7″ woman. According to police reports, Tasha Williams had blood on her shirt and lacerations on her forearm when officers arrived. Her husband told police she had grabbed a knife — of course she did, and I probably would too when facing someone twice my size (not that it would do me much good).

Does a large person have an even greater responsibility to avoid violence than a small person? Does an athlete have a greater responsibility than a non-athlete? I think so. As the parent of a son who approaches Williams’ size, I’ve always taken the position that he should be held to a higher standard. Well, I’m not actually that noble. I’ve told him that he will be held to a higher standard. There are both humanitarian reasons for him to avoid violence — he could really hurt somebody — and labeling effects that will make violence an especially poor choice for him. I’ve always wanted to study the relationship between physical size and punishment severity — my working hypothesis is that big kids tend to be waived into adult court and they tend to get tougher, more secure placements, all else equal. I can also hypothesize some race*size interactions and gender*size interactions that might be interesting to test.

Any aggressive move made by a burly 6’4″ man (or mannish boy) looks and feels a lot different than someone 5’10” making the same move. Simply standing up quickly attracts a lot of attention in the former case but few would notice in the latter. Child A (lg.) once lamented that child B (sm.) never gets into trouble for her own violent behavior “because she’s supposedly harmless,” and I guess A has a point. But it is different — a bigger person can generally do a lot more damage. So, in any serious fight, he’ll be the first attacked and likely the first arrested. That said, I’ve been stoked about him playing football because it gives him a safe place to cut loose and (finally!) throw his body around with abandon. I always loved going full-tilt in contact sports, and I was really a pretty awful football player. Still, I liked the idea of testing physical limits and think I learned something from the experience, especially as an adolescent. Reading about football players and domestic violence obviously tempers this excitement, even if such violence turns out to be less common among athletes than non-athletes (frankly, I don’t know the literature on this question, but I suspect that a number of good statistical controls would be needed to make a valid comparison).

I guess the danger is spillover — if football somehow supports a culture of off-field macho/violent behavior then the risks outweigh the benefits. Plus, I’d wager that sociology professors tend to be some of the least physically aggressive people on the planet, so it seems especially deviant to celebrate violence in any form — no matter how contained or institutionalized. Whenever I read something like the Williams story I want to start yelling at my son (“DON’T YOU EVER…), but he didn’t do anything wrong. It is almost an involuntary reaction — I see the story and start sputtering, until I’m quickly dispatched with a snarky comment (e.g., “yeah, dad, that’s exactly what I was planning to do today before you read me that article”). So, I’ll try to explain this one to him when I can be cooler about it. He’s heard it all a hundred times before and he has a nice arsenal of conflict resolution skills — he says things like “I’m too mad to talk to you right now, so I’m going to come back when I’m calmed down” (heaven knows, he didn’t get that from me). Still, I just can’t ignore something like the Kevin Williams story — especially when Williams is playing the same position and when others seem all-too-eager to look the other way on what they’d euphemistically call “off-field problems.”

Maybe there’s a way to put a positive spin on it. Alan Page (#88 above) was a defensive tackle too. He was one of the most dominating and aggressive football players in history — the first defensive MVP in national football league history. Now he’s the first African American Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court (and, of course, a fine distance runner). I suspect that Justice Page didn’t simply morph from being a fierce and aggressive young man into a thoughtful and reflective middle-aged jurist, but that he carried both capacities within himself throughout both careers. Perhaps he just knew where to draw the lines.

I’ve tried to avoid trite statements of righteous indignation over responses to hurricane Katrina, but some reactions provide ideal-typical examples that can be useful in teaching. I took a break from putting together a powerpoint slide on “deviance and morality” for my second lecture on “defining deviance,” only to see this item (from the American Family Association’s Agape Press by way of Volokh):

Rev. Bill Shanks, pastor of New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans, also sees God’s mercy in the aftermath of Katrina… Shanks says the hurricane has wiped out much of the rampant sin common to the city. The pastor explains that for years he has warned people that unless Christians in New Orleans took a strong stand against such things as local abortion clinics, the yearly Mardi Gras celebrations, and the annual event known as “Southern Decadence” — an annual six-day “gay pride” event scheduled to be hosted by the city this week — God’s judgment would be felt. “New Orleans now is abortion free. New Orleans now is Mardi Gras free. New Orleans now is free of Southern Decadence and the sodomites, the witchcraft workers, false religion — it’s free of all of those things now,” Shanks says. “God simply, I believe, in His mercy purged all of that stuff out of there — and now we’re going to start over again.”

Am I correct to assume that Rev. Shanks’ statements would be considered deviant and negatively sanctioned in most churches? They seem to be cited approvingly in Agape Press. I’m aware there is an old (testament) tradition supporting some variant of them, but I’m surprised to see a local pastor make such points. I thought the “Who Would Jesus Kill” bumperstickers were cheap religion bashing, but Rev. Shanks seems to have some clear answers to this question. I’ll use the quote in class tomorrow, but only alongside a humanitarian statement from a religious leader to balance the presentation. Here’s one from Catholic Relief Services: