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:

A new Bureau of Justice Statistics report by Christopher Mumola discusses suicide and homicide in jail and prison. As summarized in the chart and table (click chart), there has been a steep drop in both types of death for both types of inmates. Remembering the old Kitsuse and Cicourel Social Problems article that I force-feed every grad student (1963’s “A Note on the Uses of Official Statistics”), I thought that perhaps officials had changed reporting practices or the way they classified causes of death. Yet deaths by all causes are under 3,000 annually in prisons and under 1,000 in jails. More precisely, 3,924 died in 2002 in an incarcerated population of 2,085,620 — less than two-tenths of one percent per year (.00188). Mortality rates for all causes have also declined precipitously for jails since 1980 and stabilized after a mid-1990s peak in prisons. So, I suspect there are real declines here, rather than simple changes in recordkeeping.

Who dies in prison? Suicides tend to be white, male, and very young or older inmates. Homicide victims tend to be white or Hispanic males. Perhaps the most intriguing finding is that homicide rates are significantly lower in prison and jail than among the general population. When Mumola standardizes the rates to match the age, race, and gender composition of inmates, the pattern is even stronger: “the resident population had a homicide rate (35 per 100,000) nearly 9 times the rate of homicide in State prisons (4) and nearly 11 times higher than the rate in jails (3).

I’m still trying to get my head around this paradoxical finding. Are we really less likely to be murdered in prison than on the street? Here are four hypotheses, and four “yeah buts.” (1) Is it a stark indictment of our ultraviolent society? Yeah, but violence has been trending downward since the early 1990s, and the 2002 homicide rate is identical to the 1966 rate; (2) Is it proof of the improved safety of our correctional facilities? Yeah, but prisons and jails clearly remain very dangerous and unhealthy places; (3) Is it evidence of the greater efficacy of the panopticon’s formal social control over the street’s informal controls? Yeah, but the streets upon which most of the general population walk are aready quite safe; (4) Is it a reflection of the not-so-great-as-one-might-think differences between the general population and the inmate population? Yeah, but a good portion of inmates have, after all, committed homicide and other violent crimes. My guess is that there’s some truth in each hypothesis, and in the labeling or reporting artifact explanation as well. Nevertheless, I find myself convinced that, to some extent, prisons and jails are becoming safer. I’ll have to adjust the hyperbole in my lecture about prisons being “crucibles of intimidation and violence” until I see evidence of deeper flaws in this analysis.

A new Bureau of Justice Statistics report by Christopher Mumola discusses suicide and homicide in jail and prison. As summarized in the chart and table (click chart), there has been a steep drop in both types of death for both types of inmates. Remembering the old Kitsuse and Cicourel Social Problems article that I force-feed every grad student (1963’s “A Note on the Uses of Official Statistics”), I thought that perhaps officials had changed reporting practices or the way they classified causes of death. Yet deaths by all causes are under 3,000 annually in prisons and under 1,000 in jails. More precisely, 3,924 died in 2002 in an incarcerated population of 2,085,620 — less than two-tenths of one percent per year (.00188). Mortality rates for all causes have also declined precipitously for jails since 1980 and stabilized after a mid-1990s peak in prisons. So, I suspect there are real declines here, rather than simple changes in recordkeeping.

Who dies in prison? Suicides tend to be white, male, and very young or older inmates. Homicide victims tend to be white or Hispanic males. Perhaps the most intriguing finding is that homicide rates are significantly lower in prison and jail than among the general population. When Mumola standardizes the rates to match the age, race, and gender composition of inmates, the pattern is even stronger: “the resident population had a homicide rate (35 per 100,000) nearly 9 times the rate of homicide in State prisons (4) and nearly 11 times higher than the rate in jails (3).

I’m still trying to get my head around this paradoxical finding. Are we really less likely to be murdered in prison than on the street? Here are four hypotheses, and four “yeah buts.” (1) Is it a stark indictment of our ultraviolent society? Yeah, but violence has been trending downward since the early 1990s, and the 2002 homicide rate is identical to the 1966 rate; (2) Is it proof of the improved safety of our correctional facilities? Yeah, but prisons and jails clearly remain very dangerous and unhealthy places; (3) Is it evidence of the greater efficacy of the panopticon’s formal social control over the street’s informal controls? Yeah, but the streets upon which most of the general population walk are aready quite safe; (4) Is it a reflection of the not-so-great-as-one-might-think differences between the general population and the inmate population? Yeah, but a good portion of inmates have, after all, committed homicide and other violent crimes. My guess is that there’s some truth in each hypothesis, and in the labeling or reporting artifact explanation as well. Nevertheless, I find myself convinced that, to some extent, prisons and jails are becoming safer. I’ll have to adjust the hyperbole in my lecture about prisons being “crucibles of intimidation and violence” until I see evidence of deeper flaws in this analysis.

Amid the reports of misery and lawlessness following hurricane katrina, one can also find civic contributions made by prison inmates. The Reuters pic below shows prisoners who filled 8,000 sandbags (no, that’s not cocaine) last Saturday. Today, inmates in Alabama and Mississippi distributed ice and supplies at roadside aid stations.

As with other institutions, the criminal Justice system is stretched to the breaking point. In New Orleans, pending criminal case files remain submerged, police officers are resigning and worse, and about 5,000 inmates were herded onto a half-submerged freeway ramp for days. In some jurisdictions, non-violent prisoners have simply been released en masse.

Aside from the desperate conditions in jails and prisons, however, many inmates are eager to load supplies and sandbags for another reason: they know that they can do nothing for their families in this time of crisis. They can’t even write a check to the Red Cross. So, many cherish the opportunity to make some positive contribution to others. Tellingly, it is often the inmate elite and trustees who first step up to offer whatever help they can give (and, of course, to get outside for a few hours). In my view, stepping up as a citizen and as a positive force in one’s community offers one pathway toward reintegration and away from crime. Some inmates are likely cheering the looters as they watch things break down on television, but many others will be searching desperately for ways to lend a hand. I am certain their work will be needed (and hope it will be valued) in the months of rebuilding to come.

Amid the reports of misery and lawlessness following hurricane katrina, one can also find civic contributions made by prison inmates. The Reuters pic below shows prisoners who filled 8,000 sandbags (no, that’s not cocaine) last Saturday. Today, inmates in Alabama and Mississippi distributed ice and supplies at roadside aid stations.

As with other institutions, the criminal Justice system is stretched to the breaking point. In New Orleans, pending criminal case files remain submerged, police officers are resigning and worse, and about 5,000 inmates were herded onto a half-submerged freeway ramp for days. In some jurisdictions, non-violent prisoners have simply been released en masse.

Aside from the desperate conditions in jails and prisons, however, many inmates are eager to load supplies and sandbags for another reason: they know that they can do nothing for their families in this time of crisis. They can’t even write a check to the Red Cross. So, many cherish the opportunity to make some positive contribution to others. Tellingly, it is often the inmate elite and trustees who first step up to offer whatever help they can give (and, of course, to get outside for a few hours). In my view, stepping up as a citizen and as a positive force in one’s community offers one pathway toward reintegration and away from crime. Some inmates are likely cheering the looters as they watch things break down on television, but many others will be searching desperately for ways to lend a hand. I am certain their work will be needed (and hope it will be valued) in the months of rebuilding to come.

Some of the saddest reports from Hurricane Katrina involve looting and a breakdown in informal social controls and public safety. While no law enforcement agency could efficiently operate in such disastrous conditions, New Orleans is especially poorly positioned. Long before the hurricane, the city had an extremely high and rising rate of homicide and gun violence, a long record of corruption, and too few officers and staff in both the police department and prosecutor’s offices. They were also poorly paid: according to Law Enforcement Management Administrative Statistics for 2000, starting pay for a new officer in New Orleans was $25,164 and the only educational requirement was a high school diploma (by way of comparison, St. Paul, MN, starts officers at $37,860 and requires at least a two-year degree at entry). Similarly, Louisiana State Patrol officers start at $22,716 and lack collective bargaining for both sworn and civilian officers (relative to $38,252 with collective bargaining in Minnesota).

I do not point this out as a hindsight critique or an insensitive shot at the many good officers working around the clock in New Orleans. It is just disheartening for a criminologist to watch other cities laying off officers or stretching their forces to the breaking point while law enforcement is so overwhelmed in New Orleans. Is it unreasonable to think that such cutbacks will put public safety at risk elsewhere in coming years? Or to think that we might make a more rational allocation of our existing public safety dollars?

Some of the saddest reports from Hurricane Katrina involve looting and a breakdown in informal social controls and public safety. While no law enforcement agency could efficiently operate in such disastrous conditions, New Orleans is especially poorly positioned. Long before the hurricane, the city had an extremely high and rising rate of homicide and gun violence, a long record of corruption, and too few officers and staff in both the police department and prosecutor’s offices. They were also poorly paid: according to Law Enforcement Management Administrative Statistics for 2000, starting pay for a new officer in New Orleans was $25,164 and the only educational requirement was a high school diploma (by way of comparison, St. Paul, MN, starts officers at $37,860 and requires at least a two-year degree at entry). Similarly, Louisiana State Patrol officers start at $22,716 and lack collective bargaining for both sworn and civilian officers (relative to $38,252 with collective bargaining in Minnesota).

I do not point this out as a hindsight critique or an insensitive shot at the many good officers working around the clock in New Orleans. It is just disheartening for a criminologist to watch other cities laying off officers or stretching their forces to the breaking point while law enforcement is so overwhelmed in New Orleans. Is it unreasonable to think that such cutbacks will put public safety at risk elsewhere in coming years? Or to think that we might make a more rational allocation of our existing public safety dollars?

When I checked the little online survey in my felon disenfranchisement page this morning, I noticed that there had been exactly 1,000 responses to my question asking whether convicted felons should be allowed to vote while in prison, on parole, on probation, or after they had completed their entire sentences. So, 1,000 being a nice round number, it seems like a good time to write up the results. With Jeff Manza, Clem Brooks, and the Harris Organization, I conducted a real national poll on the subject in 2002. Jeff and Clem designed some clever question wording experiments, splitting the sample to get clean estimates (a far superior method to the single-item approach I used on my quick n’ dirty question). In the Harris poll, we were somewhat surprised to find that most people favored allowing everyone but current prisoners to vote. How do the results from this nationally representative poll compare to those from my online visitor poll?Visitors to the site were decidedly more favorable toward voting rights for all groups, but both polls revealed the same gradient of support — strongest for ex-felons who have done their time, weakest for current prisoners, with those supervised in their communities on probation and parole falling somewhere between the two extremes. So, the public represented in the Harris poll would favor a system such as Ohio or Illinois, where only prisoners are disenfranchised. Many of the site visitors would go farther and enfranchise prisoners as well, as is currently the practice in Maine and Vermont. Neither group of respondents would prefer a stricter system such as Minnesota’s or Wisconsin’s, in which probationers and parolees are disenfranchised. Most conspicuously, perhaps, only 20% nationally and 8% of site visitors favored indefinite disenfranchisement of former felons as well as current felons, as is currently the case in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Virginia and other states (note: the map hasn’t been updated to include 2005 changes in Iowa and Nebraska).

I’m of course very skeptical of such online poll results (and confess that some of those 1,000 votes came from my computer and many more came from the computers of my students). Nevertheless, I was happy to discover some degree of diversity among site visitors and the same gradient of support for the voting rights of non-incarcerated felons. I’m also grateful that about 1,000 people took the time to read the survey and vote. Thanks!

When I checked the little online survey in my felon disenfranchisement page this morning, I noticed that there had been exactly 1,000 responses to my question asking whether convicted felons should be allowed to vote while in prison, on parole, on probation, or after they had completed their entire sentences. So, 1,000 being a nice round number, it seems like a good time to write up the results. With Jeff Manza, Clem Brooks, and the Harris Organization, I conducted a real national poll on the subject in 2002. Jeff and Clem designed some clever question wording experiments, splitting the sample to get clean estimates (a far superior method to the single-item approach I used on my quick n’ dirty question). In the Harris poll, we were somewhat surprised to find that most people favored allowing everyone but current prisoners to vote. How do the results from this nationally representative poll compare to those from my online visitor poll?Visitors to the site were decidedly more favorable toward voting rights for all groups, but both polls revealed the same gradient of support — strongest for ex-felons who have done their time, weakest for current prisoners, with those supervised in their communities on probation and parole falling somewhere between the two extremes. So, the public represented in the Harris poll would favor a system such as Ohio or Illinois, where only prisoners are disenfranchised. Many of the site visitors would go farther and enfranchise prisoners as well, as is currently the practice in Maine and Vermont. Neither group of respondents would prefer a stricter system such as Minnesota’s or Wisconsin’s, in which probationers and parolees are disenfranchised. Most conspicuously, perhaps, only 20% nationally and 8% of site visitors favored indefinite disenfranchisement of former felons as well as current felons, as is currently the case in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Virginia and other states (note: the map hasn’t been updated to include 2005 changes in Iowa and Nebraska).

I’m of course very skeptical of such online poll results (and confess that some of those 1,000 votes came from my computer and many more came from the computers of my students). Nevertheless, I was happy to discover some degree of diversity among site visitors and the same gradient of support for the voting rights of non-incarcerated felons. I’m also grateful that about 1,000 people took the time to read the survey and vote. Thanks!

I’ve written at some length about the hyper-stigma that accompanies the “sex offender” label in the contemporary United States. Whenever I even hint that this stigma may hinder rather than help public safety, as in this AP story in June, I’m swamped with supportive calls and emails from sex offenders and their families and vaguely threatening or accusing mail from others. And, of course, breathless invitations to appear on cable news shows as “liberal punching bag o’ the day.” [Can you believe it, this guy actually thinks sex offenders have it too tough?] Now comes this story from the Seattle Times and Bellingham Herald:

BELLINGHAM — Last Friday night, a man claiming to be an FBI agent dropped in on three Level 3 sex offenders living together, supposedly to warn them of an Internet “hit list” targeting sex offenders. The man was not an FBI agent, but he may have been enforcing a hit list of his own creation. Two of the roommates were found dead early Saturday of gunshot wounds, and Bellingham police are investigating a crime that authorities say may be one of the nation’s most serious cases of vigilantism aimed at sex offenders. The killings also highlight a potential problem about Washington’s 1990 law requiring sex offenders to register their addresses so the public can keep track of them.

Yes, if the story checks out as reported, I guess murder qualifies as a potential problem. Given the demonization of sex offenders, I’m certain that few will shed tears over these murders. I’m also sure that the vigilante had never read the Bureau of Justice Statistics report or large research literature showing low recidivism rates of sex offenders relative to other former prisoners. Yet our FBI imposter/wannabe was well-informed on two counts: (1) he knew that “level-three sex offenders” Hank Eisses, 49, James Russell, 42, and Victor Vasquez, 68 could be found at 2825 Northwest Avenue; and, (2) he knew the specific details of their crimes — offenses that took place in 1997, 1994, and 1991, respectively. Clearly one cannot blame the print or broadcast media, or the state department of corrections, or local law enforcement, or the state legislature for the actions of an accused vigilante. Nevertheless, the case raises troubling questions about whether the policies of each institution are best serving the public interest. To my knowledge, there is no clear evidence of less new sex offending in communities that impose greater stigma. Lacking such evidence, I fear that the moral panic exemplified by current notification procedures is a net loss for public safety.

Even years before their scheduled release, both male and female prisoners have told me they feared “the internet” and public availability of information about them. Rest assured that the Bellingham murder story will quickly make the rounds of every TV room and sex offender unit in state penitentiaries. It is not a story of deterrence that will keep them from future crime. It is not a story of redemption or martyrdom that will give them strength as they work through the tough times. It is instead a story of the hysterical vigilante lying in wait, a story that embodies their fears about life after prison and their dim prospects for ever becoming a normal citizen in a community. And it makes them wonder why the hell they should go to treatment.