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inside higher ed reports on criminal background checks for faculty members.

i was surprised a few years ago when a student applying for an academic position sweated-out a very thorough criminal background investigation. during my job search in the mid-1990s, i can’t recall any discussion of criminal history — except for the senior scholar who chided me, saying “young criminologists these days haven’t done enough crime to make any sense of it.”

i can understand why colleges and universities might want a basic screen on applicants, but my student was called upon to explain every single arrest. on this point, i agree with the senior scholar who interviewed me: screening out criminologists with arrest histories is sort of like screening out economists who’ve handled currency.

i’m perplexed at the attention to the pew foundation’s recent 1-in-100 study, since i figured that by now most of us had at least a dim sense of the social distribution of criminal punishment. the risk is far greater than 1 percent for many segments of the population and far lower than 1 percent for many other segments.

the 1 percent figure is misleading because it aggregates a bunch of zeros with a bunch of 50 percents. c’mon, just think about the denominator for a second. if we exclude those at essentially zero risk of prison, the percentage quickly rises. do you really think that your great grandmother in the birchwood convalescent center is at any risk for incarceration in a state penitentiary? the likelihood of incarceration is far greater for the working-age population, and far, far greater for the working-age male population, and far, far, far greater for the working-age african american male population.

and that’s just the denominator. now think about the numerator. we’re talking about people sleeping in a cell tonight, and not talking about anyone who slept in a cell last night (but not tonight) and who will sleep in a cell tomorrow night (but not tonight). when you add in the formerly or recently incarcerated, and those who’ve served lengthy probation sentences, the risk of imprisonment far exceeds 1-in-100. in 2006, melissa, jeff, and i estimated the felon and ex-felon population at 7.5 percent of the adult population, 22 percent of the black adult population, and 33 percent of the black adult male population.

another way to think of such risks concerns the election. according to paul campos:

During football games, the University of Michigan’s stadium hosts about 111,000 people. If you filled the place with randomly selected 60-year-old white women, around 10 of them would turn out to be prison inmates. If you did the same with 46-year-old black men, about 5,500 would be current residents of our prisons and jails. In other words, if we took into account only race, gender and age, Obama’s chances of being in prison would be 550 times higher than Clinton’s. Here’s a good question for a presidential debate: “Do you think 46-year-old black men are 550 times more likely to deserve to be in prison than 60-year-old white women?”

the atlanta journal-constitution reports on rufus terrill, a local tavern owner with a novel approach to neighborhood crime.

He mounted an old meat smoker atop a three-wheel scooter and attached a spotlight, an infrared camera, water cannon and a loudspeaker. He covered the contraption with impact-resistant rubber and painted the whole thing jet black.

in this video clip, the robo-smoker doesn’t come off as terribly intimidating. in fact, i can’t imagine it surviving long in an actual high-crime neighborhood, since its li’l water gun would never stand up against a sustained attack by a louisville slugger.

in atlanta, as elsewhere, the police generally frown on vigilantism — even robotic vigilantism-by-proxy:

Atlanta police officials said they haven’t received any complaints about the robot. But police spokeswoman Lisa Keyes said Terrill would be committing an assault if he intentionally sprays water on someone when in control of the robot.

i’m not sayin’ that there’s a racial angle to this story, but there’s certainly a socioeconomic angle. the bar is in close proximity to the metro atlanta task force for the homeless and mr. terrill’s regulars apparently refer to the robot as the bum-bot. while i can’t applaud the use of his private security robot on the public streets, i’ve got to give mr. terrill 10 out of 10 for ingenuity.

despite a student’s recommendation, i never got around to reading margaret b. jones’ gang memoir, love and consequences. as it turns out, the “refugee from gangland” appears to have made the whole thing up.

via the times:

In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview from her home on Monday, Ms. Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles.

“For whatever reason, I was really torn and I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to,” Ms. Seltzer said. “I was in a position where at one point people said you should speak for us because nobody else is going to let us in to talk. Maybe it’s an ego thing — I don’t know. I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it.”

oh, i get it — sort of a noble thing. one can’t help but think of james frey, who fictionalized a good bit of his memoir a couple years ago. still, it bears repeating: there’s nothing more pathetic than a pretend badass.

well, this is disappointing. i read last week’s nytimes review of love and consequences and i was looking forward to reading the book. from the excerpt, it seemed like an interesting, well-written book that dealt with issues of race, class, and gender, and might have been appropriate reading for a number of my classes on crime and delinquency. i also read the feature piece on author, margaret b. jones, and the life she created in eugene, oregon. it sounded nice.

unfortunately, it turns out the author fabricated the entire story. amazingly, no one caught the deception until after her “memoir” had been published and reviewed. as the nytimes reports:

In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.

The problem is that none of it is true.

Margaret B. Jones is a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is all white and grew up in the well-to-do Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, in the San Fernando Valley, with her biological family. She graduated from the Campbell Hall School, a private Episcopal day school in the North Hollywood neighborhood. She has never lived with a foster family, nor did she run drugs for any gang members.

this story just gives everyone involved a bad name. there was a compelling story to be told here, but why did the author have to claim it as her own? sometimes the real truth is found in fiction — that’s a lesson i learned in a journalism class as an undergraduate — but the distinction between truth and fiction should always be clear. credibility once lost is likely gone forever. the publishers have recalled all copies of the book, so now the author has become the story after all.

the seattle pi is in the middle of publishing a series of articles on “the strong arm of the law,” detailing controversial cases and issues with the seattle police department. so far, there are articles on police use of force, obstruction cases and charges, and how blacks are disporportionately arrested on “contempt of cop”charges.

while the police department questions the methodology used in some of the reports, for anyone interested in issues with policing, the series is worth a look.

as you may have heard, a former texas prosecutor sent sexually suggestive emails to an nbc producer posing as a 13-year-old boy. when local law enforcement sent in a SWAT team, apparently at the behest of the network, the guy killed himself.

few will have sympathy for anyone sending dirty emails to kids (or, to be precise, those posing as kids). that said, i could find no evidence suggesting that the man had ever engaged in any violence against kids or adults. but for the network’s intervention, he may never have acted on the impulses that drew him into dateline‘s spotlight.

via newsday:

A federal judge handed a legal victory Tuesday to a woman who claims “Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator” led her brother _ a Texas prosecutor _ to kill himself after camera crews and police officers showed up at his home in a sex sting.

In a scathing ruling, U.S. District Judge Denny Chin permitted a $105 million lawsuit to go to trial, saying a jury might conclude the network “crossed the line from responsible journalism to irresponsible and reckless intrusion into law enforcement.”

Louis William Conradt Jr., an assistant prosecutor in suburban Dallas, fatally shot himself after he was accused of engaging in a sexually explicit online chat with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy, according to a lawsuit filed by his sister.

In his ruling, Chin said the network “placed itself squarely in the middle of a police operation, pushing the police to engage in tactics that were unnecessary and unwise, solely to generate more dramatic footage for a television show.”

Chin wrote that a reasonable jury could find there was no legitimate law enforcement need for a heavily armed SWAT team to extract a 56-year-old prosecutor from his home when he was not accused of any violence and was not believed to have a gun.

He said a jury might conclude it was done solely to sensationalize and enhance the entertainment value of the arrest.

“A reasonable jury could find that by doing so, NBC created a substantial risk of suicide or other harm, and that it engaged in conduct so outrageous and extreme that no civilized society should tolerate it,” Chin said.

Before issuing his ruling, Chin said he reviewed a copy of the Feb. 20, 2007, episode. In her lawsuit, Patricia Conradt claims a police officer at the scene of the shooting told a “Dateline” producer: “That’ll make good TV.”

brad sends word of topline results for a december 2007 crime poll. the research was conducted by third way, with the report authored by jim kessler, rachel laser, michael earls, and nikki yamashiro.

the upshot is that americans still see crime as a very serious issue, they are split about equally with regard to whether democrats or republicans would best respond to crime, and they favor (compulsory) rehabilitation programs. here’s the full text:

Third Way Crime Poll — Topline Highlights

These are the highlights of a 1,139 person survey conducted by Cooper & Secrest Associates, December 15–19, 2007 on voter attitudes toward crime.

Americans View Crime as a Resurgent Threat
Although, crime does not rival the economy or Iraq as a front burner issue, there are clear indications that the public is becoming more concerned about the issue.
• 57% rate crime as a “very serious” issue
• By a 56-11% margin, the public believes there is more crime rather than less crime in America than one year ago
• 78% say that children are more vulnerable to crime than ten years ago
• By a 69-19% margin, Americans feel that crime is more of a threat to their own safety than terrorism

Most Americans Are Non-Ideological Pragmatists on Crime
Our research identified three distinct groups of Americans on the crime issue. The most prominent was the 55% of Americans whom we call “Solve-the-Problem” voters. They are non-ideological pragmatists who are open to a very active government role in crime prevention and intervention if properly designed and framed to emphasize personal responsibility. These voters are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans and are dispersed evenly throughout the country. The remaining two groups are far more ideological. “Throw-the-Book” voters comprise a small minority of the population and oppose any efforts at changing criminal behavior beyond enforcement and prison. They are overwhelmingly conservative. “Read-a-Book” voters believe wholeheartedly in rehabilitation and are far more likely to be liberal than the general population. They rank crime lower as an issue and see crime as slightly less of a threat to themselves.

Democrats and Republicans are at Parity on the Crime Issue
When asked who would do a better job of “working to reduce crime,” 33% chose Democrats, 31% chose Republicans, and 36% volunteered “not sure” or “neither party.” Compared to the 1970s and 80s, when the country trusted only conservatives to combat crime, our polling indicates that there has been a significant shift in public opinion towards parity. However, Americans still have distinct preconceptions about both parties’ approaches to the issue. They see Democrats as too quick to blame crime on circumstances, like bad schools, broken families, and dysfunctional neighborhoods. They see Republicans as holding individuals responsible for their own actions, but straying too far towards punitive sentencing for crime.

Voters Favor Intervention Efforts to Reduce Crime
There is strong support for programs aimed at reducing crime, but those designed to make people improve and take responsibility scored the best. For example, when prison rehabilitation programs were defined as a requirement of, not a benefit for, prisoners—support soared. Specifically, a policy forcing prisoners “to work, get an education, and learn skills because they need to be productive when they get out” scored 36-points higher (with 91% approval) than one providing prisoners who have “difficult family, economic or mental health circumstances” with the “proper counseling and training they need to be rehabilitated.”

this story caught my eye this week — it is an interesting example of creative — and possibly restorative–Justice. the new york times sets up the story as follows: “What punishment should be imposed on a man who shot a police officer almost 40 years ago and fled to Canada, but went on to live an upstanding life as a husband and father who worked in a library?”

the answer, in this case, is an unusual plea bargain in which the offender, joseph pannell, will serve 30 days in jail, spend 2 years on probation, and give $250,000 to a foundation that helps the families of injured chicago police officers. the broker of the deal was actually the victim, who suffered permanent damage to his arm, but said: “Something good had to come out of this…The easy way out would have been to have a trial, and cost this county hundreds of thousands of dollars, have him go to jail, and cost the prison system hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

for his part, pannell, now 58, took responsibility for the shooting which took place when he was 19, saying: “We must seek to move away from adversarial confrontation and towards peaceful reconciliation and conflict resolution…Today is about acceptance of responsibility, atonement and redemption.”

no one went to prison, yet all parties seem satisfied with this resolution. too bad such creative Justice negotiations are the exception rather than the rule.

the bureau of Justice statistics just released a new report on campus crime and law enforcement. what can be learned from these data? in comparison to the general population, college campuses have a relatively low rate of violent crime (about 62 per 100,000 population on campus, relative to about 466 per 100,000 in the general population). overall, rates of both violence and property crime declined on campus from 1994 to 2004. in both years, crime rates were significantly higher in private than in public schools, with the private campus violent crime rate actually rising over this period. i’m not sure how to account for this, but i’d imagine there is great heterogeneity within both the private and the public campus categories.

the report shows that NYU had the largest campus law enforcement agency, but that howard university reported the greatest number of sworn officers (those with full arrest powers granted by a state or local government).

top-10 campuses ranked by number of full-time law enforcement employees
345 New York University
235 University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
202 Temple University
200 Howard University
194 University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
190 University of Southern California
180 Michigan State University
170 University of Alabama – Birmingham
156 George Washington University
155 University of Florida

i’d like to see more than the top-10 before drawing any inferences, but east coast universities such as temple and penn appear to hire more sworn officers than universities in the west or midwest. i may end up digging a bit deeper into these data, as there is some talk of expanding campus law enforcement to address security concerns at the minnversity.

top-10 campuses ranked by number of sworn officers
166 Howard University
119 Temple University
100 University of Pennsylvania
97 University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey
95 George Washington University
86 University of Florida
79 Georgia State University
78 Yale University
76 University of Maryland – College Park
76 Vanderbilt University