i’m just back from the 2005 american society of criminology annual meetings in toronto. we had a fine conference at the royal york (though it was expensive for the student members) and near-record attendance. i love the meetings and the society has been a great home for me since my early grad school days. both meeting and society are less formal and more interdisciplinary than american sociological association gatherings: almost anyone who wants to get onto a session can get onto a session and they usually have some interesting things to say.

i’m currently the executive secretary of the organization, which means that i type board meeting minutes, scoop a lot of ice cream, and sign off on awards. plus, i really rake in the loot on secretary’s day. next year’s meetings will be held in los angeles, and the theme under new president gary lafree will be “democracy, crime, and Justice.” i’ll be organizing sessions on crime and politics, chairing an article award committee, and working on a long-term planning committee for the society. i’m hoping to reach out to non-asc members interested in voting, politics, and crime who might not otherwise attend the meetings. i’ll post more on this in spring, but if you would like to present a paper on this or another crime topic next november, you only need to submit an abstract by march to get on the program.

i had a great meeting with michael bischoff of the council on crime and Justice recently, where we discussed the sort of civic engagement work that could be done behind prison walls. minnesota has a number of inmate-based restorative Justice groups. michael wrote to me today with word that the men of faribault prison are holding their second annual “tough guys for tots” walk this Saturday. All money raised will go to the local rice county toys for tots program. Last year the inmates (who earn very little wages) pledged quite a bit themselves.

if you normally give to such toy programs around the holidays, you might consider making a donation and sponsoring a walker this year. in addition to helping out the kids, you can help nurture a prisoner’s pro-social impulses and actions. if interested, you can send a check marked “tough guys for tots” to:

MCF-Faribault
Attn: Jay Welborn
1101 Linden
Faribault, MN 55021-6400

i had a great meeting with michael bischoff of the council on crime and Justice recently, where we discussed the sort of civic engagement work that could be done behind prison walls. minnesota has a number of inmate-based restorative Justice groups. michael wrote to me today with word that the men of faribault prison are holding their second annual “tough guys for tots” walk this Saturday. All money raised will go to the local rice county toys for tots program. Last year the inmates (who earn very little wages) pledged quite a bit themselves.

if you normally give to such toy programs around the holidays, you might consider making a donation and sponsoring a walker this year. in addition to helping out the kids, you can help nurture a prisoner’s pro-social impulses and actions. if interested, you can send a check marked “tough guys for tots” to:

MCF-Faribault
Attn: Jay Welborn
1101 Linden
Faribault, MN 55021-6400

from yahoo news:

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court refused Monday to review Florida’s lifetime ban on voting rights for convicted felons, a case that would have had national implications for millions of would-be voters.

i worked for several years, took a lengthy deposition, and wrote an expert report on this case (johnson v. bush), so the news is disappointing.

from yahoo news:

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court refused Monday to review Florida’s lifetime ban on voting rights for convicted felons, a case that would have had national implications for millions of would-be voters.

i worked for several years, took a lengthy deposition, and wrote an expert report on this case (johnson v. bush), so the news is disappointing.

who says the war on drugs hasn’t been effective? the daily mirror reports another celebrity chagrined at the quality of cocaine these days. current crooner and former sexy person rod stewart reports:

I don’t know why anyone would want to take coke now … It was different in my day, because it was all so much purer. Now these dealers mix it with salt, washing powders, anything they can get their hands on. Kids just don’t know what they’re taking.

this reminded me of other recent complaints by noted cocaine experts, such as current velvet revolver vocalist scott weiland. in an esquire interview this april, weiland described the good old days:

it was not that nasty, gasoline-tasting, cat-piss-smelling sh*t that they have nowadays. It was f*ckin’ shale, you know? It was mother-of-pearl stuff that they used to have in the old days. It was so hard, you had to slice it real thin with a razor blade, like little slices of garlic. They don’t even make that sh*t anymore.

weiland’s imagery is evocative, isn’t it? i can see (mother of pearl), smell (cat-piss), feel (hard, like garlic slices), and taste (gasoline) the differences he’s describing. weiland’s imagery is richer than rod stewart’s, i think, because stewart was only a “casual” user.

weiland was anything but casual about cocaine and heroin. his first-person account of his love affair with these drugs is riveting. i was planning to require it for my deviance class this week, but chickened out. although it is an honest, candid warts-n’-all portrayal, in my view it simply makes cocaine sound too attractive. based on my student surveys over the years, i know that coke remains a deviant taste among my undergrad students (in contrast, lifetime marijuana use is roughly 75 percent). would weiland’s words have led anyone to try cocaine or heroin for the first time? would a professor’s apparent endorsement make a difference? here are a few excerpts from weiland’s piece, highlighting the exotic attractions, the rituals, and the subjective experience:

MY FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH COCAINE were just completely…it was, like, sexual. It was unbelievable. I didn’t think that there could be anything that good…

The guy cut us out a couple lines each, like, six inches long and about an eighth of an inch wide. I had two of them. And that was all we needed. We were high for five hours. And there was no grinding teeth. There was no big comedown. I think the devil gives you the first time for free…

He tied me off and shot me up. And then he said, “Now you got your wings.” I remember just lying back on his mattress … Complete warmth went all the way through my body. I was consumed. It’s like what they talk about in Buddhism, that feeling of reaching enlightenment. Like in Siddhartha … there’s this feeling in Buddhism where they say there’s a golden glow that goes from your fingers all the way through every appendage and into the pit of your stomach. And that’s what it felt like to me, slamming dope for the first time. Like I’d reached enlightenment…

I was home. All my life, I had never felt right in my own skin. I always felt that wherever I went…I don’t know, I always felt very uncomfortable. Like I didn’t belong. Like I could never belong. Like every room I walked into was an unwelcome room. After doing dope for the first time, I knew that no matter what happened, from that day forward, I could be okay in every situation. Heroin made me feel safe. It was like the womb. I felt completely sure of myself. It took away all the fears. It did that socially; it distanced me from other people, made me feel less vulnerable…

Once I started shooting, I realized I’d made a career decision…
WHEN I STARTED DOING HEROIN, I felt almost immediately like I had become part of something bigger than myself, that I’d entered into a new social realm…

I never wanted to quit. Never. I saw narcotics as something I needed in order to function. I believed at the time that I was born with a chemical deficiency. Which I was. I was totally correct. But at the time, I believed I was born with this particular chemical deficiency that only opiates could fulfill. My basic thought was: How the hell can all you people want to keep me away from the one particular medicine that could keep me from blowing my head off?

again, weiland does not endorse use of these drugs — he just tells us honestly about how he experienced their seductions. drug educators face a real paradox in describing such psychoactive effects to non-users. any realistic presentation must note that cocaine and heroin are experienced as pleasurable by users (recognizing, as howard becker, that such definitions are social constructions). yet, such descriptions have at least some potential to encourage use. and, of course, such use can bring harm to users.

of course, cocaine and heroin have long histories as licit as well as illicit drugs. freud himself endorsed parke-davis cocaine, which it alleged could “supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and … render the sufferer insensitive to pain.”

i would have used weiland to lecture on stigma and the arc of his career as a singer and as a drug user. yet his descriptions were too rich for the task — i would have needed a few more first-person accounts describing the banality of the experience (“did coke in the club, got really anxious, couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to do it anymore”) for balance. in any case, the students will get plenty of sociological analysis of drugs in america: craig reinarman and reefer madness on moral panics and a little becker on learning to use marijuana. still, i’d like to find a way to responsibly add some sort of first-person account to cover the individual-level processes described by weiland.

who says the war on drugs hasn’t been effective? the daily mirror reports another celebrity chagrined at the quality of cocaine these days. current crooner and former sexy person rod stewart reports:

I don’t know why anyone would want to take coke now … It was different in my day, because it was all so much purer. Now these dealers mix it with salt, washing powders, anything they can get their hands on. Kids just don’t know what they’re taking.

this reminded me of other recent complaints by noted cocaine experts, such as current velvet revolver vocalist scott weiland. in an esquire interview this april, weiland described the good old days:

it was not that nasty, gasoline-tasting, cat-piss-smelling sh*t that they have nowadays. It was f*ckin’ shale, you know? It was mother-of-pearl stuff that they used to have in the old days. It was so hard, you had to slice it real thin with a razor blade, like little slices of garlic. They don’t even make that sh*t anymore.

weiland’s imagery is evocative, isn’t it? i can see (mother of pearl), smell (cat-piss), feel (hard, like garlic slices), and taste (gasoline) the differences he’s describing. weiland’s imagery is richer than rod stewart’s, i think, because stewart was only a “casual” user.

weiland was anything but casual about cocaine and heroin. his first-person account of his love affair with these drugs is riveting. i was planning to require it for my deviance class this week, but chickened out. although it is an honest, candid warts-n’-all portrayal, in my view it simply makes cocaine sound too attractive. based on my student surveys over the years, i know that coke remains a deviant taste among my undergrad students (in contrast, lifetime marijuana use is roughly 75 percent). would weiland’s words have led anyone to try cocaine or heroin for the first time? would a professor’s apparent endorsement make a difference? here are a few excerpts from weiland’s piece, highlighting the exotic attractions, the rituals, and the subjective experience:

MY FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH COCAINE were just completely…it was, like, sexual. It was unbelievable. I didn’t think that there could be anything that good…

The guy cut us out a couple lines each, like, six inches long and about an eighth of an inch wide. I had two of them. And that was all we needed. We were high for five hours. And there was no grinding teeth. There was no big comedown. I think the devil gives you the first time for free…

He tied me off and shot me up. And then he said, “Now you got your wings.” I remember just lying back on his mattress … Complete warmth went all the way through my body. I was consumed. It’s like what they talk about in Buddhism, that feeling of reaching enlightenment. Like in Siddhartha … there’s this feeling in Buddhism where they say there’s a golden glow that goes from your fingers all the way through every appendage and into the pit of your stomach. And that’s what it felt like to me, slamming dope for the first time. Like I’d reached enlightenment…

I was home. All my life, I had never felt right in my own skin. I always felt that wherever I went…I don’t know, I always felt very uncomfortable. Like I didn’t belong. Like I could never belong. Like every room I walked into was an unwelcome room. After doing dope for the first time, I knew that no matter what happened, from that day forward, I could be okay in every situation. Heroin made me feel safe. It was like the womb. I felt completely sure of myself. It took away all the fears. It did that socially; it distanced me from other people, made me feel less vulnerable…

Once I started shooting, I realized I’d made a career decision…
WHEN I STARTED DOING HEROIN, I felt almost immediately like I had become part of something bigger than myself, that I’d entered into a new social realm…

I never wanted to quit. Never. I saw narcotics as something I needed in order to function. I believed at the time that I was born with a chemical deficiency. Which I was. I was totally correct. But at the time, I believed I was born with this particular chemical deficiency that only opiates could fulfill. My basic thought was: How the hell can all you people want to keep me away from the one particular medicine that could keep me from blowing my head off?

again, weiland does not endorse use of these drugs — he just tells us honestly about how he experienced their seductions. drug educators face a real paradox in describing such psychoactive effects to non-users. any realistic presentation must note that cocaine and heroin are experienced as pleasurable by users (recognizing, as howard becker, that such definitions are social constructions). yet, such descriptions have at least some potential to encourage use. and, of course, such use can bring harm to users.

of course, cocaine and heroin have long histories as licit as well as illicit drugs. freud himself endorsed parke-davis cocaine, which it alleged could “supply the place of food, make the coward brave, the silent eloquent and … render the sufferer insensitive to pain.”

i would have used weiland to lecture on stigma and the arc of his career as a singer and as a drug user. yet his descriptions were too rich for the task — i would have needed a few more first-person accounts describing the banality of the experience (“did coke in the club, got really anxious, couldn’t sleep, didn’t want to do it anymore”) for balance. in any case, the students will get plenty of sociological analysis of drugs in america: craig reinarman and reefer madness on moral panics and a little becker on learning to use marijuana. still, i’d like to find a way to responsibly add some sort of first-person account to cover the individual-level processes described by weiland.

i noted a couple weeks ago that shelly schaefer and i were speaking on voting and the civic reintegration of former prisoners on november 29th. alas, we’ve been bumped for another fine talk by a visiting job candidate. postponement offers a bit of relief for shelly (currently serving a tough four-month sentence as my sociology of deviance teaching assistant), but we’re still readying the paper for asa submission by january 18th. despite this bumping, elaine hernandez, an nimh-nrsa predoctoral fellow, will present some of our coauthored work that week.

Wednesday, November 30 12:30 – 2:00 pm in 915 Social Sciences Building
Elaine Hernandez and Christopher Uggen, “Sources of Variation in State Mental Health Parity Laws.”

i won’t give away the punchline, but mandating mental health coverage appears to be a partisan political issue.

i noted a couple weeks ago that shelly schaefer and i were speaking on voting and the civic reintegration of former prisoners on november 29th. alas, we’ve been bumped for another fine talk by a visiting job candidate. postponement offers a bit of relief for shelly (currently serving a tough four-month sentence as my sociology of deviance teaching assistant), but we’re still readying the paper for asa submission by january 18th. despite this bumping, elaine hernandez, an nimh-nrsa predoctoral fellow, will present some of our coauthored work that week.

Wednesday, November 30 12:30 – 2:00 pm in 915 Social Sciences Building
Elaine Hernandez and Christopher Uggen, “Sources of Variation in State Mental Health Parity Laws.”

i won’t give away the punchline, but mandating mental health coverage appears to be a partisan political issue.

from the sentencing project:

alec ewald, a political scientist at union college, has written some excellent law review articles on felon disenfranchisement. he just completed a new sentencing project report on how such laws are administered. in a mail and phone survey he finds much confusion and error in interpreting and administering these ballot restrictions. in a ‘crazy-quilt’ of tiny pieces: state and local administration of american criminal disenfranchisement laws, he reports that 37 percent of local elections officials interviewed misunderstand state eligibility law. moreover, in at least five states a misdemeanor conviction also results in the loss of voting rights (hmmm. maybe i should stop calling it “felon” disenfranchisement).