the first rule of fight camp is that everybody talks about fight camp

the local press are abuzz over derek boogaard's saskatchwan summer "fight camp." mr. boogaard is the designated enforcer of the minnesota wild, our professional hockey team.

fighting is clearly the camp's focus and mr. boogaard's most marketable professional asset. as the blood-spattered t-shirts make clear, this is not your typical skills camp with a little demo discussing fighting as a necessary evil. this is a fight camp.

i'm most interested in the parents of the 12-18 year-olds in attendance. real hockey moms and dads truck their kids to rinks and camps year round, but savvy parents are probably sending their budding rocket richards and dominik haseks to stickhandling camp or goalie camp. so, who sends their kids to fight camp? a few hypotheses:

1. parents who give in to their kids might reluctantly sign off on fight camp. i can certainly envision some young lads making the camp a real priority and working and/or whining hard to attend. this seems the most likely scenario to me.

2. parents who can only afford fifty bucks might send their kids to fight camp. they get a chance to interact with a famous and/or infamous hockey player but needn't break the bank to do so.

3. parents who think their boys should be doing a bit more masculinity might send their kids to fight camp. if the little nipper has a nice hockey skill set but shrinks from the violence, the parents might see mr. boogaard's camp as an efficient karate-kidlike corrective.

4. parents who think their boys should discipline their violence might send their kids to fight camp. if the young palooka has shown a propensity for wanton violence, a fight camp might be seen as just the thing to discipline or attenuate it before the authorities step into the picture.

i could spin off a few hypotheses on family structure (frustrated hockey dad or single mom?) and social class (emasculated middle-class or working-class focal concern?), but i'd need to know more about hockey and fighting to do so effectively.

a few more questions: do you think attendees are likely to get into more fights next season relative to last season? would participating in a one-day $50 fight camp have any effect on behavior on or off the ice? do teammates view attendance positively or negatively? i imagine that my lad would ridicule any teammates who thought they needed summer school remediation in this area. i know that he'd ridicule any parents who thought that such a camp could toughen up their kids.

good hennepin county research job

Job Title: Planning Analyst, Senior
Closing Date: 7/19/07 5:00 PM
Salary: $41,976 - $63,900 annually
Job Type: Full-time
Location: Downtown Minneapolis
Department: Strategic Initiatives & Community Engagement

times op-ed on juvenile justice

the ny times offered a strong op-ed on juvenile justice this week. in my juvenile delinquency class, i discuss the 1974 juvenile justice and delinquency prevention act, which should have removed juveniles from adult jails. unfortunately, the practice of housing kids in adult facilities has continued unabated, with predictable and disturbing results.

2006 i.s.i. journal citation rankings for criminology n' penology

org theory reports this week on the new isi web of knowledge journal impact ratings for sociology, so i thought i'd check out the updated criminology and penology rankings. as the figure indicates, criminology once again ranks at the top of the list, with an impact factor of 2.1. this means that, on average, criminology articles published in the past two years were cited a little more than two times in 2006, relative to about 1.3 citations per quant crim article and one citation per justice quarterly article.

the ratings shift around from year to year, since a "hit" hundred-citation article in, say, policing would rocket that journal up the charts. this year, i'm a bit surprised by the high ranking of sexual abuse: a journal of research and treatment, but see few other surprises on the list. in my opinion, good articles appear in every one of these journals, though the top-ranked journals might be more consistent in publishing high-quality articles from stem to stern in every volume.

how should you consider such measures in assessing journal quality? i'd advise a multi-method approach. the best and most thoughtful discussion i've seen on ranking journal quality comes from the auburn university library. i'll paraphrase liberally:

1. Citation Analysis
A high number of citations generally indicates a high level of quality. Cited reference searching enables you to find articles from journals that have cited a book, a patent or another article. Through a cited reference search, you can discover how a known idea or innovation has been confirmed, applied, improved, extended or corrected... Citation Analysis Debate

2. Impact Factor
Impact factor is based on the number of times that articles in a journal are cited in the two years following the year of publication...High impact factor or highly cited journals are considered more prestigious and important. JCR Fact Sheet Impact Factor Debate

3. Prestige and Reputation of the Journal
The prestige and reputation of the association, society, or organization publishing a journal can be a determining factor. Theoretically, the most prestigious scholarly associations such as APA, IEEE, etc. publish the best, most important, research in the field and therefore their journals have more prestige and weight than others...

4. In-Depth Knowledge of the field and Journals in the field
...Few people have knowledge of, and familiarity with all scholarly journals in a discipline ...However, among sub-disciplines, it becomes more possible to possess in-depth familiarity with the journals. If someone does truly possess this knowledge, their opinion, of which are the “best” journals in a discipline is worth a great deal in assessment.

5. Acceptance/Rejection Rate of the Journal
...Low acceptance rate, high rejection rate journals are considered the best and most prestigious journals. ...Many journals and societies have web pages that give publication data and style requirements and often includes acceptance/rejection rates. The paper copy of the journal occasionally includes this data and will always provide current contact information. Periodical Guide

6. Indexing Services covering the Journal
Whether a journal is indexed in the major indexing/abstracting service in the field is another criteria that can be used to assess the worth and quality of a journal.

7. Total Circulation of the Journal

...High readership and circulation could be markers of a journal's quality and/or popularity. Circulation numbers can be often be found in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory or might be obtained from the journal publisher's website.

the white-collar execution of zheng xiaoyu

zheng xiaoyu has been executed. the former head of china's food and drug safety agency had been convicted of accepting bribes from pharmaceutical companies this may.

leftist criminologists often rail against the light sentences given to white-collar criminals in the united states, particularly when measured against the lengthy prison time served by those convicted of street crimes. this sort of disproportionality case is most convincing with respect to drug convictions and property crimes. it doesn't take a marxist to notice that poor people who steal $2,000 worth of property sometimes do longer (and harder) time than executives who steal $2,000,000 emptying a pension fund.

i suppose that a few criminologists will read zheng xiaoyu's execution as evidence that an appropriate consideration of social harm has been given its due weight at sentencing. more cynically, of course, most of us will interpret this execution as signaling that scapegoats will be found and crucified whenever big-time market interests are threatened -- in china, as elsewhere.

either way, i doubt that this execution will do much to purge the diethylene glycol from your counterfeit colgate or the melamine from your cat food.

a probable cause standard for in-car surveillance systems

nate chapnick of edmunds.com offers a nice piece on surveillance systems and in-car cameras that allow parents to monitor their teen drivers. one firm will track your car's sudden movements, record the data on a website, and assign your kid a "risk score."

i once scoffed at such surveillance measures. then i thought about the two teenagers in my house hurtling down the road in three-thousand pounds of steel.

the data tell us that when teenagers die, they are likely to die behind the wheel. the centers for disease control report that "motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for U.S. teens, accounting for 36% of all deaths in this age group" and that "the risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among 16- to 19-year-olds than among any other age group .... per mile driven, teen drivers ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than older drivers to crash."

though i understand these risks, i'm too much of a small-l libertarian to monitor my kids electronically. i've decided to adopt a probable cause standard for implementing such surveillance. that means that i won't hassle with such stuff unless and until i have information sufficient to warrant a prudent person's belief that tor or esperanza had been delinquent or that evidence of delinquency or contraband would be found in a search.

but that doesn't mean that i won't take steps short of full-on surveillance, such as implementing curfews, based on a less-stringent reasonable suspicion standard. if i judge that a reasonable parent in my circumstances could reasonably believe that tor or esperanza has been, is, or is about to be, engaged in delinquent activity, i will strike down upon them with great rulemaking and furious anger. plus, i'll take the keys.

come to think of it, my kids don't really need to drive at all. if they broach the probable cause standard and behave so irresponsibly that i feel the need to purchase an in-car surveillance system, i'll just hold the keys until they can afford to buy it for me. that'll teach 'em.

responsiveness to noble and ignoble appeals

australia has a reputation for producing particularly nasty anti-speeding public service announcements. newsweek's kendall hill reports on a new campaign with a lighter touch:

When you first read the slogan, SPEEDING: NO ONE THINKS BIG OF YOU, you might think it was a reminder that people think poorly of those who break the law. Think again. This new road-safety campaign, launched in Australia last week, is aimed a bit more below the belt—by suggesting those men who speed have small penises. In the television and cinema advertisements, young "hoons"—Aussie-speak for speeding or reckless drivers—are mocked by unimpressed women who wave their little fingers at the drivers in a parody of their manhood.

nice. my reading of the literature leaves me a bit skeptical that any PSAs could alter long-term behavior, especially among hoons. yes, crack cocaine use dropped when kids learned that it wasn't cool, but they didn't need a television ad to convey the message. still, i'm intrigued by comparisons between appeals to our nobler impulses and appeals to rationality or superficiality. the latter seem to hit us where we really live, especially when supported by good science. messages showing how smoking gives you wrinkles or shrinks your manhood might thus be more effective than messages about, say, the deleterious effects of secondary smoke on your loved ones.

watching both ads, i can't help but think about an experiment comparing changes in driving behavior among dudes exposed to pinkie-wagging and dudes exposed to bloody bodies in the ditch. two questions: (1) which approach, if any, would be more effective in the short- and longer-terms? and, (2) is there a functional equivalent to pinkie-wagging that would deter all those female speeders racing past me?

getting soft or getting smart?

via the sentencing project and talkleft:

in the democratic forum broadcast on pbs last thursday, the 1,756 democratic candidates for president addressed the issue of crime and punishment. watching the video and reading the transcript, one gets the sense that the bloom is officially off the mandatory minimum rose.

aside from eliminating the disparity in crack/powder cocaine sentencing, however, the candidates were a bit light on concrete reforms. breaking news: not one candidate called for greater racial disparity in justice or expansion of the death penalty for expired license plate tabs.

hmmm. what happened to the clinton/gore kill 'em all crime rhetoric of the nineties? is it getting just a little bit safer for democrats to be just a little bit softer on crime? i'll be fascinated to hear the republican response.

in not-unrelated news, the times endorsed the second chance act today, to "provide grants, guidance and assistance to states and localities that are developing programs to reintegrate former inmates into their communities."

midyear 2006 incarceration

the bureau of justice statistics just released incarceration numbers for midyear 2006. a total of 2,245,189 people were incarcerated in state prisons (1,290,200), federal prisons (188,979), and local jails (766,010) as of june 30, 2006. this represents a 2.8 percent increase over the previous year and the biggest jump since 2000, so it is probably time for criminologists to stop talking about a "leveling off" in u.s. incarceration.

i'm more concerned with rates than numbers, so my figure above standardizes by population to show the long-term trend in prison incarceration. the 2006 rate was 497 per 100,000 u.s. residents, or 750 per 100,000 counting jail inmates.

most people know that incarceration rates are highest for african american males, but it is sometimes tough to get one's head around the magnitude of group differences in punishment. in 2006, about 4.8 percent of all african american men and about 11.7 percent of african american men in their twenties were incarcerated. as the figure below shows, the incarceration rate for african american men is currently fifty times higher than the incarceration rate for white women (4,789/94 = 50.9).



the disparities are much greater, of course, when age is thrown into the mix. the rate for african american men in their twenties is about 1,300 times higher than the incarceration rate for white women aged 55 and over. white guys my age have a rate of 1,419 per 100,000, which is significantly higher than any of the female rates (which top out at 999 for african american women in their late thirties), but significantly lower than the rates for latino or african american men in all but the oldest age group.

finally, there is great state-to-state variation, with louisiana (835 per 100,000 residents), texas (687), and oklahoma (658) leading the nation in punishment. the lowest incarceration rates were in maine (141 per 100,000 residents), minnesota (189) and rhode island (195).

all the young dudes, carry the booze

ever heard the term shoulder tapping? today's strib describes a new minnversity study in which young-looking research assistants offered liquor store patrons money to buy them beer.

epidemiologist traci toomey finds that young males are significantly more likely to respond favorably to such requests: 19 percent agreed to purchase the beer, relative to about 8 percent in the general population.

this is an intriguing finding, i suppose, and consistent with the general tendency toward greater delinquency among young men relative to other demographic groups. the study used 4 female research assistants and 1 male RA, however, so i'm a bit concerned that chivalry or some sort of ican'tbelievethiscutegirlisactuallytalkingtome phenomenon might have something to do with the propensity of young dudes to violate the law and respond favorably to the request.

i can't imagine a scenario in which i'd buy booze for minors, partly because i'm afraid they'd drink themselves to death (well, i did see a bit of this while attending college in madison) and partly because i'd assumed one would be severely punished for such an offense. in case you'd consider making such purchases for your undergrads, here's the formal deterrent:

St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh said they have charged individuals with providing alcohol to a minor, a gross misdemeanor carrying up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine, for buying in such circumstances.

if someone taps you on the shoulder, just say no.

photo by Richard Tsong-Taatarii , Star Tribune

to die unsung would really bring you down

the bureau of justice statistics just released a report with data from the first national census of medical examiners' and coroners' offices.

recordkeeping practices appear to vary greatly across jurisdictions, but the report lists a total of 13,486 unidentified human decedents currently on record -- with more than one-fourth of the total in new york city alone. here are the top five offices, which account for about 54% of the unidentified human remains on record nationally:

New York NY 26.8%
Cleveland OH 16.2%
Los Angeles CA 5.9%
Houston TX 3.0%
San Bernardino CA 2.3%

on father's day

a seattle high school has started a program called "dads in the halls" in which fathers, uncles, and male mentors are invited to spend a few hours in the school on designated days interacting with the students and teachers. as the seattle times reports, the program is designed to increase fathers' participation in their kids' lives at school and to also serve as role models for other students.

this seems like a good idea -- low cost investment with real potential to let young people know that men in their community care about them. i know how lucky i was to have a new father come into my life when i was 13 and to have him totally accept me as his own. he has been a wonderful father and mentor and his love, support, and guidance have helped to shape who i am. i hope the "dads in the halls" program continues and grows and i hope today's young people can receive the same kind of support and encouragement.

happy father's day.

indecent recordings

i personally discovered obscene recordings back in elementary school. a friend had somehow obtained comedy albums by cheech and chong, richard pryor, george carlin, and redd foxx on one of those "get 14 records for a penny!" record club promotions. the sexual references surely sailed over our heads, but we knew this stuff had to be funny and guffawed accordingly.

now i learn that obscene recordings have been with us since, well, any kind of recordings. yesterday's npr's weekend edition featured a new collection of lewd victorian-era recordings titled Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s. the feature replayed clips from the original wax cylinders, showing that there's nothing terribly novel about lewd, crude, and immature humor.

in light of the rapid pornographication of any new medium today, it really shouldn't surprise us to learn that by the late-1890s one could hear, say, "The Whore's Union" or "Dennis Reilly at Maggie Murphy's Home after Nine O'Clock." nevertheless, the clips are still a bit jarring to modern ears. they might not be funny" but they are certainly obscene, as evidenced by the bleeping necessary to get them on the airwaves in 2007.

i can imagine that this sort of phenomenon is old news to social historians, who could likely point out ancient (e.g., socrates' whoopee cushion) or far nastier attempts at humor over the course of human history. i'm personally fascinated by the social control aspects of the story -- some of the actors heard on the recordings were actually incarcerated -- and will likely order the CD for my sociology of deviance class. i'm guessing that enforcement under the comstock act must have been somewhat effective at policing such vice, for precious few of these recordings exist today.

curfews

with schools closing up shop for the summer, the subject of curfews has drawn renewed attention in the local news. when high-profile crimes involving juvenile victims and perpetrators occur after midnight, of course, calls for enforcing the curfews intensify.

the chart above is taken from Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report, which shows the time of occurrence for the violent crimes of murder, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault. the data are taken from the National Incident-Based Reporting System for 2000-2001. curfews can be part of a useful strategy to reduce juvenile crime and victimization, though it almost looks as though curfews might be more effective among adults.

in minneapolis, the curfew rules are a bit complicated:
• Under 12: 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
• 12-14: 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday.
• 15-17: 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday, 12: 01 a.m to 5 a.m. Saturday and Sunday.

i didn't even know the curfew rules in my hometown, so i looked them up this morning. esperanza, and anyone age 15 and younger, must be home by 10 p.m. tor, and others age 16-17, must be home by midnight in our town. regardless of the juvenile crime clock and the formal rules, however, i try to get my kids home as early as possible.

a life on hold, part 2

the georgia superior court judge vacated genarlow wilson's 10-year mandatory sentence today and ordered him released from prison. the new york times quotes from the judge's decision:

it would be a “grave miscarriage of justice” for Mr. Wilson to be kept in prison for the remaining eight years of his sentence. “If this Court, or any court, cannot recognize the injustice of what has occurred here, then our court system has lost sight of the goal our judicial system has always strived to accomplish: Justice being served in a fair and equal manner,” he wrote in the order granting release.

the state attorney general filed notice that his office would appeal, and genarlow wilson remains in prison, victorious but still behind bars, his life still on hold.

crafty

conrad defiebre offers a nice story on crafty inmate quilters in monday's strib.

i've known female prisoners to take great pride in such work, particularly when their products are donated for a good cause. nevertheless, this is the first i've heard about male participants. one young st. cloud inmate explains the attraction:

it's quiet, it's mellow, and the stuff is donated to some people who need it.

hallelujah. and nobody's stolen any scissors or needles yet, either. the registration-required site offers a fine slideshow with audio.

a life on hold

while all of the attention of late has been focused on paris hilton, her on-again, off-again, on-again jail sentence, and questions of celebrity justice, there will be an important decision in genarlow wilson's case on june 11th. the judge will decide whether to release him from prison.

his case has received extensive and thoughtful media coverage, but if you haven't heard about it, here's a summary from the website for his appeal:

Genarlow Wilson sits in prison despite being a good son, a good athlete and high school student with a 3.2 GPA. He never had any criminal trouble. On the day he was to sit for the SAT, at seventeen years old, his life changed forever. He was arrested. In Douglas County he was accused of inappropriate sexual acts at a News Year’s Eve party. A jury acquitted him of the allegation of Rape but convicted him of Aggravated Child Molestation for a voluntary act of oral sex with another teenager. He was 17, and she was 15.

Along with the label “child molester” which will require him throughout his life to be on a sexual offender registry, Genarlow received a sentence of eleven years — a mandatory 10 years in prison and 1 year on probation.

On July 1st, the new Romeo and Juliet law went into effect in Georgia for any other teen that engages in consensual sexual acts. That change in the law means that no teen prosecuted for consensual oral sex could receive more than a 12 months sentence or be required to register as a sex offender.

Had this law been in effect when Genarlow Wilson was arrested, or had been done after the Marcus Dixon case, Genarlow would not now be in jail.

Genarlow and his mother are overjoyed that no one else in Georgia will have to know their pain. In the meantime, however, the legal fight goes on for Genarlow Wilson.

Genarlow has been incarcerated since February 25, 2005.

insidious or beguiling? really clever law enforcement

let's say that you don't happen to share my affection for the fine art of concert flyers. how would you stop "rogue promoters" from papering the halls, walls, and buses of your fair city with gig posters? in glasgow, the city council cleverly started slapping CANCELLED stickers over the offending posters. the result?

... some rogue promoters ... have been inundated with complaints from music fans.
People who have bought tickets to some of this summer's big gigs have complained, thinking that an event, rather than the advert, had been cancelled.
The source said: "If people start phoning concert promoters complaining that they thought the gig had been cancelled, then the promoters have no-one but themselves to blame for having the posters put up in the first place."

i give them 10 out 10 for style, 10 out of 10 for creativity, and maybe 3 out of 9 zillion for enforcement priorities. but dang that's clever.

paris hilton sent home early

as i'm sure you've heard, paris has left the building.

ms. paris hilton was reassigned to home confinement, 3 days into a 23-day jail sentence. a few observations from a sociological criminologist:

1. yes, in my experience, this sort of thing is pretty unusual.

2. indeed, people are going to be very pissed about the whole equal-justice-is-a-sham aspects of this case.

3. i believe that the los angeles county sheriff's office must have anticipated the outrage that this move would spark. based on the remarks by sheriff baca's spokesperson steve whitmore, the office appears to be medicalizing and, hence, normalizing ms. hilton's treatment. they seem to be suggesting that sending inmates home for medical reasons is standard operating procedure in the l.a. county jail.

4. i'm not so cynical that i dismiss the possibility that ms. hilton was reassigned based on legitimate medical or humanitarian grounds, rather than (or in addition to) naked discrimination based on her race, gender, celebrity, or wealth. trust me, any young inmate's first couple days behind bars are rough. about half of all jail suicides occur during the inmate's first week in custody, with the highest suicide rate among inmates under the age of 18.

5. of course, thousands of poor and anonymous inmates, many with debilitating mental health problems, will also be struggling to survive this night in jail. and few of them will be sent home or reassigned to house arrest.

quiet riots

the seattle times reports that barack obama is warning of "quiet riots" among blacks after the disaster of hurricane katrina and the current administration's poor treatment of new orleans' residents in its afttermath.

"This administration was colorblind in its incompetence," Obama said at a conference of black clergy, "but the poverty and the hopelessness was there long before the hurricane...All the hurricane did was to pull the curtain back for all the world to see," he said.

"Those 'quiet riots' that take place every day are born from the same place as the fires and the destruction and the police decked out in riot gear and the deaths," Obama said. "They happen when a sense of disconnect settles in and hope dissipates. Despair takes hold and young people all across this country look at the way the world is and believe that things are never going to get any better."

chris and i (with co-authors kelly fawcett and kristin bates) have a chapter coming out about race and voter disenfranchisement in the south, with particular focus on new orleans after hurricane katrina. the problems are enormous. will we find the political will to address them before the potential "quiet riots" erupt into further devastation?

ceo compensation and the sting of public disdain

we've all read how the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay has risen in recent years. in minnesota, compensation for executives from northwest airlines and united healthcare spark frequent editorials of the "oh, come on! you cannot be serious" variety.

big-time CEOs such as warren buffet have also decried such compensation packages, railing "that a mediocre-or-worse CEO – aided by his handpicked VP of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo – all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement."

but it really takes charles denny, the respected former chair and CEO of ADC telecommunications, to show us how bad things have gotten for former executives. this week, mr. denny slipped an astonishing parenthetical admisson into his fine strib piece on CEO compensation:

Public opinion is turning against business leaders. Poll after poll reflects growing public distrust in executives. The Harris Poll showed a drop in public confidence in major business leaders from 28 percent approval in 2000 to 13 percent today. Only organized labor, Congress and lawyers received lower rankings.

(As a former CEO, I feel the sting of public disdain. When my grandchildren ask me what I did at work, I tell them I was the company librarian.)

nice. what do you think they're paying the ADC librarians these days?

gallows humor...literally

an inmate on death row in texas is seeking jokes so that he can select the funniest one and offer it as his last statement before his execution on june 26. to read the full story from the AP, click here.

the short version is this: patrick knight is on death row for shooting his neighbors to death 16 years ago. he claims that his idea to offer humorous last words is not intended to disrespect his victims; instead, he says: "I'm not trying to say I don't care what's going on. I'm about to die. I'm not going to sit here and whine and cry and moan and everything like that when I'm facing the punishment I've been given."

knight got the idea for a joke as his last statement after a friend was executed earlier this year and laughed from the death chamber gurney: "Where's a stunt double when you need one?"

for many inmates, the use of humor is an important survival strategy in prison. is it taking it too far for a condemned inmate to tell a joke before being executed, or should the individual be allowed to express whatever last sentiment s/he chooses?

punishment, justice, and hope

the Salem Statesman Journal reports:

Oregon has begun a new effort to increase the odds of success for inmates when they leave prison -- and decrease the likelihood they will return for longer and more expensive stays. Gov. Ted Kulongoski has created a 19-member council to oversee the efforts of government and nonprofit agencies. He said it will be good not only for inmates -- 4,000 of whom are released annually from state prisons -- but for the public and the tax-supported general fund.

"Criminal justice has to be about more than punishment; it's also about hope," Kulongoski said Friday. "People who have served their time need an opportunity to turn their lives around -- a job, a place to live, a chance for a new start. "

Max Williams, the state corrections director, said the council's aim is to draw together all the government and nonprofit agencies working on employment, housing, medical and mental health services, alcohol and drug treatment, and personal skills to help those inmates succeed out of prison.

the council seems like a positive step, but perhaps even more important is the need to educate the public about the realities of reentry. the article offers useful information and statistics, including the facts that oregon's prison system now holds a record 13,500 inmates, and the proposed budget of the department of corrections for the next two years is $1.35 billion, triple its level of more than a decade ago. currently there are about 34,000 inmates under post-prison supervision.

unfortunately, the editor who wrote the title of the article misunderstood the concept of reentry, apparently confusing reentry with recidivism. the title: "New panel aims to make inmate re-entry less likely" is definitely contrary to the goal of the council...

not just the premise for a television show

from today's seattle times:

For four months, Federal Way police sent two undercover detectives — a 29-year-old woman and a 33-year-old man — to infiltrate an area of increasing drug use:

High schools.

Officials provided few details Thursday on how the detectives, well out of their teens, were able to pass themselves off as students, but their undercover operation succeeded to an alarming extent.

With little difficulty, they purchased a cornucopia of illicit drugs — including marijuana, Ecstasy, cocaine and the prescription drug oxycodone — as well as rifles and semiautomatic handguns.

The investigation culminated Thursday with criminal charges filed against 12 students, ranging in age from 13 to 18, and against two adults not associated with Federal Way schools.

sort of a big deal for $6.49

well, it's been a quiet week in lakeland, florida. the weekly crime map shows only a handful of robberies, some residential burglaries, a couple of stolen cars, and a graffiti report. even so, i was surpised to learn that shoplifting a $6.49 box of prophylactics from the lakeland sears could still land one's picture on the local crime stoppers leaflet shown above. a few hypotheses:

1. awesome technology. the picture quality was just too good to ignore. check it out: the poor lad is caught red-handed.

2. moral revulsion. some folks are still sickened by the idea of condoms being sold right out there in the open like that. perhaps if the young fellow had grabbed, say, a $6.49 bottle of brut the lakeland police might not have made this case such a priority.*

3. cold cash. maybe somebody is after the reward money: according to the crime stoppers f.a.q., "Tipsters remain anonymous and become eligible for rewards of up to $1,000."

4. crim theory. perhaps lakeland is big on broken-windows law enforcement or shaming sanctions.

5. wistful nostalgia. the mayberry-gone-wild aspects of this story would seem to evoke durkheim's society of saints. wouldn't it be nice if this was the picture of serious crime in america? the young rascal would naturally fess up in such a world, where he'd be given a good talking to by a kindly officer.

*oops, scratch that. only four days later, a crime stoppers alert detailed the theft of "a pack of socks and three bottles of cologne." i bet it wasn't brut, though.