Posted by Scott on June 19th, 2008 — Posted in Recidivism
In my previous post entitled, Recidivism and the Prison Industry (Part 1), I explained that the prison industry does not effectively rehabilitate offenders because doing so is not in their financial interests. The prison industry profits from the expensive wastefulness and ineffectiveness of the prison system. As I said about rehabilitating offenders in the last post, the problem is not that the prison industry does not know how to do it; the problem is that they do not want to do it. In today’s post, I will explain how we can get the prison industry and the politicians to actually rehabilitate offenders.
It all comes down to money. We have to make it profitable for them to actually rehabilitate offenders and lower violent crime rates. And we have to make it unprofitable for them to keep wasting our resources.
To that end, we need to create a system of strict financial accountability.
When a prison releases someone who goes on to commit a new crime, I suggest we hold the prison financially responsible by making them pay for the damages caused by the crime or by making the prison pay a penalty fine of some sort.
I suggest prisons do not receive funding based on how many inmates they have each year because that can leave it profitable for the prison to keep inmates too long. Instead, I suggest prisons receive a certain amount of total funding for each inmate no matter how long they keep the inmate so that it is in the prison’s interest to rehabilitate and release that inmate as quickly and efficiently as possible.
To help ensure that inmates are not released until they have been rehabilitated and are safe to be released, I suggest that professionals must be put in charge of reviewing inmates and approving or rejecting each inmate for release. Then if a released convict commits another crime, a single person can be held accountable. The especially helpful advantage is that we can fire reviewers who have approved the release of a relatively high percentage of inmates who re-offend. So we can find reviewers who are able to predict more accurately whether someone will re-offend and thus drastically lower the recidivism rate.
Finally, we need to ensure that effective incarceration and rehabilitation systems receive a lot of funding if they work correctly. The funding provides the financial incentive for the industry to actually rehabilitate offenders. And the funding also provides the ability to afford to rehabilitate offenders. For more about providing the funds, check out my post entitled Funding Security.
What do you think? How do you suggest we make it in the financial interests of the prison industry to actually do their job, rehabilitate offenders and lower recidivism rates?
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Posted by Scott on April 28th, 2008 — Posted in Recidivism
In regards to criminal behavior, recidivism refers to criminals re-offending after release from prison. In the United States, the recidivism rate is approximately 60%, which means that more than half of people released from prison commit another known crime.
An incarceration system could find many effective ways to significantly reduce the recidivism rate. And I assume doing it would save a lot of money because it would reduce so much crime, much of which is committed by previously convicted offenders.
Unfortunately, I do not think it is in the interests of the prison industry to reduce recidivism and prevent crime. The prison-industrial complex makes money by building prisons and stuffing them full of people. They make money with high crime rates. For example, you may wonder why the prison system wastes so much of taxpayers’ money barbarically throwing non-violent drug offenders in overcrowded prisons while releasing non-rehabilitated violent offenders who then commit more violent crime such as rape, murder and battery. The prison industry does that because they make more money that way. The prison industry makes money by getting people put in prison who do not belong there. They make money by not lowering violent crime rates such as when they fail to rehabilitate violent offenders before release.
Industrial-complexes cause the government to spend taxpayers’ money in ways that are wasteful, inefficient and ineffective for the taxpayers but profitable for the industries, politicians and bureaucrats that receive the money.
We can talk all day about how the politicians and the prison industry could reduce recidivism and violent crime. But the problem is not that they do not know how to do it. The problem is that they do not want to do it.
In the interest of keeping this blog post from getting too long, I will make my next post about how I think we can solve the problem and get the prison industry to actually rehabilitate offenders and reduce recidivism and violent crime.
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Posted by Scott on April 27th, 2008 — Posted in Crime Prevention
I made a blog post back in March about the fact that education prevents violent crime and victimization. Today, I read a research brief about education as crime prevention from the OSI. Here are some excerpts:
“[R]esearch shows that quality education is one of the most effective forms of crime prevention. Educational skills can help deter young people from committing criminal acts and can greatly decrease the likelihood that people will return to crime after release from prison.”
“There is a strong link between low levels of education and high rates of criminal activity…”
“According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, there is an inverse relationship between recidivism rates and education. The more education received, the less likely an individual is to be re-arrested or re-imprisoned.”
“The RAND Corporation, a public policy think tank based in California, recently released a study showing that crime prevention is more costeffective than building prisons. Of all crime prevention methods, education is the most costeffective.”
The fact that providing education to people causes them to commit less violent crime and victimization seems both obvious and common-sense to me. But I still like to consult the research.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on April 25th, 2008 — Posted in Violence Prevention
I think a lot of violent conflicts happen as a result of pseudo-toughness. That is especially the case in regards to fights between young people and poor or blue-collar people. People trying to be tough will start and get into fights and violent conflicts. For example, I assume most bar brawls and schoolyard fights happen because the people involved want to be or seem tough. In their desperate attempt at toughness, they attack others when they would be better off minding their own business, and they fight when it would be wiser to walk away. To explore the issue more fully, I have written and posted an article about destructive pseudo-toughness at my philosophy forums. Check it out: Causes of Self-Destructive Attempts at Toughness
Of course, not all violence and victimization is caused by people try to be tough. I think the other main cause is the desire for financial profit. For example, I assume the desire for profit is the foremost motivation of robbery and corporate crime.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on April 24th, 2008 — Posted in Bullies
I just read some interesting but unfortunate news. A recent study of 210 college students found that bullying in grade school appears to increase the chances that the victim will suffer from depression or social anxiety later in life. That includes the often overlooked social bullying, which refers to non-physical forms of bullying, such as gossiping, spreading rumors and verbal attacks.
School administrators have a lot of trouble trying to stop social bullying because it happens more secretly and does not leave as blatant of evidence as physical bullying.
Perhaps parents and schools could provide prevention programs such as having sensitivity programs and teaching students about the damage that bullying causes.
Also, I bet providing high-quality psychological care to all students could help. It would help victims deal with bullying and avoid depression and anxiety. It would help bullies overcome their psychological problems that cause them to bully.
Although it’s mostly a light-hearted teen comedy, I think the movie Mean Girls
does a good job exploring the social bullying so common among schoolgirls.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on April 22nd, 2008 — Posted in Violence Prevention
Today, I want to mention what I see as the most important elements of violent crime reduction.
Education - I have said before that I believe that most of the young, violent gangbangers on the streets would choose to give that life up to become an educated professional, such as a medical doctor, if they saw it as viable. I believe lack of education leads to habitual antisocial behavior including violent crime. In contrast, education gives people self-esteem and hopefulness. Education gives people skills, credentials, and good jobs, which means they have something to lose by engaging in violent crime.
Poverty Alleviation - Children raised in poverty have a notoriously higher tendency to engage in violent crime and other antisocial behavior. Poor people tend to commit violent crime more than more affluent people, and poorer neighborhoods tend to have higher crime rates. Reducing poverty will reduce violent crime. Additionally, to be non-poor, I believe a person needs complete healthcare coverage, which means that the person has access to any needed psychological or psychiatric care. By eliminating poverty and ensuring people have access to healthcare, people would get help for psychological problems when those problems may otherwise cause the person to commit violent crime.
Legalizing Victimless Crimes - Society wastes a lot of resources on non-violent, victimless crimes. Those resources could otherwise go towards preventing and stopping violent crime and victimization. For example, all the massive amounts of money and prison space put towards enforcing the prohibition on marijuana could instead be put towards preventing and stopping violent crimes such as murder, rape, robbery and battery.
What do you think? What else do you see as essential to violent crime reduction?
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Posted by Scott on April 21st, 2008 — Posted in Politics & Commentary
In 2006, I made a blog post about The Danger of False Accusations. In it, I explained that I believe that sometimes false accusations of sexual victimization can be more damaging than sexual victimization itself. More importantly, I explained why I believe activists must work together to simultaneously reduce both the prevalence of false accusations and sexual victimization. Division will leave us unable to effectively stop either.
I still like that blog post and still agree with what I said then. I think it represents an important aspect of the problem of sexual violence that I often do not mention.
Anyway, I am posting about that old blog post today because it still gets some comments posted to it. I think the comments are interesting, so even if you have already read the post, you may want to read the comments and join the discussion. They contain some enlightening stories. If you have not read that old post yet, I recommend you check it out.
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Posted by Scott on April 18th, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I have been thinking lately that high ages of consent hinder efforts to stop sexual victimization, such as rape and sexual assault.
If one person has sex with someone else who’s age is under the age of consent determined by the statutes in that jurisdiction, then the sex is considered statutorily unconsensual and is thus considered rape. For example, in some jurisdictions, if a 15-year-old boy willingly has sex with a 16-year-old girl, the 16-year-old girl could be charged with rape.
I think we trivialize rape when we treat consensual sex as rape because of the age of one person–at least when we are talking about teenagers. More importantly, I think we risk taking the focus away from forcible rape.
I realize that an older person can manipulate a young person by taking advantage of the young person’s lack of mental development and respect for the authority of older people. However, at least when talking about people over 12 years old, the line between persuasion and coercion is blurry and depends much more on the specific circumstances and specific mind-states of the participants in any given instance.
When talking about two or more people who are each either teenagers or older, I do not think we can tell whether or not the sex was truly consensual or not just by the ages of the two people.
When we assume sex between two people, who are both over 12 years old, is not consensual because of the age of one of the participants, I think we risk wasting resources fighting consensual sex in the name of stopping rape at the expense of actually stopping rape.
If it is alleged that one person actually raped another person who is over 12, then let’s investigate it, and put the accused person on trial if there is probable cause that the accused person actually coerced the victim to have sex. Let’s not just assume the sex was coercive because of the alleged victim’s age.
As for people 12 and under, I am not concerned much about them not having the legal ability to consent. So I would recommend at least lowering the age of consent to 13 years old.
If one person uses the appearance of authority, manipulation or overwhelming persuasion to trick or coerce another person into having sex, then I say charge that first person with rape regardless of the ages of the people involved. I simply do not think that sex between a teenager and an older person is always unconsensual. And I worry that we may waste our resources fighting consensual sex that we falsely assumed is unconsensual when we could put those resources to fighting sex that really is unconsensual.
What do you think?
For similar reasons, I would also propose lowering the age of consent for other actions as well, such as smoking and drinking. But I suppose I’ll wait to talk about until another day.
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Posted by Scott on April 16th, 2008 — Posted in Child Protection
I am currently reading Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex
by Dr. Joycelyn M. Elders. I like it so far.
Anyway, while reading a chapter about censorship today, I was interested by some information. Elders points out that research has found that viewing erotica or pornography does not correlate with antisocial behavior. She goes on to say that researchers have found more evidence of the opposite. She points out studies that have shown that sex criminals tend to have been exposed to pornography less than other kids, and not an earlier age. According to John Money, one of the world’s foremost authorities on sexual abnormalities, the majority of patients with deviant sexual fantasies and behaviors had a strict anti-sexual upbringing in which sex was either never mentioned or was actively repressed and defiled.
Though the facts go against the common perception, they do not surprise me. My intuition tells me that, when a person is made from childhood to repress or feel disgusted by his or her own natural sexuality, it will lead to perversions. Generally, I assume that self-contempt leads to psychological instability. Also, generally, I assume that over-repressing natural and healthy sexuality will often make the interests and desires ooze out in perverted, overwhelming and dangerous ways.
In a silly analogy, imagine if we convinced people from childhood that drinking water is immoral and disgusting and that they are immoral and disgusting for wanting to drink water. That would probably increase violence and social deviance related to drinking water. At the very least, it would drive kids crazy and create crazy adults.
When the goal is protecting children and preventing sexual violence, I think adults need to give uncensored, accurate, factual information to curious children so the children can make healthy decisions then and later in life. The kids need facts not puritanical opinions. I believe censorship and pushing sexual repression on children leaves them ignorant and leads to unhealthy decisions.
What do you think?
1 Comment »
Posted by Scott on April 14th, 2008 — Posted in Politics & Commentary
I just finished reading the descriptions of about 20 or so books about violent crime and criminology. Two of the books seemed especially interesting to me. I hope to read them both soon. (Of course, I have a long list of books that I want to read, so it takes me a while to get to any single book.) Anyway, here are the two books:
Savage Pastimes: A Cultural History of Violent Entertainment by Harold Schechter - Overview: “Does violence in movies, on television and in comic strips and cartoons rot our children’s brains and make zombies-or worse, criminals-of adults at the fringes? In this cogent, well-researched book, American pop-culture expert Harold Schechter argues that exactly the opposite is true: a basic human need is given an outlet through violent images in popular media. Moving from an exploration of early broadsheet engravings showing torture and the atrocities of war, to the depictions of crime in “penny dreadfuls,” to scenes of violence in today’s movies and video games, Schechter not only traces the history of disturbing images but details the outrage that has inevitably accompanied them. By the twentieth century, the culture vultures were out in full force, demonizing comic books and setting up a pattern of equating testosterone-fueled entertainment with aggression. According to Schechter, nothing could be further from the truth. He also blasts those who bemoan the alleged increased violence in media today, and who conveniently scapegoat popular entertainment for a variety of cultural ills, including increased crime and real-life violence. Though American pop culture is far more technologically sophisticated today, Schechter shows that it is far less brutal than the entertainments of previous generations. Savage Pastimes is a rich, eye-opening brief history that will make you rethink your assumptions about what we watch and how it affects us all.”
The Next Attack by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon - Overview: “In this provocative new book, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon show how the terrorist threat is evolving with a broadening array of tactics, an army of new fighters, and, most ominously, a widening base of support in the global Muslim community. The jihadist movement has been galvanized by the example of 9/11 and the missteps of the U.S. government, which has consistently failed to understand the nature of the new terror. Left on this trajectory, much worse faces us in the near future. It doesn’t have to be this way. The Next Attack makes the case that America has the capacity to stem the tide of Islamic terrorism, but Benjamin and Simon caution that this will require a far-reaching and creative new strategy, one that recognizes that the struggle has been over-militarized and that a campaign for reform must be more than rhetoric and less than bayonets. And they point out how America’s increasing tendency to frame the conflict in religious terms has undermined our ability to advance our interests. Is America truly equipped to do what is necessary to combat Islamist terrorism, or are we too blinded by our own ideology? The answer to that question will determine how secure we will truly be in the years and decades to come.”
What do you think? Have you read either of those books? If you read either of them before I do, tell me what you think of it.
The first one, Savage Pastimes, reminds me of a post I made on this blog last March: Violent Video Games Do Not Cause Teen Violence
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Posted by Scott on April 9th, 2008 — Posted in Corporate Crime
I would not want to make debatable environmental issues too frequent of a topic on this blog. I would not want to take the focus away from preventing more direct violence and victimization, such as rape, murder, sexual assault and battery. We can all agree on the horribleness of those more blatant and direct acts, so I use this blog to regularly try to encourage us to finally work-together to actually do what it takes to end those direct acts of violence and victimization, such as rape, murder, sexual assault and battery. I would not want to take away from that by talking too much about controversial and disagreeable issues regarding the environment.
Nonetheless, today I want to point out that we do also need to work-together to defend ourselves from people who would hurt us by polluting and damaging our enviornment.
Throughout the process of industrialization, certain profit-seeking groups of people have claimed ownership of much of the world and its natural resources. They profit by overusing resources, polluting the enviornment, and making commodities out of various parts of our world. For example, some of these people have profited by claiming control of vast forests, cutting down the trees, and causing massive damage to the long-term health of our enviornment.
For the most part, the few people committing any given act of environmental destruction profit while all of us have to pay the consequences. So, while the cost to us all is not worth the benefit to us all, human-caused environmental destruction happens because the profit to the specific people who do it is worth the cost to those specific people who do it because they do not have to pay most of the costs; The rest of us have to pay the costs! And by pay the costs, I mean suffer the consequences of environmental destruction.
While human-caused global warming infamously causes many problems, pollution and environmental destruction also cause many other problems. For example, pollution to the air, water and land damages our health and contaminates our food supply. Overusing natural resources can reduce the supply of them, such as hunting an animal so much that it goes extinct or destroying trees and plant-growth more than they regrow thereby destroying our supply of breathable air. From increased cancer to asthma, we frequently see the harmful effects of environmental degradation.
Some people may suggest making laws and advocating governmental policy change to stop people from destroying the environment. For example, the government could make it illegal for any person or group to pollute more than a certain amount. The government could require people and corporations to offset their emissions–just as we would make a vandal pay to for the repairs for the window he broke. The government could create protected areas, such as saying certain forests cannot be cut down, saying certain animals cannot be hunted, and so forth.
Though I support making the government as small as possible, I might support some of those laws in the same way I support laws that outlaw murder or battery. I see those laws as mostly declarations of our intention to defend ourselves, and I support self-defense. I support defending ourselves from murder and violence, and I support defending ourselves from people who hurt us by polluting and destroying our enviornment.
However, I view the lack of environmental-protection laws as a scapegoat. I think we tend to blame the lack of environmental-protection laws as a means of trying to support environmental protection without acknowledging our own blameworthiness.
I believe that we do not need more laws to stop the destruction of our enviornment. I believe we can more effectively protect our enviornment using non-governmental methods. I believe we can do more by taking direct action rather than asking the government to change its laws. Let me give some examples: We can each conserve energy in our own personal lives. We can buy less commodities that require destruction of the enviornment to produce. We can recycle. We can boycott corporations that pollute or harm the enviornment. We can live in smaller houses with bigger yards that have trees and plants which we can preserve. We can spread awareness about the harmful effects of environmental degradation. We can spread awareness about what activities and which corporations cause the most harm to the environment. And we can stop doing those activities and stop doing business with those corporations.
If we want to protect ourselves by protecting our enviornment, I believe we can do it. And we can do it without changing the government’s laws but by changing our own personal actions.
If you have any more ideas on how to protect our enviornment, please post them here as comments. Also, help raise awareness about the environmental problem by telling people you know about this blog post. Send them the URL.
What do you think?
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Posted by Scott on April 8th, 2008 — Posted in Rape & Sexual Assault
I found a nice post on a blog from a University of Wisconsin student. In the blog post, Alex Wagner points out that everyone can help end sexual violence regardless of their race, gender, or religion.
I agree! We must refuse to remain complacent or just passively indignant about the prevalence of sexual assault and rape. We must get active. We must all organize and work together to prevent sexual violence and help victims. This can include all sorts of activism, such as donating time or money to victim’s services or prevention programs, raising awareness, or attending a local workshop or conference about sexual violence.
If you have any other suggestions of how people of all types can help end sexual violence, please post them here as a comment.
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