From the Pew Research Center: 5 facts about crime in the U.S.

File this under fact checking.

Number 3 might be the most important fact listed.

- Click here for the article.

Donald Trump made crime-fighting an important focus of his campaign for president, and he cited it again during his inaugural address in January. With the White House and Justice Department announcing steps to address violence in American communities, here are five facts about crime in the United States.

1- Violent crime in the U.S. has fallen sharply over the past quarter century.
2 - Property crime has declined significantly over the long term
3 - Public perceptions about crime in the U.S. often don’t align with the data.
4 - There are large geographic variations in crime rates.
5 - Many crimes are not reported to police.

From Radiolab: Eye in the Sky

For our look at the 4th amendment, and privacy - among other things.

You are never not monitored, but neither are criminals.

- Click here for the article.

In 2004, when casualties in Iraq were rising due to roadside bombs, Ross McNutt and his team came up with an idea. With a small plane and a 44 mega-pixel camera, they figured out how to watch an entire city all at once, all day long. Whenever a bomb detonated, they could zoom onto that spot and then, because this eye in the sky had been there all along, they could scroll back in time and see - literally see - who planted it. After the war, Ross McNutt retired from the airforce, and brought this technology back home with him. Manoush Zomorodi and Alex Goldmark from the podcast “Note to Self” give us the low-down on Ross’s unique brand of persistent surveillance, from Juarez, Mexico to Dayton, Ohio. Then, once we realize what we can do, we wonder whether we should.

Not so tough on crime

One way to reduce crime is to not define every problem as a criminal act subject to law enforcement. Two Texas Tribune stories touch on this idea.

- Most embrace some reforms in Court of Criminal Appeals races.

Regardless of party, most of the candidates for the state's highest criminal court say they want to see more cases involving drug addiction and mental illness moved out of the criminal justice system.

. . . Keasler and Meyers – a conservative and progressive, respectively, and two of the longest-serving judges on the court – said people dealing with drug addiction and mental illness don't belong in the criminal justice system. Walker said he's faced the issue with his clients.

"I see people all the time – I've had several cases recently where my clients are competent to stand trial, but they're not really capable of keeping up with probation. They honestly can't," Walker said. "And they need a very intensive type of probation with a whole lot of help. The system can't just put those kind of people out on the street and expect them to show up when they're supposed to show up and do all the programs they're supposed to do without some very intensive help."

Burns, who has presided over a diversion program for more than four years, said helping these offenders instead of punishing them works out in the long run.

"When it comes to drug offenses, I'm a big believer in diversionary programs," Burns said. "I really think that treatment works much better than incarceration because if you don't treat people who have drug problems, they're going to fail on probation and then they're going to end up in prison. It really starts a cycle of failure and criminality."

- Two school districts accused of violating new truancy law.

Two Texas school districts are not following a new law designed to reduce the number of students who end up in truancy courts, an alliance of advocacy groups claimed on Monday.

In complaints filed with the Texas Education Agency, Disability Rights Texas, Texas Appleseed and the National Center for Youth Law accused the El Paso and Mesquite independent school districts of violating provisions of House Bill 2398, a measure designed to decriminalize multiple absences and encourage schools to intervene before court action is taken.

Under the new law, school districts are no longer able to send students with three unexcused absences within a four-week period to truancy courts. School officials must instead notify parents of the absences and warn them of the penalties, which include a fine or loss of driving privileges if the student acquires more absences. A criminal complaint against the parents may eventually be filed as well.

The bill also requires public schools to implement truancy prevention programs and develop new methods of punishing students are punished after multiple absences. It also mandates that parents and educators have face-to-face meetings, and that students be enrolled in a truancy prevention program.

From Virtual Tourist: WARNINGS AND DANGERS IN HOUSTON Areas to Avoid / Crime

Looks a lot like the redlining map discussed in a previous post.

- Click here for the article.

- Click here for the post on redlining.

From the Atlantic: What Caused the Great Crime Decline in the U.S.?

For out look at the public policy process - in this case policy evaluation. Did the "tough on crime" approach have anything to do with it?

- Click here for the article.

In the early 1990s, U.S. crime rates had been on a steep upward climb since the Lyndon B. Johnson presidency. The crack-cocaine epidemic in the mid-1980s added fuel to the fire, and handgun-related homicides more than doubled between 1985 and 1990. That year, murders peaked in New York City with 2,245 killings. Politicians embraced tough-on-crime platforms and enacted harshly punitive policies. Experts warned the worst could be yet to come.

Then crime rates went down. And then they kept going down.

By decade’s end, the homicide rate plunged 42 percent nationwide. Violent crime decreased by one-third. What turned into a precipitous decline started later in some areas and took longer in others. But it happened everywhere: in each region of the country, in cities large and small, in rural and urban areas alike. In the Northeast, which reaped the largest benefits, the homicide rate was halved. Murders plummeted by 75 percent in New York City alone as the city entered the new millennium.

The trend kept ticking downward from there, more slowly and with some fluctuations, to the present day. By virtually any metric, Americans now live in one of the least violent times in the nation’s history.

But the forces that drove the Great American Crime Decline remain a mystery. Theories abound among sociologists, economists, and political scientists about the causes, with some hypotheses stronger than others. But there’s no real consensus among scholars about what caused one of the largest social shifts in modern American history.
So, what happened?

A variety of possibilities are explored - none explains everything.

From Al Jazeera: Panama Papers: Why some of this is perfectly legal What is the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion?

We've been discussing crime policy in some 2306 sections. Here's a bit along those lines. The tax avoidance schemes reveled in the Panama Papers case are not necessarily illegal. To some degree that is because the people benefiting from the scheme are the same ones - or affiliated with - the ones making the laws.

- Click here for the article.

It is estimated that corporations are saving themselves as much as $260bn a year by setting up businesses in lower tax regimes. A favourite method to avoid paying tax is to ask companies in high tax regimes to pay royalties for the use of a brand name - or simply to make a loan and ask for repayment. In other words, one part of a company makes a loan or pays for services to another. Again, this is legal.

But to deliberately seek to evade tax is considered illegal. This is when corporations and individuals underreport how much they earn or make bigger deductions than they are entitled to.

There is no suggestion in the stash of files leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that anything illegal has taken place. The so-called Panama Papers highlight how easy it is for the wealthy, political elite and their families to set up shell companies in tax havens to conceal their wealth.

According to financial transparency campaign group Tax Justice Network, as much as $32 trillion was hidden in offshore accounts by rich individuals. It can cost as little as $1,500 to set up an offshore structure to hide your wealth.

It has been known for some individuals to avoid tax by setting up offshore shell companies, in which they deposit their earnings before making loans to themselves. That way they avoid future tax liabilities.

Mossack Fonseca, the Panama-based law firm from which the documents have been leaked, has said it "does not foster or promote illegal acts". And that's the key: wealthy clients who may wish to hide money from their spouses, children and public scrutiny employ law firms to make sure they don't fall foul of the law.
While such offshore structures are legal they are increasingly seen as odious in the realm of public opinion.

More on the Panama Papers.

- Panama Papers: a massive document leak reveals a global web of corruption and tax avoidance.

More gun owners claim self-protection as the reaosn why they own guns despite the fact that violent crime is decreasing. Why?

This graph in the Pew Center site popped out at me while I was putting together the previous post. Here's the related study:





But this graph points out that violent crime is decreasing the in the US over roughly the same period of time described above:




This suggests that there is less reason for people to justify using protection as a reason to own a gun since there is less likelyhood that one will be affected by violent crime. Of course this doesn't mean that violent crime doesn't happen and one might reasonably choose therefore to own a gun for protection, but the trend lines do not jive. Fewer violent crimes suggest that protection should be less a factor used to justify gun ownership.

But this assumes that people are basing their decisions about why to own a gun based on unvarnished facts. Something is likely convincing people that violent crime is a bigger problem than it really is. There may be certain groups that are advantaged by convincing people that crime is more prevalent than it actuall is. It is also commonly pointed out that local news tends to hype local crime since it tends to attract viewers. I'll surf around and look for attitudes about the prevalence of crime and see if it conflicts with actual crime rates, but this might lend support to the argument below that the information we receive about factual matters is distorted.

In fact it might be worth investigating who or what best determines attitudes about crime.

Why is jaywalking a crime?

Cars didn't always rule the roads. pedestrians did. Cars were always at fault when there was an accident. Pedestrians could use streets as they chose.

The auto lobby made sure that changed. They invented the concept of jaywalking.

A highlighted 1913 film: The Costs of Carelessness.

Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill

While putting material together for the last lecture on the executive branch I came across Warren Harding's support for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill (1922) which passed the House but was filibustered succcessfully in the Senate. It would have made lynching a federal crime, but there were questions about its constitutionality. States were uninterested in prosecuting those accused of lynching, the federal government was then expected to step in to ensure that all citizens would be guaranteed the protection of their civil rights.

Federalism and the Loughner Indictments

Today's NYT has information about additional federal charges against Tucson shooter Jared Loughner. The story touches on controversies regarding which level of government has jurisdiction over which offenses he violated. As we know from 2301s discussion of federalism, nothing he did violates a law that the federal government has a delegated power over. The Constitution does state that the federal government can pass any law within federal lands, but Tucson is not in federal land. What's novel about these indictments is that prosecutors are claiming that Loughner can be prosecuted for killing constituents waiting to see their member of Congress.

Laws have been passed federalizing the murder of federal officials (see here for example) many driven after Kennedy's assassination when it turned out the federal government had no jurisdiction over the crime (murder - falls under the reserved powers).

From the Story:

Prosecutors filed 49 federal charges Friday against Jared L. Loughner, the suspect in the Tucson shooting rampage, accusing him of murdering and attempting to murder five federal officials; killing four constituents of Representative Gabrielle Giffords who were attending a public event she sponsored; and injuring 10 others waiting in line to talk to her.

“You have a right to meet with your member of Congress openly and freely and peacefully,” said Dennis K. Burke, the United States attorney for Arizona, indicating he was confident that the novel legal theory the prosecutors were using — including charges involving victims who were not federal officials but merely attending a “federally provided activity” — would be upheld in court.

Outside legal experts, however, said the charges would give an opening for Mr. Loughner’s defense team, led by Judy Clarke, to challenge their validity.

The raft of new charges, some of which could carry the death penalty, go far beyond the previous indictment against Mr. Loughner, a troubled 22-year-old who is accused of opening fire outside a Tucson-area supermarket on Jan. 8 with a Glock semiautomatic pistol in an effort to kill Ms. Giffords.  
Background
- Why is there a separate federal statute for attempted murder of a member of Congress?

- Wikipedia: Federal Crime in the United States.
- Wikipedia: Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

Stupid News Story

Slate points out how the AP has recycled the same alarmist story for thirty years as if it was news.