Posted on 01 December 2008. Tags: Broken Windows Theory, Rudy Giuliani, Vandalism, Volunteerism
From the Economist, it seems that the “broken windows” theory of crime, proposed in theearly 1980s and used as the intellectual backing for Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s zero tolerance crime policy, has been vindicated by Dutch
sociologists:
A PLACE that is covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy. And with good reason, according to a group of researchers in the Netherlands. Kees Keizer and his colleagues at the University of Groningen deliberately created such settings as a part of a series of experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave. They found that they could, by a lot: doubling the number who are prepared to litter and steal.
Reason Magazine has more here. This “broken windows” theory is, of course, controversial, and with good reason. Cracking down on Bansky acolytes with the same fervor as car thieves and burglars doesn’t make sense. I suspect that there’s a reverse, citizen alienating effect here. By heavily punishing a teenage
kid, messing around in a bad neighborhood, the police risk making that kid, rather than earning his or her trust; he or she will see the officer as an enemy, rather than an ally. This isn’t just an inner-city issue either; it’s no accident that innumerable white, suburban kids have NWA’s “Fuck Tha Police” on their iPods.
Dealing with “broken windows” seems like a perfect opportunity for the Obamanaughts. In fact, rather than a national service program, it’d be preferable to see a multitude of programs sprout up in municipalities, counties, and other local communities. President Obama could start things off by delivering a national address exhorting communities to start their own
programs yada yada, leaving each community to determine how much they
valued the liberty of their individual citizens. Different communities
would establish different forms of the volunteer service, allowing for
experimentation.
These programs could focus on helping with the clean up of downtrodden areas, leaving police to focus on issues where a police officer really is needed — murder investigations, domestic violence disputes, and so on. This isn’t to say that officers shouldn’t prosecute vandals in the act. But I worry that studies like these will put an undue focus on minor crimes, while serious crime is given no more attention than it usually receives, if not less.
Also, speaking of Rudy “Zero Tolerance Drag” Giuliani, it seems like a good time to bring out this SNL skit:
Posted in Current Affairs, To the Right
Posted on 01 December 2008. Tags: Bangkok, International News, Mumbai, Terrorism
Friday, I was sitting around stewing about how self-centered people can be. Saturday, the “Black Cats” finally killed the last terrorists in Mumbai, India. Today, the people’s protest against the Thai government continues in Bangkok.
The connection here is that I have friends over in those two countries, and I had never thought of them or their safety. It is very lucky that the Kalamazoo College programs are located away from the action, but these events still affect them. I wonder what Kalamazoo would do if they chose to pull the students out of Thailand only to find that every airport in the country is being suffocated by peaceful protestors. Personally, I wish I had taken my blinders off and thought about my friends sooner.
Collectively, we’ve all watch the world fall into a “Crisis” with a capital “C” because the Stars And Stripes screwed up on sup-prime mortgages, so it’s becoming increasingly obvious that all these countries are linked together. My example is a specific one, but one could argue that the disruption of the Mumbai trading center and the possible overthrow of the Thai government have numerous consequences for us all. In addition, Nigeria is hosting riots that show a microcosm of the “War On Terror,” and your neighborhood church might be sending youth groups to build houses for the survivors of the floods in the Santa Catarina region of Brazil.
Whether it’s a common courtesy for a friend or a world event, it’s clear that we should stop stop thinking about ourselves so much and pay attention to what’s going on around us. Every headline in the ”International News” section affects us, even if it’s not obvious. So whether or not we care, it’s time to read.
Posted in Asia, Current Affairs, Study Ablog, To the Right
Posted on 30 November 2008. Tags: Congress, Democratic Party, House of Representatives, Jane's Law, Matt Yglesias
Matt Yglesias, on the new dynamics in the House of Representatives:
The thing of it is that it doesn’t really matter what Eric Cantor thinks. The House Republicans are, in effect, irrelevant. The House GOP mattered in the 110th Congress because President Bush used his agenda-setting powers to frame a certain number of issues such that Blue Dogs agreed with the Republicans. In the 111th Congress, you’ll have more liberals (making Blue Dog votes less necessary) plus more Blue Dogs (reducing the proportion of the Blue Dog faction you need to get all the Blue Dog votes you need) and a Democratic president who presumably won’t deliberately shift the agenda to terrain that lets the Republicans get the upper hand.
Instead, Yglesias says, the Senate is far more important. But if he thinks that the House debate won’t play a role, he’s sorely mistaken. The Democratic Party can try to force an un-compromised agenda through the House, and succeed, but it’s not as though the GOP Senators have their coverage of those debates blacked out. Once the battle lines are drawn in the House, and Cantor can afford to focus solely on principles without having to worry about maneuvering, the compromising work in the Senate will be much harder for the Democrats. In fact, what Cantor thinks matters more now, when 2010 is the main issue for the House GOP, than it did when he was helping to twist arms for votes.
On a broader scale, it’s incredible how little time it took for the arrogance of the new power to establish itself. Much of the failure of the Bush administration can be pinpointed at the callous, uncompromising manner in with the GOP dealt with the out-of-power Democrats during it’s two-branch dominance. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and greater power corrupts greatly. Now, one might say that Obama has a better “temperament” for dealing with the opposition, an unquantified stance that I’ll accept for the sake of argument. This will ultimately mean that the measures forced through will be far more moderate in their scale than Bush’s — making the perceived “Blue Dog” advantage Yglesias cites irrelevant. The progressive gains will occur over a greater period of time, perhaps, but will also be less sweeping in scope.
Incidentally, what are the numbers of new Democrats v. numbers of new “Blue Dogs” in the House?
Posted in Current Affairs, To the Right
