As the last in my series of guest-posts on crime and punishment, here’s a list of fairly specific recommendations. They are designed to simultaneously reduce crime and incarceration, by (1) using prison cells more efficiently; (2) using punishments other than incarceration; and (3) controlling crime by means other than punishment. The detailed justifications can be found in the book.
General and Budgetary
- Treat arrests and punishments as costs, not benefits.
- Emphasize swiftness and certainty of punishment rather than severity.
- Design punishments with the maximum ratio of deterrent efficacy to (1) the suffering inflicted and (2) the damage to the non-criminal opportunities of those punished.
- Concentrate enforcement rather than dispersing it.
- Directly communicate deterrent threats.
- Shift the burdens of crime and punishment away from otherwise disadvantaged groups, especially poor African-Americans who face much more of both.
- Increase the budgets of criminal justice agencies when doing so will reduce either crime or incarceration. Money is cheap compared to liberty.
- Shift the mix of correctional budgets away from institutions (prisons and jails) and toward community corrections (probation and parole). Spend more on controlling the behavior of those awaiting trial.
Policing
- Add police to areas with high ratios of crimes to officers.
- Focus on reducing crime and disorder, not on making arrests.
- Identify and target high-rate serious offenders, with the goal of incapacitating them by incarceration. Don’t neglect domestic violence in this analysis.
- Identify those who only barely miss being targeted as high-rate serious offenders – the junior varsity – and warn them that continued criminal activity will result in their being added to the varsity list. Select specific easy-to-observe crimes for “zero tolerance” treatment, either jurisdiction-wide or in specific areas. Publicize those choices, with “narrowcast” warnings aimed at identified offenders as well as “broadcast” announcements.
- Don’t try to destroy street gangs as social organizations, but warn them that gunfire by any member will bring the wrath of the law down on the entire group.
- Give the service of bench warrants connected with focused enforcement efforts or absconders from community supervision, the highest rather than the lowest priority.
Prosecution, Courts, and Sentencing Rules
- Economize on the use of scarce prison and jail cells. Focus on high-rate serious offenders and not on people whose crimes are mostly in the past.
- Allow sentencing judges access to juvenile criminal records.
- Substitute probation (and probation-enforced alternative sanctions such as “community service”) for prison.
- Provide some non-trivial punishment even for first-time misdemeanor offenders.
- Enforce bail conditions, including desistance from the use of expensive illicit drugs.
- Move high-rate offenders up the queue for trial dates.
- Consider both the offender’s broader criminal history and the broader driving history – especially a history of accidents with personal injury – in sentencing drunken or reckless drivers.
- Prosecute felonies committed by parolees as new crimes, rather than allowing them to be treated as mere parole violations.
- Coordinate with police to carry out specific deterrent threats aimed at individuals or at classes of behavior.
- Move toward “community prosecution” programs where policies are allowed to vary by neighborhood and are made after active consultation with both police and community leaders.
- Make some period of post-release supervision part of every prison sentence and most jail sentences.
Institutional corrections
- Re-examine the size of individual prisons. Smaller is probably better.
- Strive to reduce noise and other sources of stress. A prison should resemble the neighborhoods offenders come from as little as possible.
- Offer every prisoner a tightly-disciplined therapeutic community as an alternative to a conventional cellblock.
- Since skills such as literacy are portable across the boundary between prison and the community, stress skill acquisition rather than attempts at behavior change such as drug treatment. Put a computer in each cell.
- Stop tolerating inmate-on-inmate violence.
- Experiment with not-for-profit “charter prisons.”
- Make recidivism a key performance measure for prison managers.
- Mine recent releasees for detailed information on prison conditions, using interviewers who are not Corrections Department employees.
Community Corrections
- Impose few rules on probationers and parolees, and enforce every rule consistently and swiftly.
- Avoid revocations for technical violations, other than absconding from supervision. Treat rule violations, and short jail stays as sanctions for them, as routine incidents of community supervision, not as a reason to end it.
- Use GPS monitoring to prevent new crimes and to convert probation and parole into genuine alternatives to incarceration.
- Make more use of “community service” (i.e., unpaid punitive labor).
- Reward good behavior as well as punishing bad behavior.
- Focus on employment.
- Evaluate probation officers, supervisors, and offices based on recidivism.
Juvenile corrections
- Experiment with short periods of isolation (a weekend alone in a room without a television set) as a sanction for juvenile offending.
Drug policy
- Raise alcohol taxes.
- Forbid the use of alcohol, at least for some period, to those convicted of drunken assault, drunken driving, drunken vandalism, or repeated disorderly conduct under the influence. Enforce this at the seller level.
- Abolish the minimum drinking age.
- Cut back on routine drug law enforcement and associated sentencing. Halve the number of dealers in prison.
- Use low-arrest crackdowns to break up flagrant retail markets.
- Focus enforcement attention and sentencing on violence, disorder, and the use of juveniles, not on the mere volume of drugs sold.
- Expand the availability of drug treatment. End the prejudice against substitution therapies in diversion programs and drug courts.
- Permit the consumption of cannabis, and its individual or cooperative production for personal use or gratis distribution.
- Force probationers, parolees, and those on bail to desist from the use of expensive or criminogenic illicit drugs.
- In neighborhoods where drug dealing is prevalent, focus in-school and community-based prevention efforts on preventing dealing.
Guns
- Close the private-sale loophole. [Update: This does not mean banning private sales, but rather requiring private sellers to verify the purchaser’s eligibility to own a firearm, as FFLs must now do.]
- Aggressively trace crime guns back to their last lawful transfer.
- Increase the penalties for gun trafficking.
- Allow concealed carry by anyone who passes a gun-safety course, and require every state to recognize concealed-carry permits from other states.
Social services and other non-punitive anti-crime measures
- Provide a nurse as a “parenting coach” to every first-time mother.
- Replicate the “good behavior game” experiment and make it part of routine teacher training if it works.
- Make preventing vengeance by the victim and his friends a central part of shock-trauma care for gunshot and knife wounds.
- Start middle school and high school later in the day, and end them later.
- Focus TANF management on reducing crime among the children of beneficiaries.
- Minimize exposure to lead with tighter regulations on smelters and public subsidy for scraping the remaining lead paint from dwellings.
Once again, thanks to Eugene for the opportunity to offer my thoughts in this space.
ricky says:
A. Nothing about border control — FAIL.
B. Mostly based on magical thinking — DOUBLE FAIL.
There are a few good ideas here, but most of it is either impractical, infeasible, or would likely be completely ineffective.
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October 30, 2009, 1:48 amMCM says:
Since ricky gives no explanation for his conclusions, I will assume he draws on his vast experience in policing, social work, the judiciary, the legislature, and psychology.
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October 30, 2009, 2:02 amgeorge weiss says:
many good ideas but which of these is the most important? its good to have priorities when you have lots of ideas
don’t know how its possible to enforce a prohibition on alcohol to alcohol based offenders at the seller level without requiring everyone in the country to have a permit to buy alcohol that would be scanned through a national database..obviously cost prohibitive
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October 30, 2009, 2:08 amAnon21 says:
Ah, it appears Ricky subscribes to the Lou Dobbs, evidence-free article of faith that illegal immigrants contribute significantly to crime, rather than mostly refraining from violations of (non-immigration) laws for fear of deportation.
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October 30, 2009, 2:15 amSoronel Haetir says:
While I have issues with numerous points in this list I will start by addressing just three.
Swiftness of punishment, how do you envision doing away with the heaps of due process that has sprung up? Is there some form of punishment available that does not require a full criminal adjudication?
Enforcement of alcohol bans at the outlet level. I have experience here, as I own a liquor store. State law forbids me from using alcoholism as a reason for refusing sales. I have folks come in every month or so asking that I not sell to their relatives. After a careful explanation nearly all leave with a better understanding of the position I am in. Requiring each sale to go through some form of background check would be simple madness. If firearm sales were as frequent and low cost as alcohol sales I doubt it would be nearly as well tolerated.
Finally the so called gun show loophole, outlawing private sales honestly doesn’t seem like it would accomplish very much. All of the research I’ve seen indicates that criminals tend to obtain weapons through means that are already illegal, most often by theft or purchase of known or suspected stolen firearms.
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October 30, 2009, 2:17 amRicardo says:
And also nothing about cracking down on income tax evasion! It might have something to do with the fact that in the real world, immigrants (yes, including immigrants from Mexico and Latin America) are responsible for very little crime as reflected in their very low incarceration rates (see here and here).
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October 30, 2009, 2:35 amLarryA says:
Create another black market resulting in more crime and expanding the temptation to avoid the taxes to people who are not presently criminals. Are we learning nothing from the present high tobacco taxes?
How is a seller supposed to know of the prohibition? A “national instant check system” for every alcohol sale?
Gangs draw their power and funding from the drug black market. The only way to reduce their influence is to end prohibition. We should have learned that lesson with alcohol.
Why not for sale?
These drugs are expensive and “criminogenic” because they are illicit.
Criminals don’t buy guns legally. This hasn’t worked anywhere it’s been tried.
And do what?
Ten years federal time per offence isn’t enough?
The good ideas:
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October 30, 2009, 3:14 amShelby says:
Mark,
My wife works in animal welfare, so I’ve learned a fair amount about the intersections between that field and prisons/criminal rehab. Do you have substantial thoughts on the use of dog-training programs in prisons? How about training protocols adapted from animal training, such as positive reinforcement? Or the use of animals to reduce the stresses that lead to prison time, or that are present in the ex-con population?
You offer a lot of good ideas, and several I disagree with. Thanks for your efforts.
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October 30, 2009, 4:20 amFrater Plotter says:
One of the subtexts I’ve picked up on in the recent posts on this subject has been the notion that the poor and minorities should be helped rather than hurt by increased police presence in their neighborhoods — that increased police attention to such neighborhoods would represent better protection for those at risk, rather than unjust profiling.
This is true only insofar as the police actually represent law enforcement rather than becoming a source of lawlessness: whether by becoming a street gang of their own, as in the Rampart case in Los Angeles; or through general aggression and exercise of privilege towards the populace; or through selective enforcement or the targeting of victimless crimes.
In short, police enacting such a policy should focus specifically on crimes perpetrated within and against the people of the neighborhood, which would represent a radical change of enforcement priorities. We have way too many examples in this country of police behaving lawlessly.
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October 30, 2009, 4:23 amTruePath says:
Other commenters have remarked on the unintended consequences many of these programs are likely to have but I’d like to add one more points.
Swift and severe punishment of parole offenses, especially treating ALL new felony offenses by paroles as felonies and stringently enforcing drug prohibitions is almost guaranteed to backfire. If you look at the information on successful drug rehabilitation they often involve some amount of backsliding. This is why programs like NA and AA have all the resources set up to catch backsliding and urge people back on the right track. If you apply some kind of one strike and you’re out rule you are likely to impair rehabilitation since many criminals have drug/alcohol problems. In other words the notion of medical treatment for drug abuse is in conflict with the idea of severe punishment for first time drug violations on parole.
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October 30, 2009, 4:54 amArrowSmith says:
Income tax evasion doesn’t make me tremble at night in fear of a home invasion. Let’s worry about the real criminals, the thugs that would break into your home at night and rape your women and kill you when they’ve had their fun.
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October 30, 2009, 4:59 amJim W says:
This approach has been tried before and it failed horribly. In fact, this approach to crime fighting is such a well known failure that I’m inclined to think that the original poster (OP) is trolling. The whole post is so full of wishful thinking and obvious logical flaws that I can’t seriously entertain the possibility that it is serious.
Most obvious of the bad assumptions of the OP:
> violent criminals can be readily rehabilitated. The evidence suggests that incapacitation is the best we can hope for. Even with our current “harsh” punishments that incapacitate far more than the OP would prefer, most offenders are repeat offenders– those that were previously caught and have supposedly been rehabilitated. Obviously it doesn’t work.
> that arrest and imprisonment are bad. They incapacitate criminals and prevent them from committing further crimes, except against other criminals. I don’t see OP suggesting any superior alternatives to accomplishing this.
> smaller prisons better. Right... better in every way except their capacity. Smaller prisons doesn’t equal less criminals. You construct prisons in proportion to the number of people you need to house there, not construct prisons to reflect the amount of crime you wish you had. I must admit that I love the gall of the OP in advising us to be careful with the scarce resource of “limited prison space” and then advising us to shrink prisons further.
> guns guns guns guns. If we’re in full on magical thinking mode, why not bring in the “gun show loophole?”
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October 30, 2009, 5:01 amTruePath says:
Also, besides the nitpicking, there is a fundamental absurdity in this list of suggestions.
The primary barrier to implementing more effective and humane punishments isn’t a lack of good policy ideas but of voter inclination. Yes, we need to think of punishment as itself a harm endured for the greater good, but the majority of voters think of punishment as something bad people deserve. In other words the standard view is that even when it offers no deterrent benefit people who behave badly deserve to be punished. Indeed, a bit of thought reveals that evolution would favor this kind of attitude.
Worse, voters choose policy positions for expressive reasons not for policy reasons. For example it doesn’t matter that expert testimony indicates severe restrictions on where convicted child molesters/child porn viewers can live or work is counterproductive and decreases deterrence (less reporting) while increasing the rate of reoffense. When people vote on issues like child molestation the desire to express disapproval, outrage and solidarity with other parents overrides any complex calculations of policy impact.
So ultimately suggesting all sorts of random policy improvements like this seems a bit silly as they won’t be implemented nor help sway the voters. On the other hand if your goal is to really reform the system then changing voters minds should be the primary goal and that means focusing on emotionally charged narratives. Tossing out random, unsupported policy suggestions that are likely to trigger a “hey, that can’t be right” reaction from almost anyone seems like the worst thing to do.
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October 30, 2009, 5:09 amTruePath says:
JimW:
Where is this said? There is some suggestion that certain types of criminals can be rehabilitated but (if we don’t count drunk driving as violent) I don’t see this assertion in the OP.
Your argument proves nothing. After all one of the major arguments against long/harsh punishments is that they discourage rehabilitation.
This having been said the OP is actually largely in agreement with you. He seems to think there are some classes of criminals who we need to do a better job of keeping in prison, hence the point of looking at juvenile records during sentencing. I interpret the OP to be suggesting we waste prison resources and create more crime by throwing the book at certain low level offenders while we don’t do enough to make sure certain violent offenders stay locked up.
The OP certainly isn’t saying all things considered arrest and imprisonment are bad. He is saying that other things being equal more arrests/imprisonment is bad. In other words if we can have the same crime rate with lots of arrests/imprisonment and little arrests/imprisonment the later is better.
The OP isn’t suggesting less total prison bunks. Merely that many small prisons are better than a few giant prisons. This is probably true for several reasons.
First it allows prisoners to maintain more ties with their support structure (family etc..) giving them a better shot at rehabilitation. Secondly, it would likely reduce the power of the prison gangs. Thirdly it would create more labratories for experimentation.
I don’t see why I should think that this would radically increase the cost per prison bed. Heck, it might even decrease the overall cost to divide prisons up if it reduced prison violence.
Guns aren’t a policy issue, they are a matter of identity politics. Neither the commenters on this site, the OP nor virtually anyone else takes the positions they do on guns for good policy reasons.
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October 30, 2009, 5:27 amBC says:
Unless you’re defining “good policy” very narrowly, your statement is fatuous bullshit.
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October 30, 2009, 5:39 amBrett Bellmore says:
Guns... We’ve been subject to a decades long assault on this constitutional right. Even with Heller, it’s too soon to trust the government on the subject of firearms. Way too soon. Making sure that the government knows who owns what guns is a well known first step to firearm confiscation, which is scarcely unknown in recent American history, and has plenty of backers yet in the government, for all that they’re keeping quiet for the moment.
Your proposal to abolish private transfers of firearms require a degree of trust on the part of the gun owning segment of the population which is rationally lacking. It would be met with massive civil disobedience.
Come back on that one after a few decades in which the government manages to refrain from attacking this civil liberty. Or better yet, don’t come back on it at all, given how little actual justification lies behind it.
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October 30, 2009, 6:04 amTracy W says:
Well I can see treating arrests as costs (we want to discourage police from arresting people at the drop of a hat), but punishments? This apppears only to make sense if you assume that the only purpose of criminal justice is to deter future offending, as opposed to including the purpose of recognising that the criminal has harmed another individual and that justice demands some payment.
And one thing I notice is that Kleiman has gone from explicitly stating as an assumption that criminal justice should be all about reducing offending, to now making policy arguments based on that assumption, without ever justifying the assumption.
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October 30, 2009, 6:29 amDavid III (famous sockpuppet) says:
How about we reduce the number of laws?
Or is that too much of a radical idea?
David
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October 30, 2009, 6:44 amHouston Lawyer says:
I think public hangings and floggings would do more to reduce crime. Legalization of narcotics and most other vices would also be a huge help. Most gangs would collapse without the money provided by trafficking in illegal items.
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October 30, 2009, 9:22 amMark says:
Private firearms sales are not a “loophole.”
Registration leads to confiscation.
Is the author a libertarian?
If you want to reduce crime related to unwitting transfers of firearms to felons, impose a modest civil penalty, of say up to $5,000.00 or 10,000.00, if someone transfers a firearm to another person without knowledge that person is disqualified from owning a gun, it gets used in a crime by the transferee (one degree only), and the transferor does not have a print out from the website (which would be opened to public query for proper purposes) that shows no NCIC hit or whatever on the transferee on the date of transfer.
You do not need a federal FFL license monopoly on who can sell firearms. The entire FFL system is antique and woefully inefficient and ineffective.
One only needs to loosen the death grip of the government and let people have access to the information that already exists to achieve the same policy goal in a cheaper and more free paradigm.
As to the rest of your proposals, I don’t even know what “halving the number of drug dealers in prison” means. So do 1/2 as many drug dealers sell twice as many drugs in prison? Are we issue liquor licenses also? Or are we still trying to control people’s apparently innate self-destructive tendencies?
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October 30, 2009, 9:28 amKirk Parker says:
Some of these seem right out of Peel (e.g. “Focus on reducing crime and disorder, not on making arrests.”)
Some of them seem like vast, catastrophically expensive (never mind intrusive) expansions of the Nanny State (e.g. “Provide a nurse as a ‘parenting coach’ to every first-time mother.”)
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October 30, 2009, 9:56 amKirk Parker says:
Brett,
Indeed–look at how compliant those nice, government-loving Canadians were with their gun registry.
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October 30, 2009, 9:57 amTeh Anonymous says:
Comment removed — using the edit function seems to have introduced some odd formatting. Will repost.
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October 30, 2009, 10:00 amveteran says:
Tangentially related, could this be coming here?
BBC NEWS
Tony Martin: Crime and controversy
Farmer Tony Martin became a focus of huge national debate after shooting dead a teenager who was burgling his home.
The incident ignited a furore in Britain over issues such as rural crime and the rights to defend property.
Many vigorously supported the then 54-year-old, but others dismissed him as a violent eccentric who chose to act as a
vigilante.
The case continues to attract controversy, with the ongoing attempts of Brendon Fearon, an accomplice of the teenage
burglar, to sue Martin for injuries sustained during the incident.
The episode began in August 1999 when 16-year-old Fred Barras, and 33-year-old Fearon, broke into Martin’s remote,
semi-derelict farmhouse in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk.
Martin, who was in the house at the time, opened fire with an illegally-held pump-action shotgun. Barras was shot in the
back and died at the scene, while Fearon was shot in the leg and recovered after treatment in hospital.
Three days later, Martin was taken into police custody and charged with murder and wounding with intent.
The case caused an immediate furore, with local supporters protesting outside the remand hearing.
It became apparent that Martin’s orchard farm and home, called Bleak House, had been plagued by crime for years.
Gun history
Martin had been burgled so many times that he had set up an elaborate network of look-out ladders and traps, even removing
a stair to hinder intruders.
Three months before the shooting, crooks had broken into the house and taken £6,000 worth of furniture.
Martin distrusted the police and was said to have begun fearing for his life. He slept with his clothes and boots on and
reportedly kept his gun primed and ready by his bedside. When his trial began in April 2000 Martin argued that he had
genuinely been acting in self-defence.
But it emerged the pair had been shot as they tried to flee through a window.
‘Mind of a child’
Jurors also heard that Martin had a history of gun-related misbehaviour, including firing upon a car six years before — an
incident which led to his shotgun certificate being revoked.
Norwich Crown Court decided he had gone beyond self-defence, and convicted him of murder — for which he was automatically
sentenced to life. The verdict sparked even more argument, with campaigners calling it “monstrous”. Martin received
thousands of supportive letters in prison.
He began an appeal immediately. In court he argued he had suffered from a paranoid personality disorder which diminished
his responsibility.
His barrister told the court Martin had suffered sexual abuse as a child and “considered himself a boy of about ten”.
Burglar sues
The court found in Martin’s favour and in October 2001 his offence was downgraded to manslaughter and his sentence reduced
to five years.
But the controversy did not end there.
Fearon, who had more than 30 criminal convictions, is now trying to sue Martin for damages as a result of being shot.
He has asked for a reported £15,000 for loss of earnings, claiming he can no longer enjoy sex or bear to see shootings on
television.
Fearon is himself currently in jail, after being convicted in February of this year on drugs charges and jailed for 18
months.
The case is likely to be heard once both Fearon and Martin have been freed.
Future security
Martin has also continued to make front pages as he has wrestled with the parole board for early release from prison.
He is due for automatic release on 28 July, when he will have served two-thirds of his sentence, but this could have been
brought forward to as early as September last year. The parole board, however, has continually refused him early release -
saying he has shown no remorse and would continue to pose a danger to any other burglars.
Martin argues he has made plans to ensure peace and security on his eventual return home.
He has discussed protecting his home with electronic gates and an air raid siren, and has been given a specific police
contact to call in case of trouble.
This has not stopped commentators worrying that he will therefore be vulnerable to revenge attacks from Fearon’s
supporters — who have reportedly put a bounty on his head, worth tens of thousands of pounds.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/3009769.stm
Published: 2003/06/13 11:57:22 GMT
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October 30, 2009, 10:03 amTeh Anonymous says:
I’m surprised no one else has commented on this one. [Edit: oops, someone did comment on this while I was writing this comment.] Do you really mean every first-time mother, or just “every first time mother receiving TANF”, or something like that?
Also: based on the experiences of some of my acquaintances (women with full-time professional jobs with great insurance): some nurses, including some L&D nurses, are idiots when it comes to actually nurturing a new baby, not helpful, or both. Having a nursing license has nothing to do with knowing how to care for a baby.
Also, call me unimaginative, but say the nurse in question is properly qualified to explain how to properly care for a new baby, assuming the mother has not already obtained this knowledge on her own. How does this help to reduce crime?
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October 30, 2009, 10:03 amShelbyC says:
You gotta do way better than that, chief. If “most” offenders are repeat offenders, that means that up to 49% offenders didn’t reoffend, which sounds pretty good.
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October 30, 2009, 10:05 amOrder of the Coif says:
Oh my, gun control again. Everything else in these lists deals with the PERSON and their CONDUCT. But, here, the author makes a special exception.
Study after study has shown that gun control does not reduce crime. Does NOT reduce crime. That’s the only valid reason for restricting gun owner’s liberty. Not to “do something,” not to express irrational “gun hate,” not to reaffirm one’s “Progressive” credentials.
Why isn’t crime reduced by a statistically significant amount? Because these laws do not impede those who do the crimes. Virtually all gun crimes are committed by persons who already have criminal records (in fact most — up to 80% — of victims do too). They are in the criminal culture. They know where to buy cocaine at 2am (I don’t) and if they can buy cocaine, the drug dealer will sell them a gun too if the money is right. The black market supplies whatever demand there is (after all, dealers take guns as part payment for drugs so they always have a few extras).
Gun control produces lots of harassment of the law-abiding but no significant crime reduction. What if the money spent on it was used to fund the other options the author recommends? I’ll bet it would have a significant impact. But you’d suggest that only if you really wanted that significant impact (not “progressive” creds).
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October 30, 2009, 10:20 amJoe says:
Well, lots of fodder for debate, so I will center on one area:
Raise alcohol taxes.
Burden the majority to discourage a minority from drinking ... and by how much? People still smoke even with sky high taxes.
* Forbid the use of alcohol, at least for some period, to those convicted of drunken assault, drunken driving, drunken vandalism, or repeated disorderly conduct under the influence. Enforce this at the seller level.
Limits are in place sometimes already — you might not be able to associate with certain people on probation, including in bars. I don’t know how this will be enforced. Will every supermarket now have instant checks? Sounds a bit dangerously Orwellian.
* Abolish the minimum drinking age.
If this means that parents can be allowed to have their children and their friends drink, fine. If it means that fifteen year olds can buy liquor or drink in public locales, no.
* Cut back on routine drug law enforcement and associated sentencing. Halve the number of dealers in prison.
why not only target big dealers of certain truly dangerous drugs? most “routine” drug law enforcement is probably a bad idea
* Use low-arrest crackdowns to break up flagrant retail markets.
maybe
* Focus enforcement attention and sentencing on violence, disorder, and the use of juveniles, not on the mere volume of drugs sold.
sure
* Expand the availability of drug treatment. End the prejudice against substitution therapies in diversion programs and drug courts.
always a good idea ... no comment on second
* Permit the consumption of cannabis, and its individual or cooperative production for personal use or gratis distribution.
if it will be allowed, including for medicinal use, coops will not provide the necessary demand and need ... sorry, like any number of other medicinal drugs now on the market, including those (over)used by those with no real need for them, you will have to sell it too
* Force probationers, parolees, and those on bail to desist from the use of expensive or criminogenic illicit drugs.
good luck ... and “criminogenic illicit” is redundant
* In neighborhoods where drug dealing is prevalent, focus in-school and community-based prevention efforts on preventing dealing.
yes
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October 30, 2009, 10:22 amPatHMV says:
I have to say that I’m very disappointed with this series of guest posts. The first 4 did little more than state the obvious, that we should look at different ways of reducing crime besides merely locking people up for long periods of time. Kleiman asserted that his approaches will be more effective than current practices both at reducing crime and at reducing budget costs. As I and several others noted early on, the devil in this policy area, in particular, is in the details. Now he throws out all of his policy proposals on the last post of the week, without providing any evidence or support for their efficacy.
It’s not that I disagree with any of these particular solutions; most (not the gun control lunacy and the mandatory mothering coach) appear likely to be beneficial. But it would have been nice to be able to discuss all of them during the course of the week, since the real policy battle is over whether these particular solutions will accomplish all of the wonderful goals laid out earlier in the week.
I feel like this has been nothing but advertising for his book rather than a real attempt to use the blog to spark serious discussion and consideration of these issues.
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October 30, 2009, 10:39 amTamerlane says:
I have a great respect for Professor Kleiman and suspect that his book will prove of far more value than his several postings here. This immediate list of suggestions suffers from the following obvious flaws: (1) There is absolutely no logical or empirical justification for any one of them. (2) They are not prioritized in any fashion. (3) They are a congeries of reasonably practical policy options, politically and/or practically implausible policy options, and radical, pie-in-the-sky/blue-sky notions that seem far more driven by ideology than anything else. Unfortunately the three types are about equally represented in the list.
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October 30, 2009, 10:49 amJohn425 says:
Abolish the minimum drinking age? Surely this writer has never been a teenager nor has he seen the carnage of teen drinking on the highways. Sir-did you watch news video of the teen gang rape the other night?
A computer in every cell? Of course! We can all do with a lot more identity theft, stalking and the fashioning of weapons learned online.
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October 30, 2009, 11:06 amTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment: A Checklist -- Topsy.com says:
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Paul says:
Ditch the private sale ‘loophole’ for gun buying. If you have the right to own guns, then the feds don’t need to know exactly what guns you own! If you don’t have the right to own the guns, then it don’t matter if they are ‘registered’ ‘papered’ or what.
All the ‘private sale’ loophole is a way for the government to keep track of what YOU own, and with such a list, grab them at their leasure.
NO REGISTRATION OF GUNS OR AMMO OR ANYTHING. The Second Amendment protects all the rest so it must be safeguared the most.
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October 30, 2009, 11:48 amCareless says:
“The parole board, however, has continually refused him early release –saying he has shown no remorse and would continue to pose a danger to any other burglars.”
I read that about five minutes ago and am still chuckling.
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October 30, 2009, 12:02 pmCareless says:
Their children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, on the other hand, commit a ton of crime. So you’re probably advocating sterilization at the border, right?
edit: that was specifically about the descendants of Mexican immigrants.
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October 30, 2009, 12:03 pmCareless says:
Their (Mexican immigrants) children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren, on the other hand, commit a ton of crimes. So you’re advocating sterilization at the border, right?
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October 30, 2009, 12:06 pmOn Crime and Punishment « Federal Way Conservative says:
[...] Crime and Punishment By Jonathan Gardner Seeing an “expert” in the field of crime and punishment post his thoughts on how to refo...has got me thinking: Why is this so hard in the first [...]
Mark Kleiman, guest-blogging says:
Shelby, NEADS has a highly successful program under which prisoners train service dogs. It seems to be a win-win, and I’d like to see it expanded.
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October 30, 2009, 12:17 pmMark Kleiman, guest-blogging says:
Just to be clear: “Closing the private sales loophole” for guns does not mean banning private sales; it means holding private sellers to the same standard of background-checking to which FFLs are current held. As things stand, a private party who sells a gun to a felon is not breaking any law. If private sellers had to do background checks, no doubt some FFLs would perform that service for a fee.
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October 30, 2009, 12:31 pmPeteP says:
“Once again, thanks to Eugene for the opportunity to offer my thoughts in this space.”
Seeing as EV lets idiots like me post here, I suppose it’s only fair that he let idiots like you do so as well.
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October 30, 2009, 12:33 pmShelbyC says:
Surely this commenter has never lived in a country with lower drinking age laws than the U.S. (Almost any country on earth), or he’d understand the effect that the U.S. drinking age has on teen binge drinking.
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October 30, 2009, 12:39 pmThe Watcher says:
I live near a black city that had about 60,000 residents left. The crime rate and murder rate exploded over the last 10 years, just as the police department downsized by about 30% to free up funds for social program grants (another story).
The state and federal governments have tried your exact program. Targeting the major felons and gang leaders in the city. During this spring they struck hard, wrapping up evidence and busting most of the senior tier gang leaders and the hard core home invaders and robbers.
That bought the city about 3 months of peace, then things exploded. Kids as young as 16 are now doing home invasions where they shoot everyone in the home including babies. Kids are shooting at cars they think look like cars of rival gangs driving by on state highways.
All of the movie theaters closed years ago in their city, so they go to the cloest one outside the city. That police department patrols with a strong presence to keep violence down, some of the young next wave got mad about that and drive-byed the cops.
Now that area has high power cameras run by the county sheriff, which flash blue stobes on top. Far from making thing safer, it tells the bangers where to go to get out of sight lines to car jack and commit armed robbery at the mall.
In short, it turns out the senior gang leaders and hard core robbers had some incentive to keep violence at a moderate level. With them gone, the streets exploded and the violence is spilling over to the nearby better areas.
If your think a 23 year old felon with some prison time is bad on the streets, check out what his 16yo half brother does with his pistol.
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October 30, 2009, 12:42 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
That is what the baby’s grandmothers, grandfathers, granduncles, and grandaunts are for. There is no reason to get the state involved in this and good reason not to. BTW, absent fathers seems to be a much bigger problem.
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October 30, 2009, 12:42 pmmischief says:
Well, we can investigate whether it really protects the innocent (which is its justification) and see if it can be culled that way.
We also need that “double jeopardy” does not apply when you’ve asked for a new trial. Yes, you can be acquitted at a new murder trial, but they can also ask for the death penalty even if you got life at your last trial. (Whether we can get it is another matter. But we need some incentive not to drag things out.)
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October 30, 2009, 12:47 pmMark Buehner says:
Ok, there are some very good ideas on this list. It’s fine to laundry list them, but we need to consider how our system got to be this way. Peace-meal reforms won’t work well, for the same reasons that got us into our current state.
You have to look at our criminal justice system as an economic entity– not just offenders, but society and government as well. Most of the ideas on this list address problems that have evolved and flourished for the simple reason that some entity is making money or expanding their institution. Every point here is a line item on one or more budgets, and there is a special interest out there making sure what is so obvious on this page doesn’t translate into reality.
Prisons are big business. Drug enforcement is HUGE business. Towns love their SWAT teams, whether they need them or not. DUI’s bring in huge revenues which put more cops on the street to write more DUIs– nothing wrong with that, but you have to realize the friction inherent in making governmental changes that affect bottom lines, even if they are great ideas that eliminate or reduce the reason de entre for the entity in the first place. ESPECIALLY if that is the case. Multiply that by every municipality, county, state, and federal agency in the country.
In other words, there is no way to nitpick this system into reasonable form. Its about like Lucy trying to sort her chocolates, except the chocolates have an agenda of their own.
These ideas need to be formulated into a doctrine of sorts, a big plan which political groups can rally behind to offset the friction that is sure to come from the aforementioned groups invested in the current system. Some political Nixon needs to go to China and question our drug, alcohol, and criminal justice system as an overarching theme. Otherwise each one of these items gets nodded at sagely, agreed upon, and then withers on the vine long before any good can come of them.
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October 30, 2009, 12:49 pmmischief says:
Why, yes, of course.
For the just treatment of criminals, you indeed must maintain that punishment is the primary purpose of punishment, that deterrence and rehabilitation are nice side-effects. Otherwise we will have monstrously disproportionate punishments for crimes because — that’s what deters, that’s what rehabilitates, what’s the problem?
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October 30, 2009, 12:50 pmJames T. Carrington says:
poor guy, i guess you watched too much Clockwork Orange or something? Are we currently letting a lot of rapists run around out there? I thought the current punishment scheme was sufficient to felonize and brand them forever as an offender...
Public hangings? Works great in Somalia. BBC
Legalization of narcotics? Works great in Portugal. TIME
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October 30, 2009, 12:52 pmKirk Parker says:
Your proposal is a bug either way. Consider that actual FFL’s are required to retain their records forever (i.e. until they go out of business, then they box them up and ship them to the ATF.) This is, incidentally, how traces work: you have a firearm of interest–e.g. the Bushmaster rifle the about-to-deservedly-depart-from-us Muhammed used for his Beltway “Sniping”–the ATF asks the mfr who they shipped it to, asks that distributor where it went, and finally asks the retailer who it was sold to. The government doesn’t actually have any of those records except in the case where someone has gone out of business.
Without such retention, how do you prove that a background check of a private-party transfer actually took place? Would you require the FFL retain the record of the transfer from party A to party B? If so, you really are banning private transfers, as in that case the transfer really is party A -> FFL -> party B, just like it does in states like CA that do ban (some or all) private-party transfers. Or would party A be required to keep the records?
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October 30, 2009, 1:22 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
This is a bit obtuse.
First, checks must be done by an FFL holder on each transfer, not just sales. FOREX, an FFL holding gunsmith must do a check when returning your gun to you. FFL dealers almost never loan guns to family members or friends. Private parties do so all the time. The hassle factor would effectively ban this practice. You would need a background check on the loan and the borrower would need to do a check on return. If your name is common, you have a real chance that the gun may not be returned in a timely manner. Each following year when hunting season rolls around and neither you or the borrower have committed any felonies, and you each know it, you still need to do the checks again. Gak!
Second, it is a federal felony to knowingly sell a gun to a felon.
Third, the “problem” seems more theoretical than real. What someone might do is not a problem, only a potential problem. Is there any evidence of actual harm?
Fourth, since there will need to be more feds hired to handle the increase in the number of checks and more to enforce compliance, then this proposal should be subject to a cost benefit analysis. At the very least anyone proposing this should be able to point to the societal cost in dollars and lives lost (if any) that are imposed by unchecked private sales. So far the actual cost appears to be close to zero.
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October 30, 2009, 1:26 pmKirk Parker says:
(Well, I tried to edit my previous to append the following, but it timed out on me.)
Moreover, there are millions of guns out there in private hands whose owners are not the original retail purchasers. Thus, the chain of custody/ownership is already broken for them; just having a background check is not enough because once the first retail purchaser is reached the trail goes dark. This will naturally lead for calls for the private-party transfer info to just go to the government in the first place. Bingo–incremental gun registry for the existing stock of firearms as they are sold.
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October 30, 2009, 1:30 pmMatt says:
Mark,
Actually, a private individual that knowingly sells or provides a firearm to a convicted felon is breaking the law. There are laws against that. Specifically 18 USC 922(g). So you are incorrect in your assumption.
Anyone privately selling a firearm to someone without verifying identity and asking a few questions is at risk for prosecution if it is later found the buyer was a prohibited person. This is why responsible individuals either know the private buyer, request to see some proof of eligibility such as a state issued carry permit or have the buyer sign a bill of sale attesting they are not a prohibited person.
A felon walking into a gun show or store is already in violation of the law. What more do we need? The fact that prosecutors elect to not prosecute cases of straw purchases shouldn’t require the law-abiding to give up more to the government in the pursuit of a dubious crime prevention outcome.
The onus is on you to demonstrate that private, anonymous transfer of firearms in intrastate commerce are a significant avenue to criminal acquisition. Any research performed on the topic has shown exactly the opposite.
This is really a cultural and liberty issue. Anonymous firearms ownership serves as a check against government overreach. As stated by other posters, if the government knows where all the guns are, it is easier to come and get them. This is a “feel good” measure that can have serious long-term issues in protecting our liberties. Those of us against this, rightfully I believe, feel the government has no business knowing who owns a gun. Why should the government be involved in how someone chooses to dispose of their personal property whether it be gun, knife, baseball bat or car? Provided the laws are followed, it shouldn’t be.
It is just one more encroachment on gun rights that has been happening for decades and has not stopped. Gun owners have no reason to trust or believe it would stop here. Next step, logically, would be either defacto, illegal registration by keeping the NICS transaction records (they are supposed to be destroyed after 24 hours) or repealing 18 USC 926(a) and allow the establishment of a national gun registry and force gun owners to comply.
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October 30, 2009, 1:32 pmMark Buehner says:
“poor guy, i guess you watched too much Clockwork Orange or something? Are we currently letting a lot of rapists run around out there?”
Ask Jaycee Lee Dugard.
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October 30, 2009, 1:32 pmSuperSkeptic says:
I agree with everybody who criticized this post. I’m not going to waste too much time on it, as unrealistic as it is. Although I just can’t resist this one
Since skills such as literacy are portable across the boundary between prison and the community, stress skill acquisition rather than attempts at behavior change such as drug treatment. Put a computer in each cell.
I’m sure printed words on a piece of paper would suffice. I’m SURE. And this guy puports to be concerned about costs/resources. If he really were of course, we all know his approach to the drug-game would be completely different. It would have to be. He’s selling free lunches. I’m not buying. (And I’m with Pat — I feel used, too. Hope your career/book sales go well!)
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October 30, 2009, 1:36 pmMikee says:
“Shift the burdens of crime and punishment away from otherwise disadvantaged groups, especially poor African-Americans who face much more of both.”
It is my understanding that the burden of crime by disadvantaged groups, including poor African-Americans, falls most heavily upon their neighbors, who are most often, statistically speaking, in those same disadvantaged groups. Shifting the burden of this crime onto some other group does not lower the crime rate at all, if I am reading you correctly. But the criminals’ neighbors might not mind.
Punishing the criminal, despite his membership in a disadvantaged group, is generally the way the judicial system is set up to work, rather than choosing to shift the burden of punishment to some hypothetical member of a non-disadvantaged group.
While the above is sarcastic, let me try to make some actual sense of your idea: Do you mean one of the following:
* Don’t inordinately punish disadvantaged persons compared to advantaged persons who commit a similar crime (e.g., crack cocaine vs powdered cocaine mandatory sentences)?
* Don’t allow crime to fluourish among disadvantaged groups due to laissez faire policing of disadvantaged communities?
* Treat disadvantaged groups differently, somehow more compassionately, in courts of law than those more economically successful (the soft bigotry of low expectations)?
In general, I think the government should take zero notice of anyone’s race, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, or gender when sentencing that person for a crime. Fair is fair, and all that.
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October 30, 2009, 1:43 pmfwb says:
How about the fed enacting only constitutional laws concerning crime and punishment? Since there are only 6 areas where that is allowed, it would improve things greatly from the perspective of federal criminal violations.
Tiocfaidh ar la!
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October 30, 2009, 1:49 pmDavid Nieporent says:
Not to single out Pat; his comment just sparked my response: every time a guest poster comes here, we get people complaining that the poster didn’t prove his entire theory in the four or five posts he made that week. Can people please stop it?
1) It’s a blog, not a scholarly journal; most posts — guest or otherwise — don’t provide detailed evidence for whatever points they’re trying to make.
2) One is certainly not going to prove a scholarly thesis in four or five posts, anyway.
The idea is to introduce people to one’s views, and (yes) plug one’s books or articles that provide depth. That’s all you’re going to get; if you want more, you’re complaining that ESPN doesn’t show enough ballet.
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October 30, 2009, 1:50 pmShawn says:
When you write that there is a “private guns show loophole” you imply that selling private property firearms, from one person who can legally own them to another person who can legally own them, is some sort of devious means of skirting the law, which apparently is meant to prevent all sales of firearms without government involvement. The loophole of criminals obtaining weapons is not closed any tighter by causing law-abiding persons to jump through one more hoop in purchasing a firearm.
How about mandatory 20 year sentences for felon-in-possession, with any plea bargaining on the charge not allowed?
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October 30, 2009, 1:56 pmTheBadness says:
Actually, a private individual that knowingly sells or provides a firearm to a convicted felon is breaking the law. There are laws against that. Specifically 18 USC 922(g). So you are incorrect in your assumption.
Note that s922 has a state of mind requirement. Background checks make the most obvious defense to a violation predicated on knowledge a tad more difficult to establish.
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October 30, 2009, 1:58 pmModa says:
Sounds like an ingenious way to overburden the courts. If you have no incentive to plead guilty, you might as well fight the charge tooth and nail. Prosecutors would be loathe to bring the charges but it would guarantee going to trial — even if you win, you already lost.
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October 30, 2009, 1:59 pmKirk Parker says:
David,
I’m not sure I agree. The whole point of a brief guest-blogging stint like this is to cover something specific (here, of course, Kleiman’s new book and the ideas contained therein.) Or at least that’s how it seems here at the Conspiracy.
You would think the author/guest-blogger in such a case would be well situated to produce a decent condensation or abstract of his argument, wouldn’t you?
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October 30, 2009, 2:03 pmFiftycal says:
Ah, the old “gun registration will cure all ills”. How do you “close the private sale loophole”? YOU DO NOT! If it were possible, Washington, D.C. and Chicago would be the safest places in the world. So this is the “licensed” model. So every piece of steel the size of a paperback book is going to have a “license”. How much is this going to cost? What bureaucracy is going to administer the license? Are you going to issue license plates that the owner is going to wear? How are you going to determine if a gun is “licensed”? Why don’t you look at Canada and how “well” there “mandatory” licensing scheme is working? They have about 1/10th the population and so far have spent more than $2 billion on a computer scheme that the police DO NOT TRUST. See, criminals don’t register their guns. In the U.S., they have a RIGHT not to incriminate themselves by registering their illegal guns. ANd a LOT of people with LEGAL guns will not register either. So other than keeping some law-abiding people from getting a gun and driving up costs, NOTHING will be accomplished except the BLACK MARKET for guns will expand. Ever heard of “prohibition”?
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October 30, 2009, 2:05 pmOren says:
Gun registration and background checks on private sales are a small price to pay for shall-issue reciprocal CCW.
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October 30, 2009, 2:11 pmMatt says:
Agreed.
I think most gun owners would accept a background check option that was accessible, no high-barriers to usage and not mandatory to allow for the preservation of anonymous firearms ownerships.
Unfortunately, this would require us to revisit the background system as presently implemented. But anonymous ownership must be preserved. Such a private sales system must, by statute and design, not record or be required to store more details than necessary to verify whether an individual is prohibited. It is not necessary to store seller information or gun information. Such as a phone system where the buyer keys in or provides their information (to preserve their privacy) and then hands the phone to seller so they can get a yes/no answer and a confirmation number for their records to provide an affirmative defense later should the gun fall into criminal hands.
Such a system will not be implemented since this is not the goal of closing the so-called “gun show loophole”. The true purpose is to raise more legal hurdles to gun ownership, begin down the path of registration and further restrict a Constitutionally enumerated right.
I would ask those who favor closing this loophole if they favor advance permission before being allowed to post on the Internet or give a public speech. Then you’ll learn their true motives.
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October 30, 2009, 2:13 pmMatt says:
You want to make a deal with the Devil, go ahead. Just don’t expect the rest of us to follow along. To me, that is a very high price to pay that I suspect within 5–10 years the Courts will support without it whether it be open carry as a right, CCW reciprocity much in the same way states are required to honor each others driver’s licenses or both.
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October 30, 2009, 2:16 pmOren says:
Matt, you can be required to get a permit before giving a public speech. See, e.g. Ward v. Rock Against Racism.
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October 30, 2009, 2:20 pmOren says:
Reciprocity in driver’s licenses is pursuant to a voluntary pact between the states. As far as I know, there is no reason they would be obligated to do so (although the US Congress can, pursuant to SD v. Dole, deprive them of highway funding).
Meanwhile, if you think the SCOTUS is going to use the 2A/14A to require reciprocal CCW, you are delusional. Not that I wouldn’t welcome it but I think the odds are very very long.
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October 30, 2009, 2:26 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Yes, Oren, you can be forced to get a permit to exercise your free speech, but I think that’s VERY wrong, too. Some people think ideological consistency is detrimental; I beg to differ.
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October 30, 2009, 2:30 pmStrict says:
““poor guy, i guess you watched too much Clockwork Orange or something? Are we currently letting a lot of rapists run around out there?”
Ask Jaycee Lee Dugard.”
Umm, isn’t Garrido currently incarcerated, facing charges of rape? I don’t think he’s a good example of a rapist that “we are currently letting run around.”
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October 30, 2009, 2:34 pmHolly says:
For those confused about the “Provide a nurse as a “parenting coach” to every first-time mother.” suggestion, I believe Mark is referring to expanding the excellent Nurse Family Partnership program (google will help you learn more). The program has been extensively studied and has been found to have numerous benefits, including a reduction in crime among the children. I don’t think anyone suggests that this be mandatory, merely made available. It would be great if everyone had a supportive, knowledgeable family, but they don’t. This sort of program can help fill that gap.
I know that there’s a knee-jerk “how dare the government tell people how to parent” impulse. I feel it too. But, certain practices: not picking up infants for fear of spoiling them, feeding infants solids too early, not talking to infants, have been shown to be, well, bad. But they persist, partially because of those extended families’ advice.
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October 30, 2009, 2:37 pmOren says:
This is was off topic, but would you really approve of protesters with bullhorns outside your house at 3AM? There are acceptable content-neutral restrictions on free speech, enforcing them by a permitting process seems perfectly rational.
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October 30, 2009, 2:39 pmuberVU - social comments says:
Social comments and analytics for this post...
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Gregory Gelfond: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment: A Checklist http://tinyurl.com/yg9rndb...
Oren says:
BTW, I stand by my original assessment. Licensing + shall-issue-reciprocal CCW is much favorable over no licensing but no SIRCCW.
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October 30, 2009, 2:45 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Nope, I would not appreciate protesters with bullhorns outside my house at 3AM. But, that’s why we have harassment laws and the commonlaw nuisance concept. Yes, off-topic a bit, but it goes toward the regulation of rights, which is related to the gun-show-loophole debate (of which I concededly know little). Fundamentally, Kleiman’s arguments imply that having a gun is a problem (just like he thinks having drugs is a problem), and that both are subject to his top-down regulations that would save us all from ourselves. I take a consistently oppositional stance on both matters, that is all.
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October 30, 2009, 2:49 pmOrder of the Coif says:
Someone posted: “Guns aren’t a policy issue, they are a matter of identity politics. Neither the commenters on this site, the OP nor virtually anyone else takes the positions they do on guns for good policy reasons.”
Prove it. Read Gary Kleck, TARGETING GUNS: FIREARMS AND THEIR CONTROL (Aldine de Gruyter, 1997) before you blather. I’ve read it and thousands of other pages of fact and policy on the failure of gun control. Gun controls are the LEAST effective means of reducing violent crime. All they do is present the appearance of “doing something” (and, most politically desirable, “something” that requires no funding).
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October 30, 2009, 2:50 pmOren says:
Well, I agree (edit: with Kleiman) that felons having guns is a problem and that non-felons having guns is a solution. Consequently, I want to make it easier for non-felons to have and carry weapons (and to protect them from liability unless they were totally out of lien) concurrently with making it harder for felons to have an carry guns.
A quick background check should add no more than $20 to the cost of a gun, a relatively small price to pay to ensure that felons are properly excluded.
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October 30, 2009, 2:56 pmAbdul Abulbul Amir says:
Oren,
“A quick background check should add no more than $20 to the cost of a gun, a relatively small price to pay to ensure that felons are properly excluded.”
Here is a hypothetical. I loan my daughter one of my guns to take to the range for some target shooting. In travel there is a serious automobile accident. The police discover firearm that upon investigation has not legally been transferred to her.
The question is, would either or both of us be criminally liable even though I know with 100% certainty that my daughter is not a felon or barred from gun possession in any way.
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October 30, 2009, 3:18 pmSuperSkeptic says:
that felons having guns is a problem
I think the bigger, real problem here is that they are, in fact, felons (are of a criminalistic nature). The fact that they have guns (a tool) is incidental, AND btw, unavoidable, becuase the law is impotent here — since they will break the law to get them (black market and such). So I don’t think that this is the problem. Any use of “law” at all as it regards felons and guns should be to stop whatever it is that they are doing that is felonious, irrespective of the guns — that is why I think your focus is misguided in this context. It amounts to fighting a collateral issue that is detrimental to non-criminals and missing the true issue.
This would also re-focus the whole “resources” complaint toward, imagine it: the actual underlying aggressive or felonious acts.
that non-felons having guns is a solution.
And a Constitutional right, so, agreed.
Consequently, I want to make it easier for non-felons to have and carry weapons (and to protect them from liability unless they were totally out of line) concurrently with making it harder for felons to have an carry guns. (edit: line)
Simply by imposing costs you make it harder for non-felons to have guns (which you characterize as a “solution”). Yet, you minimize the costs as “relatively small” — which, they may be. But on general principle, they shouldn’t exist (shall not infringe and such). I am a gunless non-felon. It would be cheaper and easier for me to buy a gun on the black market. And so it is for felons. This “mak[es] it
hardereasier for felons to have and carry guns” — and is actually counterproductive. As for protecting non-felons from “liability,” my approach moots that issue.Quote
October 30, 2009, 3:23 pmStrict says:
“It would be cheaper and easier for me to buy a gun on the black market.”
Really? Would this, in your actual life, actually be true if an extra $20 would be tacked on to the price of a gun?
It’s pretty darn easy to legally get a gun, and there’s no fear of getting busted by the police or robbed by an arms dealer. There’s no risk of acquiring a gun that might have been a murder weapon. (etc)
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October 30, 2009, 3:41 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Yes, in actual life it is not cheaper when you add $20.00 to the cost of something. As far as easy goes, I was referencing the initial buying; you are discussing the ease of using/storing/bearing, etc. in perpetuity, which I was not. But you make my point for me, because, as a non-felon, I shouldn’t have to have a “fear of getting busted by the police or robbed by an arms dealer[]” to exercise a constitutional right, or make an economic transaction that harms no one else.
And as far as “acquiring a gun that might have been a murder weapon,” my position moots that issue (or “risk”), and I have no moral qualms with it anyhow because that’s what the tool is designed to do.
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October 30, 2009, 4:01 pmRyan Waxx says:
Well, there you have it! I wonder why no one ever thought of that solution before!
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October 30, 2009, 4:01 pmPubliusFL says:
I oppose “closing the private sale loophole” (as Prof. Kleiman puts it), but in fairness, it is a trivial matter to require private sales to be conducted through a FFL, while not imposing the same requirement on short term loans. That’s how California’s law works.
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October 30, 2009, 4:10 pmyankee says:
I’m very disappointed by this post. First Kleiman provides an interesting discussion of the potential effect of different policing practices and the racial distribution of crime and crime victimization. Then, in the last post, he gives us a grab-bag of 61(!) policy proposals, most of which have nothing to do with anything he said earlier. It would have been much more useful to the readers if he had provided an more detailed discussion of a smaller number of ideas.
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October 30, 2009, 4:12 pmStrict says:
“Yes, in actual life it is not cheaper when you add $20.00 to the cost of something. As far as easy goes, I was referencing the initial buying; you are discussing the ease of using/storing/bearing, etc. in perpetuity, which I was not. But you make my point for me, because, as a non-felon, I shouldn’t have to have a “fear of getting busted by the police or robbed by an arms dealer[]” to exercise a constitutional right, or make an economic transaction that harms no one else.
And as far as “acquiring a gun that might have been a murder weapon,” my position moots that issue (or “risk”), and I have no moral qualms with it anyhow because that’s what the tool is designed to do.”
I’m not sure we’re communicating here. You didn’t address what I was talking about. I wasn’t at all discussing the ease of storing or using. I was addressing your claim that it’s cheaper and easier to buy black market guns than legit guns.
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October 30, 2009, 4:23 pmRyan Waxx says:
It’s even worse then that. He made an entire post and discussion about how black on black crime makes it impossible to reduce black incarceration without creating more black victims... and in that post doesn’t reveal how he plans to break the chain, and now in this post he just blithely says that one of his proposals is to reduce black crime AND black victimization. That’s it. No other explanation.
Many of his other proposals are of the same “bell the cat” variety or straight-out fantasy. Finally, a very few correspond to suggestions we’ve seen before in other contexts... like the ludicrous notion that cutting back on busting potheads is going to affect the drug war.
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October 30, 2009, 4:38 pmA. Dawson says:
I read through part of this... this guy makes me gag. It’s It has very little academic value and I am apalled that Dr. Volokh would allow this sort of diatribe to be posted on his blog.
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October 30, 2009, 4:38 pmSuperSkeptic says:
And thought I was addressing your claim that it isn’t. If I were to buy a gun on the street, that would be the end of it. Easy. Here’s your money, here’s your gun. If I were to buy it at the range, I have to deal with background checks, waiting periods, etc., not to mention government supervision of my possession and it’s whereabouts. I think it’s a relatively straightforward point. As for the costs, I think that’s even more obvious.
You addressed the fear of police and risks that the gun was used in a crime; that, to me, is a concern with post-initial sale use of the gun. This, I believe, is unnecessary, and I addressed it as such.
As for the fear of getting robbed by an arms dealer during the intial sale, I have none. Black market actors arguably have more of an incentive to keep good customers than legal economic actors, becuase there are less of them, and because contact with new customers is dangerous as they could be jailed for their economic activity. Anybody can rob you at any time. If anything, they should fear me robbing them.
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October 30, 2009, 4:47 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Why? As someone already pointed out, what’s fair is fair, and we’re allowed to crap out ideas here, after all. It just supports my point that after all his public policy jargon, he knows no more than you or I do about how to manipulate everybody in society for our own good.
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October 30, 2009, 4:52 pmOren says:
Not having to reapply for a CCW in every State that I want to visit is a huge decrease in costs.
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October 30, 2009, 5:09 pmOren says:
If we tack on some non-trivial chance of pulling a 20-year mandatory for buying a gun without the requisite check, we might then conclude that the inconvenience of the range is outweighed by the threat of prosecution.
As to the rest of your parade of horribles, I’m actually for reducing the government “supervision” of your gun, once you prove that you are an upright citizen qualified to possess it.
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October 30, 2009, 5:15 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Your right, but your entire premise relies on the fact that you believe an interpretation of a right of the people that “shall not be infringed” permits a placing upon the people of a burden of proof that they are an “upright citizen qualified [to it].”
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October 30, 2009, 5:25 pmBC says:
And this is why you and many of the rest of us will never see eye to eye on this. Any policy that proceeds from the assumption that a citizen is not qualified to exercise his constitutional rights, and requires him to prove otherwise, is, for us, a non-starter.
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October 30, 2009, 5:33 pmSuperSkeptic says:
In a similar way as you’d allow a burden of proof be placed on the right of the people to the freedom of speech and assembly for that matter...
*you’re*
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October 30, 2009, 5:33 pmStrict says:
“Any policy that proceeds from the assumption that a citizen is not qualified to exercise his constitutional rights”
Interesting. Why do you say “citizen”? Does the 2A say anything about citizens?
So you don’t want any government imposed prerequisites for gun ownership (background checks, etc.), except you do (citizenship requirement).
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October 30, 2009, 5:49 pmStrict says:
” If we tack on some non-trivial chance of pulling a 20-year mandatory for buying a gun without the requisite check, we might then conclude that the inconvenience of the range is outweighed by the threat of prosecution.”
And the non-trivial chance that the street dealer will rob you. Or will sell you a faulty, non-returnable product. Or the huge chance that the guy on the street will refuse to sell a gun or arrange such a deal.
And he didn’t answer my question. I wasn’t asking if hypothetically buying a street gun is easier. I was asking about his real life situation. Is it really, actually easier to buy a street gun? If he’s really law-abiding, how does he know where to go on the street, and who to ask? What cross-section, and which guy do you approach to ask the question?
WalMart or Gander Mountain or a gun range is much easier...
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October 30, 2009, 5:57 pmBC says:
Actually what I want is for sub-moronic internet trolls to cease feigning pinpoint recognition of hypocrisy by playing retarded semantic games.
The Second Amendment speaks of “the people”, and I’m comfortable with the Verdugo-Urquidez exegis. I used the word “citizen” because “a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community” is unwieldy.
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October 30, 2009, 6:14 pmDonP. says:
“Gun registration and background checks on private sales are a small price to pay for shall-issue reciprocal CCW.”
I’m right there with you, as soon as you break the news to Mayor Daley and he regretfully nods his head and permits it in “his” city and state.
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October 30, 2009, 7:00 pmRyan Waxx says:
Except that what you’ll actually get, even if there was a bill in this format, is gun registration and background checks on private sales but no shall-issue reciprocal CCW.
Sort of like those times when they promised greater enforcement in exchange for amnesty over on the illegal alien front. The only thing that actually occurred was the amnesty.
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October 30, 2009, 7:08 pmOrder of the Coif says:
You don’t Oren and I believe you already know that. Get a Florida permit. Five years, 33 states. One fee that works out to about $20/year. http://handgunlaw.us/states/florida.pdf
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October 30, 2009, 7:08 pmCato The Elder says:
Why did this become a gun-control thread?
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October 30, 2009, 7:14 pmRyan Waxx says:
Because pointing out major problems with the OP was so easy that people were getting bored?
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October 30, 2009, 7:19 pmCJS says:
Are you trying to imply that we should focus efforts on tax cheats because all the rapists have been caught, or because the extra resources wouldn’t produce a higher rate of detention or prevention? It’s not as if it’s just some fantasy problem from the movies. http://www.wichita-massacre.com/
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October 30, 2009, 7:33 pmJim W says:
Jaycee Dugard was abducted and raped by a guy that was previously caught and imprisoned for this crime before, but released after a short sentence. This was entirely preventable. There was a time when a man caught kidnapping and raping children would have ended up riding the lightning, but now the 8th amendment apparently commands that he get to be a repeat offender after spending a few years in the criminal job fair formerly known as prison.
African Americans are burdened by crime and punishment disproportionately because the black population has a larger criminal sub-population and those criminals happen to prey mostly upon their black neighbors and relatives. “Shifting the burden” away from the black community won’t make crime go down, it will just allocate enforcement resources away from where they are needed most. We need more concern for potential black victims of crime than for the scumbags that are rotating in and out of the prisons. If safe streets require a 50, 70, or 90 percent permanent black prison population, then so be it (ie, the prisons are 50 percent black, not 50 percent of black people in prison). The vast majority of black people are capable of refraining from criminal activity and won’t be inconvenienced by this.
Kleiman knows little about guns or gun laws and he should keep his mouth shut about the issue. There are reams of research available that he has apparently not bothered to consult and the proposals he is making in this area have been made (and rejected) countless times before. It makes him look like an anti-gun shill.
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October 30, 2009, 7:40 pmRyan Waxx says:
You mean aside from the sons of those in prison? Having that many people from a concentrated area going to prison does indeed cause problems. The problem is that NOT incarcerating those people would in most cases cause worse ones...
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October 30, 2009, 7:56 pmJim W says:
Fuck’em. Part of being a good parent is not committing felonies. If you don’t care enough about your kids to keep your nose clean, why should we?
Or perhaps you’re arguing that having kids at home should be a legal justification for committing crimes?
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October 30, 2009, 8:33 pmBrett Bellmore says:
No, it’s not, because as I pointed out, gun owners have no rational reason to suppose they’d get the shall issue reciprocal CCW, and wouldn’t get some kind of attack on their rights utilizing the government’s enhanced knowledge of who they were.
Again, we’re coming off a decades long effort on the part of the government to attack this civil liberty. Many of the perpetrators are still in place, and show no real sign of having changed their stripes. The circuit courts are still resisting, and it’s far from obvious how much will the Supreme court has to force them into line. It would be massively irrational for gun owners to trust the government on this subject.
We’re not Charlie Brown, Lucy. Put down the football and back away slowly, and in a few decades we might think about kicking it.
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October 30, 2009, 8:55 pmRyan Waxx says:
You don’t understand. I was merely pointing out that you just can’t go around saying that locking up people doesn’t have any effects, because it clearly does.
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October 30, 2009, 9:37 pmAnatid says:
All this indicates is that our current prison system is terrible for rehabilitation. Positive behavior changes are easiest to bring about in a context of low stress, social support and community, and stability and control over living situation. Prisons offer none of these things.
Presumably he was talking about creating another type of agent (such as a nurse or social worker) who specializes in working with new mothers.
If you have the time, acquaint yourself with the concept in developmental psychology known as patterns of attachment. If not, here’s the basic premise.
The young of most species that exhibit parental caregiving will experience attachment. Ducks are a good example of this. A duckling is mobile and curious long before it is able to survive in the world on its own, so it is born with behavioral programming to cause it to stay near its mother. While its mother is around, it keeps her in sight and uses her as a secure base to explore its environment, never straying too far. When its mother is not in sight, the duckling will start peeping in a particular rhythm to signal distress and summon it mother, who it is anxious to rejoin. The mother has similar programming to respond to her lost duckling’s cries.
In human beings, this system is most important when children are toddlers — mobile, curious, but still helpless against danger. Depending on the mother’s internal state, her feelings and behaviors may be ‘out of sync’ with the baby’s behavioral programming, and this will influence the way in which the baby attaches to her. A secure-attached infant knows that all he must do in a time of danger is summon his mother, and all will be well. But if the mother’s actions are altered or clouded by misperceptions — say, for example, she is physically uncomfortable with herself and others, and rarely holds her baby close for long periods — then the baby needs to not only worry about summoning her, but also about how to modify his own behavior to get what he needs from his mother.
There are multiple types of insecure attachment. In the example above, the baby would learn not to expect physical comfort from his mother. When she is absent, instead of crying for her, he would pretend not to care about her presence. At all costs, he has to avoid letting his attachment system be activated to spare himself the pain of crying for comfort that will not come. This type is known as avoidant attachment in children. It can be readily observed as young as a single year of age. Avoidant one-year-olds bully their peers over an order of magnitude more than secure one-year-olds do (see the works of Alan Sroufe).
About 80% of these ‘avoidant’ babies will grow up to be the same, now labeled ‘dismissive’ adults. They have difficulty with intimacy, poorer impulse control, and are more likely to experience substance abuse, anxiety, and depression. Dismissive adults are most likely to get divorced, most likely to engage in domestic violence, and make up a greatly disproportionate number of violent criminals, especially rapists and murderers.
With about 80% accuracy (again), by interviewing a pregnant mother, you can predict the attachment type of her child. These patterns of behavior are passed from generation to generation. If your mother tells you that you should be proud of your one-year-old for not crying when you leave him alone, you’re likely to believe her. Pity.
Current studies are showing that training programs for foster parents to emulate the behavior of a secure parent are highly successful. Sroufe also identified a number of factors common to the 20% who do change, and grow up to be secure despite an insecure parent. Presumably, if we teach some of these concepts to parents, we could reduce the number of dismissively-attached adults with every passing generation.
Studies suggest that a majority of sexual assaults are never reported, much less concluded with a conviction. Just sayin’.
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October 30, 2009, 11:00 pmhappycynic says:
Overly complicated.
1. End drug war.
2. Focus police and DAs on the handful of repeat offenders of serious crimes (i.e. traditional felonies).
Also, your “private sale loophole” is a terrible idea. It is going to be yet another gun law that makes felons of innocent men without providing any social benefit. It’s the kind of law that the average person is going to violate without realizing it. Dad’s going to give his son a gun and end up being a felon. And don’t tell me that a liberal DA isn’t going to drool over the prospect of adding a “gun crime” conviction to his resume.
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October 30, 2009, 11:26 pmLarryA says:
A concealed carry license will be really useful after the registered guns are confiscated.
When Canada was debating its long gun registry reporters noted that handguns had been registered for more than sixty years. They went to the registry and asked for a couple of stories where registration had solved crimes, to serve as a good example for the pending legislation. Unfortunately the registration folks couldn’t come up with a single case where their system had done so.
You have to get a permit to give a public speech, but you don’t have to register your voice prior to giving the speech. I have to have a license to carry concealed, but not to possess the firearm I carry.
If we’re going to let anyone with $20 run a comprehensive background check, why don’t we just post everyone’s criminal, drug abuse, family violence, military, and mental health history on the internet?
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October 31, 2009, 4:16 amTruePath says:
I suspect this is the reason for the suggestion that one ought not to try and eliminate gangs as a social institution but rather pressure them to keep violence down.
As far as targeting particular offenders or classes of offenders it’s a political, and potentially legal, non-starter. I mean sure we might ramp up enforcement disproportionately some places or put a few more police resources here than there but to be effective this kind of strategic use of police resources requires that we do two things.
1) Make clear, believable public statements announcing our intent to devout all availible police and prosecutorial resources to prosecuting certain kinds of law breaking by group X (say members of a particular school, social group, neighborhood etc..) even if it means letting people who aren’t in that group walk on more serious charges. Moverover, while not necessarily an immutable charachteristic, membership in group X must be pretty tough to change.
In other words not only would the police have to engage in the sort of unfair practices they are always being accused of but we would have to publicly embrace our intention to be radically unfair about who gets punished. The programs that get actually implemented are only targeted in the weak sense that they pick out a certain kind of criminal activity for extra attention or focus on high ranking members of existing criminal organizations. That’s not particularly helpful since it just incentivizes criminals to move into different sorts of offenses and to avoid centralized power structures. You only get the benefit from targeted enforcement when some class of people knows they can’t stop the police from prioritizing enforcement against them so they have no choice but to behave or go to jail. Even if the voters were ok with arbitrarily picking on one group as the initial police priority in such a severe way it might fall afoul of various non-discrimination laws.
2) Inform the public where the line between minor infractions the state isn’t going to bother pursuing seriously and crimes that trigger a serious expenditure of police resources.
If the deterent effect of targeted policing is going to work people need to know how well they need to behave to avoid drawing the wrath of the targeted punishments and this needs to be drawn at a plausibly achievable level. If you throw the book at people who swipe a candy bar from the drugstore or sell some drugs then a significant minority of the tageted individuals will start to feel the situation is hopeless and the police are going to come down hard on them whether or not they improve their behavior.
Implicitly the police already kinda do this but people only have a vague sense of where the line is between minor things and major ones, and this line might be different for different police and prosecutors. However, the public would see an explicit statement of this policy as saying it’s okay to go steal a $5 candy bar. I mean hell this is why we still have drug laws despite how obvious their harms are, people feel that repealing them would be tantamount to an endorsement.
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October 31, 2009, 10:37 pmGaryC says:
Why not try “swift and sure punishment” for felons in possession of a firearm? Reduce the sentence to 1 year, but hold the trial within 1 week, with the defendant held in jail without bail pending the trial, then sent to prison immediately upon conviction. The trial should be based on two decisions by a judge:
1) Is this person a convicted felon?
2) Did he possess a firearm when arrested?
That should take a few hours per case.
If there are other charges pending, then the defendant remains in jail, where he gets credit for serving the felon-in-possession conviction, while the other charges wind their way toward trial.
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November 1, 2009, 3:59 amBrett Bellmore says:
Here’s my wish list:
1. Roll back felony inflation. I’m guessing this would instantly reduce the number of felonies.
2. Abolish victimless crime laws. Eliminating whole classes of crimes would dramatically reduce the crime rate, as well as defunding criminal gangs.
3. Encourage gun ownership and CCW. Encourage victims to fight back. Career criminals commit many crimes a year, even a small increase in the probability of being injured during each crime will compound over the course of a year, resulting in criminals being incapacitated much earlier in their careers. And thus shifting the number of criminal encounters the public has to worry about downward.
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November 1, 2009, 6:44 amOrder of the Coif says:
On drug gangs committing crimes with guns, all Kleiman needs to do is read what others have already done. You can make a good start in 10 minutes.
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November 1, 2009, 7:57 amSoronel Haetir says:
There is a general requirement that all charges that stem from a particular course of conduct be tried at the same time, so I’m not sure this would be allowed.
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November 1, 2009, 10:26 amPintler says:
This debate seems to forget that crooks will actively try to find ways to circumvent the law. Here’s three ways to get around background checks:
1)If I am willing to transfer legally acquired firearms to felons, today I just sell them, and if the police ever ask what happened to the gun, I say “I sold it to a guy, I didn’t get a name, but he was wearing a blue jacket”. When FFL transfers are required, I will just be careful to make sure the gun is ‘stolen’.
2)As the old joke goes, smuggle them into the country hidden under drug shipments.
3)Make them. I’m not joking. I’m a mediocre hobby machinist and I have made a 1911 frame, starting from a solid block of metal. This is on manual machinery older than I am. Google around and you can find places where you can download the CNC code so your modern (made in the last 20 years) CNC machine can crank them out by the dozens. If you’re not into machining, you may think that you need a huge factory to make guns, but that’s not true any more than you need a huge distillery to make booze. Any mom-n-pop machine shop could crank a few dozen after closing one night. Sure, they’d be a little more expensive, but probably not much. Since our gun bootlegger wouldn’t be concerned with warranty returns or being sued for a bad design, they could simplify the design, skimp on the heat treating, and so on.
I’m all for keeping guns away from crooks, but you have to think about how your opponents will try to game the system.
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November 1, 2009, 10:34 amGaryC says:
In the Philippines, there are artisans who start out with a gun to copy, a block of steel, and a hand file. It may take them a week or two, but the copy is functional. Not pretty, and not terribly accurate, but functional.
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November 1, 2009, 2:51 pmGaryC says:
If the felon-in-possession charge was federal, and the others were state, then there would have to be separate trials at different times anyway. Not that I think that it makes sense to have so many federal criminal statutes...
How binding is this general requirement? I suppose that a federal judge could rule that violating it would be a violation of due process, and I’m fairly confident that the 9th Circuit would agree, but has the Supreme Court ever ruled on it?
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November 2, 2009, 2:35 amBilly Oblivion says:
How do you think Cocaine, Heroin and (some) Meth enter the country? Have you heard of gangs like MS13?
MOST illegal aliens who come here are good and decent people (relative to their culture anyway) who want nothing more than a better life for themselves. These people should be provided with legal channels. A small percentage (*probably* close to 10%, I’ve heard estimates from police officers of 10%) of illegals are “problem children” of either the petty variety (drug dealers) or the more serious (B&E, gang activity etc.).
The biggest part of the problem is that this minority hides in, and preys on the majority that ARE decent people, and since they are here illegally they are often afraid to go to the police for help.
So yes, border enforcement–aka “controlling the border” is important in managing petty crime.
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November 3, 2009, 2:42 amVangel says:
The big elephant in the room is being missed.
The first thing that we need to do is to get rid of laws that make criminals out of people that do not initiate force or fraud against others and do not intrude on others and their property. Why should someone be arrested for smoking pot or using his/her body to earn money in a voluntary transaction? Getting rid of such laws would eliminate 90% or more of criminal charges in the system. That would leave resources to ensure that the laws that are left are taken seriously and punished fully.
The second thing that is required is to get rid of the state as a party that has primary standing when a crime is committed. When a con artist steals from a family the state is not a victim so it should not be the primary determinant of the appropriate punishment. It should not be the State of XX vs Jones but the Victims vs Jones. The federal government and states should certainly should not be collecting and keeping ‘fines’ when companies take actions that harm individuals because those fines need to go to the real victims instead.
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November 3, 2009, 9:11 am