When he invited me to post about crime and punishment, Eugene suggested that I might want to finish up with a response to comments. That seems like a good idea. So let me offer two general remarks, and some specific responses:
In general:
A. I can’t read Eugene’s mind, but I suspect that he invited me to guest-blog (despite our basic disagreements) for the same reason that I regularly follow this blog and other libertarian and conservative information channels. The basic lesson of Bayesian analysis is that you can learn only from information that disconfirms some part of your current belief set. But of course the natural tendency of the mind is to minimize cognitive dissonance by accepting confirming evidence and rejecting disconfirming evidence, and that tendency is emphasized when beliefs get to be badges of group membership.
This is a deeply unhealthy tendency, and it tends to defeat one of the basic evolutionary strategies of homo sapiens, which Karl Popper summed up as “letting our beliefs die in our place.” Unfortunately, it has been on full display in the comment threads to my posts, which consisted (when the comments related to the posts at all rather than merely ranting about unrelated topics) mostly of vigorous attempts to prove that the thoughts offered in the posts were worthless or wicked, and the poster an ill-intentioned idiot.
Eugene no doubt thought he was doing his readers a favor by offering them some reading that might challenge their precoceptions. There is little evidence in the comment thread that the VC readership shares that view, but it’s possible to hope that the comments are not a representative sample of reader reaction.
B. The suggestion that various non-punitive programs might control crime, and that doing so was preferable, ceteris paribus, to controlling crime by inflicting damage on offenders, met with an especially furious response, mostly centered on the phrase “liberal social engineering.” But the project of putting 1% of the adult population behind bars – an incarceration rate five times as high as any other advanced democracy, and five times as high as the U.S. ever had before 1975 – is itself a massive, massively risky, and expensive social-engineering project, and no less massive, risky, or expensive for never having been thought through. It also involves a completely unprecedented expansion of the power of the state over the individual.
If all taxation is theft, then the $200 billion required to support the current policing, adjudication, and corrections systems is just as much “stolen” as the much smaller sums that might be usefully expended on improving parental performance by poor young first-time mothers, removing lead from the environment, or improving classroom discipline. If people who call themselves fiscal conservatives understood that a sentence of life without parole imposed on an 18-year-old represented a present-value expenditure of $1 million, the enthusiasm for “throwing away the key” might be diminished. (An execution, including the due process required – but not sufficient – to prevent the execution of the innocent, costs more.)
In my view, crime at current levels is such a social problem that even substantial increase in the $200 billion criminal-justice budget would be justified by even modest decreases in crime. If we can spend an extra $10 billion a year to have reduced crime and reduced incarceration, so much the better.
Now for the specifics:
1. Evidence about the capacity of nurse-family partnerships to reduce offending by more than 50% (based on a randomized controlled trial) is here.
2. Evidence about the impact of lead on crime takes two forms: individual-level studies, and econometric studies. The results are consistent, and the effect sizes are large. Moreover, the biology is understood: lead, even at low levels, damages cognitive function, and lower-level cognitive functioning reduces deterrability, thus increasing crime. Moreover, lead does specific damage to impulse control.
Therefore, lead causes crime, and removing lead reduces crime. It does so more cost-effectively than increasing incarceration, and it has side-benefits rather than side-costs.
3. I have no doubt that a minimum legal drinking age of 21 reduces drinking among minors, and that relaxing that rule would increase drinking (and drinking-related problems) in that population. It also generates massive disobedience and the mass acquisition of false ID. Increased alcohol taxes are effective in reducing drinking, and especially in reducing heavy, problem drinking (since an extra tax of a dime a drink wouldn’t much bother someone who averages a drink a day). The biggest impacts are on heavy drinking by minors, whose incomes tend to be limited. A combination of relaxing the age restriction and raising the price could reduce heavy drinking while avoiding the criminalization of mass behavior.
GM Roper says:
Great guest post. There is ample evidence that, for example, the “war on drugs” has been lost for a long time, yet, we continue in a useless fight. Better to completely decriminalize certain drugs regarding possession and use, and levy taxes on the sale of the same.
On the other hand, production of and illegal distribution of should continue to have penalty in the courts.
This conservative would really like to see some changes in the way the so called war on drugs is fought. For example, possession (in Texas) of four ounces or less is a misdemeanor but five ounces gets you jail time. Stupid? I think so.
October 31, 2009, 1:44 pmCurt Fischer says:
“Disconfirms”?? What you view as the “basic lesson” of Bayesian analysis is only true if you assume that everyone has beliefs about everything. Maybe some of the comments in response to your posts came from close-minded ideologues who refuse to examine your evidence. But why waste time whining about such nonsense? Why respond at all? There were plenty of much more thought-out, reasonable comments. A response to those would have been much more persuasive.
Even granting arguendo that what you think Eugene thought is true, what did you expect? A long string of thank-you notes from readers? “Thank you for challenging my preconceptions!”. Perhaps many commenters believe an important function to writing comments is to challenge your preconceptions. In my experience here on the VC, wisdom can flow both from the conspirators to the commenters and “backwards” from the commenters to the conspirators. Granted, on the whole, the conspirators are probably more often sources of wisdom more than sinks, but they at least sometimes recognize that preconceptions can be challenged on both sides. Instead you dismiss commentariat’s criticisms as “vigorous attempts to prove that the thoughts offered in the posts were worthless or wicked”.
In short, your response here (1) seems remarkably thin-skinned, and (2) in my view, may even undermine the credibility of the points you have been making all week.
October 31, 2009, 2:00 pmPeteP says:
“and the poster an ill-intentioned idiot.”
I never said you were ill-intentioned :-) Although there is perhaps a fine line between ‘grossly misguided’ and ill-informed.
“Eugene no doubt thought he was doing his readers a favor by offering them some reading that might challenge their precoceptions. ”
Not knowing the man personally, it’s my impression that he favors free speech, even that which he disagrees with. I believe he wishes to promulgate same here in his blog.
“But the project of putting 1% of the adult population behind bars — an incarceration rate five times as high as any other advanced democracy,”
You mean like France, for instance ? Are you aware that nightly riots featuring car burnings are routine over there ? That the police dare not go into certain neighborhoods, even in squad-level SWAT teams ?
I’m about sick and tired of hearing people whine about ‘other countries are so advanced, the USA sucks so bad by comparison’, whether it relate to law enforcement, health care, ‘civil rights’. or anything else. If you want to bitch about ‘approaches to crime control’, I suggest you focus, for example, on Iran, where they cut your hand off in the public square for stealing a loaf of bread, or China, the world leader in executions by far, or the many muslim countries where a woman is thrown in jail and whipped for wearing pants or driving a car.
When you get THOSE little issues fixed, come back and bitch about the USA some more.
“Evidence about the capacity of nurse-family partnerships”
When we need some government-mandated-controlled nurse coming into our homes telling us what to do with our new family members, we’ll damned well ask for one.
“Evidence about the impact of lead on crime takes two forms” – again, go after the REAL offendors of environmental pollution and hazards in this world before you dare focus on the USA !
As to raising the price of alchohol – again, take your nanny state ‘We know what’s good for you better than you do’ elsewhere, to put it kindly.
I could go on, but I’m too pissed off, and you wouldn’t listen anyway.
You liberals NEVER have the stones to look at the REAL problems, which are specific to certain ‘cultures’, not ‘the lack of government interference and control’.
October 31, 2009, 2:06 pmRyan Waxx says:
It seems to me you’ve learned from the readership as little as you claim the readership has learned from you. If the answers were as easy as you think, someone else would have thought of them by now.
The few unique ideas you had were inadequately explained to the point that they amounted to little more than hand-waving. Sure, it’s a wonderful idea to reduce both black criminals and black victims… but for god’s sake, you don’t simply list it as a solution rather then as a problem to be solved.
October 31, 2009, 2:14 pmwesley says:
Wow. “A.” was mean and unhelpful. You might have been better served – it might have been more worthwhile and less wicked – if you had said nothing at all about the unproductive comments.
My belief in that makes this comment really ironic.
October 31, 2009, 2:21 pmfishbane says:
If you want to bitch about ‘approaches to crime control’, I suggest you focus, for example, on Iran, where [...]
When we need some government-mandated-controlled nurse coming into our homes telling us what to do with our new family members, we’ll damned well ask for one.
[..]
You liberals NEVER have the stones to look at the REAL problems, which are specific to certain ‘cultures’, [...]
I take it that Pete considers the US just about perfect, aside from those pesky liberals.
He also apparently likes his lead-befuddled children, at least until they need to be jailed, which isn’t a problem because of Iran and China.
For my part, I’m personally very glad that Kleiman was given this opportunity here – listening to a policy expert is always a gift, even if I happen to disagree from time to time. Surprising notions (such as lead crime) are only one of the gifts.
October 31, 2009, 2:24 pmfishbane says:
If the answers were as easy as you think, someone else would have thought of them by now.
Wow.
I’m amazed that you think that rolling back a big part of the drug war, revamping a significant portion of the economy, convincing various folks like, apparently, yourself, that their understanding of the cause and effect of crime, and then modifying a couple of hundred years of legal reasoning are “easy”.
What’s a hard problem where you live?
October 31, 2009, 2:28 pmKJ says:
I’m familiar with Kleiman’s work and ideas, and I am as sympathetic as anyone with libertarian first principles can be.
But this series has been the least persuasive I’ve seen him, ever.
Good, though, that he’s inclined to first examine his own performance!
October 31, 2009, 2:38 pmpdxlawyer says:
The nurse-family partnership link appears to be mis-directed.
Yes it was. Fixed now. Thanks! – MK
October 31, 2009, 1:44 pmnicehonesty says:
Your talk of high-minded goals like disconfirming beliefs and challenging precoceptions is belied by your actual behaviour.
You set the tone of the interaction in your responses to readers in your first post:
and
You spent the time and effort in the comment section to make these sorts of ad hominem attacks on commenters, but studiously avoided engaging the commenters who offered substantive criticisms of your posts, who requested that you provide supporting evidence or explanations for your more extreme and unusual claims, or who pointed out basic errors of fact (e.g. the gun show “loophole”).
October 31, 2009, 2:51 pmDavid Welker says:
Point (1) is a matter of opinion. However, I see no evidence for it. Pointing out that many of the comments were of low quality is to point out a fact. Pointing out facts does not make one “thin-skinned.”
Point (2) is a purely emotional response, disconnected from basic logic.
Here is your argument:
The author didn’t appreciate certain comments, which were extremely close-minded and unhelpful.
Therefore, his argument must be wrong. Note the assertion that the “points” (i.e. argument) may have somehow lost credibility.
I think it would be a lame argument to assert that an author loses credibility because he does not appreciate close-minded, ignorant, and primarily ideological comments that are unhelpful. Would someone who perceived high value in such ramblings be more credible? In fact, I think it enhances his credibility when he rejects such approaches.
But your argument descends even further into the abyss. The assertion that the argument itself (the “points you have been making all week”) is or may be weakened is completely unfounded. There is absolutely no logical connection between the fact that Mark Kleiman did not appreciate the close-minded, ignorant, and primarily ideological responses of some commenters to his blog posts and the merits of his argument.
October 31, 2009, 2:56 pmDave H says:
I’m as libertarian as they come, and the main problem I had with the comments to these posts was that they entirely ignored the point of the posts. Even if you don’t like the idea of government-sponsored nurses visiting homes of single mothers, it might be useful to know if that helps. Maybe then you could support such programs on your own – if you’re not more interested in placing blame than you are in reducing crime.
And while PeteP’s comment at least acknowledges the points made in the post, it also makes up some points that I don’t see made anywhere. I think the US is the greatest country ever, but I also think it is a worthwhile goal to reduce crime. If you acknowledge that lead results in increased crime, how silly is it to say “well, other countries have bigger environmental problems, so come back to me when you’ve fixed those”. And putting 1% of the population in jail isn’t a victory for anyone – the people in jail, their victims, or the rest of society.
October 31, 2009, 3:07 pmyankee says:
I’m a bit disappointed by this post. The previous post was a grab-bag of 61(!) policy proposals, most of which had nothing to do with anything Kleiman said previously. Some of them (“shift the burdens of crime and punishment away from otherwise disadvantaged groups”) weren’t even proposals, just goals. I was hoping Kleiman’s last post would provide at least a brief discussion of how those proposals related to the points he’d made earlier, but instead he chose to complain about the worthless comments.
Granted, many of the comments were worthless, but this is the Internet.
October 31, 2009, 3:17 pmMark Arnold says:
Fifteen years ago, I was appointed to represent an inmate on death row to handle his federal habeas challenge. I quickly discovered that there is no more incoherent body of law than that involoving death penalty cases. I also discovered how wise George Will was when he observed that conservatives need to remember that the death penalty is another government program. So is the war on drugs and mandatory minimum sentences and three-strikes-and-you’re-out laws. They may be constitutional; that does not make them wise.
October 31, 2009, 3:17 pmOrder of the Coif says:
Mark posted:
Not so. Your first 3 gun control conclusions sound so much like the the PC Liberal “line” on gun control (and Brady Campaign press releases), that well-informed readers picked right up on it. It seemed like a failure of information and/or analysis (especially since gun control isn’t your issue nor a major point of discussion in your book). So, I thought you might like to learn the facts from the premier Criminologist in the area. Therefore, I posted directions to his book.
I think you are uninformed, not wicked.
October 31, 2009, 3:31 pmChrisTS says:
Well, I enjoyed the posts if not all the comments. Certainly, if one is thin-skinned, one might nonetheless have something worthwhile to say.
I suggest MK go over to the thread for his post on race & classs and punishment. I am impressed by the amount of partisan-role bending in evidence over there, and it clearly is inspired by his OP.
October 31, 2009, 3:45 pmLead (pipe) Lawyer says:
How can lead possibly cause crime when 50 years ago millions of homes had pure lead pipes? Now they worry about a tiny lead seam on a copper pipe, but when I grew up the pipe feeding water to our building (and all the others I saw in Chicago) was pure solid lead.
Elimination of lead in the last 50 years should have resulted in an enormous drop in crime but it obviously hasn’t. There must be something else to it. Maybe lead only affects certain people with certain DNA. Like alcohol affects native Americans differently than others.
October 31, 2009, 3:53 pmAndrew Lazarus says:
PeteP’s comment illustrates well the cognitive dissonance that poor Prof. Kleiman suffers. The point, to Pete, of our expensive prison system is not really that related to crime, it’s to punishing certain ‘cultures’. I don’t know why someone who accuses Kleiman of insufficient stones can’t bring himself to explain in plainer English that his solution to social problems is jailing Negroes and has to say ‘cultures’, down to the apostrophes. Or maybe I do understand, and it explains why the modern American conservative carries a strong whiff (stench?) of Jefferson Davis.
October 31, 2009, 4:00 pmAndrew Lazarus says:
Because it is easier to eat paint than pipes?
October 31, 2009, 4:03 pmChrisTS says:
Not only is it easier to eat paint than to eat lead, lead paint is more accessible to kids than pipes in the walls or under the floorboards.
Furthermore, lead toxicity increases as levels of other contaminants increase. So, an increasingly toxic environment aggravates the effects of lead [and most other toxins].
October 31, 2009, 4:09 pmMark Field says:
That’s a pretty safe assumption in any thread. As Chris suggests, a lot of times it takes a while for points to sink in (I have a brother like that — he’ll deny my points any validity at all, then adopt them himself 6 months from now). The most helpful thing about the internet is that out of the 90% dross, you may get a few good comments that force you to re-think a position (or vice versa). But it’s a long war, not a short one.
October 31, 2009, 4:16 pmTNeloms says:
I didn’t follow the comments on the previous posts (I just read the posts, which I liked), but if this was typical of how people were responding, I understand the reaction in this post, even though the post comes across as close-minded.
What do Iran or China have to do with this conversation? I don’t think it was suggested anywhere that we adopt either country’s approach to crime.
This is totally ridiculous. These posts have been about what would make good policy in the US, and the comparisons to other countries have simply served to illustrate that objectively we are lacking in certain areas. The fact that other countries are worse than the US does not in any way make it not worthwhile to try to make the US better. Would you say these statements to your Senator or Representative? Should they not worry about policy in the US because other countries are worse? Then why do you make these comments to people who inform your Senator and Representative?
Do you not believe that lead has the claimed effect? Why?
I don’t know what conclusion is meant to be drawn from this statement, unless you’re calling for *more* social engineering. Let’s say your right that certain cultures are to blame for these problems. Then what do we do? Destroy these cultures? Change (socially engineer!) these cultures? Your comment serves to simply assign blame, which is totally irrelevant to the topic of these posts, which is how to make things better.
October 31, 2009, 4:22 pmJim W says:
I think the posters above have said a lot of what needs saying (especially Order of the Coif, directly above and KJ and PeteP further above), so there’s not much I can add.
My overall impression of Kleiman from his guest contributions, especially the final non-sequitur post with its long wish list is that he lacks the background to understand how to implement his goals or to understand why most of them are horrible ideas. The worse possibility is that he does have the background but he’s simply too lazy to think about or research his suggestions thoroughly enough to see the obvious problems.
Kleiman, it’s especially galling that someone of your supposed intellectual strength will suggest vague changes without an examination of
a) Why things are that way in the first place. Ie, why aren’t you assuming that the “problems” you point out are solutions to worse problems? The world is often a choice between bad and less bad. Putting large numbers of black criminals in jail is bad, but what are the alternatives? Letting them go so they may continue to commit crimes? Incarcerate innocent white people to even the numbers out?
b) How your suggestions will implement themselves. This isn’t just a nitpick. This is the real meat of the problem. If anyone knew how to rehabilitate hardened criminals instead of keeping them locked up or executed, they would be doing it now. If anyone knew how to fix the crime problem in the black community, they’d be doing it now. Every one of your (on its face) good suggestions has been brought forth before, but no one knows how to accomplish them without causing worse problems.
c) Whether your suggestions have been tried before. Come the fuck on. I can’t believe you never came across a single attempt in the past 40 years to address crime problems in black neighborhoods, nor any data about the success of particular programs. Also, are you telling me that you performed more than 5 minutes of research but were unable to find a single rebuttal explaining why “closing the gun show loophole” might not be a useful policy to implement for reducing crime? People jumped all over you because this is incredible laziness on your part.
And finally, this post reeks of butthurt. People didn’t lap up your bullshit so you’re accusing us of being close-minded. No. You tried to handwave away all the obvious problems with your suggestions but people immediately saw through your platitutdes to the underlying lack of merit. You have no one to blame but yourself.
October 31, 2009, 4:25 pmDoug says:
My question is if the paper about lead that was linked to the use of nurse-family relationships is correct in that lead by in large is nonexistent (ie removal of lead from gasoline) then why would we need a nurse to establish a relationship with a family? Is there some other goal?
October 31, 2009, 4:27 pmPeteP says:
Lazarus – you put words in my mouth I did not speak ( or type ).
Bloods and Crips et al ( black ), Sorenos, Nortenos, SI-13, Mexican Mafia, La Eme, et al ( brown aka Hispanic ), Hells Angels / Breed / Pagans / Warlocks et al ( white ), neo-nazi’s of whatever ilk ( white ) – makes no difference to me. These are ‘sub cultures’ that have arisen in our country.
There are certain ‘cultures’ ( as much as you wish to ignore the fact because you think mentioning it is ‘racist’ ) where 50 + % illegitmacy is ‘the norm’, where high school drop-out rates of 50 + percent are routine, where it’s routine to be able to name many many family members that have been shot in gang wars, or are in prison, where 12 year olds with handguns are ‘normal’. where having your actual father in your life ( or even knowning his name sand court-ordered DNA test ) is exceptional, etc etc.
These ‘cultures’ ( with no offense intended towards Petri dishes world wide ) are a HUGE HUGE HUGE part of what is destroying our society.
If you insist on calling this ‘racism’, that is your problem, not mine.
October 31, 2009, 4:37 pmCan't find a good name says:
Am I correct to say that this post is missing a title?
October 31, 2009, 4:37 pmOren says:
I for one, am thankful for having my notions challenged and thankful that you took the time to post. I found the posts insightful, even where I disagree with the conclusions.
October 31, 2009, 4:44 pmTNeloms says:
So you agree that this is in fact a problem, and is destroying our society. Then what is your proposal to fix it?
October 31, 2009, 4:44 pmLead (pipe) Lawyer says:
Because it is easier to eat paint than pipes?
Then why is lead banned in pipes and pipe solder? Lead paint was banned in 1978. Why do we need a new movement to ban lead in things?
October 31, 2009, 4:50 pmMike McDougal says:
I did not follow all of Kleiman’s posts, but I followed some of them. As I posted before, I think the central problem is a political one. Some of Kleiman’s proposals might work, some might not. But virtually none of them will be tried if they can be shot down with a simple tough-on-crime message.
October 31, 2009, 5:02 pmyankee says:
I get the sense that PeteP’s goal is to assign blame rather than to make things better. Either that or it’s supposed to be a covert argument for not trying to make things better: because black people have a “bad culture,” people in power shouldn’t care about black crime victims.
October 31, 2009, 5:03 pmChrisTS says:
No, we need to have more effective removal of lead from all buildings: perhaps especially from those buildings occupied by children most vulnerable to toxins because of multiple toxicities, stressful environments, and inadequate or no healthcare. These are the buildings in which poor kids live and attend school, where peeling paint and unrepaired damage to walls and woodwork further increase the exposure.
(Lead pipes are dangerous, but they are not the most available source of lead toxicity in children.)
October 31, 2009, 5:06 pmChrisTS says:
JimW:
I think you are not a regular on VC. It is not my blog, but as a daily reader, I would like to point out to you that foulmouthed screamers are not generally welcomed.
October 31, 2009, 5:10 pmChrisTS says:
I posed this to a criminal justice seminar once:
If we could give every pregnant mom a pill and every infant a shot so that all infants would be neuro-healthy and resistant to the ill effects of their surroundings, and we knew this would end all criminality due to those kinds of factors, would you approve of that?
I wonder how folks, here, would respond.
October 31, 2009, 5:13 pmyankee says:
Well, none of them will be followed if nobody advocates for them either. And some of his ideas, like swift and certain punishment, can be reconciled with a tough-on-crime message.
I’m what you might call a minimalizationist: I care about minimizing the amount of crime. So if Kleiman’s proposals work, I’m all for them; if they don’t, I’m against them. His proposed alternative policing strategies (e.g., focus on swift and certain punishment, focus on high-rate repeat offenders, make a point of going after one group of offenders until they’re gone, then move on to another group) sound like they have promise. A lot of his other proposals (“charter prisons?”) sound bizarre and he’s offered no evidence that they’d be a good idea.
October 31, 2009, 5:14 pmTNeloms says:
Well if he just wants to assign blame and use that as a reason to let them hurt themselves, then he and I only have a disagreement in values. But what got me is that he said that this is a problem that is destroying our society. So either he accidentally used the wrong hysterical rhetoric, or he’s not just being selfish but rather complaining for its own sake without offering an alternative.
October 31, 2009, 5:28 pmTim says:
We would do what we do with every other virtuous idea like that. We would hope that the market produced it cheaply enough for you and everyone else to buy it, and if not, we would start businesses to try to extract the economic profit, thus driving the price down.
On a separate note, I think that most of the comments here are grossly inappropriate, ad hominem attacks on a guy with a fundamentally sound idea. I concur with some of the criticisms of his ideas that should and must be thought out more carefully to their logical conclusion, but I believe that the tone and general nastyness is unprofessional and unnecessary.
October 31, 2009, 5:41 pmJoe says:
I have no doubt that a minimum legal drinking age of 21 reduces drinking among minors, and that relaxing that rule would increase drinking (and drinking-related problems) in that population. It also generates massive disobedience and the mass acquisition of false ID.
There seems to me a noticeable difference between making the drinking age 21 and not having a minimum drinking age at all. I also don’t see how the fake id problem (& won’t they get them anyway? I reckon many private clubs, e.g., will still have age requirements) is a good trade off for the increase of drinking and drinking related problems.
Likewise, putting aside the fake id for clubs and such, people under 21 will find various other laws to break on large scale, including getting pot away from co-ops, home gardens and people who are willing to give it away for nothing. So, since the id and low breaking benefits are limited, I don’t see the cost/benefit value here.
BTW, “A” comes off as snide. I have seen critics annoyed at how you respond to criticism as well, so you might also want to apply it to yourself.
October 31, 2009, 5:47 pmOrder of the Coif says:
Someone posted:
These ideas do have a lot of promise. They are virtually identical to David Kennedy’s proposals tried SUCCESSFULLY in Boston and Minneapolis in the 1990′s. Kennedy (now at John Jay College in NYC) has numerous articles describing the effective implementation of these proposals.
They aren’t new, they have been demonstrated to work, but the Police simply will not stay the course. Maybe it’s not as much fun as terrorizing young mothers with children in the car (remember the Texas case in the S Ct a few years back), or maybe the police administrators are afraid success will reduce their budgets and influence, I don’t know. But I have watched the Minneapolis PD repeatedly adopt the same basic strategies, with great PR and a new name and new faces, only to abandon it a year or two later just as it’s success became clear.
October 31, 2009, 6:02 pmRyan Waxx says:
As we all know: when you can’t rebut the substance, criticize the tone. JimW has provided the most direct summing up of the problems of both this post and the entire thread of them yet.
I just want to know where the devil you got “screamer” from.
October 31, 2009, 6:08 pmArthurKirkland says:
Far more criticism here than was observed with respect to a recent not-ready-for-prime-time guest-blogger whose arguments were juvenile (roughly the third-year associate level — quite fitting, if you think about it), whose writing was haphazard, and whose scholarship was scant.
Can anyone explain this?
October 31, 2009, 7:12 pmNathaniel says:
I think it was pretty ballsy writing all this stuff here on VC where Mark probably (hopefully?) knew the reactions were going to be, shall we say, less than immediately supportive. I dunno if I would have had the courage to do something like that.
But I believe Mark did himself a disservice and set himself up for failure in his basic approach. He started the series by talking about crime in ways that raise red flags in Libertarians and conservatives by using terms closely associated with liberals, statists, and pro-welfare folks, and then he criticized commenters’ perceived failure to listen to his arguments rather than provide a more gentle introduction to them, or more attempts at persuasion.
I mean, if you sound like a liberal on a blog filled with Libertarians and conservatives, you’re either going to have to move heaven and earth to prove to them the merit of your ideas, or else resign yourself to a lot of teeth-gnashing. Mark seemed first stunned then embittered at the negative reactions he encountered.
Then, even more disastrously, with the VC readership still wary and untrusting, Mark listed his ideal policy prescriptions in the form of a bulleted list of “wouldn’t-it-be-nice” ideas, some of which sounded great, and other of which seemed ludicrous, and all without any explanation or justification at all.
It made us think that he believed his his ideas to be so self-evident that they didn’t need any explanation, which was of course belied by the fact that at least a few (the private transfer “loophole” for example) were simply factually wrong and have been long debunked.
October 31, 2009, 8:03 pmfrissell says:
nurse as a “parenting coach”
You should be aware that such a proposal strikes many conservatives and libertarians as totalitarian and it would likely cause an exceedingly adverse response. That would include an armed response in some cases. Many on our side are opposed to state intervention in parent-child interaction at any age.
October 31, 2009, 8:46 pmKieth Nissen says:
Your “specifics” no. 1 and no. 2 are interesting but (starting with number one) demonstrating that a nurse in a young family’s home is effective at deterring crime (by the newborn, I presume) would be a very lengthy program. I am skeptical and I think the claim needs more explanation (link didn’t work for me either).
Lead (item no. 2) is a toxic substance. Has it been demonstrated that lead poisoning leads to more criminal behavior than toluene, acetone, crack cocaine? arsenic? it seems like the claim is startling enough that it needs more explanation. Lead poisoning has been a known killer for fifty years now (at least); where did the revelation come from that it also leads to criminality?
I think you can get a better reception from the VC commenters if you expand on the economic benefits of your proposal. All these people in jail is surely not a good thing and we (Americans) have to figure out a way to safely reduce that incarcerated population.
If you really want to be popular at VC, mention that you like to carry a firearm.
October 31, 2009, 9:42 pmAndrew Lazarus says:
Oddly, visiting nurses (like doctor house calls) were a lot more common a generation ago than now. But you see, back then, they were pure as the driven snow nurses. Now who knows what you’ll get: probably evil immigrants carrying Obama-indoctrination drugs in their stethoscopes. I mean, seriously: neo-natal checkups are totalitarian?!
The fact the American right is drowning in paranoia, racism and sadism complicates making good policy, but it doesn’t make the “conservative” views very popular.
October 31, 2009, 10:13 pmnicehonesty says:
Can you provide any links to these state-mandated nurse’s visits you claim were so prevalent a generation ago, Lazarus?
I’ve never heard of them before.
October 31, 2009, 11:08 pmDave Hardy says:
The problem with a popular blog, which this is, is that commentors can outnumber posters by fifty or a hundred to one. Even when both have to have lives, this is a rather unequal match. I’d agree that we over-incarcerate and that both that and the death penalty tend to be quite arbitrary, which may be a product of the political process (just as funding levels for different diseases tend to reflect public relations emphasis more than death rates). If I had a problem, it would that in having dealt with criminals/sociopaths on a number of occasions … most of them are both stupid and ruthless. This makes it hard to sway them with reason.
I knew one who was probably not even really sociopathic. But a drunken argument with her first husband ended with him trying to kill her and her boyfriend (reason for the argument) killing him. Then she married boyfriend, stabbed him. Police understood, told her they’d not charge her so long as he lived, which he did. Finally got killed while driving DUI, onto wrong side of road ending in head-on at high speed. She was actually an agreeable and pleasant person… under most conditions. Just not while drinking gin and grapefruit juice (shudder). And appreciated that she had a problem with anger control and tried to manage it, just wasn’t always successful. How her kids turned out I have no idea, but it would have taken more than a nurse/coach to change that.
October 31, 2009, 11:24 pmKen Arromdee says:
We have another name for “challenging their preconceptions”.
It’s called trolling.
And “I did it just to get people to think” is a very old and tired excuse for trolling. Claiming you’re trying to get people to think is not an excuse for bad research, bad logic, or any of the other kinds of problems which would be fatal flaws if the arguments were meant to support a point rather than to challenge preconceptions. And it’s arrogant to challenge preconceptions and not expect some of your own to be challenged at the same time.
November 1, 2009, 12:54 amKen Arromdee says:
If failure to meet the standards of a person checking up on you can result in loss of your children, then yes, they’re totalitarian. There’s no need to assume that someone who thinks so is a conspiracy theorist.
November 1, 2009, 12:57 amAndrew Lazarus says:
They weren’t, of course, mandated—they were a typical feature of the health system. I guess profit-seeking insurers found it better to shift the eventual costs of lost first-time mothers to society at large. I suppose you could shut the door on them, but a new mother—you’re all guys, right? And if not childless, let the gf/wife handle Junior—is not likely to turn down the help. I remember a neonatal visiting nurse telling us about a time she washed dishes for the exhausted mom, because that’s what the mom needed most.
Now, of course, she carries Communistic propaganda.
Twenty-five percent of the US is becoming unhinged.
November 1, 2009, 1:02 amAndrew Lazarus says:
Hunh? If you abuse your children, the state already has the power to take them away. Do you want to argue this is totalitarian? Like any process (including the criminal justice system) there will be errors in its administration, and in both directions. It’s not uncommon for kids to end up dead when social workers cluelessly didn’t move fast enough. I still can’t see what’s so scary about seeing if the baby is getting enough milk, the parents know how to change diapers, look for signs of failure-to-thrive, etc.
It’s really quite amazing. There is the real history of these institutions, and then there are the perfervid nightmares of the True Americans who see their independence subverted by the social-fascist who somehow got elected over the old white guy.
November 1, 2009, 1:09 amyankee says:
Kleiman called for state-provided nurses’s visits, not state-mandated nurse’s visits. Big difference.
November 1, 2009, 1:12 amBrian K says:
3. I have no doubt that a minimum legal drinking age of 21 reduces drinking among minors, and that relaxing that rule would increase drinking (and drinking-related problems) in that population. It also generates massive disobedience and the mass acquisition of false ID. Increased alcohol taxes are effective in reducing drinking, and especially in reducing heavy, problem drinking (since an extra tax of a dime a drink wouldn’t much bother someone who averages a drink a day). The biggest impacts are on heavy drinking by minors, whose incomes tend to be limited. A combination of relaxing the age restriction and raising the price could reduce heavy drinking while avoiding the criminalization of mass behavior.
for me, this raises an interesting question. is it possible to base the alcohol tax on the age of the buyer? i.e. someone who is 19 buying a bottle of vodka will pay $x while someone who is 43 will pay $y, where x>>y. this would have a deterrent effect on underage binge drinking but an insignificant effect on older people who are much less at risk. has something like this ever been tried? would if be constitutional? sellers are already required to check ID so it wouldn’t pose an extra burden on that end.
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November 1, 2009, 1:25 ammattski says:
Maybe “substance” is in the eye of the beholder. What looks like substance to you looks like lead-impaired thinking to me. Here’s a sample of JimW’s “reasoning” which seems to impress you:
Can I tell you something, Ryan? That is an argument based on imagination and quite literally nothing else. If it had any merit then no unsolved problem would ever be solved.
Also, maybe “screamer” refers to such words as “fuck” and “bullshit.” Just a guess.
November 1, 2009, 1:44 amNeil C. Reinhardt says:
1. Kleiman IS THIN SKINNED or he would NOT delete posts in his OWN blog about the pro Obama bisas
in MSM. & a list of over 150 documented lies Obama has told so far.
While I am a very blunt and untactful sometimes sarcastic person, one post he deleted from a gauyu named “Fred” simply said something to the effect of:
“Neil, all of ODUMA”S Lies make me sick!”
2. I presented TWO items which could be done QUICLY to both reduce the number of people in prison and the Billions they cost.
HE TALKS about rejecting things which do not fit people previously held views and then he turns around and does EXACTLY that himself!
Does the word HYPOCRITE ring a bell?
November 1, 2009, 1:46 amNeil C. Reinhardt says:
Amazing!
Someone is SO STUPID as to say Eugene is Trolling when it is HIS BLOG?
Talk about needing to learn how to think? He is a perfect example of someone who does not.
November 1, 2009, 1:58 amnicehonesty says:
They weren’t, of course, mandated—they were a typical feature of the health system. I guess profit-seeking insurers found it better to shift the eventual costs of lost first-time mothers to society at large. I suppose you could shut the door on them, but a new mother—you’re all guys, right? And if not childless, let the gf/wife handle Junior—is not likely to turn down the help. I remember a neonatal visiting nurse telling us about a time she washed dishes for the exhausted mom, because that’s what the mom needed most.
Lazarus, can you provide some links to evidence of these once-a-month nurse’s visits (for the course of the entire pregnancy and for two years afterward, which is what Kleiman’s cited studies are based on) that you claim were prevalent a generation ago?
I cannot find any evidence that these in-home nurses’s visits commonly occurred as you claimed.
November 1, 2009, 2:36 amCareless says:
So in the end, he responds to nothing but a couple of the most contentless responses to his posts, 100% ignores the most obvious way to reduce crime down the road, and ignores all criticism of his suggestions?
November 1, 2009, 2:47 amnicehonesty says:
Kleiman called for state-provided nurses’s visits, not state-mandated nurse’s visits. Big difference.
I didn’t see where he specified one way or the other, yankee, but if these visits are not mandated then they [obviously] will not have the beneficial effect that Kleiman is claiming they will have.
If the laundry list was intended to be just a set of suggestions for voluntary actions by individual citizens, and not a list of state-mandated actions and changes to actual laws, it probably could have been shortened to just “Everyone should try to be a good person.”
November 1, 2009, 2:47 amsgi says:
It starts at the beginning. Disadvantaged children come from disadvantaged families, who also come from disadvantaged families. Generation after generation, disadvantaged adults create more disadvantaged children.
The problem with most of the author’s ideas is that they don’t address the source of the problems, which is the family. It is probably fair to say that most of these families receive social assistance which is not adequate to support themselves. While receiving social assistance and not working, they have a lot of time to boost their incomes by committing crimes like drug dealing and theft. Their children are neglected, some go to prison, some become addicted, or worse.
Perhaps social assistance should come with a lot of strings attached. Instead of handing over free cash and food stamps every month, perhaps social services should provide child care and job search/job training services, even educational opportunities, so that people who are disadvantaged have a real chance to change the course of their lives.
It would be very expensive in the short term. And it would not be easy. No doubt many would need to complete their high school education first, then get some vocational training, then find a job that pays enough to support themselves and their dependents. They may have to move out of a bad neighborhood or leave an abusive spouse or even abusive parents. They may need alcohol and drug counseling, the services of psychologists. In short, some would need a small army of dedicated people and even then some would not make it.
It’s a daunting task but intense intervention is required at the source. Tweeking the justice and prison systems isn’t the only answer. By the time these young men and women are in the system there are already years of established bad habits, learned by observation of their families and peers. We’ve got to get them before then.
By the way, I am not a social worker or a lawyer and I hate the idea of people meddling in other peoples lives. Ideally people should be responsible for themselves and their dependents but exceptions must be made when entire generations are at risk.
November 1, 2009, 2:34 amGaryC says:
If you want a swift and certain punishment, then you have to come up with a punishment that can be implemented in hours or even minutes, does not cause any permanent health effects or risk of death, but is proven to be extremely effective in changing behaviour.
Hey, what about water-boarding?
November 1, 2009, 2:56 amJim W says:
Concealed carry and home ownership of firearms actually produces extremely swift punishment so long as the victims are willing to use them. The felon is shot while in the midst of his crime and traditionally expires at the scene. The more often this happens, the less eager criminals are to commit confrontation crimes. And since they were in the midst of committing the crime, there’s no question of their guilt and thus no due process concerns.
Regarding disadvantage, it has nothing to do with money. I came from worse poverty than most criminals in this country, yet no one in my family commits crimes. Bad culture causes criminality, not bad credit ratings. And there’s nothing the government can do to fix this because the government is a notoriously inept parent.
November 1, 2009, 4:42 amDudley Sharp says:
There is no doubt that we can be smarter and more efficient in our criminal justice practices.
However, we must be sure that our assumptions have a factual basis.
“Prisons are a bargain, by any measure”
http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/1996/0116crime_john-j–diiulio–jr.aspx
Also, many of the cost studies, alleging that the death penalty is more expensive that the death penalty, have little foundation in reality.
“Cost Savings: The Death Penalty”
http://homicidesurvivors.com/2009/05/07/cost-savings-the-death-penalty.aspx
Duke (North Carolina) Death Penalty Cost Study: Let’s be honest
http://prodpinnc.blogspot.com/2009/06/duke-north-carolina-death-penalty-cost.html
and
the death penalty would, almost always, be less expensive than a true life sentence, if states could just repeat the Virginia model.
65% of those sent to death row are executed, 15% of cases are overtuned and executions occur after 5-7 years on death row.
November 1, 2009, 6:15 amBT says:
I did not get a chance to read all of Mr. Kleiman’s posts; however, I still don’t see how incarcerating 1% (actually about 0.8%) of the total population is excessive, especially when you factor in illegal aliens and the mentally ill. How we treat the mentally ill is a disgrace but that is a subject for another day.
The one point that Kleiman raises that I don’t get is lead paint which has been banned for residential use since 1978. I spend alot of time in some funky buildings on the south and west sides of Chicago and I have never seen lead paint. I am not saying that it is not there but I just haven’t seen it. My understanding is that Fannie and Freddy and HUD will not make a loan on a building with lead paint. It is hard to believe that many of these children are still living in homes or apartment buildings that have lead paint exposure. The other source could be plumbing but older plumbing is galvanized steel, not lead, at least in Chicago.
I am all for changing the drug laws in this country as are many of the commenters. That to me would be a major step in the right direction.
November 1, 2009, 6:49 amKen Arromdee says:
It’s not totalitarian if you assume a 100% objective system where the personal biases of the nurse never affect anything, where innocent people never get accused, and where the nurse is a computer programmed never to see anything private that doesn’t directly affect the child.
If you don’t assume that, then it’s a big totalitarian step. By your reasoning, we should be fine with state-mandated cameras in every home too. After all, if you commit a crime, the state has the power to punish you; the cameras just make it easier to get caught and you have no right not to get caught. And of course the police would never abuse the cameras for anything or invade your privacy.
Because those aren’t the only things the state-mandated nurses are going to look for. They’ll end up micromanaging every aspect of the child’s life with the impliict threat “if you don’t obey, we’ll take your children. You may get them back in five years if you have a lot of money and you can convince a court.”
November 1, 2009, 7:57 amKen Arromdee says:
Why do you think it’s impossible to troll on your own blog (or on a blog where you’re a guest)? In many ways it’s an ideal place to troll–for one thing you have no worries about ever being moderated or kicked off for trolling.
“I did it to challenge your preconceptions” is a variation of “I did it to get you to think”, which is a classic trolling excuse. If you really want to get people to think, it’s absolutely not an excuse to explain away criticism or to write things that are not as well thought out as normal arguments.
November 1, 2009, 8:08 amCheckEnclosed says:
People who are too unprepared to have children — too young, too poor, too uneducated, too poorly supported by family & friends — should be given strong incentives not to have children and encouraged to have abortions (free, paid for by taxpayers).
But since people who call themselves Conservatives, but are mostly Religious, will keep the above from happening, we will continue to have unwanted children brought into the world by those least prepared and least able to care and provide for them, with predictable costs to the rest of us.
Given these facts, prenatal and perinatal coaching may be a second best solution,and should not be derided just because it sounds Liberal.
November 1, 2009, 8:46 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Wait.
I thought we Conservatives hated brown folks and the poor.
Now I’m told that we’re inexplicably blocking them from being murdered pre-birth, as they should be.
Wow, I can’t keep up.
November 1, 2009, 8:56 ammattski says:
???
Ken, you appear unable to imagine any middle ground between hypothetical extremes. And the result, clearly demonstrated by your misrepresentations of the positions of others, is that you argue with the simplified cartoons in your mind and not with the actual people who put forth reasonable arguments which, to you, aren’t “normal.”
November 1, 2009, 8:59 amBruce says:
I would be interested in seeing posts from VC’ers that substantively address some of Kleiman’s ideas (Eugene? Orin?)
November 1, 2009, 9:27 amThere are so many straw men (thanks especially to PeteP) in the comments that the VC could qualify for agricultural subsidies.
David Chesler says:
I was part of the silent plurality in this series because mostly I agreed. Gun control? Hard to figure, so I let it pass. Lead paint? It’s out of gasoline, that should make a big difference. They keep lowering the standards. Intact paint (which is undoubtedly under the paint in my 1955 house) isn’t a big deal, but if I ever test for it I’ll be in for tens of thousands of dollars of repairs; similarly all those rules on secondhand stuff that kids might get cause waste and loss.
Home nurses? I’ve been mugged by the government on that one already. My state’s child protective department has more files per capita, and fewer prosecutions; every time I’ve had to deal with them it’s a fishing expedition (“It appears you did not beat your child, but your housekeeping doesn’t meet the standards of any hotel I’d stay in.”) I think my parents had a doulla for a week (after the week Mom and I were in the hospital.)
November 1, 2009, 9:33 amCato The Elder says:
Whatever the outcome of this debate, you can be assured that your typical leftist will come out of it feeling self-righteous, vindicated by his own reality. AJL, you continue to embarrass yourself.
November 1, 2009, 9:43 amRichard Nieporent says:
People who are too unprepared to have children — too young, too poor, too uneducated, too poorly supported by family & friends — should be given strong incentives not to have children and encouraged to have abortions (free, paid for by taxpayers).
Next you will be advocating the sterilization of poor people. After all “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
November 1, 2009, 9:44 amOren says:
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to offer it to them on the taxpayer dime — save us a pretty penny.
November 1, 2009, 10:26 amChrisTS says:
Mattski:
Yup. When combined with poor or no argumentation, this qualifies as ‘screaming’ for me.
Ryann may have different standards for attributions of ‘screaming’ than I do; he certainly has very different standards for substantive argumentation. As he did not respond to my ascription of ‘foulmouthed,’ I take it we agree on that one.
November 1, 2009, 11:04 amChrisTS says:
As to the ‘list’ on the previous post:
I took this to be, indeed, a list of all the possible means we might consider to reduce crime. Exploring all of them would require a book, at least. Offering only some might seem to invite criticisms of incompleteness, or lack of imagination, or bias. Not that anyone would respond in such ways.
November 1, 2009, 11:06 amAndrew Lazarus says:
Well, nice, you could Google “neonatal visiting nurse”. I already supplied one link.
I did not say these visits were common; I said they were more common than they are now. Given your confusion between provided and mandated, I’m starting to wonder about Obama Derangement Syndrome attacking your retinas—you might want to get that checked if you have insurance.
Prenatal and neonatal care are associated with favorable outcomes, not concentration camps. Who could have guessed.
November 1, 2009, 11:17 amAndrew Lazarus says:
Yes, with Obama-nurses, if Baby hasn’t been tattooed with the Mark of the Beast, the state will take them and do it anyway. Can you point to the onerous standards that the new mothers will have to meet? Are they going to require/prohibit cloth diapers? Organic strained carrots—or else? It’s really a pity that policy discussions have to revolve around bizarre Beck-fueled fantasies.
Incidentally, prenatal care is a pretty good example of what Kleiman is talking about. The “conservative” way is to prosecute crack-addicted mothers afterwards. Now, if you can explain why this would be better, or cheaper, than nurses trying to get expectant mothers off crack first, I’m all ears.
November 1, 2009, 11:26 amAllan Walstad says:
I tried to read all of Kleiman’s suggestions, but it just seems like such a mish-mash. To the extent that he moves in the direction of legalizing drugs, he’s onto one of the most important things we can do–and, don’t you know, it’s something we can do to increase individual liberty. “Swift and certain punishment” becomes difficult to achieve (at least in a society where individual rights are taken seriously) when there is a huge volume of crime. Some of that crime is purely artificial, the result of pols presuming to impose on people’s right to live their own lives and make their own choices–including use of recreational drugs. We know that prohibition drives up the price and puts the courts off-limits in settling disputes among dealers and customers. The result is not that the trade dries up, but that it becomes dominated by violent criminal gangs.
If lead really is still a substantial environmental hazard, then ameliorative measures make sense. Still, why wasn’t crime vastly more rampant decades ago when lead paint, pipes, and gas additives were ubiquitous? How large can the effect of remaining lead be?
Visiting nurses? Fine. Let Kleiman contribute to charitable organizations that offer visiting nurses free or for reduced cost. Let him solicit contributions from others. Line up a movie star or NFL star to promote the project. Same with the hypothetical idea from way back in the thread, “If we could give every pregnant mom a pill and every infant a shot so that all infants would be neuro-healthy and resistant to the ill effects of their surroundings, and we knew this would end all criminality due to those kinds of factors, would you approve of that?” Sure. Set up a charitable organization to supply the pill/shot free or cheap to all those mothers who want it.
November 1, 2009, 11:36 amyankee says:
Do you have any evidence this will happen? My guess is that the answer is ‘no.’
November 1, 2009, 12:17 pmKen Arromdee says:
There’s nothing wrong with nurses trying to get expectant mothers off of crack. All you have to do is figure out a way to guarantee that the nurses would only look for crack addiction and such and cannot threaten to take away children based on problems like the one already described by David Chesler. Good luck coming up with the guarantee.
November 1, 2009, 12:26 pmAndrew Lazarus says:
I found Mr Chesler’s comment a little short on specifics, and a little long on exaggeration. Perhaps you can point to some evidence that the Obama-nurses are alien pod people coming to take away the babies. Until then, maybe you should switch to a different delusion.
November 1, 2009, 12:29 pmVisitor Again says:
Thank you, Mark Kleiman, for guest-blogging and giving us a fascinating series of posts. Your final post’s first paragraphs, in Point A, were dead-on.
November 1, 2009, 2:10 pmcubanbob says:
Kleiman’s suggestions are risible and without merit.
1-The root of crime is the dysfunctional young male. The solution is to eliminate the welfare state, the great enabler of single motherhood. Study after study done has shown that children need fathers in their lives. While there are plenty of instances where children raised by single mothers turn out fine by and large those who are raised by single mothers are more prone to crime and other social dysfunctions. Prior to welfare was this level of dysfunction prevalent in the black community? Even among the poor blacks? No. Blacks are merely the canaries in the coal mine. They were the first to suffer the unintended consequences of good intentions with hispanics gaining up on them and whites gaining momentum as well. As for using the baseline of 1975 for the increase in incarceration rates perhaps it has escape Kleiman’s notice that year is ten years after the implementation of the Great Society and the rise of the welfare state, essentially the first generation that was partially raised by the welfare state.
2-Incarceration rates: Have a large cohort of dysfunctional young thanks to our welfare scheme and what does one expect? So either they are incarcerated and not committing crimes or delude ourselves with more well intentioned foolishness. If prison does not deter them from a life of crime why would anyone believe for a second that men who are incapable of controlling their impulses and have no desire to even do so and indeed believe that only fools and the weak are law abiding are suddenly going to magically be transformed by some social program? Whether or not other countries have a lower incarceration rates than ours means nothing. Indeed some of those ‘advanced’ countries with lower incarceration rates have higher crime rates than ours. Perhaps they should implement higher incarceration rates.
3-The core function of the government as defined by the constitution and its preamble is provide for the common defense and for law and order. That is what taxes are for, to pay for the core required functions, not for social engineering and wealth re-distribution. Kleiman has it exactly backwards, what is needed is to discourage single motherhood and it’s deleterious social effects instead of trying to make a dysfunctional concept work. While it may indeed cost one million to imprison an eighteen year old for life without parole, unless I am wrong such a severe sentence would require the commission of a serious crime. Few criminals are one time and one time only offenders so his calculation fails to consider the other side of the ledger, the cost of the crimes committed by the criminal during the same period of time if he was not incarcerated.
November 1, 2009, 2:59 pmmariner says:
Mark Kleiman:
Have you considered the possibility that he thought he was doing YOU a favor, by offering you a forum to receive critiques that might challenge YOUR preconceptions?
November 1, 2009, 3:07 pmSuperSkeptic says:
Swift and effective punishment is the universal goal. I’d simply prefer – and repeatedly lamented that Mr. Kleiman does not, it appears, prefer – to punish only those who are worthy of punishment, i.e., those who have unjustly harmed another. You see, when you stop punishing drug consumers (and sellers, too!) because they are not actually hurting anyone else, you’ll stop having to deal with the resource depletion of that punishment (which is massive), and you can start focusing on the punishment of those who actually deserve it. Less people in jail, more criminals in jail – it’s so obvious that his failure to support it is suspicious to say the least.
That substantive point about the “war on drugs” aside, this experience was rather cantankerous, but I have no apology for my role in that. We have to be subjected to the real life repercussions of the proposals of “policy experts” like Mr. Kleiman as long as he has the ear of government; so I have no qualms busting his virtual balls for the use (or as I would characterize it, misuse) of that power.
November 1, 2009, 3:22 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
While I don’t disagree with you, I have to say that it may be too late. Too many young men have come up without fathers or father figures. They won’t know how to be parent, or why they would want to.
…Also, going back to the nurse issue, not sure how we got from the reference in the OP here, where nurses were assigned to mothers who were still in their teens, unmarried, or poor, to a nurse for every first-time mother as stated in the previous post. I had my daughter at age 26, having been married for 5 years (am still married to that person) and with the support of his family and mine. My mother stayed with us for a week after my daughter was born. If the government had paid for a person, a stranger to me, to come into my household and assess how well I was doing at taking care of my child, that would have been a very poor use of taxpayers’ money. Maybe the “every first-time mother” part was not thought out and not intended.
November 1, 2009, 3:26 pmAndrew Lazarus says:
I’m looking in my copy and I can’t find “law and order” anywhere. General welfare, yes. Can you give us a link to your version?
November 1, 2009, 3:37 pmArthurKirkland says:
Kleiman raises many good points, but the first step to solving America’s crime problem would be to put a half-inch leash on the drug warriors and disregard those who favor conviction of college students for drinking beer.
That would advance the interests of liberty and morality, too.
November 1, 2009, 3:48 pmAndrew Lazarus says:
I really don’t think Obama intends to open doors with sledgehammers to let nurses in—but my first-born didn’t arrive as scheduled and while my mother-in-law was great, the nurse didn’t need to find a flight. And my mother-in-law doesn’t keep a baby scale in her car.
Baby Number One arrived while I was a teacher on summer vacation. I was there when the nurse came to sing the Internationale with us. I wonder if the guys who know mothers don’t want nurses have the slightest experience with newborns?!
November 1, 2009, 3:52 pmohgoodgrief says:
Speaking as a non-member of the legal elite, but as one who spent his entire adult life dealing with lawyers and law enforcement, there is no doubt in my mind that the system is “broke”. Adversarial law, as practiced here in the US pits two elements against each other. And the truth is all too often forgotten in the process.
Concepts such as restorative justice and other extralegal approaches to the problems of criminal/antisocial behavior will never be accepted by the vast majority of the legal profession. It is in the status quo that they are invested.
November 1, 2009, 6:10 pmKen Arromdee says:
If the mother wants the nurse, it’s no problem. If the program is actually mandatory, though, it isn’t going to matter whether the mother wants the nurse.
November 1, 2009, 7:02 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Andrew, you could hire ten nurses for all of me. I don’t want taxpayers having to pay for nurses for mothers who do not need them, or for mothers who do but can afford to pay for them without the taxpayers’ help. I think the taxpayers have quite a bit on their plates just now, especially trying to support themselves and their families during this recession. Perhaps you can find some reason to justify why other people who are strangers to you and who have problems of their own should have had to pay for you to have a nurse at your house.
And I wasn’t talking about Obama. Please try to understand that people who don’t agree with you politically don’t necessarily think that Obama is the Anti-Christ, or even that he is behind everything they find disagreeable. I was talking about Mark Kleiman’s previous post, wherein he suggested “Provide a nurse as a “parenting coach” to every first-time mother.” Unless you think I think Obama is writing under a pseudonym, I don’t get how you think I think Obama is forcing nurses on mothers of newborns.
As for baby scales, as far as I know, every pediatrician’s office has one. That is a very, very poor attempt to explain why every first-time mother needs a taxpayer-provided nurse, if that’s what your point was.
November 1, 2009, 7:16 pmAnatid says:
Laura-
In Kleiman’s post with his list, I made a comment in which I attempted a basic explanation of attachment. It’s an area of study in developmental psychology that offers a specific mechanism by which certain types of behavior are transmitted from generation to generation. It has also identified a number of factors that contribute to a child breaking this cycle as an adult.
Notably, the types of maternal behavior that most predispose a developing child toward a life of low resilience and crime do not, to most observers, appear in any way to resemble abuse. These mothers can appear to be the most attentive, the most dedicated. Their children can appear to be the best-behaved. It often takes a trained specialist coding for certain behaviors to make the distinctions.
There is currently a program for foster parents to teach them to emulate the microbehaviors that will influence a child’s pattern of attachment for the better. The longitudinal studies won’t be bearing fruit for a decade or three, but the preliminary results look promising. Offering similar training to the highest-risk mothers wouldn’t be a bad idea.
The problem with making it optional is that the type of adult attachment – called ‘dimissive’ – which most predisposes a person towards crime is the type who exists in denial of his problems. There’s nothing to see here, nothing’s ever gone wrong, everything is wonderful. These are the people least likely to seek help on their own, even if only for the sake of their child.
The scientific data are pretty clear on this point. Find a way to intercede with an entire generation, raise ‘em right, and it seems that 20 years later your crime rate will plummet. But the payoff wouldn’t be for two decades, and no one in the country wants to be told how to raise THEIR children.
Come on. We’ve all seen those families in public that just scream pointlessly at their ill-behaved kids. If it’s possible to believe that someone else might not naturally be a good parent, why is it so hard to believe that any of us might not be, either?
November 1, 2009, 10:30 pmAndrew Lazarus says:
Um, Laura, one point of the program was to bring the nurse and the scale to the home?! (And if it weren’t for that S-CHIP program the conservatives so hate, maybe there’s no pediatrician in the picture?)
November 1, 2009, 11:49 pmnicehonesty says:
I did not say these visits were common; I said they were more common than they are now. Given your confusion between provided and mandated, I’m starting to wonder about Obama Derangement Syndrome attacking your retinas—you might want to get that checked if you have insurance.
Lazarus, you claimed:
Oddly, visiting nurses (like doctor house calls) were a lot more common a generation ago than now. But you see, back then, they were pure as the driven snow nurses. Now who knows what you’ll get: probably evil immigrants carrying Obama-indoctrination drugs in their stethoscopes. I mean, seriously: neo-natal checkups are totalitarian?!
If you can’t substantiate this claim (which you appear chronically unable to do), the honorable course would be for you to retract it, not double down on the smears and insults.
And your link to the NY nurses’ organization indicate that their client base is growing, so it refutes, rather than supports, your assertion.
November 2, 2009, 12:39 amdisconnect says:
I made a few specific comments related to what I perceived as weaknesses in parts of your arguments. If you happened to read one and think, “This guy thinks I’m an ill-intentioned idiot and is trying to prove me wrong,” there’s nothing I can do about that.
Grow up, argue the substantive parts, and IGNORE THE TROLLS. Welcome to the internet.
November 2, 2009, 8:13 amRichard Aubrey says:
There is no evidence that mandatory or even state-provided visiting nurses will become arms of the totalitarian state.
November 2, 2009, 12:49 pmThat’s because there can never be evidence of anything that has not yet happened.
It’s a trick question.
You can point to indications that a particular program would move that way, that some of the folks, or types of folks, involved have moved that way in other endeavors.
But you can’t prove it.
However, the proper response to the first question is, “But that’s the way to bet.”
We know some doctors, usually pediatricians, ask about guns in the home.
Well, would say the promoters of such a question in eyebrow-arched innocence, don’t you think guns are dangerous to children?
I don’t think the eyebrow archers have exhausted their inventory of things that are dangerous to children
We know, for example, that conservative talk radio leads to things like the Oklahoma City bombing. Bill Clinton said so. Is Rush on when the nurse visits?
I work with children and young people from time to time.
There are frequently things going on I think are counterproductive to their healthy growth and I sometimes think I should interfere.
But I recall I do not have the effing right to interfere, and I do not have all the facts.
What if I were not restricted by the conservative’s view of my right to interfere and were sure, due to my government certification, that I always had all the facts?
That would, by the way, describe some or many of the hypothetical nurses.
This is not to say there are not examples of horrific parenting.
That’s a separate subject.
The question was whether the visiting nurses would become an arm of a totalitarian or nanny state.
Nation of Cowards » Blog Archive » When Is It Okay To Suggest That Low IQ Causes Crime? says:
[...] blogging at Volokh Mark Kleiman has a post detailing steps that we could take to lower crime rates. He says…. 2. Evidence about the impact of lead on crime takes two forms: individual-level studies, [...]
November 2, 2009, 1:05 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Andrew, why did you need a baby scale in your home? I never had one and had no need for it. Why did you need one?
Also, I suggest that you enlarge your reading material a bit. Branch out from the hard-left screeds that you apparently vary only with VC. When you do, you won’t make stupid statements like the one about conservatives hating s-chip. To enlarge upon this – can you, without sarcasm, explain the problem that conservatives have with it? Bet you can’t.
Anatid:
So you think it’s feasible for “trained specialists” to be available to assess EVERY first-time mother in the country to see whether she’s doing it right?
Backing up my point here that the trained army of nurses that we’d have to have, to do house-calls on every new mother, is going to include clueless people who possibly will do damage. Because the pool from which the nurses will be drawn will be the same pool from which the bad parents are, i.e., fallible human beings.
November 2, 2009, 2:16 pmtraveler496 says:
If any of us was faced with deciding among several plausible strategies for treating a loved one’s brain tumor, we would ask lots of non-rhetorical questions, carefully consider diverse opinions and data, maintain an open (but not indiscriminate) mind, give differing degrees of credence to various beliefs based on the evidence, and the like; and our perspective would probably evolve considerably in the process. We would do these things, of course, because our overriding priority would be to find the best strategy for our loved one.
I don’t see much of that kind of behavior in threads such as this.
November 2, 2009, 4:33 pmRichard Aubrey says:
Laura.
November 2, 2009, 4:49 pmI think the remark about conservatives hating the S-chip is because the dems, having sold it as an aid to impoverished children, have expanded it to prosperous young adults.
None of us saw this coming, of course.
But opposing the expansion means consevatives hate S-Chip, and naturally, hate poor children.
Thorley Winston says:
Fixed it for you.
November 2, 2009, 6:24 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Sure, Richard. But I wanted to see if Andrew could say, without sarcasm, that conservatives are concerned about expanding s-chip into the middle class where it’s not necessary, pulling health insurance out of the free market (to the extent that it’s even in it), and giving over more responsibility that individuals should shoulder if they can, to the nanny state. I don’t think he can do it, I think he’s constitutionally unable to admit that people who disagree with him might not have evil motives. It’s either that, or he is genuinely unaware that there might be arguments other than the ones that support his side.
November 2, 2009, 8:09 pmTracy W says:
I think this post shows the value of, if you are going to going to criticise other people for their tendency to accept confirming evidence and reject disconfirming evidence, it’s a bit more convincing if you spend a bit of time talking about your own faults too, or discuss something that has lead you to change your mind.
November 3, 2009, 5:56 amAlthough of course this post does, as written, make a strong case for the faults Kleinman outlined being common human ones.
Suzy says:
I appreciated the series. I really don’t think Kleiman should worry so much about the comment threads, though. For example, most of the comments about the lead issue are clearly uninformed by the studies posted as evidence. If these are the kinds of questions being asked about whether lead and criminality are related, even after K. posts his evidence, then what hope do his proposals have of getting a reasoned hearing in this forum? It’s pretty frustrating, yes, and it’s probably why it’s hard to solve so many of these problems despite having good reasons to believe that certain actions would be helpful. However, the important thing is convincing people who have the power to make these policy changes, and that’s likely to be done more quietly and persistently behind the scenes. In the wider political arena, I’m pessimistic that some of these arguments will gain any purchase. People wouldn’t like to buy a home with lead in the yard or in the paint on the walls, I suppose, but maybe that’s the hard experience they’d need to learn things like “you can’t tell by looking at it”. In short: direct this stuff at an audience that can do something about it, and don’t worry about the random flak.
November 3, 2009, 1:46 pmnicehonesty says:
In short: direct this stuff at an audience that can do something about it, and don’t worry about the random flak.
The problem, Suzy, is that any “audience that can do something about it” is not going to be persuaded by Kleiman’s ad hominem attacks, his failure to address substantive criticisms, his failure to provide evidence or explanations for his non-obvious claims, nor his “clarifications” that are based on errors of fact or law.
He’ll face the same credibility problems with another audience if he chooses to use the same techniques with them as he did here at the VC.
November 3, 2009, 3:26 pmNate Dawg says:
traveler496: If any of us was faced with deciding among several plausible strategies for treating a loved one’s brain tumor, we would ask lots of non-rhetorical questions, carefully consider diverse opinions and data, maintain an open (but not indiscriminate) mind, give differing degrees of credence to various beliefs based on the evidence, and the like; and our perspective would probably evolve considerably in the process. We would do these things, of course, because our overriding priority would be to find the best strategy for our loved one.I don’t see much of that kind of behavior in threads OR posts such as this.
There. Now it’s really fixed.
November 4, 2009, 7:49 pm