Morning Ed: Crime (2018.01.23.T}
[Cr1] In a bold move, Alaska has ended cash bail. I’m not one to believe that because most of the world does one thing and we do another that we should reconsider our stance, but it would be worth our while here to look at what other countries do for a system that so obviously privileges wealth.
[Cr2] Bold!
[Cr3] Sometimes it seems like if Uber didn’t exist, a capitalist-hating creative type would have to invent them. Is Lyft this way?
[Cr4] Kate Waldman has a good piece on why USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s victims were ignored. What jumps out at me about this one is how his victims were bigger than he was, and yet still…
[Cr5] California prison guards have a very high suicide rate.
[Cr6] Danielle S McLaughlin argues that the media (and others) owe the girl who made up the hijab attack an apology.
[Cr7] Well, it’s true as far as that goes: Swans don’t judge. Probably.
[Cr8] A study from last year on sex crimes had some surprising revelations, including higher frequency of female-on-male harassment and female-on-female prison sexual abuse than previously supposed.
[Cr9] She didn’t do it! God said so.
There are so many details to love in this story. (San Jose News, 1925) pic.twitter.com/iZhIp4Aw6c
— Undine (@HorribleSanity) January 10, 2018
Cr1: That’s actually a good state to experiment with that system.
Cr4 & Cr6 demonstrate the difficulty of all this. Figuring out when a kid is caught in a lie that has runaway from them, and when a kid is telling the truth requires some work on the part of the adults in the room.
Although Waldman should quantify that all encompassing ‘We”. I don’t know about the rest of you, but before the Indy Star story broke, I’d never even heard of USAG, much less Nassar. After that, it was certainly on my radar, but as with all such stories, demanding that ‘we’ all take notice of this horror and give it the attention the author feels it deserves is asking a lot of people whose attention is demanded for so many other horrors every day, and that is on top of the demands of just living.Report
[Cr1] is a seemingly rare piece of good news – arrestees not being seen seen as sources of money to be squeezed as hard as possible. I hope it works out well.
[Cr5] while the approach of testing the trauma of being a person guard is doubtless needed, it would be nice if there were also some attention paid to reforming the prison system so it is less inherently traumatizing.
Presumably if it’s that bad for the guards, it’s worse still for the inmates. But nobody’s talking about how we must provide counseling and sorry for released prisoners PTSD. Just send them on out and wonder why recidivism is so high.Report
[Cr1] It’s not clear whether eliminating bonds will make much difference. Right now, there are three options: (1) released on own recognizance; (2) released on bond; or (3) cannot be released. Eliminating the middle compromise, forces a choice between the other two. And I’m pretty sure rates of recidivism and failure to appear are going to strongly reflect socio-economic realities. The non-appearance rate in the U.S. is something like 25%, so it’s not like the current system is optimized anyway.
I assume in other countries there are fewer Constitutional constraints to convictions in abstentia.Report
@pd-shaw
I think the problem is that bond is also set unfairly. Poor minorities are often given really high bonds that don’t match their alleged crimes. White people, not as much. IIRC New Jersey’s reform was to force courts to do number 1 unless someone was a flight risk or committed a really violent crime.Report
The bond is a surety used to pay bounty hunter. If you reduce the number of people released, then the bounty hunter cost is reduced.
Illinois just changed its laws:
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Doughnut-eating contest winner arrested again after doughnut shop robbery
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Cr4 besides what Waldman says, the audience for gymnastics like the audience for figure skating is really into the fantasy aspect of the sport. The advantage for figure skaters is that their audience doesn’t seem to mind adult figure skaters but the audience for female gymnastics seemingly as no use for female gymnasts in their mid to late teens or older. That makes most female gymnasts very young, vulnerable, and with an audience willing to look the other way and ignore anything they don’t like. Its the same with football audiences, who routinely ignore the hazing and the crimes committed by some football players. People can be wretched at times.Report
I don’t think it’s the audience as much as it is the judging. As in, for whatever reason, the athletic performance that is considered superlative in women’s gymanistics is most readily done by persons between 13 and 17 years of age. (in contrast with say, the men’s gymastics competition, with more strength elements, so their bodies need a few more years to ‘optimize’)Report
Cr9 – And the jury found her guilty anyway! That’s great stuff.Report