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You arrive in London for a dream vacation in one of the world’s great cities. After a quick stop at the cash machine, you head to the historic Gordon’s Winebar, the oldest such establishment in the metropolis. After a delicious meal you turn around to discover that your favorite leather jacket, with your credit cards [...]
Archive for the ‘Crime Control’ Category
April 3rd, 2012
Not very much, according to Justice Kennedy. I couldn’t help thinking about the Affordable Care Act cases when reading his opinion for the Court in Florence v. Burlington County, handed down yesterday. The Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment does not forbid law enforcement from strip searching arrestees even if there is no reason to suspect that they possess [...]
March 26th, 2012
Category: Crime Control, Policy Analysis
This is really important stuff. The pilot implementation Mark relates will lead to refinements and improvements, but I do not think it will show the basic idea to be wrongheaded. The most important modifications, I predict, will follow the discovery that a lot of the letters go unread or their contents denied. Some will be [...]
March 26th, 2012
Hundreds of thousands of people could be helped through opt-out hepatitis C testing in correctional settings.
March 26th, 2012
Category: Crime Control
“Hey, YOU! Yeah, YOU! Here’s what YOU’ve been doing that we don’t like, and here’s what’s going to happen to YOU if YOU don’t stop it, pronto!” Thirty chronic domestic assailants in High Point, NC, just got personalized warning letters from the police chief.
March 24th, 2012
To misquote Harold Hill’s line “I count the hours I spent with a gun in my hand as golden” overstates the situation greatly, but before I got bored with them, I played with firearms, and here are some of the things I shot at and one I didn’t: I never in my life imagined it [...]
March 23rd, 2012
Category: Crime Control, Drug Policy
The PM and Home Secretary Theresa May, over the objections of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, have endorsed a minimum price for alcohol in England and Wales. This is highly encouraging to those of us in the public health and public safety fields who have been pushing this idea since the election. But much of the [...]
March 21st, 2012
Category: Feeling Safer Yet?, Firearms
Some devices send out mysterious compelling signals to our brains, demanding to be used. A toothbrush and a vacuum cleaner, not so much. But as my friend Andy Lippman observed, a TV “needs watching”. Frodo’s ring wanted to be worn, and a gun wants to be fired at something. There are guns and guns, and [...]
March 17th, 2012
Category: Policy Analysis, Prisons and penal policy
This post was inspired by a tweet. @AnnieLowrey praised a beautiful New York Times story by Pam Belluck about dementia among geriatric prison inmates. Lowrey expressed surprise that “21 percent of America’s prisoners are serving 20 years to life.” That is indeed a surprising number. It reflects a statistical and operations research principle you may [...]
March 9th, 2012
Category: Crime Control
In which I try to sort out the differences among the various versions of “broken windows.”