--Mike Connelly

“What happens if you privatize prisons is that you have a large industry with a vested interest in building ever-more prisons.” -- Molly Ivins, 2003

With the publication of a couple of important stories in Oklahoma over the last couple of days, we’re going to spend a little time looking in a bit more depth at the politics and power plays behind the establishment of private prisons in states and the institutionalization and lock-in of incarceration as the only viable form of crime policy, regardless of all the research and alternatives that point to prisons as one of the least cost-effective ways of maintaining public safety of all those possible. But before you dig in enthusiastically (!!), we ask that you take a look at these pieces first since they set up for you the foundation for your own analysis of and (dis)agreement with what comes in this series.

“Evaluation of the Taft Demonstration Project Performance of a Private-Sector Prison and the BOP”
“Costs and Benefits of Privatization Can Be Tricky to Assess”
“Inmate Recidivism as a Measure of Private Prison Performance”
“Push for Private Prison Was Downfall”
“Alaska’s Citizens Lock Out Private Prisons”
“Private Prisons: The Public’s Problem A Quality Assessment of Arizona’s Private Prisons”
Texas Prison Bidness blog homepage and archives
“Private Prisons Profit from Illegal Immigrants”
“FAU Drops GEO Group Stadium Deal Amid Controversy: Say Bye to Owlcatraz”

As you read below and in posts to come, claims are made without supporting data or analysis that these pieces above challenge. You’ll have to decide what makes the most sense, but we ask that you note that none of the private prison supporters deal with the material in these pieces. Research disputing private prison superiority? Doesn’t exist. Corruption? Doesn’t happen. Persistent patterns of politics and management problems? Please, the private sector does everything better than government, just look at Wall Street. Taking millions of dollars from treatment, staff benefits, staff development, lowering costs to the host states and spending them on putting the prison company’s name on a university stadium? No problem . . . until it is. Like everything that happens with private prisons after the sales pitch is over and the salesman have taken their commissions back home. That said, let’s move on to

PART ONE
One of our greatest concerns in the last few weeks here has been the crude but loud campaign by Oklahoma’s political leadership [sic] to remove the state’s DOC director. Two charges at first. One, that he had illegally employed his long-time partner in the department. That one went nowhere once people familiar with state law were consulted, apparently, and it turned out that the director was hired specifically after all those concerns had been dealt with. But the intent was never to actually charge anything. Just to get the governor’s stenographer on the statewide newspaper to level the claim that the director was unethical so that the public would buy the other charge.

That charge was that the director was claiming to need more funding for the department when he had plenty of money in revolving funds that he had never told the governor about. IOW, he was LYING, LYING, LYING, BIG FAT LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE LIAR!!!! Except, well, he had told the governor. Had for her entire term. As he had the governor before her. It’s a prudent technique to handle needed repairs and for emergencies so that the legislature wouldn’t have to tax more or pull from other departments. Especially with the Klown Kar otherwise known as the Oklahoma Legislature and its monumental nonsense the background upon which you run any department in that state.

Rather than let nonsense go, the governor and her staff/appointees along with state legislators doubled down. Well, yes, we were told, but we were lied to about amounts, they said. What they were were confused (in the best interpretation) about the difference between encumbered and unencumbered funds. So he’s still LYING, LYING, LYING, BIG FAT LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE LIAR!!!! The solution? Well, the revolving funds will now be audited. Only no one involved in the smear will say the A-word very often because of THAT OF WHICH NO WORDS WILL BE SPOKEN audit of a couple of years back, from the same political forces, that spent almost a million scarce state dollars to prove that the director was LYING, LYING, LYING, BIG FAT LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE LIAR!!!! Unfortunately, that audit verified that the people of Oklahoma were lucky to get as much from their tax dollars in the Oklahoma Department of Corrections as they did. (Yes, I did work for the OK DOC for five years, and these are the reasons I was proud to. You can verify all this yourself with a Google search.)

As we’ve noted before, the problem for the OK DOC director’s critics is that he’s one of the most respected and sought-after corrections leaders in the country. When he walks away, and he will because no one with his options will put up with cr*p like this with no state leader defending him, he will do better pay-wise and health-wise than he would by staying. He won’t be the loser. Oklahoma will. But the majority of its voters will return the governor and the legislators to office by large margins, so the state will have it coming.

If you haven’t been following this story here, you may be asking: Why are they wanting to get rid of one of the few good things they’re known for around the nation? Because, as we’ve said before, a good corrections department and low recidivism rates are waayyy down the list of what the governor, her staff/appointees, and legislators there want. Most of all, they want to hand the state treasury over to the private prison industry which, please do not call it quid pro quo because that would be so insulting, turns a far less proportion of their treasury over to the political leaders [sic].

Wild charge? Read this from the one more consistently reputable newspaper in the state:

Private prison interests have given nearly $200,000 in campaign dollars and gifts to 79 of the 149 members of the state Legislature since 2004, a Tulsa World analysis shows.

From a meal valued at $3.87 for one lawmaker to $22,500 toward T.W. Shannon's Speaker's Ball, private prison and halfway house influence has become well entrenched at the state Capitol.

As the state's prison population has climbed, so has spending on private prisons, which was nearly $73 million last fiscal year, up from slightly more than $57 million in fiscal year 2004.

Halfway-house expenditures were nearly $14 million in fiscal year 2012, up slightly from more than $12 million in fiscal year 2004.

Since 2004, lobbyists, private prison and halfway house employees have given $375,425 to 165 elected officials and candidates for office.

The contributions and gifts come from lobbyists and others affiliated with Avalon Correctional Services, The GEO Group Inc. and Corrections Corporation of America. All three have operations in the state. The lobbyists' representation is not limited to one private prison or halfway house company. They have contracts to represent dozens of far-ranging interests.

The story’s recounting of the justifying the expenditures on policymakers by the companies captures about the best actual example of what this book details that you’ll ever see. “Lobbyists represent a lot of clients so we don’t buy policymakers just for one.” “It’s for education, not their votes and power.” And this one’s not paraphrased at all: “ . . . it is clear we are not buying any influence but support candidates that provide good government to the state.” Like they did in Alaska, for example.

The OK governor won office by 21%. The House Speaker ran unopposed the last two times and won 2-1 his first election. The least the Senate Appropriations chair has ever won by was 69%-31%. His last election was 79%-21%. “Good government” was a sure thing. Why spend so much on someone who was landsliding? If the companies really believed that the governor isn’t affected by campaign contributions, as her spokesperson spews, then wouldn’t it be kinda stupid to give her that much, especially when she was clearly going to be pro-private prison this way anyway because the governor isn’t affected by campaign contributions? Should any state be offering to turn its inmates over to companies run by people so stupid? Wouldn’t you be lying in your bed fearful and awake every night if your state did?

The longest and strongest force in the moves against the DOC director is the former Senate Majority Leader, Glenn Coffee, who was term-limited out of the legislature but immediately found work advising the governor (about private prisons!!) as her appointed Secretary of State, despite a state law requiring legislators to wait two years before taking state jobs. The governor felt it was within the spirit of the law to pay his salary out of non-general revenue dollars until he left in December last year to be a full-time lobbyist. You can still Google plenty of his statements pushing private prisons, like this one. Here’s what happened to legislative payments to the architectural firm that dared to say the state should expand its existing public prison facilities rather than contract with private prisons for bedspace. Don’t get the results you paid to get, you don’t finish paying, right? Lousy steak, complain loudly and stiff the bill.

The former senator’s allegiance to private prisons and efforts to require the DOC director to use them even when dollars/bedspace would have been taken from public facilities even gained some national attention in 2009, as you can see here. The piece gives the details but we’ll give you a couple of tasty nuggets (and here’s the article about the private prison paid vacation trip for an aide who is, also after a term-limited legislative career, head of the OK State Chamber of Commerce):

There has been a lot of talk about private prisons in the state recently. It revolves around Oklahoma State Senate Pro Tem Glenn Coffee requesting a study from the Department of Corrections that sought the amount it would cost to close down three prison facilities. This was made more apparent after it came out that a Republican Senate policy adviser was taking vacations with private prison lobbyists. . . .

The main argument in favor of private prisons is cost savings. I think this is at best inconclusive. The Director of the Department of Corrections report states that it would cost $23 million to close down three existing prisons. When it comes to current facilities, there are mixed results, with some reports claiming cost savings, some saying they cost the same, and some saying that private prisons actually cost more. Even in places where there were cost savings, they were a result of sending low risk inmates to that prison and the high risk ones to public maximum security prisons.

Private prisons also usually have lower levels of staff and what staff they do have usually is less trained. This can lead to lower costs, but what else does it lead to? A study found that private prisons were 49% more likely to have an assault on a guard and 65% more likely to have an assault on a fellow inmate. Hmmm. Is that worth it? . . .

Oh, and if you are wondering what company that lobbyist that went on vacation with the policy adviser to our State Senate, it is the GEO Group, which already operates a private prison in Lawton. This practice creates a cycle and it must be stopped. Our prison population has already gone up five-fold in the last few decades, we must end this cycle before it drags our society down more.

This faux controversy with these painfully transparent actors about evviiillll DOC directors misusing revolving funds is political theater at its worst/best. You read your lines, we’ll read our script. “Can’t buy my vote”/”we’re just educating.” The “rubes” eat this stuff up and we’ll take their money and run. The “stage” in Oklahoma is what Daniel Elazar called “traditional” political culture, which he said predominated in OK as compared to “moralistic” and “individual” political cultures:

Traditional Political Culture. Social and family ties are prominent where this type of political culture is found. This often means that some families run the government and others have little to say about it. This reflects an older attitude that embraces a hierarchical society as part of the natural order of things. Government is seen as an actor with a positive role in the community, but the role is largely limited to securing the maintenance of the existing social order. Political leaders play a largely conservative and custodial role rather than being innovative. Otherwise, limited government is viewed as best because that is all that is required to meet the needs of those in power. The South is the regional focus for this type of culture. While undergoing change, traditional southern politics have been dominated by "backdoor" arrangements and strict class divisions.

The upper levels of the state society get themselves and their proxies elected to make sure that their interests, not the whole state’s interests, are preserved and expanded. Some parts of the state will be lucky to get gravel roads, others get freeway exits straight to their ranch, stuff like that. If you get in the way of that, should you happen to believe that tax dollars should be efficiently and productively spent for the people of the entire state, that makes you an obstacle. And, if you have the political controls of the state in your hands, what do you do to obstacles?

Ask the OK DOC director.

But wait, you say? Perhaps a case can be made that, at least for Oklahoma, “efficiently and productively” should be private prisons despite the independent research that clearly demonstrates no greater value. Actually, that case has been recently made. By two astrolo . . . economists from Temple University in that far-away place called Philadelphia. Their arguments do deserve attention. And take-down. That comes tomorrow in Part Two.

Oooooo.  Cliff-hanger.

Inside the Silo News
“California Gov. Jerry Brown Promises Prison Legislation”
“Report Says Post-Prison Arrests Down, Repeat Offenses Up”
As he sues to not have to do anything, CA’s governor proposes legislation to do something, which should tell you either what he thinks his chances are with the Supreme Court and/or the political strategy he’ll use to run for reelection. “I Fought the Law and the Law Won” and “I Tried to Work with Those Lunatic Legislators.” So reelect me. Covering every base he might need with a meringue-like substance. Meanwhile, a state corrections report shows that arrests of releasees six months before and after “realignment” there were virtually the same (in fact slightly better since), but that may be an effect of the pressures on county revenues, too, we suppose. Of those arrested, however, the number arrested more than once increased fairly impressively. Which could also be the result of reactions to the policy and repressed county revenues, if you think about it. IOW, as the report recommended, “caution should be used when interpreting the findings” and using flamethrowers (well, we threw in that last part, but it’s true).

“Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Honored for Work on Crime Data, Custody Death”
“Michelle Rhee and the Washington Post”

We alerted you a while back to this newspaper’s efforts to bring the problems with crime data to their city’s readers, which led to a reported overhaul of how much of Milwaukee’s crime and trends get recorded and reported. While the data problem is certainly not unique to Milwaukee, the reporting about it is. So this award to what I’ve always felt was a premier newspaper for Corr Sent in the maannnnyyyyyy states I’ve worked in is well deserved. The opposite kind of award goes to the always overrated Washington Post which, perhaps because the bulk of the company’s profits come from its education testing unit, has hyped a privatizer named Michelle Rhee and her bogus education “reforms” for years now. As former head of Wash DC schools, she oversaw the same kind of cheating scandal that got her equivalent in Atlanta recently convicted and may get the same result to the head in Columbus, OH. Instead of mashing her and holding her accountable, the WaPo has remained her defender and champion, again for reasons that may not have anything to do with journalism. Nevertheless, as we’ve said before, when you make performance measures everything and you leave their collection in the hands of those to be measured, this is what you can count on time after time. What prevents it, if you can’t have independent collection, is a truly First Amendment-oriented news organization (aka NOT anything on television). Readers in Milwaukee know how true that is. Readers in DC? Not so much. How about your neck of the woods?

“Inmates Crucial in Fighting Wildfires”
“Communities, Theater Feel Loss of Greensburg Prisoner Work Program”
Stories on inmate contributions to communities. First story California. Second one, Pennsylvania, result of opening new facility and transferring inmates. None of these benefits to communities added into usual cost-benefit analyses of prisons, probably because it might raise some uncomfortable questions about the purposes of prisons, but the benefits from inmates to taxpayers and patrons are real.

“County Reports Chronic Complaints with Privatized Service”
You may read our post later today (and likely just above the News) on private prisons in Oklahoma and my comments about why some services need to be public enterprises with public accountabilities, not private businesses answering only to bottom lines. This story isn’t about Corr Sent, but it provides a sad but telling example of why. Folks, you HAVE TO spell out performance measures and ENFORCE THEM, which is why private companies put so much into elections and lobbying rather than services that money could go for. The payoff is much better. It’s called Reality.

“Could Lower DUI Standards Be Decades Away in Pa., N.J.?”
We noted when the National Transportation Safety Board proposed dropping DUI blood levels to 0.05, it might be a while before they were adopted, just as what happened with the last drop from 0.10 to 0.08. This article verifies and explains that.

“Maximum Security Prison Guard Shares the Most Disturbing Parts of His Job”
Verbally, so don’t worry. No real surprises for corrections types but the rest of you readers might find out some new things. Won’t make you wish you’d grown up to be a prison guard. Or for your kids to be. Good thing most states, especially private prisons, don’t shank them on pay. . . .

“Suspects Caught on Tape in Messy Attempted Burglary”
Very weird story even for OK. Warning in advance that the “messy” involves excrement. Weirdest part. They got away. Oklahoma poopy burglars/voters. Any questions?


Outside the Silo News
“Illinois on Verge of Becoming Second Biggest State to Legalize Medical Marijuana”
“Pot Dispensaries Could Mean Green for State Coffers, Advocates Argue”
“Cannibis: Colorado’s Budding Industry”
“Want a Marijuana License? Here Are Some of the Rules You Might Have to Follow”
“State Releases Draft Rules for Pot Industry”
“Pot Regulations in Washington May Differ from Colorado’s”
“Marijuana Buffers Pain of Social Exclusion”

Tons (kilos?) of pot news built up over the weekend, showing the old “states as laboratories of democracy” thing and including a piece on “bud-tenders” that you’ll have to find yourself. So pick your pleasure. So to speak.

“Infrastructure Constraints Loom as Texas Grows”
“Bill Mandating Drug Tests for Legislators Advances”
You may have noted that, as a born and bred Oklahoman (yes, one of those voters above when I lived there), I don’t have a great fondness for Baja Oklahoma. I especially don’t have great fondness for its apologists (“but we’re not all crazy, really, and go, ‘horns!!”). That said, the state is clearly stepping up to the plate in addressing The Perfect Storm in ways that not only other nearby states should pay attention to (<cough> oklahoma <cough>) but frankly the rest of the country. This article spells out how the state has identified water, roads, and electricity grids as areas for immediate attention. “You have to invest in infrastructure now in order to have an infrastructure in place for 20 and 30 years from now.” Yes, it’s not because it’s just the right thing to do. They have to justify it in terms of economic development, but that’s how most states will have to sell it whether they’re true believers like Texas or not. So, as painful as it is to admit, like they’ve done with Corr Sent Reform 1.0, Texas is a state to watch for national leadership. Just hopefully it will be more meaningful and real than what they’re touted for about their Reform 1.0. (And even better if they become the model for the second article.)

--Mike Connelly

Family reunion on my wife’s side this last weekend so we’re still in recovery mode from a trip to Arkansas (please, no comments about people being related in AR . . . which are only remotely true). So we’re giving you some items we’ve picked up over the last week or so, divvied out with minimal commentary and a brief excerpt for a change, leaving you completely in charge of where your Deep Thoughts wander and how they link to Corrections Sentencing to get this week rolling. We’ll be in better fettle (which is what, exactly?) when we get to the News later and the rest of the week. Just a little Guin . . . milk should do it.

“Seeds for Thought: Scale”

Today’s Seed for Thought comes from the Stanford Social Innovation Review’s blog, a site that covers (as the name suggests) social innovation and related conepts like philanthropy, social entrepreneurship, and nonprofit organizational development. In the latter category, an article today provided a five-question checklist for nonprofits to assess their readiness to scale and increase their impact. The second question asked whether your program model has been tested: according to a survey of American nonprofits, “only 39 percent of nonprofits that are scaling or intending to scale have evaluated the impact of their work”. To me, that’s a surprising result – in my mind, before growing a program or initiative you should take some time to make sure it’s actually achieving the results that you think it is!

Although I’m glad that evaluation is included in the list, I think there’s a danger that evaluation and research is relegated to a one-time “check it off the list” task. In scaling a program to new communities or populations, organizations are bound to run into unexpected challenges. Elements and approaches that were beneficial in the initial program may be less useful or even detrimental in new situations. . . .

“We’re Not as Moral as We Think (and How That Gets Us in Trouble)”

Whenever we see examples of ethical or moral failure, our knee-jerk reaction is to say that was a bad person. We like to sort the world into good people who had stable and enduringly strong, positive characters, and bad people who had weak or frail characters. And this belief that somehow our behavior or our conduct is largely shaped by who we are and our true selves is, I think, one of the great assumptions that we need to challenge if we have to get a better handle on what leads people to go astray. . . .

The overconfidence that people have in their own moral capacity is one of the things that we have to be very careful about. Most people think I am good; I have the proper moral compass. I will never be led astray. That form of moral over confidence, I think, is sometimes what gets people into trouble when they find themselves in situations where the pressures are so great that they are led astray. Thinking hard about what it is about situations that are more likely to tempt us and what it is that are about situations that are more likely to give us moral courage is, in my view, one of the most important things that we need to understand.

“When I Hear the Word Culture . . . Aw, Hell with It”

To put it another way, Goldberg is making a standard rhetorical move which has no accepted name, but which really needs one. I call it ‘the two-step of terrific triviality’. Say something that is ambiguous between something so strong it is absurd and so weak that it would be absurd even to mention it. When attacked, hop from foot to foot as necessary, keeping a serious expression on your face. With luck, you will be able to generate the mistaken impression that you haven’t been knocked flat, by rights. As a result, the thing that you said which was absurdly strong will appear to have some obscure grain of truth in it. Even though you have provided no reason to think so.

“The Power to Predict, and Influence, the Future”

Predictive analytics is technology that not only gives organizations the power to predict the future but also to influence the future. And the reason it has that difference is because predictive analytics predicts for you, me, everyone – one person at a time whether you’re gonna click, lie, buy, die; whether you’re gonna default on your credit card statements; whether you’re gonna commit an act of fraud; whether you’re gonna vote for this presidential candidate or that presidential candidate. And because the predictions are on that level – and that’s really the defining characteristic of this technology of predictive analytics - it enables organizations to improve their operations – to operate more effectively. That’s what defines a functioning society is how all these organizations are serving you, interacting with you, treating you, contacting, not contacting you, medically treating you, campaign volunteers are knocking on your door, insurance providers approve or don’t approve your application.

It’s per person. So you’re being predicted and it’s important for people to understand that, that your actions, your behavior and your medical outcome for example, those types of futures for each individual person are being predicted and in some cases the thing being predicted is sensitive. . . .

“Unable to Grasp Alternative Viewpoints? Chill Out.”

According to Sassenrath and her colleagues, “Individuals often start with their own point of view when taking another’s perspective, and thereby unintentionally project their own perspective onto others.” This, they write, “ultimately leads to egocentrically biased inferences of others’ perspectives.”

Physical warmth, they contend, strengthens this bias, by promoting a feeling of “increased social proximity and intimacy.” In contrast, they write, physical cold “is associated with social distance.” This perceived separation may help us understand the fact that their point of view differs from our own.

Needless to say, grasping that truism is important to a smoothly functioning society. Without it, we can get lost in a thicket of unwarranted assumptions, making it far more difficult to successfully complete everything from business transactions to political negotiations.

So forget those scenes in movies where influential men cut deals while in the sauna. This research suggests those negotiations would be more fruitful if they took place in a meat locker.

Remember this for your next committee meeting.

Have a good week.

As part of our endless quest in the face of slow news days to provide you relevant info on how to deal with the forces facing correction sentencing as we approach 2020, we will every Sunday provide the familiar “book review.” Well, not so familiar, actually. We intend to focus on books that don’t fit into the reigning “inside the silo” paradigm that has so successfully gotten us where we are today. Sometimes that may mean corrections and/or sentencing books that challenge the existing mantras. Other times, it may mean books that don’t even touch on corrections and/or sentencing but have significant relevance that we would otherwise miss by insisting on staying inside our silo. And, so you won’t have to worry about bookmarking or coming back and scrolling through archives when you want to check something we said, we will gladly post each review over on the left-hand side of the blog for easy reference. Please. Don’t thank us. The astonishment in your eyes is enough.

Reviews of CL&CJ Reviews Series

Got back a couple of weeks ago to the admirable enterprise run by Rutgers and its criminal justice program featuring serious online reviews of crim just books, including many that (in)directly relate to what we do in Corrections Sentencing. While there are several up right now that sound interesting, we’re focusing over the next few weeks just on the ones that deal with issues we raise here. We’ll give you the direct links and promising teasers of the full reviews (as in “we’re leaving a bunch of good stuff out”), but be sure to head over to give them the hit counts they likely need to justify their existence (unlike us here who seem to thrive on running off possible hits, we know). Who knows? We may have missed a book you’d be interested in or that has a relationship to Corr Sent that you see and we didn’t. To quote the philosopher Judy Tenuta, “it could happen.”

I’ve mentioned before that on the morning of April 19, 1995 when Timothy McVeigh pulled his van load of fertilizer and diesel up in front of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, I was in my office across the street talking about private prisons with the OK advisory sent comm attorney. Couple of minutes later, I was in a fetal position in my chair with my arms over my head waiting for the noise and shaking to stop. I don’t really remember the instant of the blast. The staples I had to get in the top of my head later may indicate why, but I do know I had no clue that a bomb had gone off. There’d been a gas explosion in Houston or someplace a week or so before and that’s the best explanation I had for my office wall that was now inside my office. (Learned that the damage of explosions comes as much from the air flooding back into the area that had been expelled by a blast, but could have gone my whole life without knowing that.) The ceiling over me held for the most part, but I was fortunately in the one corner that didn’t still have brick and marble and other ceiling and wall stuff blow in and down.

Our office was pretty empty that morning, not because we were, as the famous Senator Inhofe of OK said later, government employees play hooky, but because morning meetings start a lot at 9:00. Had McVeigh gotten there 30 minutes earlier or 11 or 11:30, he would have killed a lot more people (but probably had trouble getting the parking place for the latter). A meeting was where my boss, the sent comm director, was, at the state capitol promising quick action on the sentencing reform bill we were preparing. He hadn’t figured the worst act of domestic terrorism in US history into his calculations. So there were only a few of us less important there, and we dug out the one person very seriously hurt who had an office with a window on the south side of the Journal Record Building, now the memorial museum for the Bombing. You saw her that night on the news many times because she made very good pictures with her face bloody and torn. A week or so later, they let us back in to retrieve what we could of our stuff, and that’s the scary part. There were fertilizer pellets all over our floors and furniture. The fertilizer hadn’t all set up. The blast could have been much worse. It might have even ripped up that old Masonic temple we were officed in instead of just knocking it off its foundations. The deaths and injuries could have been higher. McVeigh was clearly not particularly competent. For that, I guess I should thank him.

My reactions to the bombing were a little different than most, I think, in that acts of terrorism should never have been considered “something that happens somewhere else” like so many people said after the blast. I just considered myself lucky to get out with some staples in my head, unlike my colleague and friend who was badly hurt. If God was looking after me, as some relatives told me, He would have spent His time better with some of the truly remarkable people whose life stories we heard about later. Crime, even the worst one in our history by an American citizen, happens. You should never “get used to it,” but you should also never think it’s not part of life and it can’t happen to you.

For the reactions of other victims of McVeigh’s fruitless lunacy, you can check out Jody Lynee Madiera’s Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, based on interviews she did with almost three dozen of the survivors and the families of the non-survivors. Here are a couple excerpts from a detailed summary that you should check out fully:

As a result of the disturbing effect of McVeigh’s presence, many of the victims turned to support groups, spiritual organizations, and therapy. Madeira details a description of the formation of four different community/advocacy groups by the victims: the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building Memorial Task Force, which was responsible for building a national memorial; the habeas group, which was responsible for altering the appellate process in capital cases through the creation of a law entitled the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) of 1996; the Oklahoma City Murrah Building Survivor’s Association, which was responsible for community service activities; and Families and Survivors United, which was responsible for victims’ rights advocacy. The main purposes of these groups were to provide companionship, build group narratives, and form reconstructive goals. Madeira discusses some of the internal tensions among the victims, particularly the friction between the survivors and the murdered victims’ family members, the (less poignant) friction between the survivors who sustained injuries and the survivors who did not sustain injuries, and between those victims who supported the death penalty for the perpetrators and those who were opposed to it. However, the majority of those participants who became involved in the community/advocacy groups felt that their activities were very cathartic and more therapeutic in assisting in their memory work than what either the media or the criminal justice system provided. They believed that the groups helped them to regain control of their lives. Moreover, as a result of their advocacy efforts within the groups, several of the participants became career advocates; they have remained involved in advocacy work many years after the bombing. . . .

The author explains that while all the victims wanted McVeigh to be held accountable for the bombing in some way, they held diverse opinions on matters such as participation in the legal proceedings, including attendance at the trials, appropriate sentences, including capital punishment for McVeigh, and attendance at McVeigh’s execution. Many of those who chose to attend and bear witness at McVeigh’s trial found that to be helpful in engaging in memory work, thereby aiding the healing process, and ultimately in serving justice. They also found that, in contrast to the media coverage, the legal proceedings provided them with unbiased information about McVeigh. Madeira points out some initial obstacles to the victims in regard to attending McVeigh’s trial, including a change of venue, the refusal to have the trial broadcast via closed-circuit television back to Oklahoma City, and a limitation on victim impact evidence. She discusses the role (or lack thereof) of emotions in the legal process and how Congress helped to ensure that the victims would be allowed to watch the closed-circuit broadcast of the trial and to attend the guilt phase of the trial if providing victim impact testimony at sentencing. A total of 38 victim impact witnesses testified at the sentencing phase of McVeigh’s trial and confirmed their initial impression of him as cold, callous, remorseless, and defiant. Ultimately, McVeigh’s guilty verdict and death sentence helped many of them with their memory work and healing process. . . .

A couple of quibbles. The small number of both impact statements and interviewees means that we have no reason to accept Madiera’s conclusions as applying to anyone other than those she talked to. And her comment in the review about “a minority” who didn’t want him executed is true but misleading. The split was very close, and some of us thought execution both gave him what he wanted and was not punishment enough. As I’ve said before, I would have kept him alive to a very old age in a small cell with pictures of the kids from the daycare center flashing on every wall and sounds of children playing 24/7. Death’s not the worst thing you can do to a person, just to people who think it is. But that’s quibbling. There’s a lot in the book and in this review to inform you and get those synapses flashing. No, I haven’t read the book myself. My synapses have flashed on this enough.

Since news tends to slow on the weekends but we know you still would like some diversion, each Saturday we will post what research abstracts we can find related to sentencing and corrections. Most of them will come from the good folks at the National Criminal Justice Reference Service, a too unheralded resource in our activities, so, if there's no link, just hit the one above and get everything, including things we might not have thought were important but we were wrong, at least for you. So get a Guinness and a bag of chips and dive in!

Examining the Interaction Between Level of Risk and Dosage of Treatment
Kimberly Gentry Sperber; Edward J. Latessa; Matthew D. Makarios
Criminal Justice and Behavior
Volume:40 Issue:3 Dated:March 2013 Pages:338 to 348

This study seeks to identify the number of hours of treatment that are necessary to reduce recidivism in a sample of offenders placed in a residential community corrections facility. The risk principle suggests that effective correctional interventions should vary the intensity of treatment by offender risk, with higher risk offenders receiving more intense services than lower risk offenders. Although much research indicates that programs that target higher risk cases are more likely to be effective, relatively little research has examined the impact of varying levels of treatment dosage by risk. Consequently, this study seeks to identify the number of hours of treatment that are necessary to reduce recidivism in a sample of offenders placed in a residential community corrections facility. The sample for this study includes 689 adult male offenders successfully discharged from a Community-Based Correctional Facility in Ohio. The results provide support for providing higher levels of dosage to high-risk offenders, with substantial reductions in recidivism for high-risk offenders receiving 200 or more hours of treatment.

Evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative
National Institute of Justice

This Web page on the National Institute of Justice Web site presents the results of a multi-year evaluation of the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI). The evaluation had several purposes: to determine the extent to which participation in SVORI programs improved access to reentry services and programs, and to determine whether the improved access resulted in improved outcomes in the areas of housing, education, employment, and criminal behavior. The evaluation found that SVORI increased access to reentry services and programs for offenders with participants more likely to have reentry plans upon release; however, provision of reentry services decreased significantly after offenders were released from incarceration. In addition, the evaluation found that compared to non-SVORI participants, program participants did not have improved outcomes with respect to housing, education, employment, and recidivism rates. This Web page also includes information on the challenges faced by returning offenders and funding for on-going follow-up research on which SVORI programs and services improved reentry outcomes. A list of detailed reports and the dataset from the multiyear SVORI evaluation is included at the end of the Web page, with links to the reports.

Inmate Misconduct and the Institutional Capacity for Control
Marie L. Griffin; John R. Hepburn
Criminal Justice and Behavior
Volume:40 Issue:3 Dated:March 2013 Pages:270 to 288

This study of 50 State prisons for men provides support for the hypothesized direct effects of institutional capacity for control on the level of violent and nonviolent inmate misconduct and for the contextual effect of prison environment. The social order of a prison arises from the combined effects of the prison’s institutional capacity for control and the effectiveness of prison management. Prior research suggests that the criminogenic characteristics of the inmate population, the security level of the prison, and the prison environment are three structural characteristics of prisons that define each prison’s institutional capacity for control, as reflected in the aggregate-level measures of inmate misconduct, and prison environment is expected to moderate the effects of inmate population characteristics on inmate misconduct. This study of 50 State prisons for men provides support for the hypothesized direct effects of institutional capacity for control on the level of violent and nonviolent inmate misconduct and for the contextual effect of prison environment. The findings are discussed in terms of the management environment created among prisons by variations in the institutional capacity for control.

Civil Death: An Examination of Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement and Reintegration
Bryan Lee Miller; Joseph F. Spillane
Punishment & Society
Volume:14 Issue:4 Dated:October 2012 Pages:402 to 428

This article discusses when someone is found guilty of a felony crime they forfeit the right to vote, serve on a jury, and run for elected office in the State of Florida. In the State of Florida, when someone is found guilty of a felony crime they forfeit the right to vote, serve on a jury, and run for elected office. These civil rights are lost regardless of whether they are sentenced to incarceration, probation, or released into the community. The process to regain these civil rights can be difficult, time consuming, and impossible for some. Research on prisoner reentry suggests that the loss of these civil rights constitutes a barrier to full citizenship that may impede the process of community reintegration. This research employs 54 semi-structured interviews with ex-felons who have lost the right to vote to better understand the meaning former offenders attribute to the loss of their civil rights and to assess the impact this may have on staying out of trouble. Findings from this study suggest that for a significant number of ex-offenders the loss of voting rights poses an obstacle to successful reintegration.

Emotions About Crime and Attitudes to Punishment
Timothy F. Hartnagel; Laura J. Templeton
Punishment & Society
Volume:14 Issue:4 Dated:October 2012 Pages:452 to 474

Various polls and surveys seem to indicate that a substantial proportion of the Canadian public desires harsher penalties for crime. While various explanations have been offered for this punitiveness, emotional reactions to crime have been under-researched. The present research draws on a Canadian dataset to test the hypothesis that the emotions of fear and particularly anger about crime are significant predictors of punitive attitudes once crime victimization, economic insecurity, internal attributions of crime causation and other variables are controlled for. This research also examines the possible indirect effects of economic insecurity, victimization and internal attributions of crime causation on punitiveness through their impact on fear and anger. The multiple regression results support the role of emotions, particularly anger, in explaining punitive attitudes. While indirect effects of victimization and economic insecurity were insignificant, 14 percent of the effect of internal attributions was through anger.

Targeting Blacks for Marijuana-Possession Arrests of African Americans in California, 2004-08
Harry G. Levine; Jon B. Gettman; Loren Siegel
Marijuana Arrest Research Project

This report provides data on arrests for marijuana possession among African-Americans in California for the years 2004-08, with attention to the adverse impact of such arrests. The study found that in every one of the 25 largest California counties, Blacks are arrested for marijuana possession at double, triple, or even quadruple the rate of Whites; however, U.S. Government studies have consistently found that young Blacks use marijuana at lower rates than young Whites. These racially biased arrests are system-wide, occurring in every county and nearly every police jurisdiction in California. This suggests that the pattern of over-representation of Blacks in arrests for marijuana possession is not due to the bias of individual officers, but rather to a general policy of resource allocation among law enforcement agencies. These marijuana possession arrests have serious consequences. They create permanent “drug arrest” records that can be easily found on the Internet by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies, licensing boards, and banks. The stigma of a criminal record for marijuana possession can create barriers to employment and education for anyone; however, criminal records for marijuana possession severely limit the chances for employment and related economic advancement among the poor and the young, particularly young Blacks and Latinos.

Race, Place, and Drug Enforcement: Reconsidering the Impact of Citizen Complaints and Crime Rates on Drug Arrests
Robin S. Engel; Michael R. Smith; Francis T. Cullen
Criminology & Public Policy
Volume:11 Issue:4 Dated:November 2012 Pages:601 to 635

This study examined racial disparities in drug arrests in two different drug markets in Seattle, WA. Highlights of findings from this study on racial disparity in drug arrests in Seattle, WA, include the following: when looking at the representation of different ethnic groups among arrestees citywide, the findings indicate statistically insignificant differences within the two drug markets examined; when compared with calls for service (CFS) data, Blacks and Hispanics were not overrepresented among drug arrestees; Blacks and Hispanics were less likely to be arrested compared to Whites based on comparisons of citizen complaints of drug activity; and in the Downtown drug market, Blacks and Whites were both arrested at nearly the same rate to what would be expected based on citizen complaints about drug activity. This study reexamined racial disparities in drug arrests in two drug markets in Seattle, WA, using new data, measures, and methods from a previous study. Data for this study were obtained from three sources at the Seattle Police Department: drug arrests, drug-related citizen calls for service, and reported crimes. The data was analyzed to the extent that minorities were over or underrepresented in arrests for drug charges. The findings indicate that Blacks and Hispanics are either evenly represented or underrepresented among drug arrestees, and that a moderate to strong association exists between drug arrests, drug-related calls for service, and reported crimes. Policy implications are discussed.

Young Adult Offenders: The Need for More Effective Legislative Options and Justice Processing
David P. Farrington; Rolf Loeber; James C. Howell
Criminology & Public Policy
Volume:11 Issue:4 Dated:November 2012 Pages:727 to 750

This article discusses the need for more effective legislative options and justice processing for young adult offenders due to the drastic change in how juvenile offenders are treated once they become legal adults. The article first examines the justifications for special legal treatment afforded juvenile offenders, focusing on culpability and adjudicative competence. Next the authors discuss the current state of scientific knowledge regarding human development in adolescence and young adulthood. The research suggests that biological changes in the brain continue from adolescence on into young adulthood, indicating that young adults do not suddenly become more adult-like in their actions. The authors also discuss research that has examined offending careers of juvenile and young adult offenders, the reentry problems faced by young adult offenders, and special legal procedures for young adult offenders. Based on the research, the authors conclude that young adult offenders are more similar to juveniles than adults with respect to features such as their executive functioning, impulse control, responsibility, and susceptibility to peer influence, and changes should be made to policies dealing with young adult offenders to reflect these differences. Recommendations for changes to policy are discussed.


From SSRN:
Status Concerns as a Motive for Crime?
Florian Baumann
Tim Friehe
CESifo Working Paper Series No. 4225

Abstract:
This paper analyzes the implications of potential offenders caring about their relative status. We establish that subjects' status concerns can result in multiple-equilibrium crime rates and may modify the standard comparative-statics results regarding how the crime rate changes in response to a higher detection probability and higher sanctions. In addition, we argue that the socially optimal level of the detection probability and the sanction will often be higher when potential offenders care about their relative positions. Our analysis can be linked to one of the most important criminological theories of crime, namely strain theory.


Incentivizing Lawfulness Through Post-Sentencing Appellate Waivers
Kevin Bennardo

Abstract:
A sentencing appellate waiver is a promise by a criminal defendant not to appeal her sentence. These provisions routinely appear in federal defendants’ plea agreements. With a few narrow exceptions, a knowing and voluntary sentencing appellate waiver bars a defendant from appealing all issues within the scope of the waiver. Using previous models of judicial behavior and available empirical data, this article argues that the inclusion of sentencing appellate waivers in plea agreements creates bargaining inefficiencies and removes important incentives from the sentencing process. As a solution, the article proposes that sentencing appellate waivers should take the form of separate post-sentencing agreements.

First, during the plea bargaining stage, both parties suffer from incomplete information about the true value of the defendant’s appellate rights because neither the procedure nor the outcome of the sentencing hearing is yet known. With that information deficiency, the parties’ default valuation of the defendant’s sentencing appellate rights are often unaligned—the defendant overvalues her appellate rights out of fear of an unjust sentence and the government undervalues the same rights based on past experiences. This disparity is magnified by the disproportionate significance that a defendant places on an unfavorable sentencing outcome relative to an unfavorable outcome’s significance to the government. As a result, the parties inefficiently bargain over sentencing appellate waivers at the pre-plea stage.

Second, the foreknowledge that a sentence is virtually unreviewable removes important incentives from the sentencing judge. Past research and behavioral modeling have demonstrated that the “ordinary” district court judge labors under an aversion to reversal and that this reversal aversion influences sentencing outcomes and procedures. By signaling to the court that the prospect of appellate review has been removed, the current system of including sentencing appellate waivers in plea agreements reduces the likelihood that district courts will adhere to statutorily-required sentencing practices.

Third, the inclusion of sentencing appellate waivers in plea agreements creates difficulties in imposing meaningful consequences on defendants for breach of the agreement. Under the current system, a breaching defendant who notes an appeal in violation of her appellate waiver suffers the consequence of having her appeal dismissed. In general, neither the government nor the court is willing to unravel the entire plea agreement as a result of the breach. Thus, the defendant’s breach renders her no worse off than if she had adhered to her promise not to appeal. The government’s impotence to impose meaningful additional sanctions beyond the prospect of dismissal fails to effectively deter defendants from breaching their sentencing appellate waivers.

This article proposes a post-sentencing appellate waiver system whereby the defendant and the government may bargain for a separate sentencing appellate waiver agreement after the completion of the sentencing hearing. During this post-sentencing bargaining, both parties will be fully informed about the sentencing hearing’s procedure and outcome, and thus will be able to appropriately value the defendant’s appellate rights and bargain efficiently. Because a sentencing appellate waiver will not be consummated (if at all) until after the sentencing hearing is complete, the sentencing judge will be incentivized to conduct a hearing that complies with all applicable sentencing law. And, because the government can withdraw the incremental benefit bartered in exchange for the defendant’s promise not to appeal, defendants will be disincentivized from breaching their sentencing appellate waiver agreements.

--Mike Connelly

Research-based Deep Thoughts for your weekend this week. We know we might sometimes come off as anti-research or –evidence, but we hope we’re clear that our concerns about the state of research generally and in Corr Sent specifically come because, to the extent we’re not clear either in our models or our categories and how both fit to the underlying theories, we end up with results but not actual understanding. That’s fine for astrologists/economics and other academics whose impact on public action is limited, but not for us as we have to make better and better decisions about use of resources in The Perfect Storm. We will be making decisions, and data-less, research-less ones may be right but are far less likely to be so than those better informed. It’s just that our still-formative nature in what we know as a discipline makes that greater confidence in the latter possibly a danger if we become over-confident. That in turn leads to statements about what we know and how to design policy around it that Reality may just laugh at, as it has recently the research underlying the “austerity” programs in Europe and increasingly here. Economists are well established enough to withstand the fallout, clearly. We may not be. And that’s what we have to be concerned about. This quote from the first article is something we would hope would never be said about us: “There is one other thing that the public should know about economists: It is cleverness, not wisdom, that advances academic economists’ careers. Professors at the top universities distinguish themselves today not by being right about the real world, but by devising imaginative theoretical twists or developing novel evidence. If these skills also render them perceptive observers of real societies and provide them with sound judgment, it is hardly by design.”

 

These pieces and the excerpts we’re providing all deal more or less directly with all these points. They’re not long so do click the links and give them some thought about whether/where you think we are getting/missing the point and how it applies to Corrections Sentencing now and in our Perfect Storm future. You know the depth of the thought. (Plus, one of them references “House”!! You have to at least read that one and apply to judges and Motivational Interviewers.)

“What Use Are Economists?”

A solution that will not work is for economists to second-guess how their ideas will be used or misused in public debate and to shade their public statements accordingly. . . . But few economists are sufficiently well attuned to have a clear idea of how the politics will play out.

Moreover, when economists adjust their message to fit their audience, the result is the opposite of what is intended: they rapidly lose credibility.

Consider what happens in international trade, where such shading of research is established practice. For fear of empowering the “protectionist barbarians,” trade economists are prone to exaggerate the benefits of trade and downplay its distributional and other costs. In practice, this often leads to their arguments being captured by interest groups on the other side – global corporations that seek to manipulate trade rules to their own advantage. As a result, economists are rarely viewed as honest brokers in the public debate about globalization.

But economists should match honesty about what their research says with honesty about the inherently provisional nature of what passes as evidence in their profession. Economics, unlike the natural sciences, rarely yields cut-and-dried results. For one thing, all economic reasoning is contextual, with as many conclusions as potential real-world circumstances. All economic propositions are “if-then” statements. Accordingly, figuring out which remedy works best in a particular setting is a craft rather than a science.

Second, empirical evidence is rarely reliable enough to settle decisively a controversy characterized by deeply divided opinion. This is particularly true in macroeconomics, of course, where data are few and open to diverse interpretations.

But even in microeconomics, where it is sometimes possible to generate precise empirical estimates using randomization techniques, the results must be extrapolated in order to be applied in other settings. New economic evidence serves at best to nudge the views – a little here, a little there – of those inclined to be open-minded.

“Dr. House Explains Why We Should Prefer Dr. Watson”

These folk and many others feel that medical diagnosis is an ineffably human task, one where the best humans are always going to be better than the best machines. This is because, the argument goes, good diagnosis requires a combination of intellect, knowledge, and intuition. The intellect is innate, the knowledge is picked up through long years of study and experience in medical school, residency, and practice, and medical intuition — the ability to see more than what’s in the test results and patients’ self-descriptions — is the product of both inherent ability and accumulated experience.

Can we replicate and improve on each of these digitally with Dr. Watson? Yes, we can.

Let’s take intellect and knowledge first. As Watson demonstrated so convincingly on Jeopardy!, artificial intelligence is now astonishingly good. As I wrote, we can put all the world’s accumulated medical knowledge in a database, turn armies of algorithms loose on it, and when presented with a set of symptoms arrive at a diagnosis within seconds. No human brain can do this, and the digital ones are getting better at it all the time.

But what about intuition? Don’t human senses, minds, and guts allow us to intuit things that machines just can’t? Won’t the best human diagnosticians notice that a patient’s skin is slightly jaundiced, or that he suddenly breaks off eye contact when stating that he’s been taking his meds faithfully, or that his voice changes tone when he answers questions about illegal drug use?

Yes, the best diagnosticians will do all these things. But as I wrote before, they’ll do them inconsistently and with great overconfidence. These problems are so great that they typically negate the advantages of intuition over algorithm even for experienced clinicians, as careful research has shown. And most doctors, of course, have less than world-class intuition, yet still trust in their own ability to ‘go beyond the data’ and arrive at a diagnosis after face-to-face interactions with their patients.

“Against Optimism About Social Science”

. . . Jeff Leek posted something today on the same topic, but with a slightly different perspective (he refers to “the current over-pessimism about science”). Leek argues, reasonably enough, “that people are using a few high-profile cases to hyperventilate about the real, solvable, and recognized problems in the scientific process” and he worries that “the rational reasonable problems we have, with enough hyperbole, will make it look like the scientific process ‘sky is falling’” and lend support to political attacks on science more generally. I think Jeff and I should be able to agree to the following:

- Science is hard, we all make mistakes, the system has problems but all human systems have problems, in working to fix these problems we shouldn’t thrown the research baby out with the bathwater that is the changing rules of scientific communication.

- We’re not there yet, we still live in a world in which it’s easier to publish and hype a elaborate flawed claim than to report a simple correction, a world in which data sharing is far from the norm, and where social and statistical biases lead to systematic overreporting of dramatic claims and systematic overestimation of effect sizes.

Leek is making the valid point that the sort of doomsaying that has been needed to draw attention to problems in scientific communication and to motivate improvements, can also be used, in guilt-by-association sense, to disparage good science. And, even in popular culture, my impression is that things aren’t as bad as they used to be. Sure, vaccine deniers and global warming deniers and all the other deniers are out there, but it’s not like the 70s when people were buying millions of copies of Chariots of the Gods, The Jupiter Effect, and The Bermuda Triangle, right?

Right?

Inside the Silo News
“Judge Finds That Anderson Hid Evidence in Morton Murder Trial”
More like this, please. Might just reaffirm a faith that no one is above the law, not even self-appointed archangel DAs. TX guy we’ve talked about, former DA and now judge (!!), going to prison with sentence max possible of 10 years . . . 15 years short of the years he took from the guy he sent to prison, but you know . . . . Judge in this case did a nice job of apologizing to the victim, a victim every bit as much as those the archangels claim to represent but somehow never worry about as long as they “win” convictions. Nice to see real justice beat these guys’ Cool Whip kind once in a blue moon.

“What Life Is Like for the 2 Million People Behind Bars in America”
Most of you who read here really don’t need to see the slide show at this link, but it might be good to have the next time Mr. Clavin a few seats down the bar from you launches into one of his learned excursions on “air conditioning and free weights.”

“Wannabe Leadership or Real Leadership?”
“Mastering Your Role as a Front-Line Effective Supervisor: 10 Keys to Build Towards Success”
Couple of pieces over at Corrections.com right now on correctional leadership you might want to check out for leisurely weekend reading (after our Research Abstracts and weekly book review, of course!!). The first one, from their top op-ed guy, IMHO, starts with this: “Leadership is more than a position as it involves certain elements that need to be identified and addressed in order to determine just what kind of person or employee you really are to the organization.” And then tells you how to know if you have or can acquire those “certain elements.” The second says there’s more to it than “DON’T DO THAT” and proceeds to spell out those 10 “keys” and 10 reasons they’re important. Isn’t it cool how these things almost always come in “10s”??

“Study: Denver Women’s Prison Has Highest Rate of Reported Staff Sex Assaults in Nation”
Given the varying reporting in prison rapes (even within CO, it looks like), not sure if this would hold up in a world of perfect reporting (see “death certificates” in “Outside the Silo” below), but still not something you want the award for.

“Aging Prisoners”
Psychologist opines (!!!) on the link we need to be making between the fears, issues, and concerns associated with Baby Boom aging in general to that happening among our inmate population. Welcome on this bandwagon already, Dr. Professor. What’s most interesting in the piece is his assertion (probably even true) that by 2020 California’s inmate population will be 16% life sentences and 16% of those will be elderly inmates. As we’ve noted before, depending on the age of the inmate starting after 50, their costs can be 2, 3, 8 times that of the general inmate. Which means, if you’re reducing prison pops to reduce costs, for every 50 and over you get or age into your prisons, you have to divert 2, 3, 8 non-50s just to keep costs level. Good thing CA has a little time to plan like intelligent people would and isn’t wasting its time fighting lawsuits all the way to the Supreme Court.

“5 Myths About Addiction That Undermine Recovery”
All good points affecting the narratives that drive our Corr Sent policymaking regarding substance abuse way too much that you may not have thought of. Here’s #3:

#3 People usually get addicted to one type of substance.
At one time, we believed that most addicts had one drug of choice and stuck with it. Today, polysubstance abuse – the use of three or more classes of substances – is the norm, not the exception. Some people use multiple substances to create a more intense high (e.g., combining cocaine and heroin, or “speed-balling”) while others take certain drugs to counteract the undesirable effects of another drug (e.g, using alcohol to come down from stimulants). Some supplement their primary drug of choice with whatever is readily available (e.g., using prescription opiates and heroin interchangeably).

Polysubstance abuse appears to be particularly common among males, those who begin using drugs at an early age, and adolescents and young adults. People who abuse multiple substances are more likely to struggle with mental illness, which when complicated by drug interactions and side effects, makes polysubstance abuse riskier and more difficult to treat than other types of drug abuse.

(And while we’re on the addiction/treatment thing, here’s a promo piece that nevertheless does provide some insight into what people look for in drug rehab when they have a choice. No worries. Looks just like what we offer in our in-house treatment.)

“McDonald’s Worker Spots Her Stolen Car in the Drive-Thru”
We don’t imagine folks who pay their own way working at Mickey D’s (disclaimer: worked through high school and college flipping burgers at a mom-and-pop drive-in) get to experience much true Karma in their lives so we hope this woman milked the moment for its total value. And got to keep the stolen clothes found in the back.


Outside the Silo News
“Study: Nearly One-Third of All Death Certificates Are Wrong”
No, not a direct Corr Sent story, but think about this in light of our constant concern here about the poor recording/reporting and bad categorizations in our research and models. Now it’s just New York City, so no proof that other places aren’t better. But consider all the reports and studies done based on causes of death and that, if NYC is not an exception, around a third of those data are just wrong. Got confidence in those doctors’ guidelines and “gold standard” studies now? And as we’ve seen in recent stories and as one who’s put data together for reporting and analysis, I pledge to you we have no reason to be cocky about our own purity on this.

“Bus Drivers Top Obese Workers List; Doctors Tip Lighter”

Saw this one too late yesterday to get it in on the week’s management pieces. C’mon, you know you’re gunna click to see. Just do it already.  Found this one late, too:  "How Needing a Wee Affects Your Decision Making."  This is one you need to click on.

“Report: Corruption, Mismanagement Plagues Energy-Rich Nations”
“Many countries that rely heavily on revenue from mining and oil-and-gas production are plagued by government mismanagement, secrecy and corruption, a new report finds.” Pretty good, but it doesn’t go into the way these places end up with small middle classes that don’t have the power to offset the owners of the resources. Good thing none of that could apply to the US states along the Gulf of Mexico or states like Oklahoma or West Virginia, right?

Have a good weekend.

--Mike Connelly

Earlier this week we explained why the proposal in OK (of course) to go to a four-year cycle of “zero-based budgeting” (ZBB) would do more harm than good, not that that’s ever stopped OK, as its current JRI and DOC revolving fund “scandal” problems indicate. We don’t really have a problem with zero-basing a program, that is, telling everyone involved “okay, no program next year at all unless you can demonstrate enough impact to justify continuance.” The bulk of the work we do on program evaluation at JCO right now is helping foundations and non-profits work with their recipients to do exactly that—stop thinking that “we do good” is enough and figure out how to develop new and extend existing data resources to demonstrate what/how much “good” that is to the people who are funding you.

(Oddly, the existing Corrections Sentencing policy and consulting structures don’t seem to want to pay for our opinion on much of anything at the moment. Hoodathunk? Too bad we’re retired and have lower-than-rent house payments so it doesn’t matter. We’re pretty certain we’ll be in demand when they’re not, down the road a couple of years after current fruitless state/local leadership and Reform 1.0 efforts have failed. We can wait.)

But we digress. As we were saying, if starting an existing program at zero for the next funding year is what you mean by zero-basing it, fine. But don’t call it budgeting and don’t pretend you’re going to do it to every program in the government effectively. Even over four years. You’re not and it just adds to the skepticism of the public and the practitioners involved concerning what’s real and what’s just the usual theater in state/local policymaking. We won’t repeat the whole spiel about ZBB here, but trust us that we’re not the only ones who’ve made these complaints. And it sounds like we won’t be the last.

OTOH, we’ve been pretty outspoken (even for us) in our preference for “zero-increase budgeting” as a prerequisite for even deciding to go into a state to talk about what reforms could be done. As we described in this piece over a year ago comparing why Texas at least could claim legislative success and Oklahoma’s Reform 1.0 effort was already showing why it would go belly up, if you start with “no more spending at all for this, now what are you going to do?” you generate different considerations and possibilities than you do with normal budgeting or with ZBB.

Again, we won’t repeat the February 2012 post, but here’s the outline. Texas’ Speaker didn’t go into bargaining mode with “stake holders” over expanding the state’s existing number of prisons like so many Reform 1.0 states do. He told his man (yes, hombre) in the House, “no more prisons, find other ways to deal with those offenders and keep it from hurting anything or costing more.” More or less, from what that House leader tells every group he gets flown in to sell the Reform 1.0 approach. IOW, zero-increase budgeting. Cap your spending on these things. No growth possible when normally that would be the path. So what do you do now?

It led TX, as the House leader effectively describes it, to taking evidence-based practice more seriously and to accepting that public safety could be protected effectively with less imprisonment. (Yes, we know that’s a debate between the JRI folks and the recent report criticizing their TX narrative but we’ll leave that for now.) The important thing from it was that the “stake holders” were put on notice that politics as usual were going to be stonewalled so don’t screw around with the leadership. Get on board and have some input or get out. But you’re not getting vetoes and we’re not worried about you running your usual “tough on crime” (in high crime states) BS against us.

It’s very similar to LBJ’s strategy when he finally did Medicare. It was going to happen, so the medical types had to decide “do we sit at the table and shape the very real change as best we can to our perspectives or do we sit outside and just gripe?” The old “socialism” charge was off the table. LBJ had the power after JFK’s death. So the medical establishment had no veto and no threat. And, whatever you think of it (looks pretty good to us as we get older at JCO), one of the very biggest policy changes in US history happened.

There was more than a little of this at play in one of the other more successful (relatively speaking) Reform 1.0 states, South Carolina. The senator shepherding the reform package had been given marching orders to get change done by leadership who stood firmly behind him, in that senator’s telling. And that senator did not give the “stake holders” vetoes either. They got to talk and advise at public hearings, but the bottom line was that change was going to happen. Get on or get off. SC doesn’t have the money to do anything major serious about one of the worst violent crime rates and it’s currently haggling over whether empty authorized positions from pre-reform should count as the positions to implement the reform (yes, you read that right, OK doesn’t have a monopoly). But its package, like Arkansas’ where the popular and to-be-returning governor laid down similar support, got passed when other states with far less determination and vision just played at (MO), defeated (IN), or butchered (OK) their 1.0 efforts. Not exactly zero-increase, but close to the “cap” concept which is so vital before any air even gets wasted on what’s going to happen.

That bottom line is our bottom line on the difference between the two “zero” types of budgeting. ZBB is a long scripted and pretty much booed-off-the-stage play that sounds good when you read about it until you see the actual performance. Zero-increase budgeting forces all the good things ZBB supposedly brings to the fore. It makes the providers consider the alternatives that could bring about the same results at less cost or better results at the same cost (aka “cost-effectiveness”). It tells the “stake holders” that the leadership isn’t afraid of their threats and isn’t accepting “politics as usual.” The new options for accomplishing the program/agency goal(s) will be ones that include them or not. Their call. But they won’t be the same old, same old.

The facts, of course, are that, as The Perfect Storm rolls on and eviscerates “the good old days” and their status quo, most state/local programs are going to be triaging, wishing they could hold steady at “no increase.” Many of them already are, and they’re not doing it well because they haven’t approached the clear future with the need to seek alternatives in their minds, either because of cognitive limits or because the ideas for them haven’t gained prominence. Yet. For the smarter ones, that day is coming or already here.

When they do, it will take Gordian Knot-cutting, “outside the silo” options, like Corr Sent Reform 2.0 in what we do, to steer the states/locals down the white water future they’re facing. A big first step to success at that would be to start planning what happens when there are just not resources there for any more increases. What do you do now to meet your professed goals? It won’t be ZBB, no matter how well-trod that process is. It will be zero-increase budgeting.

--Mike Connelly

Usual potpourri of dealing with admin problems to self-help career stuff this week. Maybe a little more on leadership than usual, the good side of it anyway. Plus a bonus for you diabetics. Seriously. And no whacks at Yahoo. (Pause here for huge sigh of relief.) Anyway, you’re the judge of the quality of each but we think there’s something here for just about everybody, even cranky old bloggers.

“8 Ways to Be a Memorable Boss” (in a good way)
“How ‘Giving’ Can Create a Positive Organizational Culture”
“Are You a Restless Leader”
“6 Traits You Need If You Want to Lead”
“5 Tips for Reducing Public Speaking Nervousness”
“How to Tell If Your Job Is Right for You”
“How Multitasking Can Improve Judgments” (KISS principle)
“The Unexpected Antidote to Procrastination”
“Your Boss Probably Wouldn’t Pass Yale’s Emotional Intelligence Assessment” (would you??)
“What Your Boss Is Thinking When You Ask for a Raise” (blah, blah, Ginger, blah, blah, blah??)
“What Do U.S. College Graduates Lack? Professionalism” (not all, but enough for an “Amen”)
“Positive Social Support at Work Shown to Reduce Risk of Diabetes”
“Providing Workplace Wellness Centers Could Backfire” (like how you feel when you go on a diet, then put the pounds back on. Like that.)
“5 Ways to Be Productive When the Pressure Is On”
“14 Easy Ways to Get Considerably More Done”
“10 Signs That You’re the ‘Problem’ Employee” (for remedies, see just above . . . only there’s no remedy for being a “loose canon” . . . or bad editor)

Inside the Silo News
“Police Drop Charges Against Teen Whose Science Experiment Exploded at School”
Not quite. She’s on a deferred prosecution which will leave her formal record clean if completed but her experience with this silly cr*p won’t be clean at all. You may remember this case that we argued was the epitome of how the “school-to-prison” pipeline operates and has gotten out of hand, taking a stupid but not malign action that schools in the past would have handled themselves without the criminal processing system being involved at all and turning them into opportunities for authorities to show who’s boss, by God. She became a national cause when scientists around the country appealed for the charges to be dropped, which they may mistakenly buy this headline and lead portions of the story and believe. Still, this demonstrably intelligent young woman (with some conspicuous lapses she would never have forgotten anyhow) isn’t going to be incarcerated and hopefully will pass this off as one of those “life lesson” things. And cure cancer so we can use her as a good example of smart nonincarceration in the future.

“NM Corrections Department Audit: More Than 50 Inmates Released Early by Mistake”
51, actually, but that wouldn’t be quite as dramatic, would it? Nor would 0.7 of all inmates whose files were checked/audited. So in the name of the NM DOC director’s need for “zero tolerance” after a mistaken release that was identified and rectified quickly and in what actually proved to be a highly efficient operation, all inmate release documents now have to go to central admin before releases, letting some parolees sit in prison longer than their release dates. But that’s okay, because they’re all “bad guys.” And they’re never coming back to your community p*ssed off about their treatment.

“The Fear Factor”
No, don’t worry, that “reality” show isn’t coming back (we hope). This is actually a good op-ed on how the use of fear by those who profit from it (the media, practitioners, policymakers) has made the majority of us stupid about the Reality of crime in our lives right now. Even brings in things like “confirmation bias” that you already know about because we bring it up here regularly in one form or another. See, don’t listen to your friends or boss. This blog is good for you. Like Guinness.


Outside the Silo News
“Does Medicaid Affect Health? Part II”
Stay with us a second on this. While Corr Sent isn’t technically involved, there’s a nice bit in this story about the “randomized field trial” to determine effectiveness of offering access to subsidized medicine in OR. We actually talked about it in a Deep Thought, I think, a couple of weeks back. Anyway, the thing here is that the “TRIAL” part was heavily emphasized in the reports, but, as this piece notes, there are trials and there are trials. This one was random one way but not another, not something generally noted in the reports. Which raises the relevant point for those of us in Corr Sent reform hyping evidence-based practice and the supposed “gold standard” of randomized field trials. There are trials and there are trials. We have to figure out which is which before touting results as definitively as we might, and we need to remember John Ioannidis’ finding that even “platinum” trials have been shown wrong 10% of the time in medical research, which is the oldest and longest effort in this. Not that the findings should be discounted in this study, just appropriately qualified, as ours need to be.

“Marijuana Decriminalization in Michigan? Democratic House Leader Just Says No”
The clueless . . . it buurrrnnnnnsssssss . . . . . Wants to “discourage use of illegal drugs.” Okay, make it legal. Concerned about possible “uptick or upsurge in usage.” Nice alliteration but could we see some data? As the guy sponsoring the legislation points out, the states that have done that sorta, you know, dispute that, that is if you’re into, you know, evidence. Carries “adverse health effects.” Such as? Please spell them out. You mean like on diabetes or PTSD or obesity? Oooppsy. You know, Mr. Democratic House Leader, when the money you spend on pot enforcement and punishments would have such greater health benefits through better public safety and prevention programs, do you really have to be so far behind even country music on where this country is and needs to be? You really want to be placed by historians in the category with “federal government” on pot? Doesn’t that buurrrnnnnn . . . ?

--Mike Connelly

Last week we highlighted a batch of new material in the Crime and Justice anthology edited by Michael Tonry, provided by the good folks at the National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Turns out Tonry has a different anthology out co-edited by David P. Farrington. The bulk of the abstracts you’ll also find at NCJRS are part of a comparative framework of the US and other nations. We’re giving you some of the more general ones, which makes them more specific to US Corrections Sentencing, but we’re also recommending you head over to the site for other specific countries. If for no other reason, just to give the NCJRS folks some love they can count in their performance measures.

Punishment and Crime Across Space and Time (From Crime and Punishment in Western Countries, 1980-1999, P 1-39, 2005, Michael Tonry and David P. Farrington, eds.)
Michael Tonry ; David P. Farrington
University of Chicago Press

This introductory essay by the editors for the book, “Crime and Punishment in Western Countries, 1980-1999” (Volume 33 in the “Crime and Justice” series) discusses current knowledge of cross-national patterns of crime and punishment. The discussion relies primarily on data obtained from the subsequent essays on trends and patterns in six offenses in eight countries: England, Wales, Scotland, the United States, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia. Section I describes the method used in the project. The authors of the essays on each country were asked to obtain crime and case-processing data; to adjust and reclassify the data, when necessary, to make it as comparable as possible across countries and time; and to conduct a series of calculations prescribed by a common template (provided in the appendix of this introduction). Section II of the introductory essay discusses cross-national comparisons of crime levels and patterns over time, with attention to the six offenses of burglary, vehicle theft, assault, robbery, rape, and homicide. Section III addresses cross-national comparisons of punishment levels, patterns, and trends over time. Section IV summarizes major findings concerning crime and punishment trends cross-nationally and offers methodological suggestions for improving future research similar to that presented in this volume.

Cross-National Measures of Punitiveness (From Crime and Punishment in Western Countries, 1980-1999, P 347-376, 2005, Michael Tonry and David P. Farrington, eds.)
Alfred Blumstein; Michael Tonry; Asheley Van Ness
University of Chicago Press

In order to explore issues in the effort of this volume to compare conviction and sentencing patterns in relation to trends in each of six crimes (burglary, motor vehicle theft, robbery, assault, rape, and homicide) in eight countries, this chapter draws cross-national conclusions about the comparative severity of countries’ punishment practices as measured in diverse ways. The measures of punishment practice considered are the imprisonment rate per 100,000 in the population, the probabilities of conviction or prison commitment per recorded offense; the probabilities of imprisonment per offense or per convictions; and the average prison sentence lengths per offense or per commitment. The analyses in this essay are based on the time average over the 20 years of each of the parameters characterizing criminal justice processing in each of the eight countries. A separate examination of time trends suggests that there have been a limited number of strong trends in various aspects of punitiveness. These have occurred more often in severity of punishment than in its certainty, and primarily with reference to the violent offenses. The main conclusions are that the United States, by multiple measures, is substantially more punitive than other Western countries; and that, for different reasons, the Swiss and the Swedes are among the least punitive, while England and Wales are rapidly moving in an American direction. These findings are not surprising, but they are more firmly based in data than is usually the case. The conclusions drawn are necessarily tentative, but they illustrate that such analyses are possible and that they can be improved as techniques for standardizing and calibrating data across nations also improve.

Crime and Punishment in the United States, 1981-1999 (From Crime and Punishment in Western Countries, 1980-1999, P 123-159, 2005, Michael Tonry and David P. Farrington eds.)
Patrick A. Langan
University of Chicago Press

Periods of variation in criminal punishment provide natural opportunities to investigate effects on crime. In general, punishment severity (sentence length and time served, for example) did not vary over the period investigated in this study, while punishment risk did: most notably, both arrests and conviction rates rose. As the risk of legal punishment rose, crime fell, which suggests, but by no means proves, a causal connection. It is impossible to identify from existing national data the specific policies and practices that produced rising arrest and conviction rates in the United States.

Cross-National Patterns in Crime Rates (From Crime and Punishment in Western Countries, 1980-1999, P 331-345, 2005, Michael Tonry and David P. Farrington, eds.
Philip J. Cook; Nataliya Khmilevska
University of Chicago Press

In a volume that contains detailed reports on crime and punishment for six types of crime (burglary, motor vehicle theft, assault, robbery, rape, and homicide) in each of eight nations (England and Wales, Scotland, Australia, Canada, United States Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland), this chapter summarizes cross-national patterns; compares recorded crime rates with survey-based estimates; proposes an analytical use of multinational trend data; and presents evidence relevant to the deterrent effects of punishment. The fact that victimization survey estimates of crime rates are higher than rates indicated by police records is to be expected. Crimes may be missing from official statistics because they were never reported to the authorities or because the authorities failed to record them in crime reports. On the other hand, survey estimates may be inflated; respondents may report crimes that did not occur during the reference period. There is no clear conclusion from the comparisons regarding whether the survey data or recorded data are more reliable for estimating trends or even crime levels; however, when the two crime-data sources show the same crime trends, they are likely reliable. The authors of this chapter suggest the possibility of comparing crime trends in pairs of nations that are closely linked with respect to economy and culture. The data also provide an opportunity to analyze the deterrent effect of punishment in the different countries by computing the correlation of crime rates with the ratio of prison sentences to crimes in each case; however, the results are subject to multiple interpretations, such that it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions regarding the deterrent effect. The effort does show that a weak statistical method applied to data from several nations still produces weak results.

--Mike Connelly

Put these off a day after Deep Thoughts got put off a week for Lamar Shapiro’s latest statement and prognostication. Positives outnumbered again this week, but the first one in that group might be a game-changer of sorts. Fingers crossed. (But don’t skip these other stories to get down to it.)

“Climate Milestone: Earth’s CO2 Level Passes 400 PPM” (parts per million, not something you celebrate if you value leaving a planet for grandchildren)
“CO2 Crosses Dreaded 400 PPM Milestone, and Science Is Very Disappointed in You” (uses Seinfeld references in an amusing way, until you realize that it’s not amusing)
“There Are Three Sides in the Looming Climate Change War” (good breakdown for your following the game from your recliner. really bad headline for good summary of range of views, does talk about the actual proportions of realists versus deniers but the structure of the article—one person for each side—still makes it sound 50-50, IOW, typical “objective,” that is, BAD reporting)
“Fracking Water Use Draining Resources, Especially in Western U.S., New Studies Find”
“Water Increasingly Crucial in Energy Policies, Experts Say” (you heard it here first. don’t worry about the paywall after the excerpt, the important part is the link made in Oil & Gas Journal to the twin threads of water and energy at a time when both are becoming more scarce and hence more expensive)
“Why Federal Efforts to Ensure Clean Tap Water Fail to Reach Faucets Nationwide” (Mr. Blumenfeld himself was frustrated enough to issue a public rebuke to California last month. In a letter to Ron Chapman, the director of the state’s Public Health Department, he wrote, “Many of California’s critical drinking-water infrastructure needs remain unmet.”
He added: “California needs $39 billion in capital improvements through 2026 for water systems to continue to provide safe drinking water to the public. Given this tremendous need, it is crucial that California fully utilize” the revolving fund that is the repository for the federal aid, as well as hundreds of millions of dollars in loan repayments from local water systems. The state was given 60 days to report how it was going to fix the internal accounting problems and get money out.)
“Greenland ‘Snow Drought’ Makes Big 2013 Melt More Likely” (so? Not like that water drains into the ocean and alters currents that alter weath. . . what? . . . never mind)
“Equipment Firms Feel Pressure as Deep-Water Work Heats Up” (everything you ever wanted to know about the tech involved in the machinery that deep drills and will have to drill deeper into worse)
“12 Reasons the American Energy Boom Is Totally Overrated”
“’Dramatic Decline’ Warning for Plants and Animals” (depends on whether you think knocking off half the Earth’s species is a big deal)
“Do We Need a Better Yardstick to Measure Severe Droughts?”
“Maine Scientists Envision Changing Forests”
“Rising Temperatures Increase Health Risks” (particularly for elderly, which is a bigger deal now for us than it used to be . . . .)
“Coal Plants Could Be Linked to Thousands of North Carolina Suicides” (bad air, bad health, bad life. Any questions?)
“Budget Cuts Could Threaten U.S. Flood Warning System” (is Paul Revere still available? That’d be about as smart)

“Moronic Oxymorons in the Age of Climate Change” (good rant on oxymorons in Perfect Storm debates while we’ve passed the 400 ppm in carbon emissions that haven’t been seen in millions of years: “clean coal” = coal, “green growth” = growth, and so on)

“Sulfate Aerosols Cool Climate Less Than Assumed” (again making the models based on MORE cooling wrong and too conservative about the speed and extent of what’s happening and when)

 

POSITIVE STORIES

“Patent Filing Claims Solar Energy ‘Breakthrough’” (this could be a big time shift if the story holds up . . . or it could be the next Segway)

“Parity Time: Large-Scale Solar Power Now Cost Effective in Oregon” (see what they did there . . . “parity” instead of “party” . . . ? okay, moving on)
“9 Signs That Americans Will See Solar Power Everywhere Within the Decade”
“U.S. Urban Trees Store Carbon, Provide Billions in Economic Value, Finds State-by-State Analysis” (top 3 states in tree-storing value are in areas predicted for major drought)
“Cheap Nanotech Filter Clears Hazardous Microbes and Chemicals from Drinking Water” (and would likely even work at correctional facilities!!!)
“Wind Power Urged to Compete with Fossil Fuels Head-On”
“MidAmerican's Wind Energy Project Is $1.9 Billion Windfall for Iowa”
“54% of Spain’s Electricity Generation in April from Renewables”
“Clean Energy Investment Booming in Latin America, Led by Mexico” (we’re sure they’ll happily share)
“London May Soon Be Drinking Recycled Sewage” (ever wonder about where the bottled water people get their product? Just sayin’)