tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/us-crime-42206/articlesUS crime – The Conversation2023-10-16T01:07:55Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148442023-10-16T01:07:55Z2023-10-16T01:07:55ZHow mistaken identity can lead to wrongful convictions<p>In March 1976, American Leonard Mack was convicted of sexual assault and holding two female victims at gunpoint. In September 2023, Mack’s wrongful conviction was finally overturned by a New York judge on his 72nd birthday with the help of the <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/news/hit-in-dna-database-proves-leonard-macks-innocence-after-47-years-of-wrongful-conviction/">Innocence Project</a>, an organisation that uses DNA evidence to prove factual innocence. </p>
<p>Mack’s conviction took 47 years to overturn. He served seven-and-a-half of these years in a New York prison. His case is the <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/news/8-moving-moments-from-leonard-macks-historic-exoneration-after-47-years/">longest</a> in United States history to be overturned using DNA evidence. </p>
<p>In June 2023, a similar historic moment occurred in Australia. Kathleen Folbigg was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/05/kathleen-folbigg-pardoned-after-20-years-in-jail-over-deaths-of-her-four-children">pardoned and released</a> after 20 years in prison for the murder and manslaughter of her four young children. </p>
<p>Considered one of the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/folbigg-release-would-make-chamberlain-case-pale-into-insignificance-20230307-p5cpya.html">worst miscarriages of justice</a> in Australian history, Folbigg’s release has sparked discussion over whether Australia needs a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/12/not-a-rare-case-kathleen-folbigg-pardon-sparks-calls-for-new-body-to-review-possible-wrongful-convictions">formalised body</a> to deal with post-conviction appeals. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/serial-podcasts-adnan-syed-has-murder-conviction-vacated-how-common-are-wrongful-convictions-190968">'Serial' podcast's Adnan Syed has murder conviction vacated. How common are wrongful convictions?</a>
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<p>Mack and Folbigg are only two individuals on different sides of the world who have spent decades fighting to prove their innocence. </p>
<p>Many others are still fighting. The prevalence of wrongful convictions is hard to determine. The <a href="https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx">National Registry of Exonerations</a> in the United States has recorded 3,396 exonerations nation-wide since 1989. </p>
<p>But data on official exonerations fail to capture the many individuals whose convictions are yet to be overturned. </p>
<p>Estimates of the prevalence of wrongful convictions in the United States range from <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/08874034221106747?casa_token=DL_gPkxNcI8AAAAA:uI-en9junmLXXScDGthXAuC9JcLsxp5OF1J4QB1WdA2L2cZRcwRuwtxVmIMiKYbYaSDj_ji4EdPSLA">0.5 to 5%</a>. The exact prevalence in Australia is less clear but we do know <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.801706351305383?casa_token=cpZBfZmh944AAAAA%3Ax_zYUlnogLjuDWl81jc38vmeOovzw44M171rP7G3ibNnU35rvWS0yeIO_Ad0eBa54nE54KxaKzIb3w4">71 cases of wrongful convictions</a> have been identified in Australia between 1922 to 2015.</p>
<p>Some have argued there could be <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.308199161216493">350 convictions per year</a> of individuals who are factually innocent in Australia. </p>
<p>A witness mistakenly identifying an innocent suspect is common in many wrongful conviction cases.</p>
<p>Eyewitness misidentification is the leading contributing factor in wrongful convictions overturned by the <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/exonerations-data/">Innocence Project</a>, present in 64% of their successful cases. </p>
<p>In Australia, <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.801706351305383?casa_token=cpZBfZmh944AAAAA%3Ax_zYUlnogLjuDWl81jc38vmeOovzw44M171rP7G3ibNnU35rvWS0yeIO_Ad0eBa54nE54KxaKzIb3w4">6%</a> of recorded wrongful convictions involved an eyewitness error. </p>
<p>This may be an underestimate given many applications to innocence initiatives in Australia alleging wrongful conviction, such as the <a href="https://bohii.net/">Bridge of Hope Innocence Initiative</a>, report <a href="https://bohii.net/blog/positiononestablishingccrcas">eyewitness evidence</a> as a potential contributing factor.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kathleen-folbigg-pardon-shows-australia-needs-a-dedicated-body-to-investigate-wrongful-convictions-205645">Kathleen Folbigg pardon shows Australia needs a dedicated body to investigate wrongful convictions</a>
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<p>In Mack’s case, two victims misidentified him as the perpetrator. These identifications proved to be instrumental in his wrongful conviction. How did the two victims get it wrong? </p>
<h2>How problematic procedures influence eyewitnesses</h2>
<p>Eyewitness identification evidence relies on witnesses to accurately remember criminal perpetrators. Several factors affect eyewitness memory accuracy. Features of the crime can impact memory, such as whether it was light or dark, or whether the perpetrator wore a disguise. </p>
<p>Memory can also be affected by characteristics of the witness at the time of the crime, such as their stress or intoxication levels. </p>
<p>These factors are present at the time of the crime and cannot be changed. What is perhaps more crucial is that eyewitness memory can also be affected by the procedures law enforcement use to collect identification evidence.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://innocenceproject.org/news/hit-in-dna-database-proves-leonard-macks-innocence-after-47-years-of-wrongful-conviction/">Mack’s case</a>, there were serious problems with the procedures used to get the identifications from the victims. One of the victims made three separate identifications of Mack. Witnesses should only complete one identification procedure for each suspect, because the first identification will bias future identification attempts. </p>
<p>For two of the identifications the victim made, she was only shown Mack by himself surrounded by police. Showing a lone suspect without any other lineup members may <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-29406-3_2">increase mistaken identifications</a>, particularly when the context in which they are shown is highly suggestive. </p>
<p>Seeing Mack in handcuffs and in the presence of police may have led the victim to identify him. Mack was the only person shown to the witness in these identification attempts, so the police officers organising the process knew he was the suspect. </p>
<p>“Single-blind” administration of identification procedures – where the police officers organising the lineup know who the suspect is – increase the likelihood of <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-49224-002">mistaken identifications</a>.</p>
<p>For the other identification this victim made, she picked Mack out of a photo lineup containing seven images. Mack’s photo was the only photo in the lineup that contained visible clothing and the year (1975) in the background. All members of a lineup must be matched and no one lineup member <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/lhb-lhb0000359.pdf">should stand out</a>, but Mack’s photo was distinct. </p>
<p>With all these problematic practices combined, we can see how Mack was misidentified and convicted.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/kathleen-folbigg-is-free-but-people-pardoned-and-exonerated-of-crimes-face-unique-challenges-when-released-from-prison-207017">Kathleen Folbigg is free. But people pardoned and exonerated of crimes face unique challenges when released from prison</a>
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<p>In 2020, a team of eyewitness experts published <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/lhb-lhb0000359.pdf">nine evidence-based recommendations </a>for conducting identification procedures. </p>
<p>These recommendations serve to reduce mistaken identifications and enhance accurate ones. </p>
<p>The recommendations address the problematic practices in Mack’s case, but also include things like making sure there is sufficient evidence to place a suspect in a lineup, and giving appropriate instructions to witnesses during the procedure. </p>
<p>Identification procedures should also be video recorded to identify any poor practices. </p>
<p>While these recommendations will go a long way to reducing wrongful convictions resulting from faulty eyewitness identifications, they will only be effective if followed by police. </p>
<p>The next step is ensuring these recommendations are embedded into everyday policing practice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214844/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hayley Cullen previously worked on a voluntary basis for Not Guilty: The Sydney Exoneration Project, an organisation that reviews cases of potential wrongful conviction. She was not involved in any of the cases discussed in this article.</span></em></p>Leonard Mack spent years in a US jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Here’s how identification procedures can, and have, led to wrongful convictions, and what can be done to prevent it.Hayley Cullen, Lecturer, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2000412023-03-02T13:23:59Z2023-03-02T13:23:59ZUnderstanding mass incarceration in the US is the first step to reducing a swollen prison population<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513014/original/file-20230301-30-1c9olo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=238%2C157%2C2573%2C1823&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People incarcerated at a county jail in North Dakota gather together. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/174524045/photo/oil-boom-shifts-the-landscape-of-rural-north-dakota.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=FaIkb2CLNjUOxOoWX521IPpa5BfsgYTnAMVCQrDFXnI=">Andrew Burton/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/16/americas-incarceration-rate-lowest-since-1995/">The incarceration rate</a> in the United States fell in 2021 to its lowest levels since 1995 – but the U.S. continues to imprison a higher percentage of its population than almost every <a href="https://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison-population-total?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All">other country</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/correctional-populations-united-states-2021-statistical-tables">The U.S. incarcerates</a> 530 people for every 100,000 in its population, making it one of the world’s biggest jailers – <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/el-salvador-begins-transfers-mega-prison-amid-gang-crackdown-2023-02-24/">just below El Salvador</a>, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/262962/countries-with-the-most-prisoners-per-100-000-inhabitants/">Rwanda and Turkmenistan.</a> </p>
<p>The U.S. actually had the greatest percentage of its population imprisoned until 2019. This followed steady growth in prison and jail populations in the 1970s, after a wave of <a href="https://www.owu.edu/news-media/from-our-perspective/tough-questions-for-tough-on-crime-policies/">“tough on crime” laws</a> and policies swept the nation. </p>
<p>While there has been a <a href="https://newjimcrow.com/,">growing recognition</a> of the need to reduce <a href="https://joebiden.com/justice/#,%20https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/07/15/president-obama-our-criminal-justice-system-isnt-smart-it-should-be">mass incarceration</a>, experts <a href="https://newjimcrow.com/">do not</a> agree on <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/rafael-mangual-discusses-new-book-criminal-in-justice">what caused the ballooning prison population</a> or the best path to reducing it.</p>
<p>As a former prosecutor and a researcher who studies the <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VxvW--wAAAAJ&hl=en">criminal justice system</a>, I have found that understanding how the U.S. incarceration rate grew over the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mass-Incarceration-Nation-Jeffrey-Bellin/dp/1009267558/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0">last few decades</a> is the key to understanding its root causes – and what it will take to return to lower rates. </p>
<p>As I <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/law/criminal-law/mass-incarceration-nation-how-united-states-became-addicted-prisons-and-jails-and-how-it-can-recover?format=PB&isbn=9781009267557">show in my new book</a>, “Mass Incarceration Nation, How the United States Became Addicted to Prisons and Jails and How It Can Recover,” people tend to talk past one another when they discuss crime and punishment in the U.S. I think the public debate can improve if people develop a better understanding of how mass incarceration arose – and its tenuous connection to crime. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A person wearing a bright orange outfit is seen walking into gates towards a beige building." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/513012/original/file-20230301-2409-xqwaw8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">While the U.S. prison population has dipped recently, the rate remains higher than those of most countries.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/539898510/photo/usa-crime-overcrowding-of-california-prison-system.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=iXtRdZscYW5liMp5Li6ez7mWwHU94JASFEYl2rO7Lus=">Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>A growing prison population</h2>
<p>The growth in mass incarceration began with a crime spike. Homicides, which averaged around <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_20/sr20_006acc.pdf">5,000 per year in the 1960s</a>, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-homicide-in-the-us-since-1950/">shot up in the 1970s,</a> reaching over 24,000 in 1991. </p>
<p>The crime spike sparked a bipartisan wave of punitive laws, the hiring of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/03/nyregion/dinkins-on-crime-dinkins-proposes-record-expansion-of-police-forces.html">thousands of police officers</a> and a <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/rethinking-prison-as-a-deterrent-to-future-crime/">“tough on crime” mindset</a> that permeated every aspect of American criminal law. The system became more punitive, generating longer sentences, especially for repeat and violent offenses, as I show in my book. </p>
<p>Over time, this led to today’s <a href="https://nicic.gov/projects/aging-prison">aging prison population</a> and many people being held long past the time they would have been released in other countries and at other times <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/02/20/aging-prison-populations-drive-up-costs">in this country’s history</a>. </p>
<p>The number of people 55 or older in state and federal prisons increased 280% from 1999 to 2016, <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2018/02/20/aging-prison-populations-drive-up-costs">according to Pew research.</a> </p>
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<span class="caption">Men incarcerated in Washington, D.C., participate in a computer science program in September 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.gettyimages.com/id/1243186427/photo/students-from-the-brave-behind-bars-program-an-introductory-computer-science-program-for.jpg?s=1024x1024&w=gi&k=20&c=lVKEnRJ9FBQ5GZSwwxMcHCV3HaKvXpvDudkR9vMMDWw=">Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>Different kinds of crime</h2>
<p>But longer sentences are only one factor in America’s supersized incarceration rates. </p>
<p>There has also been a <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2022/02/drug-arrests-stayed-high-even-as-imprisonment-fell-from-2009-to-2019">dramatic expansion of the kinds of crimes</a> for which U.S. courts imprison people. </p>
<p>After the 1970s, more and more people went to prison for drug crimes and other offenses that rarely used to lead to prison time. </p>
<p>Serious violent crime, meanwhile, went <a href="https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf">back down in the 1990s</a>. The crimes – like armed robbery and murder – that had sparked the march toward mass incarceration plummeted. </p>
<p>But prison populations didn’t drop. </p>
<p>As a prosecutor in Washington, D.C. in the early 2000s, I saw this change firsthand. Our caseloads were increasingly dominated by drug sales, drug possession and gun possession cases – cases which, not coincidentally, are typically the easiest to detect and prove. These changes were happening on a national level.</p>
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<p>The number of people incarcerated in state prisons for homicide increased by over 300% between 1980 and 2010, reflecting the temporary spike in homicides and longer sentences for those convicted of that offense. </p>
<p>But the scale of the increases for other offenses, like drug crimes, is even larger – rising 1,147% over this time frame.</p>
<h2>Speaking the same language</h2>
<p>While prison populations are finally starting to go down, progress is slow. At the current rate, it will take decades to reach the low incarceration rates the U.S. had for most of its history. </p>
<p>This dip is partially <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/impact-covid-19-state-and-federal-prisons-march-2020-february-2021">because of the COVID-19 pandemic</a>, which prompted some states to release prisoners to avoid overcrowding and health risks. It is not clear that these recent reductions in the incarcerated population will continue. </p>
<p>I think that substantially reducing prison and jail populations will require better understanding of the link between incarceration and crime. It is not simply the case that incarceration goes up because people commit crime; instead, the story is much more complicated. That is because we use incarceration for two purposes: to obtain justice on behalf of victims and to try to change people’s behavior. </p>
<p>This distinction results in two kinds of cases flowing into this nation’s criminal courts.</p>
<p>First, there are cases that involve the most serious harm to individuals, like crimes of sexual violence and murder. Second, there are cases like drug offenses and weapons possession, which are not typically about obtaining justice for victims but are supposed to further policy goals like preventing drug use.</p>
<p>Changes in how we treat both kinds of cases contributed to the nation’s sky-high incarceration rate. American mass incarceration is a result of <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/06/u-s-public-divided-over-whether-people-convicted-of-crimes-spend-too-much-or-too-little-time-in-prison/">increasing sentence lengths</a> for people who commit serious violent crimes. But it is also a product of a stunning expansion of the system’s reach in the form of more and more crimes leading to prison and jail. </p>
<p>Substantial progress at reducing the incarcerated population will require reversing both trends. First, returning sentence lengths for all offenses, including serious violent crime, to their historical norms. And second, resisting this country’s growing habit of relying on incarceration as a tool for achieving policy goals.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200041/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey Bellin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Experts still disagree about why the US prison population has grown so much over the last few decades. But crime is only one part of the problem.Jeffrey Bellin, Mills E. Godwin, Jr., Professor of Law, William & Mary Law SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1929002022-10-24T12:26:40Z2022-10-24T12:26:40ZRepublicans say crime is on the rise – what is the crime rate and what does it mean?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490961/original/file-20221020-15-cwe7bn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C2100%2C1401&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Mehmet Oz has talked a lot about the crime rate during his campaign in Pennsylvania.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Election2022PennsylvaniaSenate/d1c89933cd874bdea6c6c3ca8a861edf/photo">AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the lead-up to the 2022 midterm elections, Republican candidates across the nation are <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-ride-crime-wave-worries-in-midterms-home-stretch/ar-AA12Zj7W">blaming Democrats for an increase in crime</a>. </p>
<p>But as a scholar of criminology and criminal justice, I believe it’s important to note that, despite the <a href="https://host2.adimpact.com/admo/viewer/4f9ccad6-acdb-4498-a405-910fc13b3ae8">apparently confident assertions of politicians</a>, it’s not so easy to make sense of fluctuations in the crime rate. And whether it’s going up or down depends on a few key questions:</p>
<ul>
<li>What you mean by “crime,”</li>
<li>What the “up” or “down” comparisons are in reference to, and</li>
<li>The location or area being examined.</li>
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<p>Here’s an explanation of those elements – and why there is no one answer to whether crime has increased in the past year, or over the past decade.</p>
<h2>What is ‘crime,’ anyway?</h2>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An email message reads: Three fires in residential neighborhoods in ONE WEEK! Three homeless encampment evictions in that same week! Multiple vehicles broken into in just one neighborhood! A homecoming game interrupted by youth with unmarked guns!" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=755&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/490969/original/file-20221020-22-3h2uwx.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=949&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Republican politicians across the nation, including Cicely Davis in Minnesota, are working to get voters concerned about crime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Cicely Davis campaign email</span></span>
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<p>Usually when politicians, public officials and scholars talk about crime statistics, they’re referring to <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement">the most serious crimes</a>, which the FBI officially calls “index” or “Part 1” offenses: criminal homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft and arson.</p>
<p>Because these crimes vary a great deal in terms of seriousness, experts break this list up into “violent” and “property” offenses, so as not to confuse a surge in thefts with an increase in killings.</p>
<p>Each month, state and local police departments tally up the crimes they have handled and send the data to the FBI for inclusion in the nation’s annual <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/need-an-fbi-service-or-more-information/ucr">Uniform Crime Report</a>.</p>
<p>But that system has limitations. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2021">fewer than half</a> of all events that could count as crimes actually get reported to police in the first place. And police departments are not required to send information about known crimes to the FBI. So each year what are presented as national crime statistics are derived from whichever of the <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/csllea18st.pdf">roughly 17,000 police departments</a> across the country decide to send in their data.</p>
<p>In 2021, the optional nature of reporting crime statistics was a particular problem, because the FBI asked for more detailed information than it had in the past. Historically, the bureau received data from police departments covering about 90% of the U.S. population. But <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/05/us/fbi-national-crime-report-2021-data/index.html">fewer agencies supplied</a> the more detailed data requested in 2021. That data covered only 66% of the nation’s population. And the patchwork wasn’t even: In some states, such as Texas, Ohio and South Carolina, nearly all agencies reported. But in other states, such as Florida, California and New York, <a href="https://public.tableau.com/shared/7969TZHT6?:toolbar=n&:display_count=n&:origin=viz_share_link&:embed=y">participation was abysmal</a>.</p>
<p>With those caveats in mind, the 2021 data estimates that <a href="https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/murder">criminal homicide</a> rose about 4% nationally from 2020 levels. Robberies were down 9%, and aggravated assaults remained relatively unchanged.</p>
<p>Rapes are notoriously <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vnrp0610.pdf">underreported to police</a>, but the <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2021">2021 National Crime Victimization Survey</a> suggests there was no significant change from 2020.</p>
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<h2>What’s the benchmark?</h2>
<p>Those comparisons look at the prior year to assess whether certain types of crime are up or down. Such comparisons may seem straightforward, but violent crime, particularly homicide, is statistically rare enough that a rise or fall from one year to the next doesn’t necessarily mean there is reason to panic or celebrate.</p>
<p>Another way to assess trends is to look at as much data as possible. <a href="https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/home">Over the past 36 years</a>, clear trends have emerged. The national homicide rate in 2021 wasn’t as high as it was in the early 1990s, but 2021’s figure is the highest in nearly 25 years.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, robberies have been trending steadily downward for the better part of 30 years. And though the aggravated assault rate didn’t change much from 2020 to 2021, it is clearly higher now than at any time during the 2010s.</p>
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<h2>Crime is highly localized</h2>
<p>These figures are imperfect in other ways, too. The data being used in today’s assertions about crime rates is more than 10 months old and presents national figures that mask a substantial amount of local variation. The FBI won’t release 2022 crime data until the fall of 2023. </p>
<p>But there is more current data available: The consulting firm AH Datalytics has a free <a href="https://www.ahdatalytics.com/dashboards/ytd-murder-comparison/">dashboard</a> that compiles more up-to-date murder data from 99 big cities. </p>
<p>As of October 2022, it indicates that murder in big cities is down about 5% in 2022 when compared with the first 10 months of 2021. But this aggregate change masks the fact that murder is up 85% in Colorado Springs, Colo.; 33% in Birmingham, Ala.; 28% in New Orleans; and 27% in Charlotte, N.C. Meanwhile, murder is down 38% in Columbus, Ohio; 29% in Richmond, Va.; and 18% in Chicago.</p>
<p>Even these city-level statistics don’t tell the whole story. It is now <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12070">well established</a> that crime is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1989.tb00862.x">not randomly distributed across communities</a>. Instead, it clusters in small areas that criminologists and police departments often refer to as “hot spots.” What this means is that regardless of whether crime is up or down in cities, a handful of neighborhoods in those cities are likely still significantly and disproportionately affected by violence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192900/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Justin Nix does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Whether crime is up or down depends on what kind of crime, what the comparison is to, and where you’re counting crimes.Justin Nix, Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska OmahaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1838122022-05-25T12:52:35Z2022-05-25T12:52:35ZWhat we know about mass school shootings in the US – and the gunmen who carry them out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465309/original/file-20220525-24-m0gxi3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=43%2C25%2C5708%2C3802&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The archbishop of San Antonio, Gustavo Garcia-Siller, comforts families following a deadly school shooting at a school in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/CORRECTIONTexasSchoolShooting/5a865a4af618489aaefdaac9d0fee3b3/photo?Query=uvalde&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=92&currentItemNo=3">AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/1990s/columbine-high-school-shootings">Columbine High School massacre took place in 1999</a> it was seen as a watershed moment in the United States – the worst mass shooting at a school in the country’s history.</p>
<p>Now, it ranks fourth. The three school shootings to surpass its death toll of 13 – 12 students, one teacher – have all taken place within the last decade: 2012’s <a href="https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2012/12/us/sandy-hook-timeline/index.html">Sandy Hook Elementary attack</a>, in which a gunman killed 26 children and school staff; the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which <a href="https://theconversation.com/parkland-shooting-one-year-later-congress-still-avoids-action-on-gun-control-111796">claimed the lives of 17 people</a>; and now the <a href="https://theconversation.com/19-children-2-adults-killed-in-texas-elementary-school-shooting-3-essential-reads-on-americas-relentless-gun-violence-183811">Robb Elementary School assault in Uvalde, Texas</a>, where on May 24, 2022, at least 19 children and two adults were murdered.</p>
<p>We <a href="https://www.metrostate.edu/about/directory/james-densley">are criminologists</a> <a href="https://www.hamline.edu/faculty-staff/jillian-peterson/">who study</a> <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/">the life histories</a> of public mass shooters in the U.S. As part of that research, we built <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database/">a comprehensive database</a> of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile. For the purposes of our database, mass public shootings are defined as incidents in which four or more victims are murdered with at least one of those homicides taking place in a public location and with no connection to underlying criminal activity, such as gangs or drugs.</p>
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<p>Our database shows that since 1966, when our database timeline begins, there have been 13 such shootings at schools across the U.S – the first in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/18/us/five-children-killed-as-gunman-attacks-a-california-school.html">Stockton, California</a>, in 1989.</p>
<p>Four of those shootings – including the one at Robb Elementary School – involved a killing at another location, always a family member at a residence. The most recent perpetrator <a href="https://www.npr.org/live-updates/texas-school-shooting-2022-05-24">shot his grandmother</a> prior to going to the school in Uvalde.</p>
<p>The majority of mass school shootings were carried out by a lone gunman, with just two – Columbine and the <a href="https://www.kait8.com/2022/03/24/24-years-later-remembering-westside-school-shooting-victims/">1998 shooting at Westside School in Jonesboro</a>, Arkansas – carried out by two gunmen. In all, some 129 people were killed in the attacks and at least 166 victims injured.</p>
<p>The choice of “gunmen” to describe the perpetrators is accurate – all of the mass school shootings in our database were <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database/">carried out by men or boys</a>. And the average age of those involved in carrying out the attacks was 18. </p>
<p>This fits with the picture that has emerged of the <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/robb-elementary-school-gunman-salvador-ramos-bought-two-rifles-on-his-18th-birthday-texas-officials-say">shooter in the Robb Elementary School attack</a>. He turned 18 just days ago and reportedly <a href="https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article261766762.html">purchased two military-style weapons</a>. It is believed that the shooter used one miltary-style weapon in the attack, authorities said May 25, 2022.</p>
<p>Police have <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-05-24/texas-elementary-school-shooting">yet to release key information</a> on the shooter, including what motivated him to kill the children and adults at Robb Elementary School. The picture of the shooter that has emerged conforms to the profile we have built up from past perpetrators in some ways, but diverges in others.</p>
<p>We know that most school shooters have a connection to the school they target. Twelve of the 14 school shooters in our database prior to the most recent attack in Texas were either current or former students of the school. Any prior connection between the latest shooter and Robb Elementary School has not been released to the public.</p>
<p>Our research and <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/about-us/our-book/">dozens of interviews with incarcerated perpetrators of mass shootings</a> suggests that for most perpetrators, the mass shooting event is intended to be a final act. The majority of school mass shooters die in the attack. Of the 15 mass school shooters in our database, just seven were apprehended. The rest died on the scene, nearly all by suicide – the lone exception being the Robb Elementary shooter, who was shot dead by police.</p>
<p>And school shooters tend to preempt their attacks by leaving posts, messages or videos warning of their intent. </p>
<p>Inspired by past school shooters, some perpetrators are <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-quest-for-significance-gone-horribly-wrong-how-mass-shooters-pervert-a-universal-desire-to-make-a-difference-in-the-world-183199">seeking fame and notoriety</a>. However, most school shooters are motivated by a generalized anger. Their path to violence involves self-hate and despair turned outward at the world, and our research finds they often communicate their intent to do harm in advance as a final, desperate <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2785799">cry for help</a>. The key to stopping these tragedies is for society to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/accused-buffalo-mass-shooter-had-threatened-a-shooting-while-in-high-school-could-more-have-been-done-to-avert-the-tragedy-183455">alert to these warning signs</a> and act on them immediately. </p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the year of the 1998 shooting at Westside School in Jonesboro, Arkansas and amend the total number of those killed and injured in the school shootings.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Densley receives funding from the National Institute of Justice.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jillian Peterson receives funding from the National Institute of Justice</span></em></p>Of the 13 mass school shootings that have taken place in the US, the three most deadly occurred in the last decade. Data from these attacks helped criminologists build a profile of the gunmen.James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University Jillian Peterson, Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1830982022-05-15T16:52:10Z2022-05-15T16:52:10ZMore mass shootings are happening at grocery stores – 13% of shooters are motivated by racial hatred, criminologists find<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/463131/original/file-20220515-35526-n9i0ha.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C191%2C4928%2C3083&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Racial hatred is a factor in 13% of mass shootings at grocery stores.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/buffalo-police-on-scene-at-a-tops-friendly-market-on-may-14-news-photo/1240669163?adppopup=true">John Normile/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>An apparently <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/14/us/buffalo-ny-supermarket-multiple-shooting/index.html">racially motivated</a> attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, resulted in 10 deaths on May 14, 2022, with the teenage suspect allegedly targeting Black shoppers in a prominently African American neighborhood.</p>
<p>Mass public shootings in which four or more people are killed have become <a href="https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/public-mass-shootings-database-amasses-details-half-century-us-mass-shootings">more frequent, and deadly</a>, in the last decade. And the tragedy in Buffalo is the latest in a recent trend of mass public shootings taking place in retail establishments.</p>
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<p>We <a href="https://www.hamline.edu/faculty-staff/jillian-peterson/">are criminologists</a> <a href="https://www.metrostate.edu/about/directory/james-densley">who study</a> the <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/">life histories of public mass shooters</a> in the United States. Since 2017, we have conducted <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Project-Stop-Shooting-Epidemic-ebook/dp/B08WJV7W3P">dozens of interviews</a> with incarcerated perpetrators and people who knew them. We also built a <a href="https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database/">comprehensive database</a> of mass public shootings using public data, with the shooters coded on over 200 different variables, including location and racial profile.</p>
<h2>What do we know about supermarket mass shootings?</h2>
<p>Only one shooting in our database prior to 2019 took place at a supermarket. In 1999, a 23-year-old white male with a history of criminal violence <a href="https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/drugs-abuse-and-a-zest-to-kill-zane-floyds-path-to-nevada-death-row-limbo">killed four people at a supermarket in Las Vegas</a>. However, there has been a raft of mass shootings at American supermarkets since.</p>
<p>The Buffalo shooting on May 14, 2022, is similar to an August 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. On that occasion, the 21-year-old white suspect posted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/03/us/patrick-crusius-el-paso-shooter-manifesto.html">a racist rant on social media</a> before allegedly driving some distance to intentionally target racial and ethnic minority shoppers. He has been charged with killing 23 people.</p>
<p>Another shooting in 2019 took place at a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/12/11/jersey-city-shootout/">Kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey</a>. Two perpetrators, a man and woman, both Black and around the age of 50 with a criminal and violent history, murdered four people before being killed in a shootout with police. Social media posts and a note left behind indicated an antisemitic motive.</p>
<p>Then in March 2021, a 21-year-old man of Middle Eastern descent with a history of paranoid and anti-social behavior entered a King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado, and <a href="https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/boulder-shooting/boulder-king-soopers-shooting-one-year/73-cc012646-e3b8-4972-a28f-953915c3d322">shot dead 10 people</a>. Six months later, in September 2021, a 29-year-old Asian man killed one person and injured 13 others at a Kroger supermarket in Tennessee. The perpetrator, who worked at the store, was asked to leave his job that morning. He died by suicide before the police arrived on the scene.</p>
<h2>No one profile of a retail shooter</h2>
<p>Mass shootings are <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/08/06/748767807/mass-shootings-can-be-contagious-research-shows">socially contagious</a>. Perpetrators study other perpetrators and learn from each other, which may explain the rise in supermarket shootings in the past few years. However, the data shows there is no one profile of a supermarket mass shooter.</p>
<p>Racial hatred is a feature of about 10% of all mass public shootings in our database. Our analysis suggests that when it comes to retail shooters, around 13% are driven by racism – so slightly above the average for all mass shooting events.</p>
<p>Some grocery stores by their nature may be frequented predominantly by one racial group – for example, Asian markets that cater to local Asian communities.</p>
<p>But racial hatred appears to be just one of many motivations cited by retail shooters. Our data points to a range of factors, including the suspect’s own economic issues (16%), confrontation with employees or shoppers (22%), or psychosis (31%). But the most common motivation among retail shooters is unknown (34%).</p>
<p>Like the Buffalo shooter, 22% of perpetrators of retail mass shootings left behind something to be found, a “manifesto” or video to share their grievances with the world. And nearly half of them leaked their plans ahead of time, typically on social media.</p>
<p>The lack of a consistent profile doesn’t leave us helpless. <a href="https://www.startribune.com/two-minnesota-professors-have-devoted-their-careers-to-researching-mass-shooters/600123369/">Our research</a> suggests many strategies to prevent mass shootings – from <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/02/1095489487/trigger-points-mark-follman-how-to-stop-mass-shootings">behavioral threat assessment</a> to restricting <a href="https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/policy-solutions-public-mass-shootings.pdf">access to firearms</a> for high-risk people. And the way to stop the social contagion of mass shootings is to stop providing perpetrators with the <a href="http://www.doi.org/10.1177/0002764217730854">fame and notoriety</a> they seek.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/183098/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jillian Peterson receives funding from the National Institute of Justice</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Densley receives funding from the National Institute of Justice</span></em></p>A suspect apparently motivated by a white supremacist agenda shot dead 10 shoppers. Analysis shows that mass shootings – and those at grocery stores – are on the rise.Jillian Peterson, Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1765012022-02-17T13:08:20Z2022-02-17T13:08:20ZAnti-Asian violence spiked in the US during the pandemic, especially in blue-state cities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/446364/original/file-20220214-23-1q4gzh5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C0%2C2970%2C1969&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anti-Asian attacks killed nine people in 2021, including 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee, seen in a photo held by his daughter Monthanus Ratanapakdee.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/AntiAsianAttacks/e99ab10373b54120963eb93769acb07f/photo">AP Photo/Terry Chea</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s widely known that Asian Americans felt – and were – <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/21/one-third-of-asian-americans-fear-threats-physical-attacks-and-most-say-violence-against-them-is-rising/">persecuted</a> <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-13/san-gabriel-valley-anti-asian-hate">during the pandemic</a>. But the extent of this violence, and its uneven geographic distribution across the U.S., is now much clearer, thanks to <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xBQYKHwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">research I conducted</a> with collaborators at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the independent research firm Development Services Group.</p>
<p>The Asian American-Pacific Islander Equity Alliance, a nonprofit based in California, has collected reports of <a href="https://stopaapihate.org/national-report-through-september-2021/">10,370 “hate incidents”</a> from March 2020 through September 2021. The <a href="https://stopaapihate.org/">categories of those incidents</a> include verbal harassment, refusal of service at a business and online abuse, as well as assaults and property damage.</p>
<p>My collaborators and I looked more specifically at <a href="https://dsgonline.com/2022/AntiAsianViolence_PerligerAnastasio_Feb2022.pdf">violent attacks against Asian Americans or their property from 1990 to 2021</a>. In the 30 years before the pandemic, we identified public reports of 210 anti-Asian violent attacks in total, an average of 8.1 per year. But during 2020 and 2021, there were 163 attacks, averaging out to 81.5 a year – or more than 11 times the previous average.</p>
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<h2>Pandemic sparks violence</h2>
<p>Minorities and other vulnerable groups have been targeted for persecution during public health crises throughout history. In 14th-century Europe, <a href="https://www.montana.edu/historybug/yersiniaessays/pariera-dinkins.html">Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague</a>. In 1900, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/26/980480882/why-pandemics-give-birth-to-hate-from-black-death-to-covid-19">Chinese people were unfairly blamed</a> for a plague outbreak in San Francisco’s Chinatown. And in the 1980s, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/03/26/980480882/why-pandemics-give-birth-to-hate-from-black-death-to-covid-19">Haitians were wrongly blamed</a> for bringing HIV/AIDS to the U.S.</p>
<p>Our data found that before 2020, the average number of Asian Americans killed or injured in anti-Asian attacks was just over eight per year. In 2020 and 2021, however, 49 were physically harmed, an average of almost 25 per year.</p>
<p>We found that almost half of the anti-Asian attacks in 2020 and 2021 were motivated, at least partially, by anger and animosity associated with COVID-19, a disease <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.4269%2Fajtmh.20-0849">first identified in Asia</a>. For instance, in June 2020, an <a href="https://abc7ny.com/hate-crime-new-gourmet-garden-chinese-restaurant-graffiti/6252183/">Asian restaurant in New Jersey was vandalized</a> with graffiti reading “coronavirus” and “COVID-19.” And in February 2021, Denny Kim, a 27-year-old Korean American veteran of the U.S. Air Force, was <a href="https://ktla.com/news/local-news/koreatown-attack-against-27-year-old-asian-american-air-force-veteran-being-investigated-as-hate-crime/">beaten by two men</a> who shouted anti-Asian slurs at him and called him “Chinese virus.”</p>
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<h2>Continuing previous trends of violence</h2>
<p>The additional anti-Asian attacks in 2020 and 2021 tended to be in the same places that had seen high levels of anti-Asian violence before the pandemic. </p>
<p>Before 2020, about half of these attacks happened in the New York City metropolitan area and in urban centers in California. During the pandemic, almost 60% of the attacks happened in those same regions. With higher numbers of Asian American residents, those might seem more likely places for anti-Asian violence to happen, but they aren’t home to 60% of Americans of Asian descent, so the level of anti-Asian violence is still disproportionately high.</p>
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<p>Most anti-Asian violence, both before and during the pandemic, happened in <a href="https://medium.com/3streams/why-hate-crimes-proliferate-in-progressive-blue-state-72483b2d72a7">urban and suburban areas in typically progressive states</a>. </p>
<p>Regardless of when they happened, the attacks were of similar types as well. Before the pandemic, more than 70% of anti-Asian hate crimes targeted people of Asian descent personally, such as a <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3460293/White-supremacist-59-attacked-18-year-old-Chinese-girl-hatchet-act-ethnic-cleansing.html">2016 attack on a Chinese exchange student</a> by an alleged white supremacist.</p>
<p>About 20% of attacks were aimed against property owned or regularly used by Asian Americans, such as in 2008 when <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/hate-incidents?state=All&page=110">someone painted racist graffiti</a> on a trash can behind an Asian market in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in a nearby park.</p>
<p>During the pandemic, the proportions were similar: About 60% of anti-Asian attacks were against people, and about one-third were against their property.</p>
<h2>Some changes in trends, too</h2>
<p>During the pandemic, more of the violence was spontaneous, rather than preplanned, than it had been before 2020, according to our analysis. Most <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26544643">other hate crimes are unplanned</a>.</p>
<p>We also found that a higher proportion of attacks were carried out by a single person than had been normal before the pandemic. </p>
<p>Overall, our findings support and confirm the experiences of Asian Americans who reported being targeted by violence more often during the pandemic.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Arie Perliger receives funding from the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. He is affiliated with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, where he serves as a research fellow. </span></em></p>A new analysis of crime data shows that anti-Asian violence, targeting people of Asian descent and their property, rose sharply during the pandemic.Arie Perliger, Director of Security Studies and Professor of Criminology and Justice Studies, UMass LowellLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1723592021-11-22T20:17:55Z2021-11-22T20:17:55ZSUV tragedy in Wisconsin shows how vehicles can be used as a weapon of mass killing – intentionally or not<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/433197/original/file-20211122-25-129bv3d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=51%2C181%2C5760%2C3630&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Debris at the site where an SUV plowed into a Christmas parade</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/debris-left-near-following-a-driver-plowing-into-the-news-photo/1236732471?adppopup=true">Jim Vondruska/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Police have yet to confirm what caused a driver to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/suv-plows-into-parade-waukesha-wisconsin-injured-f8c6a9dcd420bc1f1a732afc7b10943a">plow a red SUV into a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin</a>, on Nov. 21, 2021, killing at least five people and injuring scores more. But one thing is clear: Vehicles can be a deadly weapon, whether used deliberately or unintentionally.</p>
<p>The suspect, <a href="https://www.fox6now.com/news/waukesha-christmas-parade-5-dead-40-hurt-after-suv-sped-through-police-line">identified as Darrell Brooks Jr.</a>, is expected to face charges including <a href="https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/crime/2021/11/22/suspect-waukesha-parade-incident-identified-darrell-brooks-jr/8717524002/">five counts of intentional homicide</a>. It has emerged that Brooks was previously arrested earlier in November after being accused of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/22/us/driver-parade-crash-suspect.html">hitting the mother of his child with his car</a> in a gas station parking lot. Waukesha police confirmed on Nov. 22, that the latest incident, which left <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/22/us/waukesha-car-parade-crowd-monday/index.html">18 children between the ages of 3 and 16 in hospital</a>, was not an act of terrorism. Nor did it follow a police pursuit, although reports suggest that the suspect may have been <a href="https://nypost.com/2021/11/22/person-held-in-wisconsin-rampage-may-have-been-fleeing-knife-incident/">fleeing an earlier incident</a>. </p>
<p>But the manner of the deaths conjures up recent memories of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38377428">terror attacks using vehicles on perceived soft targets</a>, such as holiday markets, as well as concern over the risk of high-speed chases ending in tragedy.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://news.gsu.edu/expert/mia-bloom/">a scholar who has researched</a> <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/71431/vehicle-ramming-the-evolution-of-a-terrorist-tactic-inside-the-us/">the weaponizing of vehicles</a>, I know that cars, SUVs and trucks can be an efficient means of mass killing, and one that can be virtually impossible to prepare against. Furthermore, it is becoming <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/162163/republicans-anti-riot-laws-cars">harder to prosecute the driver</a> involved in such fatalities in some states.</p>
<h2>‘Poor man’s weapon of mass destruction’</h2>
<p>Vehicle ramming – <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/19_0920_plcy_strategic-framework-countering-terrorism-targeted-violence.pdf">defined by the Department of Homeland Security</a> as the deliberate aiming of a motor vehicle at individuals with the intent to inflict fatal injuries or cause significant property damage – has been called the “poor man’s weapon of <a href="https://www.offgridweb.com/preparation/vehicular-terrorist-attacks-strategies-for-safety-and-survival/">mass destruction</a>.” </p>
<p>Members of the terrorist group Islamic State were not the first to employ this deadly innovation – in attacks on people in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39355108">London</a>, <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/tag/nice-truck-attack/">Nice</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/31/nyregion/police-shooting-lower-manhattan.html">New York</a> – but in recent years they have perhaps become most closely <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/16/islamic-state-claims-responsibility-for-nice-truck-attack">associated with the tactic</a>.</p>
<p>The group featured “vehicle ramming” in their propaganda as one of their <a href="https://www.counterextremism.com/vehicles-as-weapons-of-terror">preferred weapons against Western targets</a> and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26297702?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">encouraged supporters to use vehicle ramming</a> against crowds. Islamic State group propaganda magazine, Dabiq, even advised would-be lone actors <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/26351502?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">which vehicle could do the most damage</a></p>
<p>In North America, white supremacists and other militant and terrorist groups have also rammed their vehicles into crowds. Incidents of people running vehicles into pedestrians include that of the violent “incel” – or “involuntary celibate” – Alek Minassian, who <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-56269095">rammed his van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018</a>, killing 10. It has also been employed by members of the far-right, such as James Fields, who was found guilty of the murder, by vehicle, of Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/james-alex-fields-found-guilty-killing-heather-heyer-during-violent-n945186">Charlottesville, Virginia</a>, in 2017.</p>
<p>After the protests following the police killing of George Floyd, <a href="https://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2021/10/vehicle-rammings-against-protesters/tulsa/">there was a massive uptick in the number of attacks</a>, most of which were aimed at Black Lives Matter protests. From the day of Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, to Sept. 30, 2021, vehicles drove into protests at least 139 times, according to a Boston Globe analysis. </p>
<p>During the course of my Department of Defense-sponsored <a href="https://minerva.defense.gov/Owl-In-the-Olive-Tree/Owl_View/Article/1859857/telegram-and-online-addiction-to-terrorist-propaganda/">research on how militant and terrorist groups’ use social media</a>, I observed extreme right-wing groups on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Parler and Telegram sharing memes about the vehicular attacks in the summer of 2020. Posts minimized the civilian casualties and mocked the core message of “Black Lives Matter,” turning it into the grotesque slogan “All Lives Splatter” and featuring a white SUV covered in red paint on the hood.</p>
<p>And it isn’t only right-wing groups that have targeted protesters. Police in cities such as <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/05/31/new-york-city-george-floyd-protests-nypd-suvs-brooklyn-crowd/5299746002/">New York</a> and <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/07/08/protesters-police-suv-dashboard-camera-footage/5370556002/">Detroit</a> have driven vehicles into demonstrations. And in Tacoma, Washington, at least one man was injured after an <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/news/535563-tacoma-police-vehicle-plows-through-crowd-watching-street-race">officer drove into a crowd of protesters</a>. In Boston last year, Police Sergeant Clifton McHale was recorded on a police body camera bragging about hitting protesters with his <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/162163/republicans-anti-riot-laws-cars">police cruiser</a>.</p>
<h2>Criminal and civil immunity</h2>
<p>In recent months, five states – Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma and Tennessee – have either shielded drivers who kill pedestrians from legal action or have fully <a href="https://apnews.com/article/817f34d2f4a04a4cb1e65afc079f6292">decriminalized hitting a pedestrian with a vehicle</a> if they were in the street or on a highway. Legislatures in states like Iowa, Florida and Oklahoma <a href="https://apps.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2021/10/vehicle-rammings-against-protesters/tulsa/">have passed laws granting drivers criminal and civil immunity</a> if they “unintentionally” hit or kill a protester while “fleeing from a riot,” so long as they say it was necessary to protect themselves. Kansas, Montana, and Alabama are <a href="https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/06/21/eight-states-enact-anti-protest-laws">planning similar legislation</a>.</p>
<p>Many more Americans are unintentionally killed or injured as a result of high-speed pursuits involving law enforcement. Police chases often occur on public roads or in <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/122025NCJRS.pdf">residential areas</a>. The result of what can be multiple vehicles going at high speeds in these areas can be deadly. The <a href="https://www.fdle.state.fl.us/FCJEI/Programs/SLP/Documents/Full-Text/Lenemier.aspx">Department of Transportation estimates</a> that around 250,000 high-speed police chases occur every year, with 6,000 to 8,000 of them resulting in a collision.</p>
<p>Around <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/07/30/police-pursuits-fatal-injuries/30187827/">500 people are killed annually</a> as a result of these police pursuits, and approximately 5,000 are injured. The Justice Department, recognizing the danger of high-speed chases, has <a href="https://www.cji.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/police_pursuits.pdf">urged police officers to avoid or abort pursuits</a> that endanger pedestrians, motorists or the officers themselves.</p>
<p>The risk to the public of a driver intentionally or unintentionally causing a mass casualty event is, as the Wisconsin case shows, just too high.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mia Bloom receives funding from the Minerva Research Initiative and the Office of Naval Research, any opinions, findings, or recommendations expressed are those of the author alone and do not reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research, the Department of the Navy or the Department of Defense.</span></em></p>At least five people were killed and many more were injured after an SUV crashed into a Christmas parade. A terrorism expert explains how vehicles have been weaponized.Mia M. Bloom, Evidence Based Cyber Security Program, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1598812021-06-01T12:50:00Z2021-06-01T12:50:00ZTyre Nichols’ death prompts calls for federal legislation to promote police reform – but Congress can’t do much about fixing local police<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507169/original/file-20230130-7092-ci21pk.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C0%2C3479%2C2326&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A sign held at a protest against police brutality on Jan. 28, 2023, in New York City. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-gather-to-protest-against-police-brutality-on-news-photo/1460361547?phrase=Tyre%20Memphis%20police&adppopup=true">Leonardo Munoz/VIEWpress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/01/28/1151504967/tyre-nichols-memphis-police-body-cam-video">severe beating of Tyre Nichols</a>, a 29-year-old Black man, by five Memphis police officers – leading to his death three days later – <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/29/tyre-nichols-police-reform-congress/11145354002/">has sparked renewed calls for federal measures to combat police violence</a> and racism.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1280">George Floyd Justice in Policing Act</a>, a package of reform initiatives aimed at local police departments, passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 2021 but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/policing-george-floyd-congress-legislation/2021/09/22/36324a34-1bc9-11ec-a99a-5fea2b2da34b_story.html">did not make it through the Senate</a>. On Jan. 29, 2023, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/01/29/tyre-nichols-memphis/">Ben Crump, the lawyer for Nichols’ family</a>, told CNN: “Shame on us if we don’t use [Nichols’] tragic death to finally get the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act passed.”</p>
<p>Since the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html">rise of the Black Lives Matter movement</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-floyd-protests-timeline.html">massive protests in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd</a>, the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=george+floyd+kileld&oq=george+floyd+kileld&aqs=chrome..69i57j0i13i131i433i512j0i5i13i30.4104j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#:%7E:text=The%20murder%20of%20George,killing%2Dof%2Dgeorge%2Dfloyd">Black man killed that year by a police officer in Minneapolis</a>, there has been widespread interest in the problems of racism in American policing. Now, there appears to be renewed appetite for change, including from President Joe Biden, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/26/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-tyre-nichols-case/">who mentioned the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act</a> in his statement on Nichols’ death. People are looking to the federal government to address this issue of national importance.</p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://law.rutgers.edu/directory/view/ak1444">law professor who studies policing and constitutional law</a>, I have seen how essential local and state reform efforts are, because the federal government has limited power to regulate policing. </p>
<p>With few notable exceptions, the Constitution <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/our-government/state-local-government/">does not allow the federal government to control</a> state or local government agencies. In accordance with <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-i/section/8712">federalism, a core principle</a> that underlies the organization of American government, <a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CONAN-1992/pdf/GPO-CONAN-1992-10-11.pdf">the federal government has only the powers</a> expressly provided to it in the Constitution. </p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/1600/legislative-branch">Congress has authority</a> to oversee the federal government, levy taxes and spend money, and declare war. Other powers not listed in the Constitution are “<a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-x">reserved to the States</a>,” giving them broader responsibility for governance. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1280">George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021</a> offered the possibility of significant policing reforms. But for those looking to the federal government to solve what’s wrong with policing in America, federal legislation can’t ensure that every police department will make meaningful changes.</p>
<p>That’s because the bill reflects the hard reality that <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10572.pdf">the federal government has almost no control</a> over state and local police departments.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man holding up a sign 'RESPECT HUMAN RIGHTS' as two police officers stand near him and approaching marchers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402919/original/file-20210526-15-1mqq7y5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Racial profiling and police brutality are not new issues – this protest march began on Staten Island, New York, on April 13, 2015, after the death of Eric Garner while in New York Police Department custody.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/crowd-sets-off-on-the-march-2-justice-april-13-2015-in-the-news-photo/469610708?adppopup=true">Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dollars and change</h2>
<p>Although <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/06/03/10-things-we-know-about-race-and-policing-in-the-u-s/">race discrimination is widely regarded as a major problem in American policing</a>, the federal government’s ability to address it is limited. </p>
<p><a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xiv">The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment</a> promises equal treatment of all racial groups by local and state government agencies and officials. <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-xiv/clauses/703">Congress has the power to pass legislation</a> in response to violations of the Equal Protection Clause, such as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.</p>
<p>But the Supreme Court has held that the equal protection guarantee bans only intentional race discrimination by governmental bodies and officials. Policies and practices that have a disproportionate effect on a racial group do not necessarily violate the Constitution. So the Supreme Court would likely conclude that the Constitution does not allow the federal government to bar state and local police policies and practices simply because they have a disproportionate racial impact.</p>
<p>That means that the federal government’s primary tool for influencing American policing is its spending power. Congress has wide latitude <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40638.pdf">to use money to provide incentives</a> for policy changes at the state and local levels by attaching conditions to federal grants. For example, Congress <a href="https://www.capjournal.com/news/fight-over-drinking-age-back-after-20-years/article_051ba049-f02e-5226-b635-ebe5b917130d.html">spurred some states to raise the drinking age to 21 by making the greater age a condition of federal highway funding</a>.</p>
<p>Congress can make the adoption of certain policies and practices a condition for getting federal grants – <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40638.pdf">as long as it does not coerce acceptance of the conditions</a>. States and localities must remain free to decline federal funds. So, if a state or locality declines a federal grant, it doesn’t have to comply with the grant program’s conditions.</p>
<h2>Seeking influence</h2>
<p>Within the limits that the Constitution sets, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act aims to assert some federal influence on local and state policing practices. </p>
<p>The bill’s most significant direct regulation of state and local police departments would be <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/george_floyd_jpa_2021_fact_sheet_.pdf">a ban on racial profiling by all law enforcement agencies</a>. Although federal courts have repeatedly concluded that <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/criminal_justice/publications/criminal-justice-magazine/2020/winter/racial-profiling-past-present-and-future/">the 14th Amendment bars racial profiling</a>, the bill would make the prohibition explicit and expand its definition. </p>
<p>The bill would also indirectly regulate state and local police departments by <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=14924">eliminating “qualified immunity” in civil lawsuits</a> where a plaintiff alleges that a law enforcement officer violated their constitutional rights. </p>
<p>Under the qualified immunity doctrine, courts dismiss claims when there is no prior case with a highly similar set of facts where a government official’s conduct was ruled unconstitutional. Government officials, including police officers, therefore sometimes escape liability <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-qualified-immunity-protects-police-officers-accused-of-wrongdoing-159617">even if they have engaged in egregious misconduct</a>. </p>
<p>If qualified immunity is unavailable, police officers will arguably be less likely to violate someone’s rights because they will expect to be liable for their misconduct. </p>
<p>Further, the bill would expand the U.S. Department of Justice’s <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/pattern-or-practice-investigations-and-police-reform">authority to investigate unconstitutional conduct by police departments</a>, and would make it easier to prosecute police officers for federal civil rights violations.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two lawmakers, Democrat Rep. Karen Bass and GOP Sen. Tim Scott, talking with reporters after meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss police reform legislation." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/402951/original/file-20210526-19-1tnwjim.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., and Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., speak briefly to reporters following a meeting about police reform legislation on Capitol Hill May 18, 2021, in Washington, D.C.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rep-karen-bass-and-sen-tim-scott-speak-briefly-to-reporters-news-photo/1232964913?adppopup=true">Drew Angerer/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Conditions on grants</h2>
<p>Most significantly, if enacted, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would attach stringent new conditions to two programs that together funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to local and state police departments every year, the <a href="https://cops.usdoj.gov/aboutcops">COPS program</a> and the <a href="https://bja.ojp.gov/program/jag/overview">Edward J. Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program</a>. </p>
<p>To take just a few examples, both <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/george_floyd_jpa_2021_fact_sheet_.pdf">Byrne and COPS grantees would be required to ban the use of chokeholds</a>. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/hr1280/BILLS-117hr1280eh.pdf">Byrne grants would be available only</a> to states and localities whose use-of-force policies bar the use of deadly force unless it is necessary. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/hr1280/BILLS-117hr1280eh.pdf">COPS grants would be available only</a> to states and localities that ban the use of no-knock warrants in drug cases. Recipients of COPS grants would be required to certify that they will use at least 10% of their grants to support efforts to end racial and religious profiling. </p>
<p>These provisions divide activists who decry the current state of policing. Some <a href="https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/ldf-issues-statement-on-house-passage-of-the-george-floyd-justice-in-policing-act/">laud them as bold reforms</a>, while <a href="https://m4bl.org/statements/bidens-address-to-congress/">others argue that less money should be directed to police departments, not more</a>. </p>
<p>If the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is enacted, some of America’s <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd16p.pdf">15,000 state and local police departments</a> would readily accept its conditions and the federal dollars they unlock. Others would likely sue, arguing that the federal government is attempting to coerce them into adopting policy reforms they do not need or want. </p>
<p>Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in 2021 that the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act “<a href="https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/3321-4">fundamentally transforms the culture of policing</a>.” But states and localities have to want to change and accept federal grants, with strings attached, for that vision to become reality.</p>
<p><em>This is an update <a href="https://theconversation.com/congress-cant-do-much-about-fixing-local-police-but-it-can-tie-strings-to-federal-grants-159881">of a story originally published on June 1, 2021</a>, and reflects the death of Tyre Nichols.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/159881/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexis Karteron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since Tyre Nichols’ death there are renewed calls for Congress to pass police reform legislation. But the federal government has almost no control over state and local police departments.Alexis Karteron, Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers University - NewarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1396512020-06-04T12:27:32Z2020-06-04T12:27:32ZStripping voting rights from felons is about politics, not punishment<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339552/original/file-20200603-130929-1s8yvl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=50%2C37%2C2686%2C1714&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gerald Dent, left, is joined by James Featherstone and Niles Ringgold at a rally for felon voting rights, in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 10, 2020.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/gerald-dent-who-served-41-years-in-prison-joined-james-news-photo/514752658?adppopup=true">Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 2018 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/us/florida-felon-voting-rights.html">Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment</a> ending the disenfranchisement of ex-convicts. Though it excluded people convicted of murder or sexual offenses, <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Amendment_4,_Voting_Rights_Restoration_for_Felons_Initiative_(2018)">Amendment 4 restored voting rights to felons</a> “after they complete all the terms of their sentence including parole or probation.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2020/04/22/state-civil-rights-groups-square-off-as-felons-voting-trial-nears/?slreturn=20200502114635">Civil rights groups</a> and <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/25/18277470/amendment-4-florida-felon-voting-rights-fees-legislation">prisoner rights groups celebrated</a> the election result. In contrast, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/florida-agreed-to-let-felons-vote-now-republicans-are-trying-to-limit-who-is-eligible/2019/03/25/5b1f9674-4cd9-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html">Republicans worried that allowing felons</a> to vote would tilt Florida toward Democrats. </p>
<p>Scholars <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/sociology/documents/manza-publications/perspectives.pdf">estimate</a> that across the United States voter turnout among felons would average around 35%. If correct, this figure could have swayed several 2016 elections with small victory margins, including Florida, where <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/results/florida">President Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton</a> in 2016 by 1.2 percentage points.</p>
<p>Florida Republicans seized on Amendment 4’s provision stating that felons have to “complete all the terms of their sentence.” In May 2019, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/03/politics/florida-house-vote-amendment-4-felons-voting-rights/index.html">Gov. Ron DeSantis signed</a> a bill requiring felons to pay all “court fees, fines and restitution” and to complete any community service before regaining voting rights. One expert <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/27/844297011/voting-rights-for-hundreds-of-thousands-of-felons-at-stake-in-florida-trial">estimated that 87% of Florida felons</a> would not meet these conditions.</p>
<p>Last month, however, <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/f/?id=00000172-48d3-dc3e-aff6-4cdf397b0000">a federal district judge ruled</a> that the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xxiv">ban on poll taxes</a>. Almost immediately, <a href="https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2020/05/27/florida-gov-desantis-to-appeal-amendment-4-ruling-that-allows-ex-felons-to-vote/">Gov. DeSantis vowed</a> to appeal the ruling.</p>
<p>Republican resistance to felon voting rights does not end with Florida. <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/virginia-governor-fighting-with-republicans-over-felons-voting-rights-2016-9">Republicans in Virginia</a> and <a href="https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/politics/state/story/2019/dec/19/georgia-senate-panel-urges-no-change-felon-voting-ban/510966/">Georgia</a> have opposed Democratic reform efforts. And in <a href="https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2020/02/10/iowa-senate-republicans-advance-bill-require-felons-pay-restitution-before-they-can-vote/4713486002/">Iowa</a> they have called for more stringent limits on voting rights.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.amherst.edu/people/facstaff/adsarat">My</a> <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814762479/">research</a> on <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/is-the-death-penalty-dying/long-shadow-of-the-death-penalty/3FB7F8D8E4ADE1FD917893FE2921DE0A">mass incarceration</a> and the U.S. penal system suggests that felony disenfranchisement is inextricably linked – as it has been for 150 years – to the political power struggle over African American civil rights.</p>
<p>Given that African Americans, a crucial Democratic constituency, are <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/color-of-justice-racial-and-ethnic-disparity-in-state-prisons/">disproportionately represented</a> in the U.S. prison population, the outcome of the Florida litigation, and reform efforts in other states, have important implications for the 2020 presidential election.</p>
<h2>A brief history of disenfranchisement</h2>
<p>Disenfranchisement of the criminally convicted goes back to <a href="https://felonvoting.procon.org/historical-timeline/">Ancient Greece and Rome</a>. In both places, citizens who committed crimes were <a href="https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/1192">stripped of voting privileges</a>.</p>
<p>The Roman Republic, from the middle of the second century A.D. onward, <a href="https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1142&context=nd_naturallaw_forum">used “infamia”</a> to penalize criminals by taking away additional public rights like testifying before tribunals. It served as an alternative to the death penalty.</p>
<p>In medieval Europe, and in the <a href="https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2837&context=wmlr">English common law</a>, such penalties were called “<a href="https://search.proquest.com/docview/900562653">civil death</a>.” But, unlike Rome’s decision to make “infamia” an alternative to the death penalty, civil death in Europe did not necessarily save the lives of offenders. Labeled “<a href="https://hilo.hawaii.edu/campuscenter/hohonu/volumes/documents/Vol03x13TheOutlawsofMedievalEngland.pdf">outlaws</a>,” they could be killed by anyone with impunity.</p>
<h2>Disenfranchisement in America</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/journals/lawreview/articles/volume160/issue6/Chin160U.Pa.L.Rev.1789(2012).pdf">British settlers brought the idea of civil death</a> with them to the New World, and the first laws stripping criminals of voting rights <a href="https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1660&context=mlr">appeared</a> in the 1600s. Plymouth Colony, for example, <a href="https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-99-issue-4/defensible-disenfranchisement/">imposed “moral qualifications” </a> for voting and, in 1657, prohibited lawbreakers from participating in colonial elections. </p>
<p>Intense debate over the meaning of voting <a href="https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/alexander-keyssar/the-right-to-vote/9780465005024/">marked the revolutionary period</a>. But from 1776 to 1821, 11 states adopted constitutions <a href="https://casetext.com/case/green-v-bd-of-elections-of-city-of-new-york">allowing or requiring felony voting</a> disenfranchisement, with Virginia being <a href="https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1117&context=jolpi">the first</a> to do so.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C47%2C5197%2C2878&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C47%2C5197%2C2878&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339259/original/file-20200602-133910-1fu5rmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Desmond Meade is accompanied by his daughter and wife as he registers to vote after ex-felons in Florida regained their voting rights.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/desmond-meade-right-is-accompanied-by-his-daughter-news-photo/1079473312?adppopup=true">Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Felony <a href="https://casetext.com/case/green-v-bd-of-elections-of-city-of-new-york">disenfranchisement continued to spread</a> before the Civil War, as 18 states included it in their constitutions. The most common <a href="https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=2140&context=ulj">justification</a> stated that people who violate society’s rules should not be able to participate in formulating them.</p>
<p>In the war’s aftermath, the ratification of the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxv">15th Amendment</a> extended voting rights to people regardless of their “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”</p>
<p>Fearing the growth of African American political power, Southern states did two things. They <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/800272?seq=1">enacted laws</a> aimed at regulating the lives of freed slaves and black citizens, criminalizing things from vagrancy to assaulting a white woman. They also <a href="https://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/manza_uggen_-_chapter_2.pdf">passed measures revoking voting rights</a> for persons convicted of committing such crimes. </p>
<p>The felony voting restrictions we see today trace their origins to these post-Civil War laws.</p>
<p>In 1871 a <a href="https://cite.case.law/va/62/790/926879/">Virginia court decision noted</a> that the “Bill of Rights is a declaration of general principles for the government of a society of freemen, and not of convicted felons,” who should be treated as “slaves of the state.” </p>
<p>That phrase, “slaves of the state,” codified a connection between the disenfranchisement of felons and the history of slavery in the U.S. The idea of <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/slaves-of-the-state">prisoners as slaves spread</a> to other states. And it was reflected in prison practices like <a href="https://theconversation.com/exploiting-black-labor-after-the-abolition-of-slavery-72482">convict leasing</a> and the use of chain gangs.</p>
<h2>20th-century consolidation</h2>
<p>During the 20th century, felony disenfranchisement became an unquestionable component of America’s legal landscape. All but two states – Maine and Vermont – <a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/voting-rights/voter-restoration/felony-disenfranchisement-laws-map?redirect=votingrights/exoffenders/statelegispolicy2007.html">employed it</a>. Some states seemed to temper the harshness of disenfranchisement by <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx">allowing ex-convicts to petition</a> for a restoration of their voting rights. But few former felons have been able to do so.</p>
<p>Periodically, people released from prison sued to secure their voting rights. They claimed that disenfranchisement disproportionately damages racial minorities and limits their political influence. As a report from the <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016/">Sentencing Project notes</a>, “One in 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than that of non-African Americans.”</p>
<p>Despite last week’s Florida ruling, felons <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/key-decisions-felony-disenfranchisement-litigation">have also had little success</a> restoring their voting rights through litigation.</p>
<p>In a series of <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/fd_research_liles.pdf">rulings, the Supreme Court</a> has generally refused to hear those legal challenges. The high court also has said that because disenfranchisement laws have a reasonable basis and a long history in the U.S., they do not violate the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. </p>
<h2>Letting felons vote</h2>
<p>In 2019 <a href="https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx">six states</a> joined Florida in reforming, or ending, felony disenfranchisement. They were motivated by concerns about racial justice and <a href="https://prospect.org/justice/rethinking-incarceration/">doubts about mass incarceration</a>. </p>
<p>In May, 2019, <a href="https://www.rgj.com/story/news/politics/2019/05/23/nevada-moves-restore-ex-felon-voting-rights/1207840001/">Nevada enacted a law</a> that automatically restored voting rights for parolees. Louisiana <a href="https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/politics/article_8a73810c-3153-11e9-81bd-97a9537e8c8b.html">restored them to 36,000 felons</a> who have been out of prison for five years or more.</p>
<p>Legislatures in <a href="https://www.ctpost.com/politics/article/Democrats-may-extend-vote-to-some-convicts-on-13591405.php">Connecticut</a>, <a href="https://whyy.org/articles/renewed-attention-on-n-j-bill-to-lift-voting-ban-on-people-with-criminal-convictions/">New Jersey</a> and <a href="https://journalstar.com/legislature/omaha-senator-again-pushes-to-restore-ex-felons-voting-rights/article_d20cca9a-f54a-51dc-b94c-d28d269e5848.html">Nebraska</a> considered, but did not pass, similar legislation. And in April, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/18/nyregion/felons-pardon-voting-rights-cuomo.html">New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said</a> that he will soon issue an executive order restoring voting rights to felons on parole.</p>
<p>Nationally, these measures tend to be more popular among <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/voting-changes/felon-disenfranchisement/">Democrats</a> than <a href="https://www.hughhewitt.com/senator-ted-cruz-planned-parenthood-attacks-freedom-act-2016-illegal-immigration/#more-29524">Republicans</a>. There may be multiple reasons for that difference, including the parties’ varied approaches to crime and punishment. </p>
<p>But there are political reasons, too. Alabama Republican Party Chairman Marty Connors captured this premise when he <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9785-2004Aug17.html">explained</a>: “We’re opposed to restoring voting rights because felons don’t tend to vote Republican.” Research on voting patterns by ex-felons <a href="https://as.nyu.edu/content/dam/nyu-as/faculty/documents/Democratic_Contraction.pdf">suggests</a> that Connors’ view is not off the mark.</p>
<p>That view underscores the stakes in Florida’s Amendment 4 debate. As the research suggests, the measure could alter America’s political landscape. </p>
<p>Given President Trump’s narrow victory in the Sunshine State in the last presidential election, if the courts strike down efforts to restrict Amendment 4 and allow 1.4 million Floridians to cast ballots in 2020, Florida <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/">may help elect a Democratic president</a>.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Austin Sarat does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Recent efforts to restore voting rights to the formerly incarcerated, a crucial Democratic constituency, could have important implications for the 2020 presidential election.Austin Sarat, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, Amherst CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1325732020-04-03T12:42:45Z2020-04-03T12:42:45ZWe spoke to hundreds of prison gang members – here’s what they said about life behind bars<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/324319/original/file-20200331-65522-1nkursm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C28%2C3743%2C2367&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A ministry program student at a Texas prison. Some inmates cite religion to avoid gang recruitment.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/male-inmate-students-of-a-christian-ministry-program-inside-news-photo/539557464?adppopup=true">Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/28/us/mass-incarceration-five-key-facts/index.html">incarcerates a larger proportion of its citizens</a> than any other developed country in the world, with around <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=6546">1.5 million people</a> serving time in prison. But to anyone who doesn’t work or live in a facility, life behind bars largely remains a <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-hidden-behind-the-walls-of-americas-prisons-77282">mystery</a>. The public gets a glimpse of life on the inside only when there are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/us/mississippi-prisons.html">riots</a>, <a href="https://time.com/5722795/rodney-reed-innocent-execution-protests/">executions</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/nyregion/jeffrey-epstein-jail-officers.html">scandals</a>.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/sociology/david-pyrooz">criminologists</a>, <a href="https://publicservice.asu.edu/content/scott-decker">we</a> spent nine months interviewing over 800 prisoners in Texas in 2016. They told us about their lives before and during prison, as well as their impending return to the community, a journey shared by <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p17.pdf">over 600,000 people each year</a>.</p>
<p>We also learned about a significant reality in prisons: gangs. </p>
<p>Our <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Competing-Control-Gangs-Social-Prisons-ebook/dp/B07WNJR435">book</a>, published in 2020, pulls back the curtain on how gangs compete for control and structure prison life. Gangs wield power behind bars, but they are more fractured and have less control than people believe. </p>
<h2>Getting in, getting out</h2>
<p>Despite fairly extensive research on street gangs, there is little research on gangs in prison.</p>
<p>Conducting research in prisons is rare because it is hard to gain access. Prison officials tend to be risk-averse and loathe to let outsiders inside the walls. Even if researchers get inside, there’s the possibility that prisoners will not participate in interviews. When the topic is gangs, these issues are even bigger.</p>
<p>That was not our experience. About half of the people we interviewed were affiliated with gangs. Gang and nongang prisoners told us, “I’d rather talk to you than sit in my cell.” They saw the interview as cathartic; they were able to “get things off their chest” to a neutral party.</p>
<h2>The ‘war years’</h2>
<p>Prison gangs exploded across the U.S. with the rise of <a href="https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18613/the-growth-of-incarceration-in-the-united-states-exploring-causes">mass incarceration</a> in the 1980s. Texas prisons were mostly gang-free until bloody battles broke out in 1984-85 between the Mexican Mafia and Texas Syndicate as well as the Aryan Brotherhood and Mandingo Warriors. Fifty-two prisoners were murdered in a 21-month period that became known as the “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/003288559107100205?journalCode=tpjd">war years</a>.”</p>
<p>Over 50 different gangs were represented in our study. Most of these gangs were active in prison and on the street. All of the 12 “security threat groups,” or STGs as they are termed by prison officials, fit the classic view of prison gangs: organized, conspiratorial and violent. The remaining gangs are called “cliques.” If security threat groups are like criminal organizations, cliques are like a band of criminals without clear leadership, direction or structure.</p>
<p>Race and ethnicity mattered to all gangs. <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=shmK3PaaT_UC&printsec=frontcover&dq=life+in+the+gang&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj69PLKocboAhUCOs0KHTdPDdEQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=life%20in%20the%20gang&f=false">Geographic proximity</a> is the great social sorter for street gangs; it is race and ethnicity for prison gangs. Nearly all of the prison gangs were composed of a single race or ethnicity.</p>
<p>The people we spoke with made it clear that prison gangs in Texas are not what they used to be. Prison gangs were described as “watered down,” no longer having the teeth to enforce rules, especially the security threat groups. Few prisoners, including gang members, believed that gangs brought order to prisons or made prisons safer, a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/how-gangs-took-over-prisons/379330/">claim often made about prison gangs</a>. The perception of power is stronger than its reality.</p>
<h2>Wielding power</h2>
<p>While gangs may not have iron-fisted control over prison life, it would be wrong to think they lack influence. If gang members compose only a minority of prisoners, around 20% in Texas according to our research, how do they wield power?</p>
<p>Violence.</p>
<p>Gangs use violence to resolve disputes, discipline members and protect their interests. Stories of violence are passed down across generations to ensure the memory lives on. The “war years” occurred more than 30 years ago, yet still loom large in the minds of the people we interviewed.</p>
<p>Gangs bring a different flavor to prison violence. There is a multiplier effect. A violent incident involving a gang member expands the pool of future victims and offenders because of the collective gang identity. Being in a gang means assuming these liabilities.</p>
<h2>Joining the gang</h2>
<p>For the uninitiated, <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/10/24/being-a-prisoner-is-like-being-a-ghost">prison is scary</a>. People are stripped of their identity, roles and status from the outside. About half of the prison population is convicted of a <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2019.html">violent offense</a>. Joining a gang would seem like a pretty good decision. </p>
<p>Our research reveals that about 10% of inmates in Texas joined a gang for the first time in prison, while another 10% imported their gang affiliation from the street. Status and protection were common reasons for joining a gang in prison, much like on the street. But ideology was also important, such as race supremacy or vigilantism, which we rarely observe in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Confronting-Gangs-Community-David-Curry/dp/0199891915">street gangs</a>.</p>
<p>Still, most prisoners don’t end up in gangs. That’s true even though avoiding gangs is harder in prison than on the street. Nongang members get their affiliations “checked” and are often recruited when they step onto a prison unit. Those that want to avoid gangs cite their religion, homosexuality or even status as sex offenders – most gangs ban inmates convicted of sex crimes – as reasons to not to join.</p>
<h2>Blood in, blood out</h2>
<p>It was once believed that once you join a gang <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Social-Order-Underworld-Prison-American/dp/0199328501">you could never leave</a>. Criminologists have <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318857376_A_Signaling_Perspective_on_Disengagement_from_Gangs">dispelled this myth</a> among street gangs; young people leave gangs regularly, and usually without repercussions like violence. We also found this to be the case in prison, even for the security threat groups. </p>
<p>Disillusionment is the leading reason for leaving. Gang members eventually realize they are sold a bill of goods on gangs. Snitching, victimization, solitary confinement and delayed parole crystallize discontent with gang life.</p>
<p>Leaving a gang is more difficult in prison. Walking away is not a credible option. Gang members sought permission or “gave notice” of intentions to leave, or enrolled in the prison system’s two-year exit program. </p>
<h2>Block the on-ramps, open the off-ramps</h2>
<p>Despite decades of effort, breaking the grip of gangs on prison has been unsuccessful. The “silver bullet” simply doesn’t exist. </p>
<p>Placing gang members in <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/251797.pdf">solitary confinement</a> is thought to be a solution, but that’s a management approach. It applies a Band-Aid to a bullet wound that could hurt more than help. And one-size-fits-all approaches to rehabilitation ignore the baggage of gang affiliation.
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<p>To compete for control, gangs need numbers, which is why focusing on points of entry and exit offers hope for reducing the power of gangs in attracting new members and encouraging current members to leave. </p>
<p>Doing nothing only allows the problem to fester and grow. Prisoners today will eventually become the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Homeward-Life-Year-After-Prison/dp/0871549557">neighbors, religious congregants and employees</a> of tomorrow. We want people to leave prison in a condition better than they arrived. That means effective responses to gangs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132573/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pyrooz has received research grant funding in last five years from the City of Denver's Department of Public Safety, the National Institute of Justice (US Department of Justice), the Charles Koch Foundation, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott H Decker has received funding from the National Institute of Justice and the Arizona State University Foundation. </span></em></p>Gangs are still a significant reality in US prisons. But most inmates say that their power has been watered down, and they no longer rule facilities with an iron fist.David Pyrooz, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Colorado BoulderScott H. Decker, Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1099372019-01-30T11:52:37Z2019-01-30T11:52:37ZCongress’s First Step Act reflects a new criminal justice consensus, but will it reduce mass incarceration?<p>When Donald Trump was elected president, many people feared his “law and order” campaign rhetoric would mean the end of criminal justice reform.</p>
<p>Trump confirmed this impression by appointing Jeff Sessions, an aggressive supporter of the “wars” on crime and drugs, to lead the Justice Department. Sessions quickly reversed a number of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/7/18073074/jeff-sessions-resigns-war-on-drugs-crime">progressive reforms</a> introduced under President Barack Obama, including reducing penalties for drug offenses, ending private prison contracts, and investigating conduct of local police departments.</p>
<p>Yet by December 2018, Jeff Sessions had <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/attorney-general-jeff-sessions-resigns-from-trump-white-house-1541619893">resigned</a> and the federal government passed a criminal justice reform bill, the “<a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/11/16/what-s-really-in-the-first-step-act">First Step Act</a>.” The law reduces prison sentences, by changing the sentencing guidelines and facilitating early release, and supports education and treatment programs in prison.</p>
<p>The bill was supported by the White House, Republican and Democratic leaders, and an <a href="https://www.firststepact.org/sponsors">unlikely set of advocates</a> from progressive non-profits like the <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/letter-congress-first-step-act">Brennan Center</a> and <a href="https://civilrights.org/the-aclu-and-the-leadership-conference-urge-members-of-congress-to-support-s-756-the-first-step-act/">American Civil Liberties Union</a> to the conservative Koch Brothers. </p>
<p>The following month, Trump seemingly <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/15/18183573/bill-barr-confirmation-hearing-attorney-general-mass-incarceration">reversed course again</a>, appointing William Barr – another staunch supporter of the “tough on crime” approach – to replace Sessions. </p>
<p>How do we make sense of these seemingly contradictory developments and alliances? </p>
<p>I have found in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=nITFLzcAAAAJ&hl=en">my research</a> that criminal justice policies and practices in the United States have often followed complex trajectories. Reforms often receive support from unlikely coalitions. But, by focusing on these strange bedfellows, commentators and advocates sometimes paper over the deeper disagreements in ideas about who, how and how much to punish. Fights over these differences ultimately shape how policies get put into practice – and whether the bill ultimately achieves its intended outcomes.</p>
<p>While the First Step Act’s passage may look like a clear victory for more moderate punishment, its implementation and impact under the Trump administration is likely to be quite limited.</p>
<h2>Bipartisan agreement on “reform”</h2>
<p>Criminal justice is often described by academics and journalists as a pendulum that swings wildly between harsh punishment focused on retribution, and more lenient treatment focused on redemption or reformation. In this metaphor, some people saw Trump’s election as a swing of the pendulum away from progressive punishment and back toward punitive policies.</p>
<p>In our book <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/breaking-the-pendulum-9780199976065">Breaking the Pendulum</a>, my colleagues <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=deM-S68AAAAJ&hl=en">Joshua Page</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4EKwvxIAAAAJ&hl=en">Philip Goodman</a> and I argue that a better metaphor is the constant, low-level grinding of tectonic plates that continually produce friction and occasionally erupt in earthquakes. This friction manifests in traditional political combat, mass demonstrations, prison rebellions, and academic and policy work. Periodically, major changes in conditions like crime rates and the economy change to provide support and opportunities to one side or another.</p>
<p>These changes often bring together unlikely allies. </p>
<p>People typically associate the “law and order” approach to criminal justice with Republicans. However, <a href="https://catalyst-journal.com/vol1/no3/did-liberals-give-us-mass-incarceration">new research</a> shows how liberals laid the ground for these policies. It was the Democratic administration of President Lyndon Johnson during the 1960s that first launched the “war on crime” by expanding federal funding to build up the capacity of local law enforcement agencies. In the following decades, the crime rate spiked, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9133.12332">due in part to better reporting by police departments</a>, and crime became a hot political issue.</p>
<p>By the 1990s, Republicans and Democrats had <a href="https://thesocietypages.org/papers/purple-punishment/">all but converged</a> on attitudes toward law enforcement. Not wanting to lose to Republicans by being portrayed as “soft on crime,” Democrats took increasingly “tough” criminal justice stances. President Bill Clinton’s wildly popular 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was the apex of this <a href="http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/trump-bipartisan-criminal-justice.html">bipartisan enthusiasm</a> for aggressive policing, prosecution and punishment. The bill made federal sentencing guidelines more severe, increasing both life sentences and the death penalty, and built up funding streams to increase local police forces and state prison capacity.</p>
<p>Despite the rhetoric of the crime bill, the best evidence suggests that it played little role in the explosion of the national prison population – or what scholars term “<a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14624740122228203">mass imprisonment</a>.” This is because policies focused on harsh punishment had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/12/magazine/bill-clinton-is-wrong-about-his-crime-bill-so-are-the-protesters-he-lectured.html">already peaked</a> by 1994. In addition, it only applied to the federal system, which represents only <a href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html">10 percent</a> of all people locked up. Finally, even though there was wide support for the crime bill, activists, politicians, judges and others continued to fight against “tough” punishment, eventually building the momentum for the First Step Act.</p>
<h2>First Step Act</h2>
<p>What does this history tell us about the First Step Act? </p>
<p>First, it’s not surprising that Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals came together on the bill. Both camps have moved away from the “tough on crime” mantra. Democrats now talk of “smart on crime” policies while some Republicans support the “right on crime” initiative. Both agree that aggressive policing and heavy criminal penalties for low-level offenses, particularly drug crimes, do more harm than good.</p>
<p>The rise of a new approach to criminal justice can be tied to a number of changes <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci-110615-085046">since the 1990s</a>, including historically low crime rates, strained state and federal budgets and a growing awareness of the negative consequences of mass incarceration. Critically, a cadre of <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/prison-break-9780190246440?cc=us&lang=en&">conservative leaders</a> spent the past two decades working to change Republican orthodoxy on this issue. They frame mass incarceration as a fiscal and moral failure that wastes tax dollars and violates the Christian principles of “second chances” and redemption.</p>
<p>As a result criminal justice reforms have been spreading to red and blue states alike since the 2000s. After the 2016 election, advocates including <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/14/us/politics/jared-kushner-criminal-justice-bill.html">Jared Kushner</a>, and a slew of celebrities like <a href="http://time.com/5486560/prison-reform-jared-kushner-kim-kardashian-west/">Kim Kardashian West</a>, have urged the President to embrace reform. These pressures ultimately succeeded in prompting the White House to support the First Step Act.</p>
<p>However, bipartisan consensus is not as seamless as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/politics/senate-criminal-justice-bill.html">it is sometimes portrayed</a>. A group of Republican leaders remain aggressively opposed to these criminal justice reforms. And at the last hour, they nearly <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supporters-criminal-justice-reform-bill-warn-poison-pills/story?id=59870831">killed</a> the First Step Act.</p>
<p>That takes us back to Barr – Trump’s recent selection to replace Sessions at the Department of Justice. Barr was President George H.W. Bush’s Attorney General. He is perhaps best known for endorsing a Justice Department memo arguing for “More Incarceration” in <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/15/18183573/bill-barr-confirmation-hearing-attorney-general-mass-incarceration">1992</a>. As recently as 2015, he <a href="https://www.wcjb.com/content/news/AG-pick-to-reassure-senators-he-backs-sentencing-overhaul-504223221.html">vocally opposed</a> federal sentencing reform.</p>
<p>During his <a href="https://www.wsbradio.com/news/national/here-william-barr-opening-statement-his-senate-confirmation-hearing/pQmsvM0NwGoBc8e2EM7y8N/">confirmation hearing</a> last week, Barr promised to “diligently implement” the First Step Act, but then backtracked to support Session’s policies at the Justice Department, adding, “we must keep up the pressure on chronic, violent criminals.” </p>
<p>Like the ‘94 bill before it, this indicates that the First Step Act will likely be more bark than bite. The First Step Act might provide relief to several <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/12/19/okay-what-s-the-second-step">thousand</a> current federal prisoners. But Barr will likely follow Sessions and direct his prosecutors to seek the maximum criminal penalties against current defendants, including for drug offenses, limiting the impact of the First Step Act’s sentencing reform. And the bill will have no practical effect on state prison systems, which in some cases have already embraced much more radical reforms.</p>
<p>While the First Step Act is a move in the direction of more humane and moderate criminal justice practices, I think it will likely be a very small first step indeed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/109937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle S. Phelps does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s not so unusual that Democrats and Republicans converge on criminal justice, at least on the surface. Deep disagreements still remain.Michelle S. Phelps, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Law, University of MinnesotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1046262018-10-26T10:42:11Z2018-10-26T10:42:11ZFlorida’s Amendment 4: Restoring voting rights to people with felonies might also reduce crime<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242477/original/file-20181026-7071-lxktvf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A felony voting rights advocate in Kentucky.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Felons-Voting/d06bd23ea64743b78454d1f1e725b83e/1/0">AP Photo/Roger Alford</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On Nov. 6, voters in Florida will consider <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Amendment_4,_Voting_Rights_Restoration_for_Felons_Initiative_(2018)">a ballot measure</a> that would restore the right to vote to 1 million citizens who are currently not able to vote because they have felony convictions.</p>
<p><a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272694">My research</a> finds that when Virginia restored voting rights, ex-offenders became more trusting of government and the criminal justice system. These attitudes are known to make it easier for citizens to re-enter society after being released from prison and decrease their tendency to commit additional crimes.</p>
<p>The results from my study in Virginia might give a glimpse of what would be expected if the Florida measure, called Amendment 4, passes.</p>
<h2>Florida’s felony disenfranchisement laws</h2>
<p>More than <a href="http://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/6-Million-Lost-Voters.pdf">6 million</a> U.S. citizens do not have the right to vote due to state laws that limit the voting rights of those convicted of a felony.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/criminal-disenfranchisement-laws-across-united-states">All but four states</a> automatically restore voting rights to people after they are released from prison, or after completion of parole or probation. </p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voting-rights-restoration-efforts-florida">Florida</a>, however, voting rights are never automatically restored.</p>
<p>They can only be restored by an application to the <a href="https://www.fcor.state.fl.us/clemency.shtml">Executive Clemency Board</a> – a four-member panel including both the governor and the attorney general. Citizens must wait at least five years after completing their sentence before applying. The clemency board is able to reject applications for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpPyLcQ2vdI">any reason</a>, including <a href="http://fairelectionsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/Hand-v.-Scott-Complaint.pdf">traffic violations</a>. </p>
<p>Under current Gov. Rick Scott, the clemency board approved <a href="http://fairelectionsnetwork.com/wp-content/uploads/Hand-v.-Scott-Complaint.pdf">fewer than 2,000 restorations</a> of voting rights over six years. There is a current <a href="https://www.fcor.state.fl.us/docs/reports/Annual%20Report%202017%20for%20web.pdf">backlog</a> of more than 10,000 applications.</p>
<p>Given these strict laws, more than 1.6 million voting-age citizens in Florida do not have the right to vote – including <a href="https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/6-million-lost-voters-state-level-estimates-felony-disenfranchisement-2016/">more than 1 out of every 5 black citizens</a> statewide. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.fl-counties.com/amendment-4">Amendment 4</a> would change the Florida State Constitution. If the referendum passes, voting rights will automatically be restored to all citizens who finish probation. This change would apply to all felonies except for murder and sex crimes.</p>
<h2>New research from Virginia</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.restore.virginia.gov/">Virginia</a>, an ex-offender can only regain their right to vote if the governor signs an executive order personally restoring their civil rights.</p>
<p>Typically, previous governors waited for people to apply and considered individual applications for restoration <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/voting-rights-restoration-efforts-virginia">with varying scrutiny</a>. But in 2016 and 2017, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe made the unprecedented move to proactively restore voting rights to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/va-gov-mcauliffe-says-he-has-broken-us-record-for-restoring-voting-rights/2017/04/27/55b5591a-2b8b-11e7-be51-b3fc6ff7faee_story.html?utm_term=.598ed4aa932e">more than 150,000 ex-offenders</a> – more than any other governor in U.S. history.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=612&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243596/original/file-20181102-83648-yvc257.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=769&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Steve Helber</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>I went to Virginia during the November 2017 statewide election, shortly after many new restoration orders had been processed. I <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272694">recruited a sample of 93 citizens</a> with felony convictions to complete two surveys – one before the election, and one after.</p>
<p>More than 70 percent of these individuals already had their voting rights restored by the governor, but many of them were not aware of their newly restored rights.</p>
<p>I randomly divided them into groups. After the first survey and before the election, individuals in one group were informed about whether their voting rights had been restored. Individuals in another group were not provided with this information. I then compared the attitudes within the two groups before and after the election.</p>
<p>Since many subjects were unaware that their voting rights had already been restored, the study randomly increased information about their voting rights. Because the two groups being compared are similar in every way – except for the information they received about voting rights – I am able to measure the effects of learning that your right to vote has been restored. </p>
<p>The results?</p>
<p>Citizens who were told whether their voting rights had been restored became more trusting of government and the criminal justice system compared to those who were not provided with this information. They also viewed the U.S. government as more fair and representative. And they became more trusting of the police and more willing to cooperate with law enforcement.</p>
<p>These findings corroborate results from <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272694">another study</a> I conducted in November 2014. The earlier study similarly informed some citizens with felony convictions in Ohio that their voting rights had been restored. Compared to another group who was not provided with this information, subjects who were informed that their voting rights had been restored reported higher trust in the government and the police.</p>
<p>These trusting and pro-democratic attitudes <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1996.tb01220.x">are known to help</a> citizens reintegrate into their communities upon release from prison.</p>
<p><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/10430-000">Research</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716206286898">suggests</a> <a href="https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=205090">citizens</a> <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474510385641">returning from prison</a> reintegrate more successfully if they are able to transition from an identity as a “criminal” to an identity of a “law-abiding citizen.” </p>
<p>Not being allowed to vote creates a lasting stigma that makes it harder for them to see themselves as valuable members of society. On the other hand, being encouraged to vote causes people to become <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123416000168">more informed</a> and <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272681">more trusting</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Causes_of_Delinquency.html?id=53MNtMqy0fIC">Research on crime</a> also suggests that people are more likely to obey laws when they believe those laws were created through a fair process. Individuals who were informed about their voting rights also perceived the government as more fair and representative. Thus voting rights might make it easier for returning citizens to reintegrate into society, while also reducing the incentives to commit further crimes. </p>
<h2>Lessons for Amendment 4</h2>
<p>Policies regulating the voting rights of ex-offenders have historically been a <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0160323X0503700104">partisan issue</a>, with Democrats supporting voting rights and Republicans supporting voting restrictions. </p>
<p>But Amendment 4 has had strong <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/florida-felon-vote-bipartisan-df6cff80d5f8/">bipartisan</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/magazine/ex-felons-voting-rights-florida.html">support</a>. One argument that <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3272685">increases support</a> on both sides is that <a href="https://www.lwvfl.org/amendments/amendment4/">restoring voting rights would decrease crime</a>.</p>
<p>There are <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3088970">other</a> <a href="https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1252&context=blrlj">studies</a> that <a href="http://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195149326.001.0001">have</a> <a href="https://www.fcor.state.fl.us/docs/reports/Recidivism%20Report%202016%20&%202017%20signed.pdf">found</a> a relationship between voting rights and lower crime. But none of them have yet been able to test whether restoring voting rights causes crime to decrease as mine does.</p>
<p>My research provides the first causal evidence that restoring voting rights causes ex-offenders to the very develop attitudes and behaviors that make them more likely to successfully reintegrate into society and avoid returning to crime and prison.</p>
<p>Amendment 4 could not only affect voter turnout and electoral outcomes – it could also decrease crime and the costs of the criminal justice system.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104626/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Shineman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New research shows that when ex-offenders are told they’re able to vote, their attitudes about democracy and justice improve. A November ballot measure in Florida hangs in the balance.Victoria Shineman, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of PittsburghLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1005672018-08-06T10:40:05Z2018-08-06T10:40:05ZPolice kill about 3 men per day in the US, according to new study<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230265/original/file-20180801-136676-2xi4sz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are multiple efforts to count police homicides in the U.S.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/new-york-city-july-7-2016-449073844?src=1xxB5zX7s4vB-mTxLtKp1A-1-45">a katz/shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Police in the U.S. kill on average more than 1,000 men per year, or about three men per day. According to our estimates, police are responsible for about 8 percent of all adult male homicide deaths in the U.S. each year. </p>
<p>These estimates come from <a href="https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304559">our study</a>, published on July 19. We relied on novel unofficial data collected through <a href="https://www.fatalencounters.org/">Fatal Encounters</a>, a systematic review of media and public records searches by researchers and journalists. Our team of sociologists with expertise on race and health, which includes Hedwig Lee at Washington University in St. Louis, used these new data to estimate Americans’ underlying risk.</p>
<p>Our analysis shows that risk of police-involved death is two times higher than indicated by official data sources.</p>
<h2>The problems with official data</h2>
<p>On July 21, police killed five people across the U.S. Dale Slocum, 56, <a href="http://www.toledoblade.com/Police-Fire/2018/07/23/Officer-identified-in-Dollar-General-robbery-shooting/stories/20180723127">was killed by police in Toledo, Ohio</a>. Eliuth Penaloza Nava, 50, <a href="http://abc7.com/anaheim-officer-involved-shooting-leaves-suspect-dead/3800936/">was killed by police in Anaheim, California</a>. Melyda Corado, 27, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/24/woman-killed-during-trader-joes-standoff-was-shot-by-police-not-the-gunman-chief-says/?utm_term=.50e142321171">was killed by Los Angeles police</a>. Ruben Maya, 37, <a href="https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article215284285.html">was killed by police in Fresno, California</a>. Vincent James Ewer II, 39, <a href="http://www.azfamily.com/story/38700298/breaking-deputies-involved-in-shooting-at-casino-del-sol">was killed by sheriff’s deputies in Tucson, Arizona</a>. </p>
<p>Despite in-depth news coverage, you might not find these names in <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?tid=82&ty=tp">official databases of police-involved deaths</a> collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics or the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/deaths.htm">National Vital Statistics System</a>. Police agencies are not required to submit information about killings to the federal government, and <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002399">coroners often do not accurately</a> classify deaths caused by police. Because police departments can choose whether to report these data, <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ardpatr.pdf">they often fail to do so</a>. These gaps leave federal data on police killings – and thus the public’s understanding of these events – relatively thin. </p>
<p>Journalists, academics and activists have started independent data collection efforts to meet the shortcomings of federal data on police-involved deaths. Projects like <a href="https://www.fatalencounters.org/">Fatal Encounters</a>, which leverages public records and media coverage in an attempt to document every person killed in an interaction with police, have made it possible to speak more precisely about the nature of police-involved deaths in the U.S. </p>
<p>These data allow researchers, for the first time, to reliably measure how often individuals die in interactions with the police and quantify racial and regional differences.</p>
<p>We used Fatal Encounters’ records of police killings documented between 2012 and 2018 to provide a new set of estimates for all U.S. counties by race. Fatal Encounters documented 9,795 police-involved deaths during this period. Men comprised 88 percent of the deaths. </p>
<p>After excluding cases in which police use of force was not the direct cause of death – generally suicides and vehicular collisions – we identified 6,295 adult male victims of police homicide killed over this six-year period, or about 1,000 per year. </p>
<p>By contrast, the <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1002399">National Vital Statistics System</a> and the <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ardpatr.pdf">Arrest Related Deaths</a> program record about 500 deaths per year, less than half of our count.</p>
<h2>Police killings are common</h2>
<p>Individuals in large, central metropolitan areas are generally at the highest risk of being killed by police, at about one death per year per 100,000 men.</p>
<p>However, about two-thirds of all police-involved killings happen in suburbs, smaller cities and rural counties. In rural areas, police are responsible for more than 10 percent of all homicides with adult male victims. </p>
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<p>Our analysis shows that about 0.7 white men per 100,000 are killed by police annually. Latino and black men are killed at higher rates, at about one death per 100,000 men and 2.2 deaths per 100,000 men per year, respectively. This means that black men are, on average, three times more likely to be killed by police than are white men. Latino men’s risk of being killed by police is about 40 percent higher than the risk faced by white men. </p>
<p>The inequalities we found in the likelihood of being killed by police are <a href="https://cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/114/2014/11/HPHR-Krieger-Trends-in-Deaths.pdf">similar to previously published estimates using official data</a>, though we estimate the rates of police homicide are about twice as high as prior estimates. </p>
<p>Racial differences in risk vary across U.S. states. Black men face the highest risk of being killed by police in Oklahoma, while Latino risk is highest in New Mexico. White risk is also exceptionally high in Oklahoma.</p>
<p>Though men are around 10 times more likely to be killed by police than are women, racial inequality in risk extends across gender. Using these same data, we estimate that black women and American Indian and Alaska Native woman are at much higher risk of being killed by police than are white women. </p>
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<h2>A public health problem</h2>
<p>Studies show that incarceration harms <a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.12136">individual and community health</a> and is a key <a href="https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102551">driver of inequality in the U.S.</a> Aggressive stop-and-frisk style policing is linked to <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4232139/">increased anxiety and post-traumatic symptoms among young men</a>. </p>
<p>Our research adds to the increasing scholarly consensus that the U.S. criminal justice system is a key <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673605711466">social determinant of health</a>. Our study indicates that contact between civilians and law enforcement exposes individuals to a nontrivial risk of premature death. </p>
<p>For this reason, we believe that police killings should be considered a public health concern. Public health agencies and researchers should play an increased role in collecting data on police-involved deaths and police use of force. Conversations about the <a href="https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2012/07/20/america-is-a-violent-country/">incredibly high homicide rate in the U.S.</a> must acknowledge that police are responsible for about one in 12 of those deaths. Reducing overall homicide risk, particularly among men of color, appears to require reform that explicitly targets interactions between police and civilians.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100567/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Official records on police homicides are full of holes. A new study tries to fill in the gaps – and finds new evidence of racial and regional inequality.Frank Edwards, Postdoctoral Associate, Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research, Cornell UniversityMichael H. Esposito, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986812018-07-31T10:41:01Z2018-07-31T10:41:01ZA new look at racial disparities in police use of deadly force<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229888/original/file-20180730-106511-luikyb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters on the University of Cincinnati campus.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Minchillo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>One of the most important social issues of the last five years is fatal police shootings of black Americans.</p>
<p>The concern that police fatally shoot blacks at higher rates than whites has given rise to a strong push for department-wide interventions for police officers. Such interventions, usually in the form of <a href="https://trustandjustice.org/resources/intervention/implicit-bias">“implicit bias” training</a>, rely on changing the beliefs that officers have about minorities as a means of reducing this racial disparity.</p>
<p>But are the assumptions underlying these interventions reasonable? Is there strong evidence that faulty officer decision-making is responsible for the racial disparity in fatal police shootings?</p>
<p>There is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/the-counted-police-killings-2015-young-black-men">clear evidence</a> of racial differences in fatal police shootings in terms of population proportions. Black Americans are only about <a href="https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_15_5YR_DP05&src=pt">13 percent of the population</a>, but make up over 30 percent of people fatally shot by police.</p>
<p>It is from this evidence that many <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-so-many-black-americans-killed-by-police/">news outlets</a> and <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">activists</a> conclude that police officers are racially-biased in their decisions to shoot. If this is true, then it makes good sense to target officer bias.</p>
<p>But is comparing the percentages of blacks and whites shot to the percentages of blacks and whites in the population really the right comparison? Does it tell us what we need to know about how to reduce fatal police shootings? </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cesariolab.com/police">My colleagues and I</a> have expertise in <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ttizi7gAAAAJ&hl=en">decision-making</a> and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=VzsNt-MAAAAJ&hl=en">police use of force</a>. We tested whether these population-level comparisons provide us with the information we need to reduce police shootings. Our recent work, <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550618775108?journalCode=sppa">published in Social Psychological and Personality Science</a>, reveals a different view of police bias.</p>
<h2>Importance of benchmarks</h2>
<p>Using population-level comparisons as a benchmark for evidence of officer racial bias relies on the assumption that people of all races are equally involved in situations where officers are likely to use deadly force. We argue that this assumption has led to a misdiagnosis of the problem, and by extension, solutions that won’t work.</p>
<p>Consider the following example: Imagine that you want to know if there is racial disparity in who receives cancer treatment. You find that among those receiving treatment, blacks make up 13 percent. Comparing this to the overall population of 13 percent, you would conclude that no racial disparity existed. </p>
<p>Yet suppose you learn that blacks make up 75 percent of people with cancer. Surely you would conclude that there is racial disparity in receiving treatment. That’s because the relevant pool is those who need treatment, not the general population.</p>
<h2>More likely to be shot, compared to what?</h2>
<p>As with the cancer example above, it is crucial to choose the correct benchmark or pool of individuals to compare an outcome with. </p>
<p>In the case of police shootings, <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1745-9133.12174">the evidence is clear</a> that fatal shootings are strongly tied to situations in which violent crime is being committed or suspected of being committed. A typical fatal police shooting occurs when there is the potential for imminent death to an officer or other citizen. Almost <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1745-9133.12269">85 percent</a> of police fatal shootings involve armed citizens.</p>
<p>Given this, we can ask, “Are blacks shot more than whites given their presence in situations in which police shootings are likely to occur?”</p>
<p>To answer the question, my colleagues and I <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550618775108?journalCode=sppa">analyzed the largest database of fatal police shootings to date</a>, The Guardian’s database of police shootings, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings">The Counted</a>. It covers all known shootings from 2015 to 2016. We calculated the odds of being shot for blacks and whites given violent crime rates for each group, which we established by using 16 different measures of crime across four databases. We used these different crime rates as a means of estimating presence in deadly force situations.</p>
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<p>One might ask, “Isn’t using arrest data to assess crime rates wrong, given that police are more likely to police black communities and arrest black citizens?”</p>
<p>If police are more likely to arrest black citizens than white citizens – without any actual racial differences in criminal behavior – this would inflate crime estimates for blacks and would skew our findings.</p>
<p>To deal with this, we also looked at a different set of data to measure crime – <a href="https://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html">death by assault records</a> from the Centers for Disease Control. These data are derived from death certificates. Whether police are more likely to arrest one race or another for, say, homicide would have no impact on the CDC’s counts for how often members of each race die from assault. Thus, the data provide a way to estimate rates of violent crime that is not biased from police arrest decisions (although it is possible that this data could be subject to other kinds of errors).</p>
<p>When we considered the rates at which people from different groups are likely to be present in these contexts, a different picture emerged. </p>
<p>The differences in involvement in criminal situations between black and white citizens fully explains the population-level disparity in fatal police shootings.</p>
<p>This suggests that officer bias – in terms of officers making different shooting decisions for black and white citizens – is not necessarily the cause of black citizens being shot at higher rates. Even if officers were making the same decisions about whether to use deadly force for black and white citizens, population-level disparities would still emerge given these crime rate differences. </p>
<p>What about shootings of unarmed citizens? The results were too uncertain to draw firm conclusions one way or another. This is because the number of fatal shootings in which a citizen is unarmed and not assaulting an officer is small – about 6 percent of all fatal shootings, or <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550618775108?journalCode=sppa">45 people every year</a>.</p>
<p>To be clear, there is a population-level racial disparity in fatal police shootings. But our work suggests this disparity is explained by differences in rates of exposure to the police, rather than racial bias by officers making deadly force decisions.</p>
<h2>Now what?</h2>
<p>These results may help explain why department-wide implicit bias training has not been – <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-29854-001">and will not be</a> – effective. It is not addressing the root of the problem. The notion that all officers across the profession are biased in this important decision is not supported by the data. </p>
<p>Instead, our research suggests two paths for reducing fatal police shootings and reducing the population-level gap in these shootings.</p>
<p>First, the most effective means of reducing police shootings would be to reduce violent crime, particularly crimes involving firearms. While this may seem obvious, the point has been lost in most public discussions. The decision to shoot usually happens in certain contexts – reducing the frequency of those events will directly reduce police shootings.</p>
<p>At the same time, it would also reduce police shootings of innocent unarmed citizens who live in neighborhoods with high rates of violent crime. One recent example is the case of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/nyregion/housing-patrols-can-mean-safety-or-peril-to-residents.html">Akai Gurley</a>, an unarmed black man who was killed by police patrolling a public housing building in New York City with high rates of violent crime. Reducing violent crime rates would reduce the expectation that officers have of encountering armed individuals in such locations, likely reducing such mistakes.</p>
<p>Second, researchers need to develop tools that accurately identify those few officers who do show robust evidence of racial bias and identify which psychological processes are responsible for such bias. Officers might treat black and white citizens differently due to implicit bias, explicit racism, or even something much more basic such as low skill at visually distinguishing harmless objects from guns. </p>
<p>Targeted interventions, based on a scientific understanding of bias, are needed – not blanket, untested interventions based on faulty assumptions. <a href="https://www.cesariolab.com/research">Our lab</a> has recently been awarded a National Science Foundation grant to develop such interventions.</p>
<p>All research has limitations, and ours is no exception. Our analyses look at national data and cannot speak to any individual case or police officer. Moreover, there is <a href="http://www.nber.org/papers/w22399">robust evidence of racial bias</a> in other use-of-force behaviors, such as Taser use – just not the use of deadly force. Anti-bias training might be effective in stemming these racially-biased policing behaviors. </p>
<p>Finally, the question of why crime rates are different across racial groups in the U.S. is a complicated question beyond the scope of this research, and thus we do not speak to this issue. Nonetheless, we believe that any research that can suggest new and innovative interventions to address this important problem should be encouraged.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98681/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Cesario has received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information (ZPID). </span></em></p>Does it make sense to compare the percentage of black Americans shot by police to the percentage of black Americans in the population? A new analysis suggests a different way of looking at the data.Joseph Cesario, Associate Professor of Psychology, Michigan State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708872017-11-20T13:28:24Z2017-11-20T13:28:24ZCharles Manson: death of America’s 1960s bogeyman<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195407/original/file-20171120-18574-1fzu580.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>So, Charles Manson <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/20/charles-manson-dead-cult-leader-sharon-tate">has died, aged 83</a>, of “natural causes”. The con-man, musician and erstwhile cult leader, who came to embody mainstream American fears of the 1960s counterculture “gone wrong”, had an easier death at Kern County hospital in California than any of the seven people whose murders he orchestrated in August 1969.</p>
<p>Manson has been largely out of the public view since his conviction for the Tate-LaBianca killings in January 1971 alongside several members of his “family” – but there has been little diminution of his grisly fame. Earlier this year it was announced that Quentin Tarantino <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/12/quentin-tarantino-to-make-manson-murders-film">is making a film about the Manson murders</a>. Big names such as Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt are among those said to be lining up for parts. </p>
<p>There remains something strange about the attention that Manson generated in life and now in death. It’s a level of interest which far exceeds matters of public record. As such, it’s difficult to know what to say by way of response to the news of his passing – or even what to say for the purposes of a tentative obituary. Difficult, because it’s hard to know precisely who (or what) the name Charles Manson is being used to describe.</p>
<p>Manson, born Charles Milles Maddox in 1934, spent most of his life behind bars. Before convening the cult-like group “The Family” in 1967, he had convictions for car theft and robbery. But it was towards the end of 1969 that he really came to public attention. He was arrested and put on trial for his role as the mastermind of a total of nine murders, including those of the actress Sharon Tate and four friends, and Leno and Rosemary LaBianca over the course of the weekend of August 8-9 1969. In March 1971 he was given the death penalty which was later commuted to commuted to life imprisonment.</p>
<p>According to testimony at his trial and that of his followers, Manson was not actually directly responsible for wielding a murder weapon at either of the two crime scenes (although there’s plenty to suggest he was <a href="https://capote.wordpress.com/2011/05/14/truman-capote-interviews-bobby-beausoleil-san-quentin-1973/">involved in other murders</a> at around the same time). But the court found he had masterminded and ordered the Tate-LaBianca killings, made all the more horrific by the fact that actress Tate had been pregnant at the time of her murder.</p>
<h2>Different kind of celebrity</h2>
<p>Whether you like it or not, from his conviction to his death, Manson was a celebrity. He became a celebrity when he made the cover of Life magazine in December 1969 and Rolling Stone in June 1970 – and subsequent novels, films, recordings, interviews, t-shirts and comic books have sought alternately to shore up this status and to demythologise it.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/195409/original/file-20171120-18547-144h2dk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=989&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Life magazine, December 1969.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon.com</span></span>
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<p>This Manson culture industry (which shows no signs of slowing down) has kept his name in public circulation for nearly half a century. It’s this material which invariably forms the basis of the analysis whenever Manson’s life and “career” is considered. What becomes visible is something of a schizoid split in which the name Charles Manson gains two points of reference. </p>
<p>There’s “Charles Manson” which effectively describes the life of Charles Milles Maddox, criminal – and then there’s “Charles Manson”, the potent symbol of evil, the name which in the words of one of his recent biographers has become a “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Z5RqZqqBb44C&pg=PT14&lpg=PT14&dq=manson+metaphor+for+unspeakable+horror&source=bl&ots=W1avg5r91X&sig=UIjRZFvKUbQnOnLGWBjSUl6v6pA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilrLPElcPXAhXsKMAKHZyADowQ6AEINDAF#v=onepage&q=manson%20metaphor%20for%20unspeakable%20horror&f=false">metaphor for unspeakable horror</a>”. </p>
<p>An early example of the latter came from the writer Wayne McGuire in 1970. Writing in his column for Fusion magazine, “An Aquarian Journal”, he speculated that at “some point in the future”, Manson would “metamorphose into a major American folk hero”. The comment was later used as the epigraph for <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13222282-the-manson-file">The Manson File</a>, a collection of Manson-related writings first published by Amok Press in 1988. The prediction was fully realised in 1997 with the inclusion of Manson in James Parks’ collection, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2199864.Cultural_Icons">Cultural Icons</a>. Here, nestling between Lata Mangeshkar, Mao Tse Tung and Robert Mapplethorpe, Manson was identified as an “American Murderer” who “channelled his peculiar cocktail of black magic, drugs, sex and rock n roll into homicidal mania”. It is this “peculiar cocktail” that underpins Manson’s symbolic status.</p>
<p>What gives his crimes – and his name – a notoriety in excess of that held by the likes of <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/albert-de-salvo-17169632">the Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo</a> and the unknown “<a href="https://www.biography.com/people/zodiac-killer-236027">Zodiac Killer</a>”, who terrorised Northern California in 1968 and 1969, is that they simultaneously interact with a matrix of other powerful symbols that carry a greater cultural resonance than the breaking of a law, however severe. </p>
<h2>Hollywood meets the crazies</h2>
<p>Tate’s murder brought into collision two heavily mediated zones: <a href="http://www.youmustrememberthispodcast.com/episodes/youmustrememberthispodcastblog/2015/5/26/charles-mansons-hollywood-part-1-what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-the-manson-murders">Hollywood and the counterculture</a>. Manson’s interest in The Beatles and use of their song title “Helter Skelter” as a blood-drenched slogan further intensified this disturbing elision of murder and popular culture. As with The Rolling Stones’ <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/6690506/The-Rolling-Stones-at-Altamont-the-day-the-music-died.html">concert at the Altamont Speedway</a> in December 1969 – at which a member of the audience was murdered by a Hells Angel – the Manson murders, once filtered through media sensitive to their range of connections, become emblems for the “end” or even “death” of the 1960s.</p>
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<p>Whether viewed as catalyst or symptom, they are events that stand in for explanations of economic shift, geopolitical crisis and social inequality which describe the decade’s apparent decline into death, violence and what <a href="https://obscenedesserts.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/craziness-good-and-bad-hunter-s.html">Hunter S. Thompson called “bad craziness”</a>. </p>
<p>If anything it was the Tate-LaBianca murders that carry the metaphorical currency, while the name “Manson” now probably signifies something else. It’s a name to conjure with. “Manson” brings to mind the shadow-side of the 1960s: the <a href="https://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/humfig/11217607.0002.206/--decivilization-in-the-1960s?rgn=main;view=fulltext">incipient violence</a> that lay beneath the counterculture’s day-glo optimism and the lost potential of a decade’s calls for peace and pacifism. When viewed from the vantage point of seeing the long, strange and violent life laid out, it refers also to someone who understood and was able to exploit the potency of the popular culture around him. </p>
<p>There’s very little to celebrate here, but maybe there’s something to learn about what it means to be a celebrity.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Riley has previously received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research into the writers of the Beat Generation. </span></em></p>The murderous cult leader’s notoriety has not diminished over four decades in a US jail.James Riley, Fellow and College Lecturer in English, Girton College, Cambridge, University of CambridgeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/845272017-10-06T00:55:13Z2017-10-06T00:55:13ZBundy trial embodies everything dividing America today<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189081/original/file-20171005-9797-1p0w1t2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A supporter of Cliven Bundy protests in Nevada. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Locher</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s that time of year again: The Bundys are <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2017/08/the_bundys_--_cliven_sons_ammo.html">going to trial</a>. </p>
<p>This fall, brothers Ammon and Ryan Bundy and their father, <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2017/08/the_bundys_--_cliven_sons_ammo.html">Cliven</a>, will face charges over a standoff with federal officials in a dispute over federal lands in Nevada.</p>
<p>Many are wondering if they’ll be let off the hook. The two Bundy brothers were acquitted in an October 2016 trial for a different standoff in Oregon. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/28/us/bundy-brothers-acquitted-in-takeover-of-oregon-wildlife-refuge.html?mcubz=0">jury’s</a> “not guilty” verdict on conspiracy charges for the Oregon standoff struck much of the public as shockingly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/oct/28/oregon-militia-standoff-bundy-trial-not-guilty-reactions">lenient</a>.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/law/faculty_and_staff/directory/eisenberg_ann.php">law professor</a> who researches rural land use and juries, I’ve found that both conflicts over public lands and jury decisions often bring up the same question: Who gets to decide what justice is in America?</p>
<h2>Geography and juries</h2>
<p>Geography matters in the U.S. justice system. </p>
<p>The Bundy trials – and the trials of their supporters, several of whom also <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-the-bundys-and-their-heavily-armed-supporters-keep-getting-away-with-it">walked free</a> for the 2014 standoff earlier this year – have made this clear. Trial outcomes <a href="http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=djclpp">can vary</a> depending on where they take place. The Bundy trials to date may well have gone differently in front of juries from Manhattan or Miami.</p>
<p>Part of the geographical subtext is that the Bundy family is not alone in their <a href="http://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=faculty_lawreviews">anti-federal sentiment</a>. <a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/265429-poll-most-westerners-support-federal-land-policy">Most westerners</a> want to see federal lands stay federal and people are rightly disturbed by the tactics of the Bundys and other militant, anti-federal <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3d2722zk">“Sagebrush Rebels.”</a> Yet, <a href="http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/land_use/2016/01/as-bundys-malheur-takeover-ends-the-real-concerns-of-sagebrush-country-ranchers-linger.html">other scholars</a> <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2980887">and I</a> have argued that there is a kernel of truth to their complaints. </p>
<p>Namely, the Bundys and their supporters claim that the federal government is <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/20140709/war-west-bundy-ranch-standoff-and-american-radical-right">“tyrannical.”</a> A less militant version of that sentiment is that federal agencies could be more fair, consistent and inclusive with local communities in the region. The Department of Interior manages about <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.641.3335&rep=rep1&type=pdf">one-fifth</a> of the land in the United States through the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management. Monitoring and enforcing regulations on this vast territory is <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2423831">difficult</a>. Many western communities think federal agencies manage public lands <a href="http://scholarship.law.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1114&context=faculty_lawreviews">arbitrarily or unfairly</a>. </p>
<p>A frequent criticism of these agencies, who have a daunting mandate with limited resources, is that they are inconsistent. Another is that they can be unpredictable. For instance, the Bureau of Land Management <a href="https://georgetownlawjournal.org/articles/170/response-essay-personhood-rationale/pdf">allowed</a> Cliven to graze his cattle illegally for 20 years, which could look like tacit approval. Local communities have also felt excluded from agency decision-making or <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2715090">looked down on</a> by federal representatives.</p>
<p>In an unusual move, one juror in the October 2016 trial <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/11/transcript_of_juror_4s_emails.html#incart_2box">spoke out</a> after the trial. The anonymous juror accused the prosecution of “arrogance” and an “air of triumphalism,” which may suggest a view of federal representatives as <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2930217">elitist outsiders</a>. However, he also emphasized that “not guilty” did not mean “innocent.” He insisted that the acquittal was not a sign that the jury agreed with the Bundys’ stances. Nonetheless, the <a href="http://www.oregonlive.com/oregon-standoff/2016/09/ammon_bundys_lawyer_argues_for.html">populist-cowboy</a> tone of the Bundy trials underscores the subjectivity of justice; one person’s terrorist may be another person’s <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-the-bundys-and-their-heavily-armed-supporters-keep-getting-away-with-it">folk hero</a>.</p>
<h2>Race and juries</h2>
<p>Race also plays a role in the Bundy cases. </p>
<p>Some observers shocked by Ammon’s and Ryan’s 2016 acquittal noticed that their jury <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-malheur-bundy-occupation-acquittal-20161028-story.html">entirely comprised white people</a>. “All-white jury” tends to be used synonymously with “unjust jury.” </p>
<p>Like geography, <a href="http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=nulr_online">race matters</a> to juries. It’s <a href="http://www.albany.edu/scj/documents/Eisenberg_Garvey_Wells_2001_JLegSt.pdf">not as simple</a> as “white people vote this way and black people vote that way,” or that all-white juries are automatically unfair. However, social science studies have shown that jury demographics <a href="http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1349&context=heinzworks">affect outcomes</a>. For instance, white jurors are substantially <a href="http://www.albany.edu/scj/documents/Eisenberg_Garvey_Wells_2001_JLegSt.pdf">more likely</a> to favor the death penalty in murder cases. Generally, <a href="https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/psp-904597.pdf">more diverse juries</a> are believed to deliberate for longer, make fewer factual errors and discuss more information, including questions of race. </p>
<p>Yet, studies have shown that courts in the United States often don’t do a good job of making juries <a href="http://juries.typepad.com/files/assembly_statement_draft_4-29-09-1.pdf">representative</a> of the population. “All-white” can also mean unrepresentative. Unrepresentative, in turn, suggests undemocratic. Race and geography interact, too: What counts as representative depends on the local population, and different courts have <a href="http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1739&context=journal_articles">different procedures</a> for picking their juries. </p>
<p>In the 2016 Bundy trial, the optics were troubling for many. At a time when people of color comprise most of the <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/how-many-americans-are-unnecessarily-incarcerated">prison population</a>, it may have looked as if the all-white jury in this case was lenient with the Bundys. The Bundys’ <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-morton-1218-20161217-story.html">white privilege</a> was questioned as law enforcement’s relatively gentle treatment of them at the 2014 standoff stood in contrast to the police killings of <a href="http://www.npr.org/2017/08/06/541929782/policing-ferguson-policing-america-the-unrest-over-the-death-of-michael-brown">Michael Brown</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/14/nyregion/eric-garner-police-chokehold-staten-island.html">Eric Garner</a> that same year. Majority-white juries have also seemed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/16/us/police-shooting-trial-philando-castile.html?mcubz=0">lenient with police officers</a> accused of killing people of color. Thus, it is not a stretch to infer from this case confirmation of a dual legal system: a lenient one for white people and a harsh one for people of color, both of which exclude people of color from decision-making.</p>
<p>Juries are <a href="https://www.law.ua.edu/lawreview/files/2011/07/The-Jurys-Constitutional-Judgment.pdf">designed</a> to be a check on government overreach. Yet, when juries are not representative, they may become just another vehicle by which the powerful wield influence. In this light, the Bundys’ October 2016 trial by all-white jury does look problematic, as only <a href="https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/OR">76.4 percent</a> of Oregon’s population identifies as “white alone.”</p>
<p>The Supreme Court has addressed questions of how juries represent the population and established some standards to ensure minimal representativeness. For example, the pool of people called to the courthouse for jury selection (known as “the venire”) must represent a <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1974/73-5744">“fair cross-section of the community.”</a> However, juries consistently underrepresent <a href="http://www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/fulltime/diamond/papers/BeyondFantasy.pdf">people of color, the young, the poor</a> and <a href="https://www.wacdl.org/files/jury-diversity-article">other groups</a>. This lack of representativeness in turn affects outcomes and undermines the <a href="http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1094&context=publicpolicypublications">public’s trust</a> in the criminal justice system.</p>
<h2>Law and distrust</h2>
<p>So much is at play in the trials of the Bundys and their supporters: the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/the-first-white-president-ta-nehisi-coates/537909/">debatable phenomenon</a> of white, rural, male, working-class alienation; <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/opinion/in-oregon-myth-mixes-with-anger.html?mcubz=0">longstanding conflicts</a> over public lands; the role of race in the criminal justice system; and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/rural-america/?utm_term=.e8701eb35475">deep racial and geographical divisions</a> that weigh on the country. </p>
<p>Perhaps the clearest theme is that distrust of our legal institutions abounds, fueled by both the perception and reality of being excluded.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ann Eisenberg does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As with our politics today, geography and race matter in the US criminal justice system. Should they?Ann Eisenberg, Assistant Professor of Law, University of South CarolinaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/822202017-08-22T11:07:32Z2017-08-22T11:07:32ZOzark, drug cartels and America’s changing relationship with Mexico<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182934/original/file-20170822-30494-yplw8g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/charlottesville-attack-41864">violence in Charlottesville</a> and the ever-shifting statements by Donald Trump about national identity bring to the fore the dangers of the recurrent narratives of <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/8/15/16141456/renaud-camus-the-great-replacement-you-will-not-replace-us-charlottesville-white">“us” versus “them”</a> and the threats posed to American values by the omnipresent other – such as Trump’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2016/oct/20/donald-trump-bad-hombres-us-presidential-debate-las-vegas-video">bad hombres</a>” from Mexico.</p>
<p>This is a narrative that has become familiar fodder in popular US crime dramas, such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/">Breaking Bad</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3397884/">Sicario</a>. But the recent Netflix series, Ozark, is a welcome shift from the dominant paradigm of the beleaguered and fundamentally decent white man struggling to survive in world full of threatening others. </p>
<p>Ozark has received <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/jul/22/ozark-review-jason-bateman-laura-linney-netflix">mixed reviews</a>. For some it <a href="http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a56488/ozark-netflix-series-review/">falls short</a> when compared to Breaking Bad, because rather than follow the protagonist’s downward spiral, in this series not only is the protagonist a middle-class white man but he is crooked from the start. </p>
<p>What Ozark shares with both the Sopranos and Breaking Bad is the way it brings home the consequences of criminal activity and shines a spotlight on the practical – even mundane – difficulties involved in multi-million dollar crime. Ozark focuses on a white-collar bureaucrat operating on behalf of a cartel. </p>
<p>To understand the significance of Ozark it must be considered in the context of a proliferation of series about the cartels, which are indelibly tied to current US-Mexican border policy and attitudes to race in the US.</p>
<p>Ozark shares <a href="https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80025172">with Narcos</a> the technique of having an opening voiceover which, in this case, establishes financial adviser Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) as the show’s – flawed – hero. But the shift in protagonist from Narcos’ heroic law enforcement officer, Steve (Boyd Holbrook), to a crooked money manager, reflects the key recognition that backroom people – bean counters even – are integral to the operation of criminal enterprises. </p>
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<h2>Family values</h2>
<p>After it emerges that his business partner, Bruce Liddell (Josh Randall), has been siphoning off money from an unnamed Mexican cartel, Marty uproots his wife Wendy (Laura Linney) and children to the <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/kevin-horrigan/horrigan-netflix-goes-to-georgia-to-trash-missourians-and-the/article_aa5ca890-eb98-51e0-a3bc-35fc0cdebde9.html">Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri</a>. Marty knows nothing about the Ozarks beyond a page from a brochure – but the move is Marty’s idea – a deal struck with the angry cartel bosses in exchange for his life. </p>
<p>Del (Esai Morales), the cartel leader, accepts the deal on condition that Marty retrieves and then launders the $US8m that his partner stole. So the family travels to Missouri. Marty and Wendy’s relationship has broken down before we meet them, but they are now forced to cooperate for their own safety and that of their children. But they soon discover that the majority white town they move to is full of corruption and criminality – as evidenced in the sadistic and murderous local drug dealers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182938/original/file-20170822-30494-xrzcyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182938/original/file-20170822-30494-xrzcyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182938/original/file-20170822-30494-xrzcyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182938/original/file-20170822-30494-xrzcyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182938/original/file-20170822-30494-xrzcyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182938/original/file-20170822-30494-xrzcyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182938/original/file-20170822-30494-xrzcyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Scene of the crime.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marty and his family are superficially ordinary and respectable – a point that the series frequently casts ironic shade on through dialogue. For example, in a typically barbed exchange, Wendy asks Marty what he has done for the family today. His response is that he has “bought a strip club”, thus upending the heavily loaded righteousness of the premise of the question. In this way, the series presents the machinations of the drug war as something that permeates all aspects of society right down to family relations. Unlike Breaking Bad and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141842/">The Sopranos</a>, where family is only in danger when systems break down, in Ozark being involved in criminality is inherently a permanent state of crisis.</p>
<h2>Location, location</h2>
<p>There is an irony in the presentation of the Ozarks as an ideal space for drug activity when its rural setting would normally bring with it a presumption of idyllic retreat and its location so far north should distance it from the trade to the south. This led to <a href="http://www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/kevin-horrigan/horrigan-netflix-goes-to-georgia-to-trash-missourians-and-the/article_aa5ca890-eb98-51e0-a3bc-35fc0cdebde9.html">criticism by Missouri opinion writer, Kevin Horrigan</a>, who objected to the portrayal of the Ozarks. Some of this is because the series was shot in Georgia, but there is also an awareness that the series’ stories of corruption do not reflect local versions of white-collar crime, which tends more typically to <a href="http://www.stlouiscopa.com/Divisions.aspx?ID=156">consist of tax evasion and embezzlement</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182935/original/file-20170822-30552-bsdp4k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182935/original/file-20170822-30552-bsdp4k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182935/original/file-20170822-30552-bsdp4k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182935/original/file-20170822-30552-bsdp4k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182935/original/file-20170822-30552-bsdp4k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182935/original/file-20170822-30552-bsdp4k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182935/original/file-20170822-30552-bsdp4k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How do you police a porous border?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kmusser via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The lake shore, an artificial construct in itself since the lake was created in 1931 by damming Missouri’s Osage River stands as a clear signal of the impossibility of policing borders because its porous border makes it a perfect locale for dealers and other illegal activity. This internal frontier challenges the idea presented by Trump that building a wall between the US and Mexico will somehow ensure that those he calls “bad hombres” <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-threatens-mexico-over-bad-hombres-234524">will be kept out</a>. The Mexicans Trump is referring to are for the most part a distant shadow in Ozark. Instead, it is the well-established white majority residents, who prove to be the most dangerous criminals.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182937/original/file-20170822-30529-g7vwl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182937/original/file-20170822-30529-g7vwl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182937/original/file-20170822-30529-g7vwl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182937/original/file-20170822-30529-g7vwl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182937/original/file-20170822-30529-g7vwl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182937/original/file-20170822-30529-g7vwl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182937/original/file-20170822-30529-g7vwl8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quaint and safe? Not on your life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ozark is a shift in the representation of the drug trade and its attendant violence to a new realisation of the complex systems that keep it in place. The Mexican cartel’s activities provide motivating action that impels the narrative forward – but it is the white characters’ willingness to participate for personal gain that is fundamentally at question. </p>
<p>As a result it is “us” who are suspect not “them” in this story – and hopefully that signals a shift in direction for popular long-form narrative.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82220/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Niamh Thornton does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s not the ‘bad hombres’ but the middle-class white guys who are the baddies of this US crime drama.Niamh Thornton, Reader in Latin American Studies, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.