The Gods Who Lied: Noam Chomsky, John Silber, Joe Paterno, and the Variations of Bad Education

I haven’t been able to muster the equanimity to find much to say about the Penn State football coaches who covered up at least one child rape in the name of the sanctity of college stadium shower stalls.  The spectacle of students rioting because some football coach is finally being held slightly responsible for serially abetting a child rapist — well, that’s a little too res ipsa loquitor to require much embroidery.  And if the administration doesn’t expel everyone involved in attacking cops and toppling vehicles, well, that’s how much a Penn State diploma is worth these days.

But the case did remind me of another where it was the administration itself doing the victim-persecuting-symbolic-lynch-mob thing.  That school is Boston University, which prides itself, of course, in residing on a much higher pedagogical plateau than Penn State, which explains the tony sophistication they brought to their lynch mob. ... 

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Moving On

Crime Victims Media Report will resume next week, with new topics:

  • Florida’s fight to lift the statute of limitations on child molestation.
  • Atlanta’s Rodney King Riots
  • What New York City’s council speaker Christine Quinn Won’t Tell You About Hate Crimes Prosecution
 ... 

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Three Strikes Laws: The Myth of Jerry DeWayne Williams and His Pizza Slice

As California begins emptying prisons over the protests of voters, a powerful coalition of anti-incarceration activist groups are declaring victory over the quaint notion that people should be punished for crime:

Prison reform advocates such as Jim Lindburg, a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on Legislation, hope that the state’s first significant corrections-policy change in decades ushers in a whole new mind-set on crime.  “There’s really nothing scientific or magical about the length of prison sentences,” Lindburg said. “Those are political calculations made in a political environment. It seems preposterous to me to suggest that letting people out a little bit early is going to have any kind of (negative) impact on crime rates. I think we just need to change the way we think about public safety.” ... 

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Interesting Editorial on Criminal Defense by Judge Dan Winn

Hat tip to Dan, who passed along the following must-read editorial from the Rome News-Tribune on funding criminal defense.

I found this editorial in today’s paper and thought you would like to read it. I do not know anything about the judge but it sounds like an interesting proposal and a fair assessment of the anti-capital lawyers.  — Dan ... 

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Peter Hermann (Baltimore Sun) Sheds Some Light on the Murder Rate, Looks for Light in the Courts

If you read nothing else this week, read the following two articles by Peter Hermann.  Baltimore struggles with crime and court issues very similar to Atlanta’s.  More severe, in their case:

Delving More Deeply Into Shooting Stats ... 

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Two Crime I Didn’t Report: Part 2

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Yesterday, I wrote about crimes that don’t get counted in the official statistics and people who don’t get to live decent lives because powerful people work so hard to deny the terrible daily impact of crime.

A new anti-crime ethic is percolating in the neighborhoods and on-line.  This ethic, however, is being slandered because it flies directly in the face of the tired old excuse-making and crime-downplaying that has long been the status quo among politicians and criminologists. ... 

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And Now, Back to Crime, Or: My Latest Trip to Atlanta

I am back home in Florida after a sad trip to Atlanta.  No matter where I am, I read the Atlanta Journal Constitution every day, so sometimes it seems as if I never really leave the city.  Weirdly, now when I’m actually in Atlanta, it seems like I’m not completely there, too, because I’ve gotten used to reading the Atlanta paper while looking out the window at this:

(my Florida backyard) ... 

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The More Things Change . . .

Thirty years ago this month, the murder of a young cancer researcher sparked outrage in Atlanta.  Dr. Mark Tetalman, a nuclear medicine specialist from Ohio, was attending a conference at the downtown Hilton Hotel when armed robbers shot him to death in front of his wife near the corner of Piedmont and Ponce de Leon Avenues.

The business community accused Mayor Maynard Jackson and Police Chief George Napper of dismissing public concerns about crime.  Atlanta had the highest murder rate and the highest overall crime rate of any city, and the numbers were rapidly climbing higher, with a 69% increase in homicides between 1978 and 1979 alone. ... 

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Five Ugly Pieces, Part 1: The Georgia Public Defender Standards Council Blows Millions on Brian Nichols, Cries Poor

I’m gonna pull the chain on you, pal. And you wanna know why?  Cause you’re f****** up my city.  Cause you’re walking all over people like you own them.  And you wanna know the worst part?  You’re from out of state. — Tom Sharky, Sharky’s Machine (1981)

Wonder why our courts are falling apart? Remember this headline, from February, 2008? ... 

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The “Benjy Brigade,” Part 2: After the DNA

(this is part 2)

On March 23, 2003, DNA specialist Edward Blake announced that the semen taken from the victim’s public hair was, indeed, Benjamin LaGuer’s. The victim had not been lying, and she was not a racist monster. The things that had been written about her and spoken about her in the halls of Harvard Law and judge’s chambers throughout the city were false. Benjamin LaGuer was the racist, and a sadistic rapist and attempted murderer, as well. After the shock subsided, Boston’s elite went into mourning. Several journalists wrote weepy paeans to their own good intentions. “I put the covers over my head, and for the next six hours, I just couldn’t get out of bed,” said reporter John Strahinich, whose thoughts under the covers apparently did not stray to retracting the bile he had directed at the frail victim of his jailhouse pal. ... 

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Update on Jamal (Shamal) Thompson: Is the Law of Georgia Being Enforced in the Courts of Georgia by Judges in Georgia?

WSB-Channel 2 Atlanta Reporter Tom Jones has been following the Jamal Thompson case more closely than anyone, and he confirmed last week that DeKalb County Judge Cynthia Becker, relying on Thompson’s lies about his past, inappropriately granted him first offender status when he had already received that status in a different county in a prior case.

The murder of cancer researcher Eugenia Calle by a recidivist who should have been behind bars raises several questions about the actions of judges and the enforcement of Georgia’s recidivism statutes.  Legislators should move to investigate the application of these laws, to make certain the law of Georgia is being enforced in the courts of Georgia by judges in Georgia.  I suspect any investigation of sentencing outcomes would uncover many instances of first-time offender rules being abused and recidivism statues being ignored in some jurisdictions. ... 

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“Cops Matter. Police Count”

Crime is down in Los Angeles, despite the economy:

Police Chief William J. Bratton sounded his familiar refrain when asked to explain why crime has not increased. “Cops matter. Police count,” he said.
Bratton has long clashed with prominent criminologists who argue that police cannot counter larger societal forces — such as the economy and drug epidemics — that they contend drive crime rates.
Criminologists like to point to 1990 – 1991, when a recession coincided with the highest crime rates seen in decades, to justify predictions that economic hardship causes people to commit more crime.  But does it? The types of crime that peaked in the early 90’s were largely fueled by inner-city drug-and-gang behavior related to crack cocaine and inter-generational poverty.  The crime wave preceded the financial crisis and persisted after the recession faded.  Crime rates really began to drop when sentencing laws were toughened, starting in 1993 (now those laws are being rolled back).   The stock market doesn’t cause or prevent crime (except white-collar crime).  More cops, and tougher sentencing laws prevent crime; fewer cops and lenient sentencing increases crime.  L.A. is experiencing a terrible unemployment picture, but crime is down, thanks (virtually everyone agrees) to Bratton’s policing.  In other part of the country, the economy is not so bad, but crime is still up.  It’s simple, really: nobody in this country has to steal bread to feed their children.  Trust the cop, not the criminologists.   

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