Too Many And Not Enough Drugs Are A Critical Factor In Insane Violence

Severe mental illness is greatly reduced as a risk factor for violence in people who are taking their meds, and greatly increased as a risk factor for violence in people who self-medicate with illegal drugs.

The severely mentally ill make up only a minor share of violent crime perpetrators (and are often victims themselves), so treatment of the severely mentally ill isn't a major driver of violent crime, but they do, overall, have an elevated risk of committing violent crimes living in a world that deals with several mental illness the way that our society does. Also, they do represent a population for whom there is a fairly clear path to reducing violent crime commission risk. Moreover, some of the most sensational and shocking crimes in our society involve instances where severely mentally ill individuals run amok, even though these crimes are very rare and are difficult to predict or prevent.

[S]everely mentally ill people account for only 3 to 5 percent of violent crimes in the general population. . . . we refer only to severe mental illness—meaning schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or psychotic depression. . . .

In a 2009 meta-analysis, or quantitative review, of 204 studies exploring this connection, psychologist Kevin S. Douglas of Simon Fraser University and his associates found a slightly greater likelihood of aggressive behaviors among those with severe mental illnesses. Yet this connection is much weaker than the public seems to believe it is and does not necessarily mean that these serious disorders cause violence. The causation could be in the reverse direction: engaging in chronic aggression (stemming from some other source) may create stress that triggers the illness in those predisposed to it. Alternatively, a third factor could spawn both a psychiatric condition and violence. . . .

[T]he MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study in 1998, sociologist Henry J. Steadman of Policy Research Associates and his colleagues reported that almost a third of severely mentally ill patients with substance abuse problems engaged in one or more violent acts in the year after they left the hospital. For discharged patients who did not abuse drugs, the corresponding figure was only 18 percent. . . .

In its meta-analysis, Douglas’s team also flagged drug abuse as one of several factors that contributed to the connection between mental illness and violence. In addition, it found the link was even stronger for patients who suffered from delusions, hallucinations or disorganized thinking. Thus, a mentally ill person is more at risk of committing an act of aggression when that individual is also abusing a drug and shows particular symptoms. . . .

In the MacArthur study, Steadman’s team found no difference in the prevalence of violence between the severely mentally ill who were on their medications and mentally healthy people, whereas unmedicated patients lashed out at significantly higher rates. . . . improving adherence to treatment may lessen the chances that severely ill people will behave violently.

From Scientific American.

I am not quite as optimist as Hal Arkowitz and Scott O. Lilienfeld, who are the authors of this Scientific American article. For instance, individuals who have been hospitalized for mental health conditions (generally, because someone determines that they pose a risk of bodily harm to themselves or others as a result of one or more prior specific incidents), clearly pose a much greater risk to the public than individuals who have received merely outpatient mental health treatment. An 18% risk of engaging in violent acts is on the same order of magnitude as the risk that a felon about two years out of prison without incident will do so and is fantastically elevated relative to someone who has neither a criminal record nor a record of commitment to an institution for a mental health condition. A 33% risk of engaging in violent acts is on the same order of magnitude as the risk that a felon just release from prison will commit a new crime.

The claim that "severely mentally ill people account for only 3 to 5 percent of violent crimes" also fails to reflect that a much larger percentage of people whom the criminal justice system deems it necessary to incarcerate have moderate to several mental health issues. The number of mentally ill people in jail and prison vastly outnumbers the number of mentally ill people who are in civil institutional settings.

This account also fails to dissect the overall problem of mental health issues adequately. There are multiple very different paths linking mental health issues and crime.

One common path links traits like impulsivity, novelty seeking, and weak anger management capacity with "heat of passion" crimes, often under the influence of alcohol and aggravated by the possession of weapons. These traits do not mitigate guilt in the criminal justice system but often are considered in mitigation of a sentence for a crime.

A second common path links the concept of psychopathic absence of conscience, with pre-meditated crimes like first degree murder, serial rapes and fraud. The violent crimes seem to usually involve a plus factor of impulsivity with pscyhopathy. The white collar crimes and immoral but not illegal business practices tend to fit psychopaths who are at the opposite end of the conscientious to impulsive dimension of personality. Psychopathic traits, rather than being mitigating circumstances, are generally aggravating circumstances in the criminal justice system and closely overlap with circumstances justifying the death penalty.

The third common path is the one focused on in the article - the delusional, and also manic or depressed individual who goes amok, a path where illegal substance abuse greatly elevates the risk and taking prescribed meds

Fourth, a significant share of people who commit serious crimes are not mentally ill, per se, but are developmentally disabled, i.e. they have IQs so low that they are considered mentally retarded. In the extreme, a low IQ can affect guilt in the criminal justice system, but more often it mitigates a sentence and heightens scrutiny of the veracity of the individual's confessions to law enforcement officers, their capacity to carry out the crime, and their vulnerability to being framed or participating ineffectively in the criminal justice system. 

Fifth, a certain share of people who commit serious crimes do so in response to traumatic circumstances, extreme stress, abuse and manipulation, in a form of extended self-defense, in the form of poor judgment in connection with the mental breakdown of a not congenitally mentally ill individual, or in the form of an inability to resist the pressure from a dominant person in their life to commit a crime. Criminal justice responses to these circumstances are all over the map, sometimes producing leniency from one district attorney or judge or jury, while producing draconian responses from another just a few miles away.

READ MORE - Too Many And Not Enough Drugs Are A Critical Factor In Insane Violence

Crime Down In 2010 (Fifth Year In Row)

Crime levels fell across the board last year, extending a multiyear downward trend with a 5.5 percent drop in the number of violent crimes in 2010 and a 2.8 percent decline in the number of property crimes.

Year-to-year changes released Monday by the FBI in its preliminary figures on crimes reported to police in 2010 also showed declines in all four categories of violent crime in 2010. All categories for property crime went down as well. . . .

Violent crime last increased in 2005. Property crime last rose in 2002.

The FBI reported that violent crime fell in all four regions of the country last year — 7.5 percent in the South, 5.9 in the Midwest, 5.8 percent in the West and 0.4 percent in the Northeast.

From here.

Yesterday's new showed divorce rates down in Colorado. Teen pregnancy continues to hover near all time lows.

Also in the news, and possibly one explanation for the shift was the results of a new survey showing that the percentage of children ages 3-17 diagnosed with ADHD had increased from 5.7% for 1997-1999 to 7.6% for 2006-2008.

The economy can't explain the decline. The regional trends don't match immigration trends. Incarceration rates have been relatively stable in this time period. But, one thing that has changed and drives a disproportionate share of the year to year variation in crime, is the changing drug scene.

Domestic meth production is dramatically down. Illegal use of prescription drugs is up. A significant share of the illegal marijuana market has shifted to the legal medical marijuana market. Cocaine use isn't particularly high. There has been a pretty dramatic increase in legal use of drugs for mental health conditions.

One way to read the recent trend is that a lot of people who used to be self-medicating with illegal drugs supplied by a rough and tumble world of gangs and organized crime are finding chemicals to address their problems through distribution channels that don't drive street crime to nearly the same degree and provide a much more predictable product.

An alternative and not necessarily inconsistent possibility is that we are reaping the benefits of a long economic boom from the early 1980s until 2007, interrupted by only relatively brief and mild recessions. People may commit crimes on impulse, but a lifestyle that leads to commiting serious crime with little hesitation and routinely committing less serious crimes is decades in the making. A long period of relative plenty may have narrowed the pool of people who were in dire poverty as young children and became more predisposed towards crime as a result.

A third possibility is that technology is making it harder and less profitable to commit many crimes. People carry less cash. Cars have more anti-theft devices. Bank robbers and rapists are more likely to get caught. The decline in meth was driven by more strict control of the ingredients that go into it.

Whatever the reason, it is hard to deny that it is good news.

READ MORE - Crime Down In 2010 (Fifth Year In Row)

A Criminal Justice Catch-22

Ezell Gilbert is now before us asking to be relieved of the consequences of a mistake we made in his direct appeal in 1998. He told us then that the District Court was wrong in sentencing him substantially more harshly based on that court’s decision that carrying a concealed weapon is a crime of violence. We rejected his argument, and affirmed his sentence of more than 24 years. United States v. Gilbert, 138 F.3d 1371 (11th Cir. 1998). We did this on a record containing the District Judge’s clear statement that the sentence was longer than he would have imposed, but for the then-mandatory Sentencing Guidelines. Id. at 1372–73. It turns out, of course, that Mr. Gilbert was right and we were wrong. Carrying a concealed weapon is not a crime of violence. We said so, belatedly for Mr. Gilbert, in United States v Archer, 531 F.3d 1347 (11th Cir. 2008).

The effects of our mistake are quite dire for Mr. Gilbert, insofar as his
properly calculated (and advisory) guideline range would today be 130–162
months, or approximately 11 to 13 years. As I write this, I understand that he has already served more than fourteen years in prison. And yet the majority opinion tells Mr. Gilbert that the laws and Constitution of this country offer him no relief.

From the dissenting opinion of Judge Martin from an en banc ruling of the 11th Circuit in an appeal of a U.S. District Court denial of a habeas corpus petition.

The majority opinion by Judge Carnes (at the same link) opens with the following:

Ezell Gilbert, a federal prisoner, wants to have an error of law in the calculation of his sentence corrected based upon a Supreme Court decision interpreting the sentencing guidelines, even though that decision was issued eleven years after he was sentenced. Gilbert insists that prisoners have a right to have errors in the calculation of their sentences corrected no matter how long it has been since the sentences were imposed. . . . The principles of policy that limit the right to be resentenced in accord with the latest guidelines decisions are those regarding finality of judgment and the important interests that finality promotes. For reasons we will discuss, the statutory provisions and the decisions furthering finality of judgment are strong enough to hold their own against Gilbert’s claimed right to have a long-ago error in calculating his sentence corrected.

Gilbert had a prior criminal record as a drug dealer, and the sentencing was conducted on the basis of plea bargain that stipulated that "his statutory sentencing range was ten years to life imprisonment on the crack distribution count and not more than five years on the marijuana distribution count. . . . Gilbert’s base offense level was 32 because his distribution offense involved at least 50 grams but less than 150 grams of crack." His lengthy and serious criminal history produced a sentencing guideline sentence about twice what appears to have been anticipated by either party because one of his prior convictions for unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon was treated as a violent rather than a non-violent offense.

The majority makes much of the fact that Gilbert received many instances of leniency in his prior run ins with the criminal justice system and could have faced a mandatory life in prison sentence if the prosecutors had chosen to take a fairly strong case to trial rather than plea bargaining. Basically, the majority argues rhetorically, although not really legally, that bad people like Gilbert deserved to suffer from judicial mistakes anyway, and gets to benefit from mistakes made in his favor, so judicial mistakes of law aren't worth correcting when they prejudice him.

In contrast, as Gilbert's lawyers see it, the basic problem is that he got a sentence twice as long as the one that he had bargained for (and of course, it bears noting that this long sentence was only made possible by laws imposing hysterically long sentence for dealing crack cocaine in small quantities that the Congress has since disavowed.)

The 11th Circuit is one of the most conservative of the U.S. Court of Appeal Circuits in the United States federal court system. The case eptiomizes the divide between liberals and conservatives over habeas corpus relief. (Note that this was a federal court decision, so the federalism aspects of habeas corpus law are absent from this case.)

It also illustrates the fact that in the federal sentencing guidelines system, slight nuances of interpretation regarding gray areas of the governing law can have profound consequences for criminal defendants. This suggests that there are real problems with the fundamental structure of this criminal sentencing system, which in practice can be quite capricious.

Then again, there is wide bipartisan consensus that far more profound mistakes in fact finding by juries cannot be corrected on any kind of appeal, and these mistakes are probably considerably more common than mistakes on questions of law that are subject to appeal or correction in a collateral attack on a conviction.

Reasonable estimates put the error rate of juries on the question of conviction for a crime, based on comparing the conclusions drawn by juries and judges and other judges with each other based on the same evidence and based on exoneration rates in cases where DNA evidence is available, at 10%-20%. Of course, something on the order of 90%+ of cases are plea bargained, so jury errors make up only about 1%-2% of criminal prosecutions. But, this still probably dwarfs the number of material mistakes made by judges on questions of law that are not corrected on direct appeal. While fixing mistakes that are clearly wrong, even if discovered and accurately addressed only much later, makes the system more accurate, errors in fact finding and poor legislative and quasi-legislative standards for sentencing across the board are a bigger problem in the inaccuracies of the criminal justice system as a whole.

READ MORE - A Criminal Justice Catch-22

Policy Beliefs Can Change

When you get immersed in the toil of electoral politics, it is easy to get into the rut of assuming that politics is all about getting people who agree with you to the polls at a higher rate that the people who don't agree with you, and that people's opinions, to the extent that they are based on more than trivial amounts of information, almost never change.

But, in the longer run, that isn't true. While an individual, and even a whole geographic community's place on the political spectrum is very stable over time, in the case of communities, even over more than a century, the location of specific policy stances on that political spectrum can shift dramatically in a couple of a decades or less.

A poll from CNN this week is the latest to show a majority of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, with 51 percent saying that marriages between gay and lesbian couples “should be recognized by the law as valid” and 47 percent opposed.

This is the fourth credible poll in the past eight months to show an outright majority of Americans in favor of gay marriage. . . Prior to last year, there had been just one survey — a Washington Post poll conducted in April 2009 — to show support for gay marriage as the plurality position, and none had shown it with a majority. . . . opponents of gay marriage almost certainly no longer constitute a majority; just one of the last nine polls has shown opposition to gay marriage above 50 percent.

From here.

In New York State, likely voters polled earlier this year supported gay marriage by a 56-37 margin. In New York City suburbs support for legalizing gay marriage is 61-33. Roman Catholics are more likely to support gay marriage than members of the population at large, notwithstanding church doctrine to the contrary.

If you told me when I started high school in small town Ohio in the mid-1980s that a majority of Americans would support gay marriage two and a half decades later, I would have thought that you were crazy. When I graduated from high school, only about 11% of those polled thought gay marriage should be legal, while about 72% oppose it. Frankly, I'm surprised that support for gay marriage back then was that high, I would have guessed that it was in the single digits, and maybe in small town Ohio it was. It is also possibly that the single pre-1994 poll's number was high and was made public at all only because it was a statistical outlier on the high end.

The AIDS epidemic had started to make most people aware that there were actually people who had intimate relationships with members of the same sex voluntarily, but even the notion that someone could actually identify as "gay" or "lesbian" in real life, as opposed to merely as an insulting and inaccurate description of someone, wasn't real clear to me at the time. I had never met anyone who had come out. I hadn't even seen or heard of anyone who had come out on TV, in a movie, on the radio, or in anything that I'd read in print. There were no organizations for gays, lesbians, transgender individuals that I was aware of in my town, and the only one that I was aware of nationally was ACT-UP. I was aware of a couple of same sex adult couples who lived together as a household, one of which involved an extended family member, but it had never occurred to me that a household like that would be anything other than platonic, and nobody in those households ever said a thing that suggested that more legal rights were necessary for them.

Since then, the trendline has been more or less steady and shows no sign of reversing. Nate Silver notes in the linked article that "If support for gay marriage were to continue accelerating as fast as it has in the past two years, supporters would outnumber opponents roughly 56-40 in the general population by November 2012." Even if the growth in support reverts to the overall trend line, there will be a pretty safe majority that favors legalizing gay marriage by then, and some states will be ahead of that trend while others will be behind it.

Popular understanding of sexual orientation and gender identification has expanded dramatically in a quarter of a century. By the time I finished high school, I learned that there were at least a few people in my community who self-identified as gay or lesbian (I would not meet anyone who had a transgender identity until after I finished college). Oberlin, where I went to college, was a mecca for gay and lesbian students, who were often active in campus politics, were deeply involved in running one of the major social events of the year on campus (the drag ball), and made it a point to be out of the closet in daily life in class and around campus. A large share of our student body came from New York City and some students personally knew people who had participated in the Stonewall Riots.

But, while college changed my views, this took much longer for the rest of the nation. More than one book has recounted what happened in the years that followed, but my point is not to illustrate how this happened. My point is to note that it did.

Even a decade ago, even among liberal minded people and many people in the gay and lesbian community, some form of civil unions seemed possible and desirable, but gay marriage seemed like a remote possibility that might never happen anywhere in anything but the distant future (where author Kate Elliott, who I whose science fiction Jaran novels I was reading in the late 1990s had put a society that had gay marriage). It was a little hard to determine at that point what gay marriage would even mean at a practical level, because not a lot of attention had been given to the question by people in a position to know the answers.

Now, there are thousands of same sex legally marriage couples in the United States and more in Europe. Colorado doesn't legally recognize same sex marriage and doesn't even have a civil unions law (one was narrowly defeated in this year's session of the Colorado General Assembly). But, it does have a lot of same sex couples who view each other as spouses, who hold themselves out to the public as spouses, who live as a household and who raise children together. They are parents of children who go to school with my children. They are teachers. They are nurses. Their families are my neighbors. Those couples are my clients in large numbers.

It has become obvious to a large share of the population through countless examples that someone can be gay or lesbian as a matter of personal identity, and that a person's sexual orientation is a stable part of who someone is as a person that someone is generally aware of to some extent, even if they may not fully understand their feelings in some social contexts or may be confused at times, for most, if not all, of their lives. (And, who doesn't, at some point in life, find their potential romantic relationships to be confusing?)

It has become clear as well that gay marriage doesn't have negative externalities. It doesn't weaken the institution of marriage for opposite sex couples. It helps many children and harms none. It imparts dignity without taking it away from anyone.

There are still plenty of people in the world who still insist that same sex loves are sinful based on epistles written by John the Gospel writer a couple of thousand years ago, and stories and laws written by Jewish priests centuries before then. But, those scripturally motivated views don't last long in the face of encounters with real life friends, neighbors and colleagues. They don't have much credibility with young people, even those who are evangelical Christians who have grown up in a world that has allowed them to see gays and lesbians and transgender individuals living ordinary (and extraordinary) lives like anyone else.

Decisions from courts and politicians, like the recent Congressional repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy in the military and the President's decision not to defend in court the part of the Defense of Marriage Act applicable to the federal government have provided the leadership that has changed the views of the majority, and willingness to hire a gay man as the White House social secretary. Once you abandon the sin theory of sexual orientation the rest flows pretty naturally, and the leadership that our nation's leaders have shown has pretty well discredited that understanding of sexual orientation.

The sin theory of sexual orientation is rapidly going the way of the equally scripturally supported and equally empirically inaccurate demon possession theory of mental illness. Despite the fact that the words in the Bible haven't changed, very few people walking the streets believe in an internalized way that mental illness is caused by demon possession, and likewise, the Biblically based defenses for the institutions of slavery are also now heart felt for only a tiny minority of American Christians.

Lots of people believe that faith healing (which the Gospels devote a great deal of time to) is possible, or at least once was possible, but very few people resort to a clergyman laying on hands as their sole means or even primary means for dealing with poor physical health.

The Pope's official position, reduced to writing ever since 1968 in "Humanae Vitae," is that using contraceptives is a sin. But:

A survey just one year later . . . found that 44% of Catholic women (who were regular churchgoers) were currently using artificial contraception. In 1974, 83% of Catholics said they disagreed with the Pope’s stance on birth control. By 1999, nearly 80 percent of Catholics believed that a person could be a good Catholic without obeying the church hierarchy’s teaching on birth control. A 2005 nationwide poll by Harris Interactive showed that 90% of Catholics supported the use of birth control. The Center of Disease Control and Prevention 2002 National Survey of Family Growth revealed that 97% of American Catholic women over age 18 have used a banned form of contraception, which is the same percentage as the general population.

The sea change in public opinion on gay rights isn't the only recent example.

While he was living, Martin Luther King, Jr., our nation's pre-eminent hero was the civil rights movement, was wary of pressing to strike down miscegenation laws and emphasized civil rights in the public sphere of work and commerce instead. Yet, in the wake of Loving v. Virginia, even prominent segregationist politicians like Strom Thurmond eventually came around to the view (and I genuinely believe that at least that far it was sincere) that miscegenation laws were wrong and that there was nothing wrong with interracial marriage. Large percentages of white, usual Republican primary voters in Mississippi still haven't come around, and we are not a nation of color blind people. But, Jim Crow era laws to enforce segregation and discriminate on the basis of race have been utterly morally discredited for the vast majority of Americans today.

We haven't reached a comfortable answer that tells us how to balance work and family in a world where both men and women are part of almost all parts of the workforce. But, almost nobody wants to return to the status quo that was in place when I was born when the percentage of women in law school student bodies was in the single digits, and there were only a handful of jobs that were open to women, especially to married women. Likewise, almost nobody advocates a return to a legal regime in which women cannot own property, bring lawsuits or enter into contracts in their own name, as was the case when the Founders wrote the United States Constitution.

Similarly, nobody is advocating that the franchise be limited to white male property owners over the age of twenty-one as it was when the Founders wrote the United States constitution. Indeed, while non-whites can no longer constitutionally be denied the right to vote based on race, women can no longer constitutionally be denied the right to vote based on gender, and eighteen to twenty year olds can no longer constitutionally be denied the right to vote based on age, laws restricting the franchise to property owners would quite possibly not violate the federal constitution, although such laws would be politically impossible to pass at the moment.

Abortion remains controversial, but popular opinion today would never support the laws struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 that made it illegal to use "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception."

Support for legalizing marijuana is at about the same point that support for legalizing gay marriage was two years ago. The year that I graduated from high school, about 74% opposed that and 24% supported it. Now, about 50% oppose legalizing it, while 46% support legalizing it, and support for legalization has grown more or less steadily for the last fifteen years. According to the executive director of NORML:

Thirteen states have decriminalized marijuana, and that covers 130 million Americans. We now have fifteen states and the District of Columbia that have legal protections for qualified medical-marijuana patients, and that covers 90 to 95 million Americans.

The President has taken the position of not using federal law to punish people who use marijuana in compliance with state medical marijuana laws, and has paid essentially no price (and perhaps gains support) for taking this position.

In aspects of life where people have real experience and are affected in their daily lives, religious texts and doctrines and even community traditions are all but irrelevant to people's opinions. The previous generation's unthinkable possibilities can become the current generation's moral norms.

READ MORE - Policy Beliefs Can Change

Good News on Friday

Social Issues:


* Despite the failure of a civil unions bill in the Republican controlled Colorado House of Representatives (the bill probably would have passed a vote in the chamber as a whole), gay marriage is now supported by majorities of men, women, Democrats and independents in opinion polls and support has increased dramatically in every demographic in the last six years.

* Civil unions or gay marriage are available in many states.

* Restoration of gay marriage in California seems imminent.

* The federal government has decided to stop defending the constitutionality of part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court.

* Sodomy prosecutions remain unconstitutional.

* Teen pregnancy rates and teen birth rates are at near record lows.

* Abortion rates are at near record lows, but constitutional protections for a pro-choice position on abortion remain secure precedents.
* Interracial marriage has become much more common as the stigmas against it have fallen.

* Divorce rates have fallen for a number of years. The current generation is less likely to get divorced than there parent's generation.

* New York recently became the last state to permit "no fault" divorce in favor of its previous, deeply flawed, fault based divorce regime.

* The percentage of the population that identifies as having "no religion" is the fastest growing religious identification in the United States and the stigma associated with that religious identification is waning.

Public Health and Safety:

* Traffic accident deaths are at the lowest level since 1949, down 3% from 2009 to 2010 despite an increased number of passenger-miles traveled, and down 25% since 2005.  It has never been safer to drive a car per passenger-mile in the history of the world.

* Almost every kind of accidental death rate, other than deaths from overdoses of a select group of prescription drugs (mostly painkillers), are at near record lows.

* Public education campaigns have greatly reduced sudden infant death syndrome and traffic deaths of young children.  Those campaigns are also making a dent in shaken baby syndrome injuries.

* Smoking is down greatly and this is one public health area where the U.S. leads comparabhle nations in the Europe and Asia.  This has finally produced, this year, declining lung cancer death rates in women as well as men.

* Anti-scientific criticisms of vaccination of children have been definitively discredited.

* People with HIV/AIDS can now live much longer with effective treatments than they did a couple of decades ago and the infection rate for the epidemic has stablized or declined in a great many demographics. 

* A vaccine against HPV, one of the only sexually transmitted diseases not easily treatable with drugs and not effectively prevented with barrier contraception methods, has entered wide public use.

* Life expectencies are rising and infant mortality rates continue to fall.  Great gains have been made in treating cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

Education:

* Colorado has significantly increased its high school graduation rate with a new mandatory attendance law.

* The United States has one of the highest rates of college graduation and high school graduation in the world.

* The scores of armed forces recruits on entrance exams has improved.


Crime and Punishment:

* Crime rates, including murder, are at near record lows.

* Incarceration rates are no longer surging up as state budgets have tightened and forced a more balance look at the necessity of mass incarceration.

* Medical marijuana has wide support and is legal in at least seventeen states, and the federal government has agreed to tolerate it despite the lack of a formal federal legislative exception permitting it. Support for legalization of marijuana is high, and support for the punitive war on drugs approach is weak.
* Excessive and racially discriminatory in practice federal punishments for possession of small amounts of crack cocaine based on bad scientific assumptions have been greatly reduced.

* Many states, including Colorado, have shifted sentencing laws for drug crimes to favor a treatment approach over incarceration for drug users (as opposed to drug dealers).

* Serious white collar crimes receive serious criminal sentences rather than "slap on the wrist" sentences that fail to reflect their seriousness, and prosecuters have been willing to prosecute serious white collar crime defendants.

* DNA evidence has produced exonerations of many wrongfully convicted or wrongfully charged criminal defendants (mostly in rape cases), and has produced convictions of many rapists who would never have been charged otherwise.

* Wider use of videotape technology has resulted in many more cases of successful sanctioning of improper police conduct and has reduced the amount of lying about alleged confessions by criminal defendants.
* Illinois ended the death penalty and commuted the sentences of everyone on death row to long or life prison sentences.


* The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by the mentally retarded and for crimes committed by offenders under the age of eighteen.

* The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the use of the death penalty for almost all crimes other than murder (a few crimes such as treason and espionage where murder is an inferred likely possibility but not certain to have occurred are also constitutionally subject to the death penalty).

* The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the imposition of life without possibility of parole for crimes other than murder committed by people while under the age of eighteen.

* Many states have ended the use of life without possibility of parole sentences for juveniles entirely.



Economics:


* Housing market fundamentals such as long term inflation adjusted prices and price/rent ratios suggest that the housing price bubble has come close to working its way out of the economy.  Since mortgage rates remain fairly low, housing is at its most affordable for more than a decade in many markets.

* Inflation is low, but we are not in deflation.

* We are experiencing some positive GDP growth on a consistent basis.

* Unlike Iceland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland, we are not in or near a sovereign debt crisis.  The Irish have incurred government bailouts of its banks of $25,000 per person, which would be equivalent to $7.5 trillion if it has a population comparable to the United States.  The combined bailout cost in the United States is on track to be about 2% of that amount per capita and did not require foreign assistance or major austerity plans.

* The unemployment rate in the United States, at 8.8% for March, while not low, is the lowest it has been for two years.

* Subprime mortgage lending, which was exploitive to borrowers and unsound as a business model, has virtually vanished.

* Payday lending has been curtailed in many states including Colorado.

* Consumer debt levels have fallen, and increased credit card minimum payments systemically reduce the extent to which families can become overextended for the foreseeable future.

Military, Security and Foreign Affairs

* We are down to 50,000 troops in Iraq, none in front line combat positions, and there is some reasonable prospect that many of them will come home.

* Tunisia and Egypt have cast off dictatorships and on are a clear path towards democratic government.

* Significant democratic reforms or replacements of dictators are likely in Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Libya.

* A dictator in Pakistan was not so long ago forced out in favor of a democratically elected leader.

* An uprising in the Ivory Coast appears on track to depose a pretender to that country's Presidency whose election depended on election fraud in favor of the actual election winner.

* World powers organized to use economic sanctions and military force to prevent mass civilian killings and a restoration of totalitarrian rule in Libya.

* The Cold War is still over, more than a decade later, and Soviet style Communism lost.  Some former Soviet countries have joined the E.U., the Eurozone and NATO.

* Kosovo remains securely independent from Serbia and is widely recognized as a sovereign state.

* Nine and a half years later, 9/11 has not been repeated.  Foreign terrorism has not become a regular event in the U.S.  A new skyscraper and memorial are going up where the Twin Towers once stood.

* The U.S. military budget is being cut.

* China has started to move towards allowing the Yuan's value in foreign currency markets to float to market levels, reducing the importance a factor that has disfavored U.S. exports to China and favored China imports to the U.S.

* While China still accounts for about half of the world's executions, it has significantly curtailed its use of the death penalty and instituted new due process protections in that process.

READ MORE - Good News on Friday

Federal Criminal Prosecutions Waste Money

How are we using federal criminal justice resources?

Filings in the regional courts of appeals dropped 3 percent to 55,992 in FY 2010, due to a 7 percent drop in criminal appeals to 12,797 and a 9 percent drop in administrative agency appeals to 7,813.... Prisoner petitions fell 3 percent to 15,789. Appeals involving pro se litigants declined 2 percent to 27,209....

Filings of criminal cases (including transfers) increased 2 percent to 78,428. The number of criminal defendants (including transfers) also rose 2 percent to 100,366, surpassing the previous record of 97,982 set in 2009. Proceedings were concluded against 98,311 defendants, 91 percent of whom were convicted, with 89 percent pleading guilty.

Immigration cases, which climbed 9 percent to 28,046, constituted 36 percent of all criminal cases filed, compared to 34 percent in 2009. The majority of immigration filings involved improper reentry of aliens, and 73 percent of all immigration cases were filed in the District of Arizona, the Southern District of California, the District of New Mexico, and the Southern and Western Districts of Texas.

Filings addressing fraud grew 12 percent to 9,371 for cases, and rose 13 percent to 12,639 for defendants in these cases.

Twenty percent of all criminal cases were drug offenses, compared to 22 percent in 2009. Cases involving drug offenses decreased 5 percent to 15,785, and defendants in those cases declined 2 percent to 29,410. Marijuana cases dropped 10 percent overall, but filings related to possession of marijuana increased, with cases climbing 26 percent to 1,248 and defendants rising 28 percent to 1,305. Drug cases involving non-marijuana offenses declined 3 percent to 10,817, and defendants in those cases fell 2 percent to 21,918.

Firearms and explosives cases, which account for 9 percent of total criminal case filings, declined 7 percent to 7,248. Defendants in those cases dropped 6 percent to 8,376.

Prosecuting and incarcerating someone whose only crime is being a repeat illegal immigrant at $30,000 per person per year, rather than simply deporting them at a cost of a few hundred bucks, or less, makes no sense. Neither does devoting federal criminal justice resources to marijuana possession cases. Drug possession generally is an issue that state courts are well equipped to handle. Nor does devoting substantial federal resources to very long prison terms for dirty old men with no prior criminal records who download child porn for free off the Internet (as the U.S. government does, despite its lack of mention in the statistics above), but have never actually harmed a child.

Notably, when gun toting, drug using judges are convicted of federal crimes, leniency is the rule.

READ MORE - Federal Criminal Prosecutions Waste Money

Friday News Dump

In Colorado

* Colorado's unemployment rate in February, of 9.1%, is the highest the state has experienced since the Great Depression and above the national rate of 8.9%. The oil bust of the early 1980s brought the rate to its previous peak of 8.8%. Also, unemployment estimates for Colorado over the last couple of years turn out to have been greatly understated, since the census revealed that the population figures used in making the original unemployment predictions were too low in high unemployment areas. Colorado's record lowest unemployment, since 1976, was at the turn of the millenium when it dropped to a little under 3%.

State officials have blamed migration to Colorado and the decision of many people who have given up looking for work to return to the workforce. Still, the fact that unemployment is climbing, rather than falling, long after the "recovery" in GDP terms has been underway, is discouraging. Unemployment is alawys a lagging indicator, but the employment situation has been worse and longer lived in the current employment recession than any since the Great Depression.

* Despite an immense state budget deficit, House Republicans in Colorado are still proposing large new tax cuts, in excess of $60 million.

* Colorado's proposed state budget will include more cuts to the Fort Logan psychiatric hospital, continuing a trend of decreasing mental health hospital capacity. The current cuts would close a juvenile ward that current houses an average of a dozen inpatients. The Joint Budget Committee argues that private facilities in the state offer the same services at a lower price and can handle another dozen patients.

In Other State Legislatures

* Both houses of Wisconsin's state legislature has passed a bill ending collective bargaining for public sector workers in Wisconsin's state and local governments. Republican Governor Walker has promised to sign the bill, which he championed. Naturally, the bill received voted only from Republicans, and a few Republicans broke ranks to join with Democrats in opposing it. Protests continue in Madison, with farmers set to encicle the state capitol with tractors next. Public opinion in Wisconsin has shifted decisively away from the Republicans and towards President Obama and the public employees unions in Wisconsin as a result of the union fight. Recall efforts are underway targeting a number of legislative anti-union Republicans, although it isn't clear if these will make the ballot or have a realistic chance at succeeding. Similar efforts are making progress in other Republican controlled states.

* The Governor of Illinois signed a bill abolishing the death penalty in that state, appropriating the funds that would have been used for death penalty litigation to a trust for murder victims, and pardoned the fifteen people on death row there. Illinois is the 16th state in the United States to abolish the death penalty.

* Kentucky has joined the list of states addressing state budget shortfalls with sentencing reforms, particularly with milder sentences for non-violent drug users.

Kentucky . . . became the latest to make the shift when Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law a measure increasing spending on rehabilitation programs and intensive drug testing. The law also reduces penalties for many drug offenses and may allow some traffickers and users of smaller amounts of drugs to avoid prison.

Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania are among those that have pending bills to reduce penalties for drug offenders, in some cases by directing defendants into treatment programs. Similar laws have taken effect in South Carolina, Colorado and New York in recent years. States have maintained stiff penalties for more-serious drug crimes.

While the changes are part of broader belt-tightening efforts, they also reflect a growing belief among state lawmakers that prosecuting drug offenders aggressively often fails to treat their underlying addiction problems and can result in offenders cycling in and out of prisons for years — a critique long voiced by groups that advocate in favor of defendants' rights. . .

The state measures mark a sharp retreat from the war on drugs, which gathered steam in the 1980s and '90s with mandatory-minimum and three-strikes prison sentences that resulted in some drug offenders being locked up for decades. Drug arrests nationwide climbed from about 580,000 in 1980 to about 1.6 million in 2009, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Although some states started rethinking drug punishment before the recession, many more states have come on board in the past two years. In 2007, Texas began shifting more drug offenders away from prison, which helped hold down the inmate population. The changes cost $241 million, less than half what the state anticipated it would have spent to build three new prisons.

* Ohio's criminal sentencing commission has released a new report on the causes of that state's prison overcrowding problem. According to the report, "recent growth in Ohio’s prison population — even with mandatory sentences and scores of bills that increase penalties for particular offenses — is not driven primarily by intake (although it is a factor). It’s largely fueled by increases in inmates’ average length-of-stay."

* Connecticut voters in a survey favored the decriminalization of marijuana (79% favor medical marijuana and 65% favor decriminalization), legalizing Sunday liquor sales (65%), and reinstating the death penalty (68% up from 59% in 2005 after a high profile murder). But, majorities there don't favor allowing grocery stores to sell wine or liquor. Connecticut currently has a death penalty but its legislature is considering repealing it.

* Connecticut last year joined a list of states that automatically treat some teens under the age of eighteen as adults in the criminal justice process; New Hampshire changed its law in 2008. Similar proposals are pending in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. The only other state that automatically tries some teens under the age of eighteen as adults is New York State. Budget savings and increased sensitivity to the distinctiveness of juvenile offenders has prompted the changes. For example, a recent study found that:

[I]nmates in adult facilities (surprisingly) give better reports than youth in juvenile facilities on several measures (including criminal activity and victimization), they also fare much worse on other measures. Importantly, the inmates in adult facilities report substantially and significantly greater rates of PTSD and mental illness symptoms, and are much more likely to be afraid for their safety, compared to those in juvenile facilities.

Colorado never had a law that automatically tried older teens under the age of eighteen as adults, but did give prosecutors the authority to directly file many serious criminal charges against older juveniles as adults without court approval; that authority was recently narrowed by Colorado's General Assembly.

* California is building a new death row prison at a projected cost of $356 million, as a partial response to federal prison overcrowding litigation in the state, in which inmates have been successful on the merits, but not seen many results.

California has 713 inmates awaiting execution. . . . By comparison, Florida ranked second, with 398, and Texas was third at 337. . . About 700 condemned men are confined at San Quentin, north of San Francisco, in facilities built to hold 554, according to the Corrections Department’s website. (Nineteen women face execution and are held in Chowchilla, a prison in the Central Valley.) On average, the men are likely to spend 17 years in the aging cell blocks, according to the prison system. . . . Since 1978, when California reinstated capital punishment, 53 condemned inmates have died from natural causes while on death row. Eighteen committed suicide and 13 were executed. Six died from other causes.

Other Domestic News

* Long Island Republican Congressman King has launched hearings in the House Homeland Security Committee into the radicalization of Islam, over objections that this amounts of a McCarthyistic inquiry that is singling out a single religion that may incite further terrorist sentiment against the United States.

* In Skinner v. Switzer, the U.S. Surpeme Court found, in a narrow 6-3 decision, that a Section 1983 civil rights suit by a death row inmate (as opposed to a habeas corpus suit) was not procedurally barred by prison litigation reform statutes. The inmate challenged an interpretation of a Texas law that prevented him from securing post-conviction access to DNA evidence in his muder case that might implicate another suspect (now dead). The court ruled in his favor because DNA testing itself does not necessarily lead to the setting aside of his conviction, as it could show that he is guilty or be inconclusive (and hence is not duplicative of habeas corpus relief), and does not violate the Rooker-Feldman doctrine because while a "state-court decision is not reviewable by lower federal courts . . . a statute or rule governing the decision may be challenged in a federal action"). The ruling also provided yet another case where heightened pleading standards in federal civil litigation were held not to bar a straightforward lawsuit brought by a prisoner.

* Excessive federal child pornography laws continue to produce absurd results:

In the spring and summer of 2006, Eric Rinehart, at the time a 34-year-old police officer in the small town of Middletown, Indiana, began consensual sexual relationships with two young women, ages 16 and 17. One of the women had contacted Rinehart through his MySpace page. He had known the other one, the daughter of a man who was involved in training police officers, for most of her life. Rinehart was going through a divorce at the time. The relationships came to the attention of local authorities, and then federal authorities, when one of the girls mentioned it to a guidance counselor. Whatever you might think of Rinehart's judgment or ethics, his relationships with the girls weren't illegal. The age of consent in Indiana is 16. . . . Rinehart got into legal trouble because one of the girls mentioned to him that she had posed for sexually provocative photos for a previous boyfriend and offered to do the same for Rinehart. Rinehart lent her his camera, which she returned with the promised photos. Rinehart and both girls then took additional photos and at least one video, which he downloaded to his computer.

In 2007 Rinehart was convicted on two federal charges of producing child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge David Hamilton, who now serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, reluctantly sentenced Rinehart to 15 years in prison. Thanks to mandatory minimum sentences, Hamilton wrote, his hands were tied. There is no parole in the federal prison system. So barring an unlikely grant of clemency from the president, Rinehart, who is serving his time at a medium-security prison in Pennsylvania, will have to complete at least 85 percent of his term (assuming time off for good behavior), or nearly 13 years.

* An NPR executive resigned after remarking in a secretly recorded conversation that the Tea Party was full of racists, despite the fact that this is true.

* Oil prices are rising on Mideast turmoil.

* Blockbuster, the dominant player in the storefront video rental market, reached an agreement with its creditors to be auctioned as a business to the highest bidder, rather than having its assets liquidated. Netflix, video on demand, and kiosk video rentals have destroyed its profitability. The chain, which grew dramatically through acquisition of competitors, also probably simply had too many stores for the market's demand and hasn't been able to shutter them fast enough. For example, in Denver at 6th Avenue and Grant Street, it once had two stores less than a block apart - both are now shuttered.

* Department store H&M has decided to open up stores in greater Denver, with the Saks location at the Cherry Creek Mall which is closing likely to be one of them.

Abroad

* Japan has had two major earthquakes in the last week. One was magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale, and the last night there was an 8.8 magnitude quake that also gave rise to a Tsunami that reached as far as Hawaiii this morning and will be experienced as far off as Peru. The first Japanese quake produced only minimal damage. The current one killed about a hundred people and led to considerable property damage in a few industrial areas mostly from the tsunami waves rather than the earthquake itself. Similar magnitude earthquakes in Iran, Indonesia and Haiti have produced massive loss of life and long term devistation, but Japan's earthquake conscious building codes and better prepared people prevented the damage from being greater. A smaller earthquake in China this weak produced loss of life and property damage comparable to that experienced by last night's massive quake.

* Civil war continues to rage in Libya and France has recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of the country; NATO nations remain reluctant to intervene militarily there. Egyptians will vote on amendments to military proposed amendments its constitution this month to prepare for prompt democratic elections that will transfer power from a military council to civilians. Protestors in Jordan have complained that a new prime minister is stalling on proposals for political reforms, using the fact that the country's 32 political parties are too fragmented to produce quality elections; the main democratic reform that has been demanded is to shift control of the executive branch from the king to a prime minster selected by parliament. Police in a predominantly Shi'ite part of Saudi Arabia shot five protestors at a small demonstration; protests in the absolute monarchy have been muted compared to elsewhere in the region - in part because Saudi Arabia is more repressive and in part because the current Saudi King is popular with majority Sunnis in the country.

* The Daili Lama in Tibet proposed on the anniversary of the day of Tibet's failed 1959 bid to free itself from China, to transfer political power of the government in exile to elected leaders, leaving himself and his successors as spiritual leaders only. Proposed succession to his position is currently unclear as he has also proposed reforms to the traditional approach rooted in the notion that he is reincarnated. China remains officially outraged at any talk of Tibetan independence, or the notion that Taiwan is not part of China. China is also cracking down in an effort to prevent the Jasmine revolution of the Middle East from spreading to it.

Medicine

* A drug to prevent the spread of M.S. has worked in a mouse model. A mouse model of a drug to treat Alzheimer's disease and damage from minor strokes in the brain has also been successful. A new drug to treat lupus has come on the market. Progress has been made in developing a new class of anti-malaria drugs based on a chemotherapy drug.

READ MORE - Friday News Dump

Overkill In Drug Sentencing

As a liberal, I generally like to think that there isn't evil in the world, just misguided individuals. Then people like Former Kingfisher County, Oklahoma Judge Susie Pritchett come along and make me think that there really is evil in the world in the persons of people like her abusing the trust that has been placed in them to use their discretion appropriately.

On Dec. 31, 2009, [25-year-old Patricia Marilyn] Spottedcrow and her mother, Delita Starr, 50, sold a “dime bag” of marijuana to a police informant at Starr's home in Kingfisher, court records state. Starr handled the transaction and asked her 9-year-old grandson — Spottedcrow's son — for some dollar bills to make change for the $11 sale. Two weeks later, the same informant returned and bought $20 of marijuana from Spottedcrow.

The two women were arrested for drug distribution and because Spottedcrow's children were in the home, an additional charge of possession of a dangerous substance in the presence of a minor was added. “It just seemed like easy money,” said Spottedcrow, who says she is not a drug user but has smoked marijuana. “I thought we could get some extra money. I've lost everything because of it.”

The women were each offered plea deals of two years in prison. But because neither had prior convictions and the drug amounts were low, they gambled and entered a guilty plea before a judge with no prior sentencing agreement.

Starr received a 30-year suspended sentence with no incarceration, but five years of drug and alcohol assessments. Spottedcrow was sentenced to 10 years in prison for distribution and two years for possession, to run concurrently. She will be up for parole in 2014.... In addition, Starr was fined $8,600 and Spottedcrow $2,740.

From here via the Sentencing Law and Policy blog.

This Oklahoma case illustrates very clearly the insanity of this approach to non-violent drug cases. The case also screams racism in the exercise of discretion in the criminal justice system. Here is how the judge justified this to herself:

Former Kingfisher County Judge Susie Pritchett, who retired in December, said "the women were conducting an extensive operationand included children in the business."

"It was a way of life for them," Pritchett said.

"Considering these circumstances, I thought it was lenient. By not putting the grandmother in prison, she is able to help take care of the children."

A presentencing investigative report prepared by the Department of Corrections rated Spottedcrow's risk of re-offending as "high"and recommended substance abuse treatment while incarcerated.

"It does not appear the defendant is aware that a problem exists or that she needs to make changes in her current behavior."

Spottedcrow was unemployed and without a stable residence when arrested, the report states. The family lost their Oklahoma City home for not paying bills.

"When she needed money this is the avenue she chose rather than finding legitimate employment," the report states. "The defendant does not appear remorseful and she makes justifications for her actions."

Pritchett said on first drug offenses, sentences are usually suspended and may require treatment or random drug tests.

Only if there are other more serious circumstances is a first-time drug offender sent to prison, she said.

"When kids are involved, it's different," Pritchett said.

"This was a drug sale. When I look at someone in front of me, I'm thinking, 'What is it going to take to rehabilitate this person?' We look at their attitude and other factors."

When Spottedcrow was taken to jail after her sentencing, she had marijuana in her jacket. She pleaded guilty to that additional charge Jan. 24 and was sentenced to two years in prison and fined nearly $1,300. That sentence also will run concurrent with her other conviction.

Does the judge actually seriously believe that she's done these kids a favor?

Who is Spottedcrow?

Spottedcrow has four children ages 9, 4, 3 and 1 and is determined to keep her 8-year, common-law marriage intact. "It's been really hard on my husband,"she said. "I know a lot of things can happen, but he'll always have my back and be there."

Her son is aware of what has happened, but the girls have been told their mother is away at college.

"I missed my daughter's fourth birthday, and I'll miss her fifth one too. My other daughter just started talking, and I'm not there to hear her,"Spottedcrow said.

"My baby woke up and doesn't know where her mommy is. This is the hardest thing to do, and know I can't do anything about it. I just have to focus on myself and take it day-to-day and plan for going home. I will want to see my kids at some point. I'm trying to take this slow. I can't get depressed about it."

READ MORE - Overkill In Drug Sentencing

Neuroscience of Binge Drinking Better Understood

[M]anipulating two receptors in the brain, GABA receptors and toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), "caused profound reduction" of binge drinking for two weeks in rodents that had been bred and trained to drink excessively." The study was published online the week of Feb. 28 in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

About 30 percent of Americans who drink do so excessively, and about 75,000 people die each year from the effects of excessive drinking. Current treatments for excessive alcohol drinking include prescription drugs Revia and Campral for controlling cravings. To ease withdrawal symptoms, doctors often prescribe medications such as Valium and Librium that carry their own risks of addiction. Valium and Librium reduce the anxiety alcoholics feel when they stop drinking but do not reduce cravings for alcohol.

The new study found that treatments that manipulate both the GABA receptor and toll-like receptor 4 have the potential to reduce anxiety and control cravings, with little to no risk for addiction[.] . . .

GABA receptors are a class of receptors in the brain that react to the neurotransmitter GABA and act as inhibitory receptors, calming down or inhibiting the activity of neurons in the brain. GABA receptors react to alcohol, giving drinkers a calm and euphoric feeling and reinforcing excessive drinking behavior. . . . This is the first scientific study to document GABA receptors' key involvement in binge drinking specifically, though scientists already believed that the receptors had a role in excessive drinking in general. . . .

Science has traditionally considered TLR4 to be an innate immunity receptor involved with neuroinflammation in the brain. Scientists associated TLR4 with microglia, cells that support inflammatory responses in the brain. "What makes this finding particularly important for the field of neuroscience is that we're showing that TLR4 plays a significant role in neurons, specifically, the neurons that are connected to the GABA receptor," . . . . To establish the connection between the GABA receptors, TLR4 and alcohol, the scientists manipulated this pathway in the binge drinking rodents . . . [with] a herpes viral vector . . . to deliver a gene-modifying agent directly to the neurons in the brain, to target TLR4 and GABA receptors. The scientists found that when they artificially stimulated the GABA receptors and TLR4 in order to simulate the good feelings binge drinkers feel when drinking alcohol, the rats lost interest in alcohol for two weeks after the procedure.

Compounds exist that would stimulate the receptors in the same way the scientists did in the study. "It's very likely that, down the road, these compounds could become new therapies for binge drinking . . . These compounds would act like a substitute for alcohol, much like methadone acts as a substitute for heroin. They would help alcoholics stop drinking, giving them relief from their cravings and from the anxiety that they try to alleviate with drinking."

From here.

So, drugs to end a predisposition to binge drink may be on the horizon in our near future, and there is a methodological precedent for determining a cause and developing a treatment for other kinds of substance addictions.

Given the strong connection between alcoholism and other kinds of substance abuse, and a wide range of socially unacceptable behavior and crimes, the next question is whether these treatments promise a world in which those social ills are dramatically less of problem.

Also, if such drugs existed, what would it take to get binge drinkers to take it? Will drug testing for probationers cease to become a matter of seeing that they aren't taking illegal drugs and become a matter of confirming that they are taking drugs that treat their vulnerabilities?

Given the poor track record of science at observing ethical standards with vulnerable or institutionalized populations, there is also good reason to fear abuses along the same lines in the future.

There may also be an upside to the complexity of many polygenetic mental health traits. While it may take just a single disruption of one of thousands of genes that go into a health functioning brain, if dysfunctional processes are equally complex, a single way to disrupt that process may deal with problems that have a wide variety of causes. This seems to be the story of modern psychiatry. We have found drugs that can manipulate a handful of neurochemicals in the brain, but those drugs treat a large number of patients with neurochemical imbalances in the neurochemical systems that most commonly go awry.

Drugs that act on neurochemical receptors and reuptake channels seems to address a great many mental health conditions. This part of the brain seems particularly succeptable to treatment with drugs. There may be other parts of the brain that are equally important, perhaps miswired neurons, for example, but we don't understand how to treat them as well.

READ MORE - Neuroscience of Binge Drinking Better Understood

Mexico Still Deep In Drug War

Police in drug violence-plagued Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, say more than 50 people have been killed in a three-day span. The El Paso Times reported Monday that the 53 victims, between Thursday and Saturday, included a police officer, a municipal patrolman and a state investigator.

From here.

12 taxi drivers have been killed in attacks in Acapulco, Mexico. Acapulco also recently saw four men bound and tossed off a six hundred foot bridge:

Four men with their hands and feet tied and heads covered in duct tape were thrown 600 feet to their deaths from a bridge Friday, authorities said as Mexico's increasingly bloody drug battles reached a new level of cruelty and intimidation.

The four were among 13 people slain Friday in Guerrero, which has seen a spike in violence since rival factions of the Beltran Leyva cartel began fighting over territory after leader Arturo Beltran Leyva died in a battle with Mexican marines in December 2009.

The other nine were killed in the resort city of Acapulco. In the most gruesome of those killings, police found a severed head that had been scalped and whose face had been skinned. . . .

Nationwide, nearly 35,000 people have been killed in drug-gang violence since President Felipe Calderon deployed troops and federal police four years ago to crush the cartels in their strongholds.

Just the thing to get you excited about a vacation in a Mexican resort on the beach, where an international tennis tournament is currently underway.

READ MORE - Mexico Still Deep In Drug War

A Cocaine Vaccine?

Suppose you could get some shots that dramatically reduce the potency of cocaine in your system through an immune system response to it? It is the sort of thing that might make it much easier for a cocaine addict to quit.

In mouse models, such a "cocaine vaccine" seems to be effective. Vaccinated mice have a far less pronounced response to comparable doses of cocaine than unvaccinated mice.

Methadone is a drug sometimes used to ween addicts off their drug addictions, but the need for fairly precise timing and dosing of a methadone therapy have been one of the important factors in a dramatic increase in accidental drug overdose deaths over the last decade or two. A vaccine treatment doesn't pose those kinds of risks.

Also, once someone received a cocaine vaccination, it would be unnecessary to monitor this part of the drug treatment program in an intensive way.

Research into similar treatments for heroin addicts and meth addicts is also underway.

Of course, there are all sorts of questions about how a mouse model translates into a human therapy. For example, the same vaccine that mutes cocaine response might actually be broader and also mute responses to medicinally useful painkillers or stimulants. Or, it might not be long lasting enough, or potent enough to deal with a heavy addiction. In the mouse model, the treatment effectively reduced drug doses by 60%. But, a human might simply increase the dose proportionately and continue the addiction.

Also, the mice were vaccinated before any exposure to cocaine, but this kind of treatment makes no sense for the general population even if the side effects and risks are pretty modest. It is hard to tell if the effect would be the same once the epigenetic changes that drug addiction causes were already in place.

Still, the prospect of a simple drug that once administered would cure people of drug addictions without long painful withdrawal and therapy, probably with relapses in most cases, at least temporarily, is a tempting possibility. And, given the negative health consequences and life consequences of being a drug addict to cocaine, heroin or meth, even significant negative side effects from the treatment would be an improvement if the vaccine is effective for people who have already become addicted. Indeed, it might even make since, pre-emptively, in people who have a strong family history of addiction and live in an environment that put them at high risk of becoming addicts themselves.

READ MORE - A Cocaine Vaccine?

Does Recidivist Sentencing Work?

Making the length of a prison sentence conditional on an individual’s offense history is shown to be a powerful way of preventing crime. Under a law adopted in the Netherlands in 2001, prolific offenders could be sentenced to a prison term that was some ten times longer than usual. We exploit quasi-experimental variation in the moment of introduction and the frequency of application across 12 urban areas to identify the effect. We find the sentence enhancements to have dramatically reduced theft rates. The size of the crime-reducing effect is found to be subject to sharply diminishing returns.

From the abstract to Preventing Crime Through Selective Incapacitation by Ben Vollaard.

Some highlights:

[J]udges almost exclusively sentenced drug-using, older individuals under the law for whom there was thought to be no hope of preventing high-rate offending by any other means than incapacitation. Most of the convicted offenders were not able to maintain a normal life style. They were out of work and did not have stable housing. They committed theft for a living, collecting a daily income of some 50 to 100 euro ($70-130) to be able to maintain their habit, which implies stealing property valuing some 300 to 600 euro ($400-800) on a daily basis. By 2001, many of these highly prolific offenders were aged 40 or over: they had fallen victim of the heroin epidemic that swept Europe back in the 1980s. The offenders spent some three to four months in prison each year in absence of the new law, and some had as many as 300 offenses on their criminal record. On average, offenders had been convicted 31 times prior to being sentenced under the habitual offender law. The enhanced prison sentence was not only meant to reduce crime through incapacitation but to provide a window for coercive treatment as well. Incarceration was often combined with drug treatment and other rehabilitative services, such as social skills training. Evaluations of the law suggest the treatment programs had little effect on recidivism. . . .

The offense data show that 85 percent of all offenses known to the police were committed within the urban area an offender has been assigned to. The other 15 percent of offenses were mostly committed in smaller communities directly bordering the urban area. . . .

[T]he rate of theft is some 30 to 40 percent lower as a result of selective incapacitation of prolific offenders. The size of the drop in crime corresponds with the results of some back-of-the-envelope calculations. If 1,200 offenders are responsible for 70 percent of crime, as we argued above, then the close to 700 offenders serving time under the law by mid-2007 are responsible for 40 percent of crime. . . . The crime-reducing effect of the law is smaller than this percentage share, however, since some of the offenders would have been doing time also in absence of the law. Assuming 8 additional months of incarceration per year as a result of the law, the drop in crime can be put at some 30 percent, which is close to what we find. . . . under the assumption that the affected offenders spend 8 additional months in prison per year, the law prevents some 80 thefts from car and 9 domestic burglaries annually per long term incapacitated offender. That implies that the costs per crime prevented are equal to some 600 euros. In other words, if the social costs of a domestic burglary and a theft from car are higher than 600 euros, then the policy is welfare improving. Estimates of the costs of crime are surrounded by controversy. Ex post approaches estimate the cost of crime that has already occurred to identifiable victims. Based on jury awards, Roman (2009) estimates the average costs of a burglary to be $4,444 (3,300 euro). Accounting for all of the costs that are known to be related to crime, including damage and the costs of use of the criminal justice system, the Home Office produces a somewhat higher estimate of the costs of a burglary of 4,600 euro ($6,000) per incident. A separate estimate for the cost of a theft from car is only available from the Home Office study, which puts it at 1,200 euro ($1,600) per incident. . . .

A habitual offender law adopted in the Netherlands in 2001 allowed for a two to three year prison sentence for offenders with ten or more offenses on their criminal record. Although the group of offenders sentenced under the law accounted for only 5 percent of the prison population six years after its introduction, the sentencing policy lowered the rate of burglary and theft from car by an estimated 40 percent through the incapacitation effect alone. The estimated impact of the law is large, but in line with self-reported crime. In addition, police counts of active prolific offenders are found to go down proportionally with the number of prolific offenders serving extra time in prison as a result of the law. . . .

Even for this highly selective sentencing policy that only affected 1,400 offenders in the period 2001-2007 we find evidence for rapidly decreasing returns to scale. The marginal crime-reducing effect of incapacitating another prolific offender declines by more than half from the lowest to the highest rate of application of the law. The benefit-cost ratio drops sharply when more offenders are serving time under the habitual offender law. The social returns to selective incarceration remain positive over the whole range of application of the policy, however. . . .

The incapacitation effect may be particularly large in the case of the Netherlands as the habitual offender law primarily affected offenders that were addicted to drugs, heroin in particular. These offenders tend to have an age-crime curve that is flatter than that of other groups of offenders – even other prolific offenders. Possible negative effects of longer prison sentences on the life of offenders such as disruption of employment, relationships and housing were limited as most of the affected offenders were out of work and did not have stable housing.

The Dutch policy of selective incapacitation started from a low base. The rate of incarceration in the Netherlands around 2001 was similar to the rate in the beginning of the 1970s in the US, for instance. Enhancing prison sentences of a few weeks or months to three years is likely to have a greater payoff in terms of preventing crime than enhancing prison sentences that are already many years long. To compare: an enhanced prison sentence for burglary of 2 to 3 years based on the Dutch habitual offender law is comparable to the default sentence for burglary in the United States. Our finding that the habitual offender law adopted in the Netherlands had a large incapacitation effect should therefore not be interpreted as evidence that all policies of selective incapacitation are likely to have a similarly favorable cost-benefit ratio. Given the rapidly diminishing returns to incarceration, the high costs of the enhanced prison sentences may soon exceed the benefits of crime prevented.

The delicacy with which the Dutch approach a very modest habitual offender law that applies only to those with ten previous offenses (although many of those would be misdemeanors under U.S. law and generally not within habitual offender provisions except under laws that allow aggravation of multiple theft amounts into a single felony theft prosecution), is itself fascinating. Habitual non-violent felony property crime defendants in Colorado and most U.S. states receive sentences many times as long.

Also, the fact that someone in the Dutch public policy process is even seriously trying to quantify the cost-benefit ratio of incarcerating habitual thieves for long periods of time, and considering even the economic impact of the sentence on the thieves themselves, is itself interesting. So too is the fact that somebody in the Dutch criminal justice policy making world finds bicycle thefts, larcenies from cars, and non-violent burglaries of unoccupied dwellings worth of interest at all. By comparison, most American criminal justice policymakers are so interested in reducing violent crime that any other objective is virtually irrelevant.

Felony Sentencing In The United States

A link to the latest data on felony sentencing in the United State can be found here (almost no state or national level statistics are kept on misdemeanor sentencing apart from overall jail incarceration rates, records of court cases commenced, and sometimes a distinction between the share of those in jail who are awaiting trial and those who are actually convicted). This year's highlights:

* In 2006 an estimated 69% of all persons convicted of a felony in state courts were sentenced to a period of confinement--41% to state prison and 28% to local jails.
* State prison sentences averaged 4 years and 11 months in 2006.
* Men (83%) accounted for a larger percentage of persons convicted of a felony, compared to their percentage (49%) of the adult population.
* Most (94%) felony offenders sentenced in 2006 pleaded guilty.

Jury trial rates do not exceed 5% for any category of crimes other than serious violent crimes. Even 61% of murder convictions are the result of guilty pleas.

The average burglary sentence in the U.S. in 2006 was 44 months of incarceration where incarceration is imposed (median 24 months), and the average larceny sentence was 22 months (median 12 months) of incarceration where incarceration is imposed. Of course, many and probably most of those sentences don't involve recidivist offenders.

Life sentences are imposed in the U.S. in about 25% of murders, 5% of rapes, 1.5% of robberies, 0.8% of non-rape sexual assault cases, 0.6% of aggravated assaults, 0.4% of other violent crimes, and 0.1% of non-violent crimes for which incarceration in prison is imposed as a sentence.

Surprisingly, no fine is imposed in 55% or more of cases for every particular kind of felony. Overall, fines are not imposed 62% of the time.

Colorado Sentencing in 2009

In Colorado, there were 42 habitual offender commitments to prison in fiscal year 2009 (see page 23 of the pdf), compared to 26-66 per year in years since 2005. These included a 40 year sentence for forgery, a 25 year sentence for burglary, four cases with an average 36 year sentence for burglary, three theft sentences of an average of 18 years each, four for trespassing or criminal mischief for an average of 11 years each, a 6 year forgery sentence, a 6 year perjury sentence, and an 11 year trespassing/criminal mischief sentence. Three habitual offender sentences were for escape, fourteen were for violent or weapon related crimes, six were for drug crimes, and two were for a felony traffic offense. All but one of the 42 habitual offenders were men and the trigger for habitual offender sentencing is two or three prior felonies of the relevant type under each habitual offender statute (there are several). While these terms are long, they are far more lenient in most cases than under California's controversial three strikes law. The average Colorado prisoner serves about half their full sentence due to good time and other considerations.

About 3% of offenders in Colorado prisons were sentenced under habitual criminal statutes. In all there were 22,961 people in Colorado prisons as of June 30, 2009. Another 12,773 were on parole.

The "need assessments" of Colorado prisoners is always notable.

Educationally, just 1% of those admitted to prison had an associates degree or more education although about 11% have some college, while 37% lacked a high school diploma with 36% being at least functionally illiterates who needed adult basic education instruction, rather than high school level GED instruction which would be too advanced for them. About two-thirds of those with either a high school diploma or GED had a GED rather than a high school diploma. So, less than a quarter of Colorado prison inmates graduated from high school in the ordinary course. In Colorado as a whole, 11% lack a high school diploma or GED, 89% of the age 25+ population has at least a high school diploma or GED, 65% have at least some college, 43% have an associates degree or higher degree, and 33% have a bachelor's degree.

About 8% had an IQ of under 81. A moderate to severe mental health problem is an issue for 30%. A moderate to severe substance abuse problem is an issue for 79%. A moderate to severe medical problem is present in 15%. Sex offenders make up 11% with another 5% suspected of having sex offense histories who are not convicted. An absence of adequate skills to get a job is a factor for 42%. Mental health needs differed considerably based on gender. A moderate to severe mental health problem was an issue for 22% of men and 55% of women.

The DOC doesn't include crosstabs in its annual report or relate needs data to recidivism data, although some data along that line are collected in a separate report and here. Offenders with mental health issues are slightly more likely to lack of high school diploma or GED (31%-32% v. 28%), to lack job skills (94% v. 91%), to be sex offenders (22%-24% v. 18%), to have substance abuse problems (80%-83% v. 78%) and to have anger issues (40%-41% v. 39%) than other inmates. They are much more likely to have medical problems (25%-28% depending on severity v. 16%), to have IQ below 81 (about 8% v. 4%), and to have suicidality issues (about 21% to 30% depending on severity v. 9%). Only 30% of inmates without a substance abuse problem have a high school diploma and 24% have neither that nor a GED.

Some mental health data don't make much sense. Those who were classified as having mental health issues often had prior psychiatric hospitalization (18%-24% depending on severity) and out patient mental health treatment (42%-47% depending on severity), but among those not classified as having mental health issues, 5% had prior psychiatriic hospitalization and 27% had prior outpatient mental health treatment, suggesting significant underdiagnosis of mental health issues by the DOC. Among those with mental health issues 23%-34% had a history of psychotropic medications, but so did 4% of those not so classified. Notably, less than 1% of inmates with mental health issues had a prior not guilty by reason of insanity case.

The most common mental health conditions were drug addiction, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, alcoholism, schitzophrenia and psychotic disorders, dsythmic disorders, "disorders usually diagnosed in childhood" like ADHD, and "sexual and gender identity disorders" 1%. In all 34% of disciplinary violations were attributed to the 25% of inmates classified as having mental health issues in the detailed study on the issue, and these inmates were much more likely to be in solitary confinement or "close" supervision than other inmmates (23%-24% v. 11%), despite generally similar offense severity.

The overall percentage of inmates with moderate to severe needs in some category other than job skills (which almost all inmates seem to lack) is probably in excess of 90%, and once job skills are considered is probably in excess of 95%.

The DOC also doesn't detail good time forfeitures or gang crime connections in its annual report, although it tracks both. About 7% of Colorado inmates are eligible for deportation upon release because they are not U.S. citizens. About 9% are foreign born (the same as the 9% of the general Colorado population that is foreign born foreign born), but the remainder are U.S. citizens not eligible for deportation. Colorado's inmates are 45% Anglo, 32% Hispanic, 20% African American, 3% Native American and 1% Asian. Colorado as a whole is 71% Anglo, 20% Hispanic, 4% African American, 1% Native American and 3% Asian.

For prisoners released in 2005 and for prisoners released in 2006, the three year return to prison rate was 53.2% (a little higher for men, a little lower for women). The largest proportions of returns to prison are for technical violations of parole. For example, looking at the cohort released in 2004, the percentage of the cohort commiting ofirst time technical violations or new crimes by number of years from release is as follows:

---------------New Crime----------Technical Violation
Year 1----------8.8%------------------24.1%
Year 2----------6.2%-------------------7.8%
Year 3----------3.6%-------------------1.9%
Year 4----------2.3%-------------------0.4%
Year 5----------1.8%-------------------0.3%

Even a 1.8% crime conviction rate per year is huge compared to the general population. But, inmates in Colorado prisons are highly atypical of the general population in a variety of "needs" categories as well as in having a history of having seriously violated the law. About 43%, however, will go five years from release from prison without a single technical violation forcing their return to prison or new crime, and about 77% will not be returned to prison for a new crime in that five year time period.

Recidivism rates are higher for those with moderate mental health issues than those with none or those with severe mental health issues.

The average annual cost of incarcerating an inmate in Colorado was $32,338 in fiscal year 2009. The state has 23 prisons. None of them was under 100% of capacity. Twelve were over 100% of capacity, in one case at 186% of capacity (Skyline Correctional Center). The state prison system employs more than 6,000 people full time. State prison populations did almost hold steady in 2009 (increasing by only 189 inmates), however, after many years of steady and rapid prison population growth due to both decreased admissions and increased releases. New crime convictions leading to prison sentences declined, while technical parole violations rose.

READ MORE - Does Recidivist Sentencing Work?

Why Are Mexican Drug Lords So Well Armed?

Why are Mexican drug lords so well armed? Because the American National Rifle Association is commited to helping them.

About 90% of guns used by criminals in the Mexican drug war were purchased from U.S. gun shops.

READ MORE - Why Are Mexican Drug Lords So Well Armed?