Monday, March 20, 2006

March 20

Charles Knott, the guy who beat the other guy to death with a cane in front of schoolchildren on 36th street September 16 of last year, pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter last Monday. He will be sentenced May 15.

A man was shot to death Saturday night near Reisterstown road, south of Pimlico and north of Coldspring.

Malbon Bolden Jr. of Glenmont (near Towson) allegedly beat his girlfriend to death in a Rhode Island Motel 6.
[login: king@aol.com pwd: connor]

Police are seeking a third suspect in the case of the Waverly pot patch. There were also two busts for the drogas blancas.

International insurance co. Zurich will pay about $2.8 million to Maryland companies after allegations of price-fixing and bid-rigging.

Hagerstown inmate Delreece Headspeth got 23 years added to his life sentence for shanking another inmate.

In Crisfield, two 12-year-olds were charged with arson.

Dept of Disheartening Statstics: for Baltimore city's black men, "finishing high school is the exception, legal work is scarcer than ever and prison is almost routine." Baltimore's also featured in the video, which will be running on the Discovery Channel in perpetuity. (Pennsylvania avenue is in the NW between Mondawmin mall and North Avenue).

Scary stat: every month in Baltimore an average 795 ex-offenders get out of jail.

16 comments:

Emptyman said...

Fathering as many children as possible, as soon as possible, without regard for (a) one's ability to support them and (b) actually "fathering" those children in any meaningful sense of the word, enables a suicidal, self-destructive subculture to continue to exist. As one despairs of saving men so bent on throwing their lives away, what remains is the hope that the young women who enable the cycle to continue will, in sufficient numbers, say "enough" to carrying and raising the unsupported children of young thugs. Because the study the Times reports on doesn't offer any meaningful suggestions for actually fixing the problem. We're left simply waiting for the pattern of cultural self-destruction to lead to its inevitable conclusion.

Maurice Bradbury said...

That was the first thing that lept out at me about that story-- who are these women (or girls) and what are they thinking? Is it a mystery that sex = babies? That single motherhood is hard, hard, hard?

I'm of the opinion that deciding to have a baby is a huge deal even when you're married, you both have jobs and own a house with an extra bedroom, but in Baltimore City that's an unusual point of view. Literally. That sounds like sarcasm but it isn't. I have more in common philisophically with a mom in rural China than I do with my neighbors.

If you ever feel inadequate as a parent, just come on down to Hampden and watch some lady with three teeth chasing a kid down the street: "git back here yew little bitch! Ima kick yer fucking ass!"

Anonymous said...

The Praxis newletter is fascinating in that its analysis treats wages as exogenous. It speaks to the income that a person of limited capacity needs in order to meet his expenses, finding unsurprisingly that a doubling of wages helps great deal.

What it fails to mention is that when you double the wage, people of limited capacity are not hired.

Anonymous said...

Not only are 800 hoods released into the wild each month, but also, some 80 of those settle in my surroundings. A study of reentry upon release finds that they flock to the most suspect neighborhoods. Unsurprisingly, they get back into their old ways fairly instantly.

They should probably be banned from the high-criminality areas as a condition of their parole.

Anonymous said...

About 75% of Baltimoreans getting out of jail have been there before. One in five will be back inside within the year.


www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410655_MDPortraitReentry.pdf

InsiderOut said...

I'm really curious about the race difference cited in the NYT article : "Closer studies reveal that in inner cities across the country, more than half of all black men still do not finish high school, . . . .
Dropout rates for Hispanic youths are as bad or worse but are not associated with nearly as much unemployment or crime, the data show."
Is there that much more racism against blacks than Hispanics?

Anonymous said...

It's a bit dubious to ascribe unemployment and criminal activity to racism. Hispanic males without wonderful education go out and get a job or two of manual labor at low wage. Black urban youth seem to feel that manual labor is for suckers. If you won't pay me like an exec, then I'll go for the fast money (and short lifespan) on the corner. They overestimate their fair market value, relative to competing hispanic workers. For that reason, I'm more inclined to hire hispanic males than black urban. That's not quite racism.

Anonymous said...

Also, hispanics do not lay off their low economic status on white, asian, or jewish others. They just deal with it.

Urban black males often take the view that they are historically shortchanged, and that they are due more than they will get. Therefore, they reason, they should extract money by any means necessary, often by lifting merchandise, hooking up friends at the employer's expense, or heisting cash. The consequence, in my experience, is to statistically justify not hiring them, perpetuating the inequality. This experience is not shared by hispanics in Baltimore.

InsiderOut said...

I reread the NYT piece and it mentions how much resources were spent to help young black women. Maybe single young black woman are actually getting encourage by the government to have children out of wedlock through monetary incentives. I think a poor single mother might actually be better off than a poor single woman.

Anonymous said...

Income support is not keyed to the age of the child, yet the cost of raising a child for a low-income single woman may actually double as it ages. What this means for the prospective mother is that she may gain net income by having a child, even though later in the life cycle the child's costs may exceed the support premium. A very rational person would compare the discounted net cash flows over 18 years. Most of the toothless wonders just drewl over that first juicy check. As the child ages and costs increase, she may actually get pregnant again to access the fast money associated with a new baby. The incentives are lousy. Dependent women should be given strong incentives not to reproduce. Perhaps you only get the child premium upon demonstrating that the tubes have been tied.

Emptyman said...

What first juicy check? You're working from an outmoded concept of welfare benefits. AFDC doesn't exist anymore. Temporary Assistance To Needy Families only lasts five years, lifetime. There is no financial incentive to having out-of-wedlock children anymore. There really wasn't one before, as was pointed out, but there's not even a superficial one now.

I also didn't understand how the programs that benefitted young women did not benefit young men. Education, job training, and career placement are equally available to men and women. Women who have to go home and face hungry children just seem to be better motivated than men who don't.

Anonymous said...

That's something of a misperception, actually. About 40% of TANF funds are disbursed as cash, with another 20% earmarked to childcare. TANF is not strictly restricted to a 5-year maximum, provided the extensions do not exceed 20% of the caseload. TANF is more functional than AFDC, but it still subsidizes the creation of children. Many of the recipients, however, are now working, earning $7-9 per hour.

You will find, though, that benefits including HUD vouchers and food cards, are still increasing in the number of children.

Anonymous said...

Pennsylvania Avenue does not run all the way to Mondawmin Mall, and north of North Avenue it only exists for three blocks, whereas south of North Avenue it exists for about 20 blocks and ends at Franklin Street, on the other side of MLK, where it becomes Greene Street. Also, the entire length of Pennsylvania Avenue is within either the Central or Western police districts, hardly what I would call Northwest Baltimore. Just sayin'.

Anonymous said...

Mayor McCheese on the HUD discrimination case:

O'Malley denounced what he called the "old bigotry that the city is by its nature a bad place."


I suppose it's not, ... if you live in Guilford, or like Hizzoner, in Beverly Hills with a police guard on site.

As for Whitelock, Barclay, or Pratt-Monroe,... yeah,... bad places. Can't blame anyone for wanting to be... anywhere else. And I think it's reprehensible to BELIEVE them into being there by promising a brighter future when you're not willing to bear the burden of bringing it to pass. BELIEVE is all about "Do as I say, not as I do."

Maurice Bradbury said...

Thanks 'non. I have been lied to via Mapquest.

I don't think what's going on with the pregnant teenagers is a financial calculus.

My mom actually worked with teenage mothers for a while (a short while, it burned her out in a hurry), and said it was an emotional thing, the girls almost always grew up feeling unloved and without a purpose or any goals, they wanted someone to love them and to have something to do. No one in their lives ever even suggested they were capable of doing anything else. People tend to do what's familiar, even if what's familiar is horrible.

Anonymous said...

That's kinda the point. They don't do the calculations about the costs later in life. What they know is that at least initially, they see 16 year-old girlfriends getting preggers and then being back in the clubs two weeks after delivery having a grand ol' time. And they have a cuddly, lil' stuffed animal called a Chil' which evinces their [physical] maturity. And it doesn't seem to be much of an inconvenience, primarily because grandma is doing all the heavy lifting.