After some morning wonkiness at the
Examiner site, Luke has his
May recap posted. It's a good article, and Dr. Sharfstein's comment ("Homicide is the leading cause of death among young men in the city. When you're talking about that many people being killed, it's absolutely a public health problem.") is much more insightful than the head-in-the-sand comment in 2005 by then-Health Commissioner Beilenson ("Baltimore is actually a very safe city if you are not involved in the drug trade."). Why don't you tell that to Anna Sowers, Pete?
Mr. B. always seems to come up with these one-two punches on the days of his murder recaps, and today is no exception. He takes a look at five women who work in the same office at the Baltimore City District Court, all of whom have
lost at least one male family member to the city's homicide problem.
I hate it when they
bury two news stories in one link: There was a knife fight on a bus in Annapolis, and police have ID'd a suspect in the murder of 21-year-old mother-to-be Christen Hawkins.
17 comments:
I'm prepared to 100% agree with Scharfstein's assessment that the rampant crime in Baltimore is a matter of public health, if he's prepared to call for the quarantine of its practitioners.
But I don't care to hear one word about becoming a kinder, gentler place through counselng, therapy, and Kumbaya.
This is about aberrant behavior and effective law-enforcement strategies to impose compliance.
Hoodlum-huggers need not apply.
From the Northern crime log, lots of burglary.
Also in the crime log this week, when in Waverly, if you see a guy with a crowbar,... RUN. No matter what, he's up to no good. Is he perhaps just working at his job?? What job ???
The assault and armed robbery on East 33rd Street is detailed.
The average murder victim in Baltimore has roughly 9 prior felony arrests.
Random, stranger-on-stranger violence can happen anywhere, at anytime, but it is rare and per capita is probably no higher in Baltimore than anywhere else with similar poverty levels.
The Zach Sowers story got so much press coverage precisely because it is so rare. I thought, in fact, that the point to things like Murder Ink in the City Paper and the Baltimore Crime Blog was to highlight the crimes that occur on an ongoing, day-to-day basis, to combat the very skewed view on crime created by the media's saturation coverage of the rarest crimes and virtual blackout on the most common ones.
It IS true that the best way to avoid being murdered in Baltimore City is to not be a felon yourself.
If there was an easy way to address that "public health problem," someone would have addressed it already. Legalize drugs and reduce Baltimore City class sizes down to about six students per classroom would be a start, but that's politically impossible. Wave a magic wand and bring back good-paying jobs for people without much education is another alternative.
The average murder victim in Baltimore has roughly 9 prior felony arrests."
no way thats true
Empty, it's hard to chronicle the eveyday crimes, because around 2 of every three never see the light of day. urder and shootings are easier because 1) they're difficult to conceal and ) 2 they tend to necessitate hospital care and hospitals are required to report the wound to authorities.
On the subject of felony convicton-->death, do tell. If I were to be convicted tomorrow of, say, stock manipulation, and then released back into my familiar upper-class surroundings, do you really think my murder probability after release is dramatically higher because of my correctional status?
I don't. What I think you mean is that the ghetto gangsta lifestyle is strongly correlated with a high murder victimization rate. Tru dat. Frankly, would that their hazard rate from lightning strikes was as strongly correlated.
Again, who said low income forces you to engage in criminal acts? Or are you acknowledging that the vast bulk of the law-abiding poor left out of this dump years ago? That leaves a demographic problem, not one of income: too many dirtbags in Baltimore.
Legalizing drugs simply reduces the attactiveness of that line of ilegal activity. Do you think the dirtbags are more likely to go straight or find another racquet ?? If they cannot profitably sell drugs, they'll just break into more houses. Either way, your silverware is gone.
As for teaching, I have some background in that area. Six (functional) students to a classroom is wasteful. I went through (suburban) public school with an average of 28 per classroom. Or are you referring to the behaviorally crippled children of dirtbags? Because they probably do need intensive decompression and reindoctrination.
You know, i can over look the drugs and the plain ol' drug dealers, but all these wannabe from LA gangs are what piss me off! Its like, the gangs in LA probably look at you as fake wannabees! but if you think about it, the gang problem in bmore makes perfect sense, it gives the coward followers something to follow, and it makes ganging up on victims much easier...crime is wrong, but come on, have some balls and be an individual...the really funny part is that all these "gangbangers" are in the same gang!! haha how funny is that, everyones a blood, ive seen very few crips...i actually saw one on paul mall drive during a cookout for my GF's grand pa...the kid looked no older then 17, i was thinking "you wish you were a real crip huh"...gangs anywhere are wrong, but atleast in LA they have some sort of organized tradition that has been passed on through decades...unlike these bmore cowards...
Well, with around 300 murders, that would account for 2,700 felony convictions over a period of several years. The Circuit Court alone books around 10,000 felony cases annually. Employing the rule of Seven and Seventy suggests that the worst 3% of offenders likely generated some 30% of annual felonies, which might be over 3,000 court cases a year. So, before considering conviction rate, we're in about the right range at 9 convictions per.
Waitaminute!
The post says nine felony arrests, so we don't need to consider conviction rate.
I actually suspect that number may be conservative, because many arrests have gone uncharged in recent years.
The former health commissioner was, in fact, mostly correct. Baltimore is about as safe as any other big cities for people that aren't involved in the drug-and-thug lifestyle.
Murder victims typically have extensive criminal records. People who have an average of 9, NINE! felony arrests aren't the type of folks that engage in positive behavior. This behavior is what gets them their "comeuppance".
I remember during the governor election, I got a postcard in the mail from Ehrlich showing a bleak grimy NYC skyline with the "statement" that you are 5 times more likely to be murdered in Baltimore as in NYC. A perfect example of childish reasoning based on per capita murder rates with no consideration for the DEMOGRAPHICS that plays a bigger role in murder than anything else, including location.
There was an interesting article about Zach Sowers in the Urbanite magazine which pointed out that, of the 282 murders recorded in 2007, 13 victims were white (about 4.6%, even though whites are about 32% of the population), and as of March 2008, Zach Sowers was the only white murder victim (after being in a coma for 10 months - the assault occcured in June 2007). So, clearly it makes sense to look at the demographics of murder victims - this really isn't a bunch of random crime cutting across all parts of the city and society. (By the way, just thinking about Zach and Anna's ordeal still gives me shivers. And while it may not have been indicative of the trend in murders in this City, it definitely painted a pretty clear image, for me, of the complete disregard for human life and minimal behavioral standards on the part of those perpetrating violent crime in Baltimore.)
Also, Galt, "If I were to be convicted tomorrow of, say, stock manipulation, and then released back into my familiar upper-class surroundings, do you really think my murder probability after release is dramatically higher because of my correctional status?" Well, after your 9th felony conviction, it becomes clear that you're frequently engaged in serious risk-taking with a disregard for the law; no one ever posited that anyone with a single felony is going to be a murder victim.
Of course, statistics lie. But the statistics for 2008 seem to paint an interesting picture: 83 muder victims year to date; 71 AA, 10 white (including 4 Hispanic), 2 not yet id'd. 69 male, 14 female. Don't know how the mentioned article thought Mr Sowers was the first white; he was the fourth. Does anyone think the female victims have an average of 9 felony arrests?
What you seem to be suggesting is that the risk-taking behavior of an individual increases the consequences to him and only to him.
Not true.
Crime creates dangers to all of us. Now, those might stick first to those in the same risk-taking subculture, but certainly not to them exclusively.
In point of fact, the mere presence of criminals in the population diminishes the functionality and taxes the resources of any system of justice.
Consider this sentence. It is especially lenient not because the offenses are inconsiderable, but because the witness population (and the local jury pool) is as tainted as the offender population.
There is your demographic problem: the presence of a large percentage of hoodlums and the prevalence of their subculture is antithetical to the functional implementation of a conventional American adversarial system of justice.
What is required in places with an excessive hoodlum (which subsumes far more than just convicts) population is something akin to a Military Tribunal and expedited enforcement authority under martial law.
That's how you bootstrap a society back to a population composition which is amenable to a standard American adversarial criminal justice approach.
Demos don't 'cause' crime. Criminal acts are unacceptable choices made by individuals.
What the demos do at the population level is to gum up the process of justice, thereby decreasing pobabilistically the effectiveness of enforcement, thereby incentivizing the more or less rational individual choice to commit the crime given the low effective penalty.
Sooooooo,... what do you do when your hoodlum demographics exceed a certain level (associated with the strictly systematic risk of nonstructurally aberrant individual conduct) ?
Eliminate them from your population. It's that simple.
As for gender and offense chronicity, females make up only about ten percent of the offender population and exhibit much lower chronicity. If the average chronicity is 9, then distilling the population down to the worst 90% probably won't increase the male average by very much.
The bigger gap in chronicity will probably be found between different age cohorts.
that should be our new slogan: "either way, your silverware is gone."
ps. I like "Pete." Our teen pregnancy and crotch-rots rates dropped under his tenure!
Baltimore City Paper, 1/23/08:
"According to police, 87 percent of last year's homicide victims had criminal records, 64 percent for violent offenses. . . African-Americans make up 65 percent of the city's population but 91 percent of its '07 homicide victims--African-American men who were shot to death accounted for all but 66 of the homicide victims. In the same year, 63 percent of victims were under the age of 30 and 51 were teenagers."
Consider that many teenagers CAN'T have criminal records, because juvenile records don't count...
It's one thing to say we can identify the population most likely to kill and be killed. (More murder cases in Baltimore City were closed by the murder of the suspect than by the conviction of the suspect in 2007). It's another thing to solve the problem.
Throwing the Constitution out the window, as John Galt suggests, is probably not a realistic option. And it probably won't help much. It's already hard to get witnesses to come forward -- in part out of fear of the criminals, but also in large part due to distrust of, and contempt for, the police. Being MORE heavy-handed will not resolve that problem.
The reason I suggested "wasteful" small class sizes is that what it takes to control 28 white-bread suburban kids and what it takes to control 28 kids coming out of a culture that prizes violence, ignorance, and instant gratification -- and scorns peaceful conflict resolution, education, and goal-setting -- are two different things. The kids did not CREATE the culture they came from, but if we don't intervene to interrupt the cycle, they will surely make it worse.
Here's the cycle: if someone creates affront, and you don't respond, you are branded as "soft" and you are deliberately victimized by EVERYONE until you prove otherwise.
It starts with beating up the guy who stepped on your toes at the bus stop. Quickly it becomes putting a bullet in the head of anyone who gave you "a hard look."
Tiny, intensive classroom work might be the closest lawful thing we can do Galt's "quarantine." And we need to do it for a generation, at least.
(Lots of free birth control would be a major step in the right direction, too.)
Lastly, while legalizing drugs won't bring about the reform of all criminals, the drug users who commit lots of property crimes won't have to commit so many to afford their fixes, and the drug dealers who kill one another over turf won't do that any more, either. That won't resolve the culture of aggression described above, but it would get eliminate a meaningful percentage of shootings and a large percentage of property crimes.
Dang, Emptyman... it's been a while since I've read a comment that I almost entirely agree with! Well spoken.
I suppose my objection is, all carrot and no stick makes me feel like an awful sucker for putting up with this dump.
There are people in this world who don't get stuck 'taking it'. Just maybe not here.
You're making a really good sales pitch for the condos at the Ritz-Carlton in 'the other Baltimore'. You know, all those people who never have to deal with any of this sh!t or the hoodlum population which causes it?
Apartheid is alive and well and living in Charm City.
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